Cyberpunk 2077 was a turning point for many. CD Projekt Red’s long-teased RPG masterpiece fell at the final hurdle, with its launch marred by immersion-destroying bugs, a failed console release, and a community of gamers who were outraged by the premium game they spent over $60 on. The game is not interesting at all.
Veteran gamers complain that “it wasn’t like that in their day,” and the good old days of picking a game car off the shelf and plugging it in are long gone. Your average gamer starts complaining about unfinished products being overpriced, and patience starts to wear thin. I don’t have the patience for the “lazy developer” critiques that are ubiquitous in this industry (in 10+ years of doing this job, I’ve never encountered a “lazy developer” – the people at the bottom care a lot), but Developers start to be critical of release-level decisions.
Maybe the studio will rush out a patch the first week, apologize, and then “fix” their game with a dastardly roadmap aimed at getting the game “to its full potential”, but that’s not what consumers pay for, is it? ? If you took a day off, dropped $70 on a new entry in your favorite series, and then realized it wasn’t playable in its current state, you’d be frustrated too, right? A lot of gamers will tell you that this habit of tinkering with things until they’re in the state they’re supposed to boot up is all too common these days, and maybe they’re on to something.
But this isn’t a new phenomenon – back in Nintendo’s 64 days, developers had to patch games, it’s just that consumers rarely saw the process, because burning discs and re-releasing games was a less obvious thing back then. matter. However, over the past few generations, the problem has gotten worse. Or, perhaps most notably. Cyberpunk 2077, Anthem, Battlefield 2042, The Callisto Protocol, Pokemon Scarlet, and Violet — these are just a few of the AAA titles that have come out over the past few years that are at best unoptimized and at worst unplayable.
As publishers — 2K, Sony, EA, and now Microsoft — condescend to charge more for their games, consumers start asking “why am I paying so much for a game on day one?”
You should have several good reasons. First, games are getting more and more expensive to produce. In 2005, a AAA developer making a blockbuster game would spend about $25 million to $35 million on the project. Now, the same studio with the same scope is going to spend $75 million to $150 million to get the game up and running, and the studio needs to get that money back somehow. Supporting your favorite developer is the most obvious thing you can do to keep the door from closing forever, though sometimes that’s not enough.
Then there is inflation. For the most part, games have stayed around $60 (or £50) for 15 years, but inflation has been on the rise for a while – and has exploded recently. In the UK it is currently over 12% and shows no signs of dropping anytime soon. It stands to reason that your game costs more to buy, but it’s not the developer’s fault that your salary hasn’t been raised to match. If you adjusted £50 in 2005 for inflation in 2022, you would get £88.24. Think it over.
So games get more expensive. Especially in a world still recovering from (and reeling from) Covid-19. Developers must enable work-from-home plumbing. Publishers must support more disadvantaged workers. Network engineers have had to withstand a surge in traffic during the 2020 lockdown. The gaming environment is different than it used to be; labor is more expensive, developers no longer accept overtime as the norm, and the industry is — finally — unionizing.
Paying more for your games is good for the industry and good for workers. But it’s entirely understandable that you don’t want to pay more for a game that pays less, or (at least) makes you wait longer for a premium product. There is a “cost of living crisis” in the UK, and the reality of the statement is that energy companies are pumping up prices while the government stands by as inflation soars. The end result is that ordinary people are significantly worse off, with working and middle classes disproportionately affected. TL;DR: The biggest gamers spend less money on games.
So it stings to see Microsoft asking $70 for a new game; it makes me feel like I can only buy three or four brand new games a year…and only from developers/publishers I trust enough Combos buy day one sales there (I used to think I could count Game Freak/Nintendo in that group, alas). That’s down from half a dozen brand new games a few years ago. There’s a reason services like Game Pass and PS Plus are hugely popular right now; the value-for-money proposition is off the charts compared to the massive one-time payments for big games. Sony’s commitment to its high prices may prove unpopular in the tough months ahead, just how prominently the consumer-friendly Game Pass has proven over the past few years.
But despite this, gaming remains — on an entertainment value-per-hour basis — one of the cheapest forms of entertainment. I’ve paid about £20 for The Binding of Isaac, about three times (oops), and I’ve spent at least 750 hours on it. By my math, that means I get 12.5 hours of game time for every £1 I spend. Better than spending £12 and wasting two hours of my life on Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.
So $70 games are hard sells, and it’s no surprise that there was an overnight outright resistance to the announcement. But before you start pointing fingers in the wrong direction, consider the average developer — ununionized, overworked, and probably underpaid. We’re all in this together, you shouldn’t be mad at a developer for making things more expensive. Remember this.