Every era of video games was affected by its business model. Games used to be far more obtuse to sell guides and hint hotlines, and they used to be hard to the point that they were less fun so that it took longer to finish them. In the early 2000s, when the industry was largely between alternate revenue streams, you tended to get a lot of padding so that they could put a larger number of levels as a bullet point on the back of the box, so the first few levels would be great, but somewhere in the middle, they’d be pretty phoned in.
CocaineShrimp@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
Ill preface by saying I didnt read the article. But I also think that the state of gaming today is much worse than it was in the early 2000s for millennials.
When I was growing up, games had to come out complete so they were generally much more polished. However, when the Xbox360 came out, console makers gave the ability to devs to release patched versions via updates. Initially it was a great idea - devs could fix bugs they might have missed while testing. But then this quickly spiralled into studios forcing devs to release 1/2 baked games in a horribly broken state.
I also think how much you generally have to pay for games has gone way up with respect to the cost of living. Video gaming is much more of a luxury now, than a simple past time. Plus there are so many F2P mobile games out there, that there is even less of an incentive to get into a console / PC gaming.
- Diablo Immortal? F2P (i know theres probably micro transactions and bullshit)
- Diablo 4? PS5 ($500 - assuming you dont have the console already) + Diablo 4 ($67) + PS Plus ($14/month) = $581 + tax
ampersandrew@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Valmond@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 day ago
Release a non finished game, and finish it only if it’s a success ™
Aielman15@lemmy.world 1 day ago
I also think how much you generally have to pay for games has gone way up with respect to the cost of living.
I don’t necessarily agree with you on this specific point (although I agree with the rest of your comment).
Gaming is unfathomably cheap nowadays and the conversion $/hrs is incredible. While yes, day 1 prices are higher than they used to be, discounts are frequent (excluding Nintendo platforms) and games tend to last a LOT longer than they used to. Excluding old-school JRPGs, I don’t remember many games from the PS1 era lasting more than 10/15 hrs. Nowadays that’s the average length for any single player game.
And that does not include the plethora of F2P and live service games that people can waste literally thousands of hours into, free giveaways (I have hundreds of titles on Epic Store that could probably satisfy all my gaming needs until the day I die), etc…
The cost of gaming has gone up only if you are a Nintendo aficionado who adamantly refuses to jump to any other platform and buys all new releases day 1, or a PC master race whose eyes strain from playing games at anything less than 300 fps on the latest NVIDIA card. For any other demographic, gaming prices are fine and more approachable than ever.
ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de 22 hours ago
I gotta argue against the games costing more compared to cola. A new Nintendo game in 1988 was $40 to $50. At that time hamburger was 99 cents, a value meal from a fast food place was $4, a house was $80,000, a new car was $10k to $18k, and you were pretty much a Middle class family if you made $45k\year. Some original NES games even hit $60 a piece.
So videogames are one of the few things that haven’t kept with inflation. In no small part due to more people purchasing games and less physical overhead, but that doesn’t take away from my stance. 40 years later and a game price has gone up by like $20.
zikzak025@lemmy.world 1 day ago
And the other side of the coin, with the advent of DLC, being able to take a complete game and carve pieces off of it to sell separately for more profit.
iltoroargento@lemmy.sdf.org 1 day ago
For a long while, DLC has been just an excuse to foist unnecessary content on the consumer for sales. There are a few notable exceptions in this like Fallout 3 and New Vegas, earlier Borderlands, and, surprisingly, the recent Tainted Grail: Fall of Avalon.
For the most part, though, I have not bought DLC without thoroughly vetting it. I’m not talking about cosmetics. I’m talking about actual story/content additions being overpriced fetch quests which are, more often than not, just vehicles for more useless cosmetics.
As an example, Fallout 4 DLC (much like the basegame itself) was a mistake seated in brand loyalty/a hope of redeeming the title. The DLC featured cosmetic additions for their Sims style settlement minigame, a couple cutesy fetch quests for armor, and two unfinished story DLCs that played like the elevator pitch of what would have eventually been fleshed out of this we’re an earlier entry in the series.
With most story DLC, at best, you get a lackluster and entirely forgettable addition to the basegame. At worst, you get horse armor disguised as a new campaign or an unforgivably half assed hodge podge of storylines that cheapen the rest of your experience with the game.
teslekova@sh.itjust.works 10 hours ago
FYI, Cyberpunk 2077’s DLC is the best I’ve ever seen, and thoroughly worth paying for. Unlike quite a few others, as you mention. It makes everything in the base game better, and the additional story is even better than the story in the base game.
iltoroargento@lemmy.sdf.org 8 hours ago
Nice. I liked it before the dlc came out so I’m definitely down to see how it changes things. I appreciate when studios support their writers to deliver a satisfying/impactful product. It makes all the difference.