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Comment by Wohlf | Hacker News Reader

Game prices have already increased via less consumer friendly practices. Predatory monetization schemes like lootboxes (i.e. gambling), DLC (mixed bag), cosmetics, always online DRM, company specific storefronts, digital sales, "early access" and releasing unfinished games have all reduced costs and increased profits while sticker prices remain static. Sticker prices have even gotten better sometimes since many games go on deep discounts quickly.

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Looking at the bigger picture, as a whole, adjusted for inflation, looks like games have actually gotten a bit cheaper. An NES game was $30-$40 in 1988[1], that's $65-$85 in 2018 dollars.

You also have a whole category of "basic" games (like phone games or indy games) that are nominally (unadjusted) cheaper than a retail NES game for the full version. I'm not an expert on this category by any means but I bought a few games from the Switch store that are very comparable to an NES game for $5-20. That's only a max of $9 in 1988 dollars!!

I'd agree that "consumer [un]friendly practices" are still a problem though. (could be a case of a few "whales" making large purchases on stuff like loot boxes subsidizing everyone else)

[1] http://videogamecomicads.blogspot.com/2012/12/sears-nintendo...

DISCLAIMER: I only play single player console games.

Have to adjust for amount of buyers too though, and the cost of different kinds of games.

When someone says "X has gotten cheaper" they mean when you walk into a store and buy X you pay less than you did in the past, either in real (adjusted for inflation) or nominal (unadjusted for inflation) dollars.

Don’t buy the industry bullshit. They’re making record profits through gambling and micro transactions.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/mattperez/2018/05/08/electronic...

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=pHSso2vufPM

Perhaps you're replying to the wrong comment? I certainly didn't say, nor imply, they weren't. Nor am I "buy[ing] the industry bullshit" (whatever that means), I'm speaking as an end consumer.

They've also decreased, a $60 game in 2006 should cost ~$75 today. Prices haven't kept up with inflation.

Most games have $80-$120 editions that include all of the actual content. $60 is usually the bare bones experience. That is on top of monetization in game.

But prices don't exist in a vacuum either. The gaming market has exploded and is vastly larger than it was back in 2006.

Steam found games were typically much more profitable when heavily discounted than when full price in general.

This is not typical of "most" games. Some games, usually AAA titles from major publishers do this, but the content is usually unimportant to the game as a whole.

The discussion is about unionization. I'd assume that means we are primarily talking about AAA here. But I could of been more explicit.

How much of content offered is sort of irrelevant. A better metric would be how many gamers buy these things. I'd guess quite a few since they keep going all in on the model (it's getting worse).

I always got the impression it was to give gaming journalists something to write about. I never met anybody actually buying these special editions.

Except now they have an additional "season pass" for nearly the same cost of the game for what used to be included for free.

Example of a $60 season pass?

Battlefield games and call of duty games come to mind. You can buy the DLC a la carte when it’s released or spend on a season pass to get all DLC when it’s released.

Battlefield games no longer have a season pass.

Fallout 4 on release had a $60 season pass - last one I ever paid for. But many games are still doing it, I see black ops 4 has one of similar price, as does Civ 6.

Fallout 4 had a $49.99 season pass which was an increase from the previous $29.99[0].

Black ops 4 had one for $40[1]. Can't seem to find historical info about civ6, but I know a "large expansion" was not included in the season pass.

[0]: https://ew.com/article/2016/02/17/fallout-4-season-pass-pric...

[1]: https://www.polygon.com/2018/6/13/17447600/call-of-duty-blac...

Maybe it was after release but I seem to remember the prices matched of the title and the season pass, I'm not in the states though so perhaps an international pricing difference, you get the point though, $50 is still nuts. I've edited the parent appropriately. I suppose the ~$100 range is more correct than the $120 range for a full game these days.

I can't think of games in 2006 that offered additional, free content. They sold them individually as map packs or weird, one-off add-ons (Horse Armor).

Horse Armor was basically the start of the bullshit, I'm not referring to additional free content, - but to match older games in terms of quality play time you often need that season pass.

Play time is a terrible measure for cost of creating a game. Yes, maybe the average playtime of old NES games was shorter, but the amount of artists involved was minimal and they didn't do it by having more content, they did it by stealing coin-sucking GAME OVERs from arcades.

I care about quality play time over just about any other metric. How long is a game actually enjoyable - maximizing that seems like it should be the clear goal, no?

I can't think of a game that is shorter than its predecessors and requires a season pass purchase, or really any 'essential' DLC for a single player game at all. With regard to multiplayer games, they don't have a cap on playtime and traditionally sold expansions (for example Battlefield 1942 Road to Rome).

Multiplayer games are often particularly brutal about this though - if you want to be able to play with the largest population you need to buy the latest content expansion - this didn't used to be the case, compare Call of Duty 4 with the newer Black Ops series for example.

This is wrong because you assume that content from the season pass is already ready when the game releases. Season pass is a different term for expansions that you used to pay in the past.

I've seen that on Reddit as well, you think companies have a year worth of content and holding onto it ... The content is just not ready / created.

What? No where did I suggest that content was ready to go - I'm simply stating that a finished game now has less quality content for the same price than it used to.

Again do you have proof for that? Because I'm pretty sure game have more content nowdays than they had 20 years ago,

I really can't agree with that. A small minority of games are like this yes, Battlefront 2 being the shining example of bad monetary practices. But something like RDR2 or just about any RPG is packed with content.

How so? BF2 has a ton of content for $60 and you don't have to pay for it.

I won't argue if you thought it was a lot.

Every single game does not have this.

I would be incredibly supportive of a game developer union in which developers can push back against being made to practice these unethical behaviors.

Unions traditionally are there to defend the interests of its members, not to address consumer related unethical behaviors.

I guess I was thinking more like a guild, then? I licensing boards? "Sorry I can't shove random RNG-for-money, boss, I'll lose my membership/license".

These union-skeptical comments like the GP rely upon the assumption that unions a hypothetical tech union would look identical to failed unions of the past, and are incapable of doing anything different.

Example of a modern non-American union where workers exert control to better the company over management decisions:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13986889

> Unions traditionally are there to defend the interests of its members, not to address consumer related unethical behaviors.

Many unions and guilds have codes of professional ethics. A quick google finds this example:

https://www.americanbar.org/groups/professional_responsibili...

I've really appreciated Skill Up's commentary on this, particularly in the context of his AC: Odyssey and COD: Black Ops 4 reviews:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dOrKtZsoy30

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HL8HfoCzCB0

Both are thoughtfully argued and well worth watching.

> Game prices have already increased via less consumer friendly practices. Predatory monetization schemes like lootboxes

I suspect loot boxes decrease the price of a game to the median player. I suspect that in many cases, they've reduced the modal and often even median price to $0.

The probably also increase the mean price, though.

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