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Comment by tapoxi | Hacker News Reader

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.

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