I've always been curious about video game pricing. The car dealership comparison was perfect, really shows how wild the market is.
makes sense when the marginal cost is near-zero.
Video games as a medium seem to be really, really well suited to passion projects, and I can’t explain why. None of my favorite movies are indie movies. Very little of my favorite music is indie.
I think one reason might be that being interactive lets the player contribute to the enjoyment themselves, which lowers the bar for what the developer has to achieve. Give people blocks and ways to move them and some will have endless of fun building something creative whereas with a movie the author is responsible for making sure the blocks are arranged in an interesting fashion.
For me though I think a large part is also simply that I am more into games than movies/music so have spent a lot more time looking into the indie scene there.
I really disagree with this, I think it's underselling the quality of indie games. It explains Minecraft, maybe, but there are so many incredible indie games that look gorgeous and have tons of interesting content, that aren't just relying on the player to entertain themselves.
Braid, Celeste, Hollow Knight, Ori and the Blind Forest, Limbo, Inside, Frostpunk, FTL, Outer Wilds, Spelunky 2, Rocket League, Darkest Dungeon, Disco Elysium, The Witness, Terraria, Return of the Obra Dinn, Papers Please, The Stanley Parable, Brothers - A Tale of Two Sons, Hotline Miami, Undertale, Firewatch, Dustforce. I could honestly double that list if I thought for long enough.
> For me though I think a large part is also simply that I am more into games than movies/music
Maybe. It still feels like indie games punch way above their weight compared to other forms of media, but it's true I could be biased there.
That'd depend entirely on your purchasing habits. "what people will pay" is an upper bound on the price, and "what they cost" is an lower bound. For high end/luxury products (eg. iPhone 12 pro max 256GB), prices are indeed dictated by "what people will pay", but for low end/commodity products (eg. low to mid range android phone, or everyday staples like food) it's dictated by "what they cost" due to competition.