Are you willing to PAY for better PC games?

[Anomaly1964]

To kinda play the devils advocate...

These small independents that seem to "care about gaming over money" seem to take FOREVER to get anything out. Sure the quality may be there, but when will you ever actually SEE/PLAY it?

I don't believe anyone is ever going to start a company with the attitude, "Our games are for PC ENTHUSIASTS, I don't care if we ever make any money, the integrity of PC Gaming must be maintained..."

Now, if said small company puts out the "perfect PC game" but because they want to make some money too and charge $120 for the game to keep this company in business, are you willing to pay that much?

 

[mb]

According to wikipedia Black Mesa started being developed around October 2004. Wow. They should really just admit it's dead.

lol, apparently someone is still doing some work on it. Or, at least, they are posting new screenshots.
http://wiki.blackmesasource.com/Special:NewFiles

Oh, and I think a better question to ask is: would you pay $10-15 for something like Black Mesa to get it sooner/have it be better instead of wait 6+ years to get it for free?

 

[finglobes]

I dont like games when new. I liked the games patched and played enough so there are good threads/videos about them online. I rarely spend more than $15 on a game since they seem to be out a year or more when I buy them. They are also usually on sale. I would pay $25- $35 if I really like a developer. I bought some stalker games near full price because of that. The $45+ games are not so appealing. Maybe if I got to play them first and knew I liked them. I find I don't like half the games I buy and that's another reason I get them cheap.

 

[Martimus]

What? Of course not. No company could make money charging more than the majority of people are willing to pay when the only real costs to them are packaging, storage, and development costs.

Software is one of those things where the unit cost is actually very low, so selling volume at low prices is an actual method of generating profit. They need to be able to sell enough units to cover their development costs plus interest, and need to sell it at a high enough price to cover packaging and storage or bandwidth (depending on if it is a physical media in a box or a digital download).

I won't pay $60 for a game, unless I really want to support the publisher (the last $50 game I purchased was Elemental, since I wanted to support Stardock.) I usually buy games for around $5-$10 when they are on sale. I also buy indie games when they sound interesting, and will pay up to $20 for those as well.

Once again, the price per unit isn't something that is really important, it is the total amount of money they can bring in since the cost per unit is actually very low. They need to sell enough to make up development costs, so they are looking far more to get the most total money possible, not the highest per unit profit possible.

In other words they might sell 10,000 units at $120, but 1,000,000 units at $50. The first option would net them $1.2M, while the second would net them $50M. Take out $10 for packaging/bandwidth per unit and it is still $1.1M for the higher priced SKU and $40M for the lower priced one. The high priced one just doesn't make any economic sense for them. In fact the $50 one probably makes less sense than a $20 one, since I think you might gain yet another order of magnitude of purchases moving to that price point. Of course, you would only make a profit margin of 100% versus 500% in my example above, so it wouldn't be nearly as cut and dry.

 

[gothamhunter]

A bunch of things.

Pretty much the words right out of my mouth. If they just strived to make better quality PC games, and keep them at a lower market price, they would generate enough profit to do it again (and again and again and etc...)

 

[Fanatical Meat]

I really hate paying over $40.00 most games just don't have that kind of value, especially when they will be cheaper in 3-6 month's and substantially cheaper in 12 month's. Although I would be willing to pay more for an MMO that does not charge subscriptions or something that I know I would get tons of game play from, then I'd go as high as $150 but once again I would need to be 100% certain that I would get tons/years of play time from spending that amount of cash.
I really don't understand why game companies can't rein in their costs a bit better instead of charging more per sale.

 

[Fanatical Meat]

ps back to Stardock, they talk a good game but let's all be honest they really haven't delivered recently between Elemental and Demigod plus the gamers bill of rights which they seemed to completely ignore with Elemental. but that's a different rant.

 

[Rhezuss]

If the game is "perfect" like you say...perfect in hours needed to complete SP, excellent and balanced MP, amazing graphics that could run on almost any computer from 2005 and up but would get something divine with an up to date PC, awesome and intuitive gameplay, credible voice acting, involving and engrossing story...did I miss something?

If this kind of game would be created, i'd pay 120 bucks for it.

 

[dguy6789]

It's called Starcraft 2 and it is $60.

 

[Anteaus]

No, but that's mainly because I think most games are overproduced these days, in the same way that movies are. No one denies that good production value sells games, but it can get out of hand. Personally, I'd like to see a back to basics approach to game development.

If someone can argue that game design of a game that costs 50 million to develop is better than one that costs 5 million just because they have more money to spend on graphics, then make your case. In short, I don't want to pay more for better games because I'm currently paying $60 for games that were $50 two years and I haven't seen any increase in overall quality. As far as I'm concerned, I'm getting the same or less quality at a higher price point.

 

[gorcorps]

What? Of course not. No company could make money charging more than the majority of people are willing to pay when the only real costs to them are packaging, storage, and development costs.

Software is one of those things where the unit cost is actually very low, so selling volume at low prices is an actual method of generating profit. They need to be able to sell enough units to cover their development costs plus interest, and need to sell it at a high enough price to cover packaging and storage or bandwidth (depending on if it is a physical media in a box or a digital download).

I won't pay $60 for a game, unless I really want to support the publisher (the last $50 game I purchased was Elemental, since I wanted to support Stardock.) I usually buy games for around $5-$10 when they are on sale. I also buy indie games when they sound interesting, and will pay up to $20 for those as well.

Once again, the price per unit isn't something that is really important, it is the total amount of money they can bring in since the cost per unit is actually very low. They need to sell enough to make up development costs, so they are looking far more to get the most total money possible, not the highest per unit profit possible.

In other words they might sell 10,000 units at $120, but 1,000,000 units at $50. The first option would net them $1.2M, while the second would net them $50M. Take out $10 for packaging/bandwidth per unit and it is still $1.1M for the higher priced SKU and $40M for the lower priced one. The high priced one just doesn't make any economic sense for them. In fact the $50 one probably makes less sense than a $20 one, since I think you might gain yet another order of magnitude of purchases moving to that price point. Of course, you would only make a profit margin of 100% versus 500% in my example above, so it wouldn't be nearly as cut and dry.

That may be true, but you're assuming a static price for the life of the game which isn't how it works. The price starts high and the people who are willing to pay that do, and then various price cuts are made for several years until it reaches "bargain bin" sale prices. Everybody has a threshold on what they're willing to pay. By pricing at $50 immediately, they're missing out on the 10,000 people that would pay $120 (some may pay even more). If they started at $120 and dropped to $50 later they'd get even more money... and guess what? That's exactly how it goes with games, or really anything. You start high to nab the early adopters, and then reduce the price bit by bit to get the rest of your holdouts at their different desired prices. Starting at your lowest price and never changing it is a terrible, horrible business model... ESPECIALLY for games.

 

[WhipperSnapper]

I would be willing to pay more money for a game that would become one of my favorites. However, it's a chicken-and-the-egg problem. I wouldn't know that games will become heavily-played and long-lasting favorites until after purchasing and playing the game for several months.

 

[Athadeus]

I'd pay anyone that could get me into the Diablo 3 alpha within the next week $500. A few months ago, I'd have done $800, but it is getting closer to beta and the classes are a lot more worked out now. I'm going to end up playing it for multiple thousands of hours, so as for release price, I don't even consider it for what I consider to be the best games (I spent $3k to get a new desktop and laptop for SC2). However, I would not pay a lot more for something that I knew was going to drop significantly in price ($120->$60) within 2 months, because that would just be wrong.

I really like WhipperSnapper's point. I suppose I don't buy many games because even cheap ones that are more frustrating than entertaining seem like a poor investment to me. Expensive games disappoint even more, like how WoW cost me ~$250 for the time I played it, and though I played many hours, I do not think the entertainment value I got from it was good.

 

[wuliheron]

If only we could predict which games would be winners. Out of some 450 games produced a year only half a dozen rake in the big bucks. Its a crap shoot and that's why today we have companies like EA moving in to create these huge umbrella corporations that control so much of the market. The more games they produce the easier it becomes to predict which will be winners and to hedge their bets.

That also makes it easier for them to seriously undercut or buy out the competition if necessary. I've even heard of them buying one company just to disband it within a week. Scum.

 

[Texashiker]

To kinda play the devils advocate...

These small independents that seem to "care about gaming over money" seem to take FOREVER to get anything out. Sure the quality may be there, but when will you ever actually SEE/PLAY it?

Examples?

Just about all of the games I am watching out for in 2011 are from big companies:

Rage
Diablo III
Brink
Duke Nukem Forever
New content for Left 4 Dead 2

 

[gorcorps]

I would be willing to pay more money for a game that would become one of my favorites. However, it's a chicken-and-the-egg problem. I wouldn't know that games will become heavily-played and long-lasting favorites until after purchasing and playing the game for several months.

That's the problem anymore. You just don't know what you'll like, and I'm finding I can't trust any sources for decent reviews anymore. Professional review sites skew big budget and heavily advertised games, and the PC gamers here are a bunch of bitter assholes who think anything sucks for any random reason. If I listened to them I'd miss out on most games I've enjoyed as of late. Then of course demos are becoming rarer it seems, and there's no way to rent PC games so you're pretty much stuck to having to suck it up and play it yourself or wait for a friend you can trust to do the same.

It doesn't help when you don't get to game much anymore, so when you finally DO plunk down some money to play it then it better be damned good. Maybe that's why so many people hate on decent games... they just can't live up to the wild expectations they have of the little amount of gaming they have time for.

 

[DaveSimmons]

I would be willing to pay more money for a game that would become one of my favorites. However, it's a chicken-and-the-egg problem. I wouldn't know that games will become heavily-played and long-lasting favorites until after purchasing and playing the game for several months.

Right. I paid $10 for the King's Bounty collection -- knowing after the fact how much gaming I got out of it I'd now be willing to pay $30+, but it's too late.

There are many other games I've paid $20-50 for that were disappointments to me, not necessarily bad games just ones that were not my cup of tea. I should either have skipped them or only paid $5-10.

That's one reason the big companies concentrate on sequels: unless they mess them up badly like DA2, players have a good idea what they're buying and what it's worth to them.

Maybe the indies need a tip jar so we can buy the game for $10 on Steam then pay them another $20 if we really like it

 

[zebano]

It all depends on the game. Most games I don't honestly care enough about to do more than wait for them to be bargain bin (< $20) purchases but I will be buying D3 the day it releases. I'm actually a huge fan of F2P MMOs simply because I can try it for a week and then drop $20 if I want to support the game. I also don't mind trying a game like WoW for the cost of a monthly subscription but when they want me to pay for base game + expansions + monthly costs that gets to be too much for me.


Outside of D3 I can't think of any game that was a must buy immediately for me in the past 3 years. I've dropped $50 into League of Legends because I like the game, want to support Riot and speed up my acquisition of in-game content.

 

[magomago]

probably not

I see the value in the following areas

1. replayability
2. enjoyment
3. community support

For the first, games like SC2, WOW, CS, DOTA+Clones, RTCW/Q3A/UT all come to mind. Infinitely repayable with others. But note that its all with humans at this point. Playing comps in SC2 isn't the same as a person, and I can play a person on the same map over and over and never get bored. I'd pay 60 dollars for a game that gives me that kind of experience. Depending on the level of interaction, I would even be willing to pay a fee (WOW) providing the initial buy in cost isn't terribly high (ie: not 60 dollars)

For enjoyment, that can come from re-playability, but I'm thinking of the content of the actual game. For many games whose re-playability is limited (single player - stuff like Phoenix Wright), its about the enjoyment when you ARE playing it. I loved Assassin's Creed, I loved Mass Effect (Although you can really replay the game twice depending if you want to be good/evil but you ultimately don't change the story arc too much), HalfLife 2, Deus Ex (the first), but I can't play these game over and over (ie: > 3 times for some, >1 for the rest).

For the last, the more community support a game has, the longer it can last. Look at WC3 , look at SC2, look at basically any game that has mods. It adds a lot of longevity to a game.


For most other games I wouldn't pay more than 10-15 bucks. I played FarCry 2 for maybe 3 hours, but i just can't keep my interest in the game despite it being pretty. I would think most games fall into that category. Left For Dead was the sae for me (although others poured hundreds of hours)
When diablo3 comes out, would I be willing to pay 60 dollars for it? Yup. 70 dollars? Yup. 80 dollars? Wait for either many user reviews (media reviews are bs these days) or a demo...and then Yup.

Obviously it looks like I'm a blizzard fanboy...but the guys deliver.

If that new Deux Ex demo really captured the feeling of the original, I probably would have paid 60 for that. But as it is, it feels too empty and has no character.

I don't have time to play a lot of games anymore because I'm busier with other things...so when I play, I want it to be good, very very good. That is why I'm willing to pay - but I'm not going to buy in unless I know it will last a while. Kinda sucks for game devs, eh?

Despite this talk about lots of replayability: I'd pay 30-40 for a great 8-10 hour experience.

edit:

okay i wrote too much but this how it comes down to

lots of re playability and I will play it over and over: 80-100 dollars
a GREAT 10 hour experience that leaves me appreciating the game: 40 dollars

and i say this noting that i play about 04-10 hours a week of games on average....

therefore, because i don't play as much, i'm willing to wait for the prices to drop and then impulse buy things on steam

 

[drebo]

I'd have paid $75 for Dragon Age 2 if they had delivered what they promised and not the hunk of garbage they actually put out. I'll finish it, but it definitely isn't worth what I paid for it.

 

[vshah]

i'd pay $150 for a Freespace 3

 

[obidamnkenobi]

I'm not terribly interested so I don't know much about it, but I know the massive grognardian wargame War in the East retails at $80, from a pretty small studio I believe. No idea how that works out for them.

It was discussed on the Three moves ahead podcast I while back, and I think they asked the publisher some questions about this model. But like I said not my thing so I kinda zoned out

 

[Powermoloch]

Id pay in full price if i'm itching to play the game since it was created. Otherwise, when it hits a sweet price point...the I jump in

 

[Fanatical Meat]

i'd pay $150 for a Freespace 3

The real question is would you pay $150 for Freespace 3 if it ended up like a console port or it had 4 hours of single player play time?

 

[JackSpadesSI]

I'm not a PC-gaming elitist, so I'll amend your question and then answer it.

Are you willing to PAY for better games?

Yes.

There are several games I would have paid $80-100 for because I got that much out of them. Of course, there were some games that I paid $60 for, but wish that I'd only paid ~$10.

In a magical, ideal world games would be rated by a perfectly unbiased group of intelligent people and the game would then be priced proportional to its rating. Each genre, of course, would be graded on its own scale (i.e. Super Mario Bros. is neither better, nor worse than Quake).