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Are you willing to PAY for better PC games?

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cever89 said:
The only new releases I'll buy are Blizzard releases, since I'm quite confident that they will eventually iron out any bugs and/or balance issues. But then again, I don't have that much time to game these days, so if I'm going to invest any time, it had better be good. 🙂
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I'll add to that statement. Blizzard is the only publisher who didn't disappointed me no matter what they are releasing. Starcraft 2 was awesome and pretty sure Diablo will be a hit to
 
This is a tainted question I'd say. It appears from the responses, (and I would have to echo) that it sounds like that's what we as gamers expect from full retail priced games, say $50/$60. Like, we expect them to be excellent at the starting price, or we won't buy them. You can't trust the review sites/mags as you know that half of them are in the pocket of devs and publishers. And that, my friend, is why very rarely do any of us even buy games at full retail price right now. So no, we are not going to pay more than that - what we're NOT even paying already. I mean aren't they supposed to be almost perfect, ideally anyway, upon release?
 
Anneka said:
I'll add to that statement. Blizzard is the only publisher who didn't disappointed me no matter what they are releasing. Starcraft 2 was awesome and pretty sure Diablo will be a hit to
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I was disappointed in Warcraft 2 and Diablo 2 (although for different reasons), and World of Warcraft. I did enjoy Starcraft though (even if it had its own problems) and Diablo 1 was an outstanding game (which also had its own issues).

Warcraft 2 had too many limitations on how to control your characters, and jsut wasn't as fun as Command and Conquer. Diablo 2 was just a minor incremental update to Diablo 1, and I was already burnt out on Diablo so the second game didn't feel fresh at all to me. World of Warcraft had just a horrific UI, where it took me probably a half hour just to figure out the unintuitive control scheme, and it just wasn't fun once I did anyway.

I don't understand why Blizzard is held in such high regard. They make some very fun games, but they are far from perfect. They are better than many studios in that they have some very good quality control measures, but they have they failures as well (they generally fail to innovate, but instead rely on polishing established gameplay techniques.)
 
To OP, no I would not pay more, but I buy new games at full price, if I think they're worth it. that would be 2-3 games a year, rest I buy on steam sale, and usually it turns out they can't keep me interested.
 
Anomaly1964 said:
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?
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yes. i gladly forked down extra for the special edition of SC2 since i knew it would an awesome game with extreme replayability. same goes for all other blizzard games of past (except wow for me)

i dont play too many games at a time. normally its one rts and/or one fps game but the FPS scene has been dead to me since UT2004. I got burned preordering UT3 and it sucking so hard. i'll never make that same mistake on any non-blizz game. on a side note, how awesome would it be if blizz revived the arena shooter genre?
 
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Martimus said:
I was disappointed in Warcraft 2 and Diablo 2 (although for different reasons), and World of Warcraft. I did enjoy Starcraft though (even if it had its own problems) and Diablo 1 was an outstanding game (which also had its own issues).

Warcraft 2 had too many limitations on how to control your characters, and jsut wasn't as fun as Command and Conquer. Diablo 2 was just a minor incremental update to Diablo 1, and I was already burnt out on Diablo so the second game didn't feel fresh at all to me. World of Warcraft had just a horrific UI, where it took me probably a half hour just to figure out the unintuitive control scheme, and it just wasn't fun once I did anyway.

I don't understand why Blizzard is held in such high regard. They make some very fun games, but they are far from perfect. They are better than many studios in that they have some very good quality control measures, but they have they failures as well (they generally fail to innovate, but instead rely on polishing established gameplay techniques.)
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cnc was fun, but war2 had a much better story line and gameplay was much more fun online. blizzard actually supports their games and releases updates all the time, whereas other companies are jokes compared to them in that regard. it took ensemble about a year before they released a patch to stop a hack in age of empires 1 that destroyed multiplayer (pressing delete 10000 times on an unfinished building gave you 10000 of your resources back :awe: )

not to mention their games are polished
 
What do you mean am I willing to pay extra for good games? Games are already sixty fucking dollars and they aren't worth it!
 
evident said:
cnc was fun, but war2 had a much better story line and gameplay was much more fun online. blizzard actually supports their games and releases updates all the time, whereas other companies are jokes compared to them in that regard. it took ensemble about a year before they released a patch to stop a hack in age of empires 1 that destroyed multiplayer (pressing delete 10000 times on an unfinished building gave you 10000 of your resources back :awe: )

not to mention their games are polished
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The story in War2 was crap compared to C&C. They weren't even close. Plus the Multiplayer was much more fun in C&C than War2. Maybe it is a matter of personal opinion, but I have never once heard someone say the "storyline" in War2 was better than C&C. The Warcraft storyline was absolutely amateur in comparison. You could make a case for the gameplay (since it is quite different) but I can't imagine a case for the storyline being better.

War2 was a fun game, but it came up short to its main competition. Some would find it more fun, others less. I personally think that the original C&C was the best multiplayer RTS ever made, and have War2 much further down the list. Starcraft was an improvement over Warcraft 2 in almost every way. Yes WAR2.exe was a fun game and wasn't a failure at all, but I was still disappointed in the gameplay, and especially the storyline compared to its direct competitor Command and Conquer.
 
Martimus said:
The story in War2 was crap compared to C&C. They weren't even close. Plus the Multiplayer was much more fun in C&C than War2. Maybe it is a matter of personal opinion, but I have never once heard someone say the "storyline" in War2 was better than C&C. The Warcraft storyline was absolutely amateur in comparison. You could make a case for the gameplay (since it is quite different) but I can't imagine a case for the storyline being better.

War2 was a fun game, but it came up short to its main competition. Some would find it more fun, others less. I personally think that the original C&C was the best multiplayer RTS ever made, and have War2 much further down the list. Starcraft was an improvement over Warcraft 2 in almost every way. Yes WAR2.exe was a fun game and wasn't a failure at all, but I was still disappointed in the gameplay, and especially the storyline compared to its direct competitor Command and Conquer.
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i dunno, back in 95 it really was a matter of opinion as C&C and war2 were both really excellent games. i just preferred war 2. in C&C all you had to do was make tanks to run stuff over, and in war2 all you needed were ogre magi w/ blood lust to win. still fun as hell though
 
Maybe it depends. I will support Valve because they have never let me down. My first PC game was Counter Strike and I have played and loved every Valve game since then. I have over 1500 hours in CS:S I believe well worth the money and I would pay $200 if I knew how much I love that game.

Blizzard is alright I play WoW and I own SC2 but I don't think SC2 was worth my $60 preorder. Is it a good game? Yes. Do I play it as much as some other games? Not really. A friend asked me to play it the other day I said I had to install it. I downloaded the game from Blizzard and then when it went to install it said I already had it installed. That shows the last time I opened SC2.

I think really the issue as has been stated here is that its tough to determine whats worth the $50-60 release price and whats not. I would have paid $60 for mirrors edge but didn't because I was hesitant at release. Metro 2033 was another I would have paid retail for but got on a $7 steam sale.
 
I agree that many games out there aren't worth anywhere near $50 or $60. Maybe I've just gotten better at spotting the good ones before I spend my cash, because most games I buy are worth their cost.

Sure, I've gotten burned a couple of times (Assassin's Creed comes to mind) but by and large I've got a very good collection of AAA games and I don't regret spending whatever I did on them.

To those that whine that no game is worth more than $10: how can you really call gaming a hobby of yours if you're so cheap and jaded about it?
 
Pay more than the standard $40-$50 price? Hell, no! If I wanted to pay high prices for a game I'd buy a console and pay the $60-$70 they pay for a game. Its also silly to think that raising the price of games is going to allow developers to do even better.
 
Yes. I would pay mad money for followups to either of the following :
Descent, FreeSpace, Wing Commander, Privateer, Populous, Nox, Revenant, and a couple more I don't recall right now.

UT2003 was a bad buy at full price (apart from the cool intro sequence, didn't like the feel of it compared to UT99, which I'm still playing)

TF2 was a steal - a few thousand hours into that game and I'm still actively playing it.
 
I don't think one price is the way to go for games. I would pay $120 for a game if it was good enough and had enough replay value, but I wouldn't consistently pay that much. Of course we won't have to worry about that because I highly doubt that many titles worth that price would come out.
 
No, let me explain.

16 years ago, some Nintendo games were as high as $69.99- and seemingly worth it. I had tons of fun, and I didn't feel cheated buying them- although I'd have been happier if they were cheaper.

But back then, video games were a much smaller niche. If you sell a game to 1000 people, you need to set a certain price to make a profit. If you sell the same game to 10000 people, you can set a much lower price and still make more profit, because most of the cost is sunk in development and doesn't scale with the number of copies sold.

Now, I know the some response will be "oh, but games cost a lot more to make now, all those special effects and voice acting cost millions!" To be blunt, I don't care about any of that crap. I guess to be fair I should say I care very little. Good voice acting does add something to a game, just not anything I am willing to pay extra for. I want fun gameplay, creative ideas, new stuff. The kind of things that some indie games have but hardly any big ticket games include.

Anyway, given all that, I'm not really willing to pay more than $40~ for a game, maybe a bit more for something really special. Most of the games I bought for $10 are more fun for me than the big blockbuster games that originally sell for $50. I'll play plants vs zombies over medal of honor any day- if I want to play an fps I'll play some serious sam 😛
 
drebo said:
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.
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+1

...maybe even more, had they bothered to make a real sequel (not an entirely new story) and kept the perfectly fine interface/game machanics. (rule no 1: don't fix it is it ain't broken)

DA:O had so many cliffhangers that it's downright unbearable. They caught me hook, line and sinker - but fails to reel in. (I actually do own DA2 becuase it was given to me as a gift - had it been a real sequel I'd probably preordered it at some rediculess premium)

Oh well there's hope still..
 
I'd pay $500 for a perfect game. However, I still don't think that would be a good business strategy. Most people wouldn't.

If I get 5 years of play out of the perfect game, it would easily recoup its cost.

Realistically, I think the pursuit of trying to make the perfect game and then pass the $ spent onto the consumer is what has got us in our current mess right now. If a developer set out to make a game that I would eventually pay $500 for, they'd be almost guaranteed to make a game that, by the end of it, would not be fun.

That is why these indie developers do so well, they don't set out to make the perfect game, they set out to make a fun game. If you happen to have fun playing what they also find as fun, then great. And by sticking to simple goals, their games are less likely to lose focus.
 
Well I'm already paying too much for crappy games and at this point I think I could be happy with what I already own for the rest of eternity.
Nope, at this point in my life I'm not gonna pay a lot extra just for companies to start making decent games again. They can go dive into the console market for all I care.

I sincerely hope you guys enjoy Plane of Diablo and Galaxy of Starcraft and Universe of the Old Republic, but I am done spending money. I dont even know if I'll get the 2nd and 3rd Starcraft modules.
 
Well just wait for the game to be released for a while and people mke a suggestion if its worth buying.
In my case I'm thinking of acquiring RIFT but i would let it go for a couple of weeks before making my final decision (wait for some good/bad feedback)
 
taltamir said:
nah, those games would just suck like the modern ones...
I would rather see a high def recreation of the original games in question.
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Somebody here in PCG posted a hacked EXE for BG2 that lets you play in any res you want. As opposed to the in game choice of 1024x768, 1600x1200 and 2048x1536 which dont actually work the way they are supposed to.

Dig around the interwebs for Baldurs Gate 2 Widescreen.
 
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