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A collection of some classic Lemmy memes for your enjoyment
What a weird example to use.. You don't understand the economic difference between paying a small indie studio vs paying 500-1000+ devs making complex 3d games where the work of setting up one character dwarves the work of one sprite based 2d character?
Silksong is a beautiful game worthy of all the praise in the world, but this comparison makes no sense.
Big development team ≠ valuable game
The argument implied here is that because more money was poured into development, the value of the game is higher.
It's putting the cart before the horse. The business logic on display by the studios is that they deserve a profit for the investment of making the game, and they have a right to charge more because they paid more to have the game made. That's just … not true, or at least shouldn't be the logic of the consumer. A game is only worth the value it brings to the player (which is of course subjective).
The argument being made here is that the $1M fancy character creator and it's dev team CAN be compared to the work of a handful of sprites by an artist - and the fact that the value is either on par or in the small artists' favor ought to be seen as damning to the larger studios.
To you specifically, @FreddyNO and regarding complex character creators specifically: do you really see value in them? My experience is that they're something I do once at the beginning of the game, but usually within a couple hours I'm wearing enough new equipment to all but fully conceal every choice I made … save perhaps overall skin-tone; plus in most 3rd person games i spend most of the game looking at the characters backside whereas the c.creator focuses on mostly the face. I get that a good character creator adds cost and complexity - but are you sure it really adds value?
Ah, yes, because the take away is that we need 1000+ dev studios churning out yearly slop franchises after 18+ months of crunch to justify their price tag, yeah?
No the takaway is that its a bad comparison.
it's not. one being infinitely more wasteful for a lesser product that costs more doesn't make it a bad comparison.
Why does a taxi ride cost more than a bus ticket? Isn't that unfair!
Funnily, that's a terrible comparison too.
Few people fit into a taxi, but many can buy a bus ticket.
Obviously it's not that simple anyway, I just had a chuckle.
Funnily I tried to be ridiculous.
No, but you need different size teams to make 2D jumping game and Skyrim.
I was born at the beginning of the 1983 video game crash before Nintendo revived the medium, and I suspect another crash is in our future. Late-stage capitalism isn't helping either, but here we are!
Most modern AAA games don't appeal to my old ass, but I remember games when they were made by people who like to play games. These are our modern indie studios and it brings joy to see them succeed.
Maybe a AAA crash cause they keep aiming for the cash grabs and battle pass/cosmetic slop. But I've been buying too many indie(ish?) games lately and I have not been disappointed by the majority of them.
Have you guys all beaten the entire library of PS2 games or soemthing? There are infinite backlog options vs waiting around for this industry to get to a good place, but im all for fighting against this nonsense with our wallets. I see a battle pass in a game I simply avoid it.
indi continues to save the gaming industry
The video games industry needs to learn to not be afraid of letting games cook for a little longer. Silksong took a long time to come out, but what we eventually got was a good game made by a small team. Imagine if instead of the 500+ team members working on the next annual release of Assassins Creed, they peel off 50 artists, writers and programmers to create a new IP over the course of the next 5-7 years? Kind of like the original decision to do just that which got us... Assassin's Creed for the original Xbox.
There has got to be a good balance between "Here is EA Sportsball 20XX, that will be $70 please." where you get an underwhelming and uninspired annual release title with minor changes from the previous year, and Duke Nukem Forever or Cyberpunk 2077 that were trapped in decades-long development hell and released a sub-par, buggy product.
It's not the $70 price tag that's the issue, it's "what am I getting for the extra $10 I am paying for this?". If the answer is a more polished and refined product, I'm all for it - but that doesn't seem to be the case.
You mean like they just did and made... Expedition 33?
Which is having unprecedented success in every quantifiable way?
Arguably Team Cherry is much, much leaner/more efficient. They don't have to pay starving managers and CEOs industry standard salaries so they can feed their families 😁
Once again the parasite class ruins things.
I feel like everyone knows the ownership class is ruining everything, but no one wants to do anything.
But that's not true. I just hang out with people with more class consciousness, I guess. The average idiot probably blames the queers and the non-whites. "They had to raise the price of CoD because of all the money spent on sensitivity and diversity!" is probably something a dud sincerely believes.
Sometimes I wish real life was more like some video games, and I could just crouch behind those people, snap their neck, and dump the body in a bush with no consequences.
I doubt this'll be well received, but I actually don't think Silksong should be used to set price expectations. Hollow Knight made a shocking amount of money, massive sales were guaranteed, and the tiny dev team has enough money to pretty much vibe and make cool stuff forever.
Please don't compare other indie game prices to this, when those games can't guarantee their financial security, or massive sales number to turn a profit regardless of price.
Also, unrelated, but reading through the Bloomberg interview, and knowing what they charged for HK, 20$ is actually exactly what I assumed Silksong would cost well before it was announced, the shock for that kinda caught me off guard.
$20 doesn't make sense for AAA games with budgets in the $100 million range. Maybe we need fewer of those though.
maybe it's the other way around. I'm not convinced budgets in the $100 million range makes sense.
The larger the scale of games gets, the more people need to get paid to get them made.
Sure, you can argue that the scale doesn't need to get bigger, but people vote with their wallets.
Arizona Tea is thinking about raising the price of their tea from $1 to $1.29 for the first time in 30+ years, but the fourth Call of Duty game to come out this year needs a 15% price hike.
Let that sink in.
Wait, they didn't already? I feel like a year ago, it magically went up to 1.25 everywhere by me, so I just assumed they actually raised it. Some good news is I have seen it in grocery stores on sale a lot for .66 a can which kind of works out to the same price as the jug so I will just get a bunch of cans instead.
No, they did not. That's just the greedy stores near you: https://www.today.com/food/news/why-arizona-iced-tea-costs-more-than-99-cents-at-some-stores-rcna160216
Yeah they have exclusive "Circle K" versions of Arizona Tea.
Silksong was primarily developed by 3 people. For comparison, Baldur's Gate 3 was developed by around 300. There are probably more than 700 people making Battlefield 6.
Didn't some AAA studios complain that Baldur's Gate is "only" 60€ and too high quality, so it sets unrealistic standards/expectations.
Of course they did. They want to sell barely working alpha builds for hundreds of dollars. Good games for a fair price screw up their plan.
Huge gaming studios churning out reskinned versions of the same franchises that have been running for a decade+ with no real original content? $70+. Indie gaming studio putting out original content? $25.
Not to defend big companies, but big companies have larger operating costs and they have more corporate responsibilities, to companies and people who fund them.
AAA game costs tens or hundreds of millions to make. Indie game can be made with 50k.
When game costs +40 million to make, you really cant take much risks and cant expect that the guys with the wallet wont want to interviene with you.
That’s all indirectly what I meant. Spend big money ant take no risks, players get expensive game with nothing original.
I just wanted to point that its not because the companies are some inconpetent cartoonisly evil entities, but its because of real live necessities and i bet there is plenty of talented amd passionate people working there too.
I would also not belittle AAA games. There are plenty of people who enjoy the yearly NHL and CoD releases and thats okay. Its not that differend that some people like mindless action movies and some people like artsy movies.
There’s just no way you could ever convince me that a 2d side scroller should ever be over $30.