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[Telltale] Tales from the Borderlands - Ep.3 "Catch a Ride" out now!
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Because pricing has as much or more to do with psychology as it does with a rational cost-to-effort ratio. The audience for people who will spend $100 on a boardgame is minuscule compared to the average AAA title audience, so you have to price it at a level that feels "fair" to the mass audience.
In a world where $15 a month can buy access to millions of hours of movies, TV, and music, $60 for a 20-40 hour block of content is a big ask. Games are already the most expensive mass entertainment option, excepting vacation destinations and event tickets. That's why games are so heavy into DLC, multiplayer, and games as a service these days - the market is already soft for a single player game at the current price point.
That's not something the industry can just push through, which is why the price has remained stable for so long.
People understand that concert tickets can cost $50-$2000, depending on the act. This is established. They will NOT understand why Madden costs $80 this year when it cost $60 for a decade and this version doesn't seem $20 better all the sudden.
Jim's autopsy of the situation. Notably called out is how their workers were treated, along with a labour JQ to come.
Or better agreements. Which is harder to do as a small studio as well.
Raising the base price from $60 USD to something higher would make things even worse for developers and studios than they are now. A large number of people don't pay $60 USD for the base product because they wait for a sale or standard retailer post-launch price cut before buying the game, and a portion of the season passes, DLC and MTX things cover that lost profit within quarters. Though a base MSRP increase isn't really applicable to TWD because full seasons of their games ran ~$29.99 USD. I don't think even the collections went over $50 USD. But people buying games at base MSRP is pretty fickle:
This game didn't get 99.9% on metacritic. Wait for sale.
This game has bugs. Wait for sale.
This game has a season pass, microtransactions, DLC and/or microtransactions. Wait for sale.
This game is episodic and when it gets finished it'll get packaged together anyway. Wait for that release.
This game that is not selling for $60 isn't worth its price for [subjective reason here]. Wait for sale.
I can't afford to buy a $60 game. Wait for sale.
Does this mean that you should blindly throw your money at full-priced games to keep the machine going, especially if you can't afford it? Well, that's your money and your decision (note: you really shouldn't buy games full price if you can't afford them). But gaming is a business and poor/weak sales will kill it, the same as any other...
I'm curious about how well games do in Canada vs. the US. Basically, say that a game sells 2,000,000 copies in the US at $59.99. That same game will generally be $79.99 here in Canada. Ignoring demographics and just looking at total populations, the US has 325 million people and Canada has 36 million people, so to be a comparable success in Canada the game would need to sell about 221,000 copies. If it does sell about that many copies in Canada, that indicates that people are probably willing to pay the higher price, and if it sells fewer copies it probably says something about just how elastic prices are for video games.
I think certain consumers are willing to pay X amount of mark-up over American prices because they are used to it across the board. On the other side of the pond, you have the incredibly frequency of prices in dollars equaling the price in pounds - £60 for a game is a huge markup, but it is also the arbitrary number Americans have settled on as fair and UK citizens are used to paying the $=£ price markup.
And American consumers couldn't get used to higher prices?
Probably not. There are plenty of people out there already that find $60 to be prohibitively expensive.
It's not really even their fault. US wages haven't really increased in 20+ years, but the cost of everything else has. Video games are a fun extravagance, but normal folks (ie: people not us :razz: ) really only buy maybe one or two full priced games a year.
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
Oh man that reminds of an article from a Dev who talked about game budgets. He described how they'd often just get a budget that seemed to have been conjured from the ether as opposed to being based on the actual needs of the game. He mentioned how more than a few times they'd end up with way more money than they needed, but they had to spend it. As I recall that was in reference to how a lot of Day One DLC comes about.
The USD is one the three major global currencies (as far as trades, the Euro and Yen are the other two). In a situation where the MSRP (or value) of a game goes from $60 USD to $80 USD. That would push the price up there as well. It probably wouldn't 1:1 in pounds... but it would go up everywhere to reflect its new value in USD.
Yeah Resident Evil 6 has 3 campaigns PLUS a bonus campaign. Did it sell as well as three different games? The Witcher 3 dev has admitted they wildly overdid how many quests are in the game. Marketing forced the addition of a competitive multiplayer mode into Dead Space 2 that drew approximately 0 players. How much did the development of that cost?
AAA Devs spend more money than ever before but it's supposed to be a given that this spend is wisely invested. Is it though?
There are plenty of people in Canada that find $80 to be prohibitively expensive. Our wages haven't gone up any faster than American wages. That's why I suggested that it would be interesting to see how well a game sells in Canada vs. the US. People would certainly be grumpy if the new game cost went up, but my suspicion is that it wouldn't have a huge impact on sales numbers. I don't think that Americans are special snowflakes that would quit buying games because the cost went up.
I'm not trying to downplay the work of the talented writers, artists, and voice actors that put their heart and soul into those games. Far from it. The storytelling was grand.
But for me, gameplay comes above all else, and good gameplay can carry me even when there's a shoddy story. (I'm not calling any of Telltale's games shoddy. I'm talking about other games). I find that for my own personal taste, the inverse of that is definitely not true. A good story cannot carry shoddy gameplay.
So what that tells me about Telltale games is that while I adore the writing, storytelling, and art that goes into them, the highly simplistic gameplay is not enough for me to want to spend full price on one of their products. I'm the kind of person that would wait for the deep sales on their games. I'd say even 50% is most of the time too high for the value I personally place on those games (because of the gameplay). And again, I'm definitely not trying to disparage the work that is there. I adore Telltale's games. But without rich gameplay, I just don't put as much value in the product. Because at that point I'm basically just paying for a story. (Or in this case, an interactive storybook).
And when you weigh the dollar per dollar value of seeing a story, the value is pretty low on these games. (For me).
I game because of the gameplay. I stick to the genres I like because of the gameplay. And Telltale's games fell outside of that range for me. I didn't often play them, and none of them were ever a day 1 purchase for me. They were the kind of thing I would fit into my super huge backlog as in-between games, in-between larger projects.
The moral state of the industry is such that I would be happy to pay $20-30 more if it meant devs, programmers, artists, etc. didn't essentially have to be debt slaves.
But what would happen instead is they'd lay off a bunch of people and give all the execs raises for making so much profit.
pleasepaypreacher.net
Also I just wanted to point out how bonkers 300+ staff is. Valve has 360 and they're richer than god.
When the inevitable lawsuits hit, I predict I will be totally shocked if it is revealed that Telltale's books weren't 100 percent on the up and up.
Not if there were strong unions and/or guilds.
It's called a "sense of entitlement."
I don't mean to generalize, but I think that's where a lot of issues in "gamer culture" (vomit at even using that phrase) stem from.
Nobody was buying them:
These are only steam sales, so it is possible that Minecraft story mode sold abnormally large amounts on other platforms such as Android, IOS, etc.
edit: Or they could be including the netflix deal.
A bit surprised Tales from the borderlands outsold Game of Thrones. But I guess Tales probably got more sales post release on account of good word of mouth.
I'm honestly not sure how you can do that badly with a Batman license.
As for game costs, I wonder if anyone would dare putting out a Developers Edition at $10 more, and explicitly say that the extra money will be split amongst the 50-odd programmers/artists/etc who worked on the game?
Having said that I really enjoyed TWD season 1,wolf among us, and tales.
PSN:Furlion
This is both good and bad. I don't want to pay the managers, I want to pay the workers, but I also want to finish this damn story that I have spent 5+ years being invested in. Especially since TWDFS is like, an actual improvement both engine and gameplay wise. TWDFS is what Season 2 or ANF SHOULD have been IMO.
Twitch: KoopahTroopah - Steam: Koopah
Especially since at this point, some of the staff might have landed other gigs. And some more might say "fuck this" and not want to come back.
Though given how Telltale works, it's possible the other episodes are feature/story locked, and all it would take is just getting what was planned up and running. Though if there's still lingering, last-minute story problems... ack.
No game is worth more than treating the people who make those games like human beings.
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
I sincerely hope every single one of their former employees tells them to fuck off. I understand extenuating circumstances may not give people that luxury (and it IS a luxury) but it’s been suspected that Telltale treated their employees like dirt before all this went down, and now they’ve confirmed it to the public. They don’t deserve to finish a game and earn a profit, let alone break even.
in telltale's specific situation, hiring people a week before declaring bankruptcy is despicable. treating people like cogs who can be overworked until new ones can be found is miserable (and against the law). there are no excuses for this.
but honestly, lots of times, without management, projects and ideas never get anywhere. wasn't penny arcade kind of a mess before that asian dude stepped in and cleaned everything up with good business management? i don't know for sure, but i bet penny arcade would have never become the awesome site it is now without good management. management is as important a piece of the puzzle as development. bad development leads to bad games. bad management leads to no games.
in this case was it bad management that lead to telltale's downfall? maybe? or maybe it was just that no one bought the games? or maybe the games were buggy and incomplete (bad developers)?
probably a little bit of everything.