Multiplayer-only games shouldn't cost $60

[cliffordcooley]

I guess in one sense, had I liked it, $30 would be reasonable.

Yep, I'll pay $30 for a game I know I will like. Until then I will pass for lower prices.

 

[BlueDrake]

I’m not saying that DLC is inherently bad; far from it. The practice of selling post-release content—the rain of DLC, season passes, and microtransactions—can be crucial to the ongoing funding of big game studios.

This comment is my biggest issue with the DLC era. When did the game studios become so large that they need to rely on tricking customers out of money for there survival? I hate bringing him up, but I have to agree at time with Jim Sterling and his skepticism of the gamin industry elites, it feels like no longer it is about making a great game, but all about how do we **** over the consumer out of more money.

He knows along with so many others, it's just getting to be AAA getting too big for their own good. When they sell x million copies or so, and still it comes up as a flop because of the expense. Will they see it as a possible "Hey we likely struck gold here!" kind of thing, or will they see it more of it's not a worthwhile franchise to keep developing?

I don't by any means want a giant CoD free for all each year, but people complaining about that should look at who's making it. 3 different developers in a rotation (was previously 2), making for a fair amount of time focused on their project. Also it's pretty much tried and true for the fans, but even then they know when a game is bad. Shall we point out CoD: Ghosts for one that had some attention, then was more or less abandoned? Even Black Ops 3 is kinda hit and miss, but of course this is mostly from PC numbers.

Just many are getting into a giant mess of, stumbling over each other chasing a market share. Of what? Nobody really knows except those in the know, and you can look at MMOs that cropped up. Chasing a dream of something, only to mostly all fall flat anymore. Same with various other game types, eventually it's stuffed to the brim with options. Some do it very well and hold onto their game, while others try to make it into a franchise thing and it eventually shrivels up and dies for the most part.

There's going to be long looks by big developers and publishers, at what cracked a lot of top charts to figure out which way to go. From various sites who did their whole "Top x of the year" to various channels, along with looking at the market itself. Trying to see what was the "big thing" and chase that, only likely to see it fall flat and feel like it was a waste of funds. Depending on where they take the IP, I'm seriously starting to burn out on seeing the same IPs each year.

I can't say much about those that are usually console bound, in one way or another because that's likely a choice of some sort already. Mostly meaning specific IPs because, I know companies are looking for an edge. Any way to sway customers into getting something, of course this is just way off topic at this point. =)

Overall just hope we see less of the $60 multiplayer-only focused games, unless there's enough content to keep people coming back in a way. Not have people go "You're biased!" because I feel that Nintendo, probably did it best with Splatoon due to their drip feed of free content. Mostly all was on disc I imagine, but it was a means to keep people coming back for more. While not locking things behind much of a paywall, I will admit Amiibo is getting pretty much to that point though.

Possibly see some idea of how Splatoon was handled, in terms of what they did with content to keep people interested? Who knows.. I know some F2P games have a fairly dedicated community, to the point they won't leave as the developers are pushing new content when they can. While listening to issues, and overall not letting things get too out of hand.

 

[DAOWAce]

$50 games shouldn't cost $60.

 

[Edito]

The $60 price tag isn't why it's difficult to get people into Rainbow Six: Siege. People these days prefer (as evidenced by sales), run & gun twitch shooters, which RSS is anything but.

Evolve has the same problem: it's a great game concept that does not resonate with many people due to the inherent features (and flaws) of its design.

Even the Killzone franchise has had difficulty due to its core design (specifically, "weight"), and the first three entries had substantial single player campaigns.

Yet, CoD, as horribly trite and boring as it is, manages to consistently pull users in spite of its $60 price tag.

Destiny, as mediocre as it is, manages to consistently pull users in spite of its $60 price tag.

Do they have single player? Sure. But the vast majority of playtime is spent in the multiplayer, not the single player (just look at all the Iron Banner gear roaming around Destiny).

I'd like to see cheaper games and more bang for the buck, too. It seems you can only get that out of indie devs these days. But it isn't price that's keeping people away from (primarily) multiplayer titles, it's the games themselves.

Couldn't agree more, if your game is good people will play, if it's bad people will not play, but I agree with the single player experience, I used to play for more that 12+h a day but now I have job, wife, kid I just don't have the time to jump from lobby to lobby that's why for me no matter how bad people talk about call of duty I will still play because I can have fun with the game just me and the game and Destiny for me is the new template it's easy to play alone or with friend and even being a multiplayer game I play on a daily basis event if its for 20min on a daily or strike.

It's about the games in the end not the price.

 

[Forebode]

I think the opposite. I mean who is going to put even 20 hours into a game with a 6 hour campaign?

Multiplayer games still get DLC, you can chat with friends, and there technically is no end.

Such is the question then.

Should games be priced based on average time of possible enjoyment OR be priced based on time and energy to build them? From a gamer standpoint I'd have to agree, I tend to buy games based on the gametimerice ratio.

On a side note, perhaps developers should be penalized for releasing games with major bugs and require them to release a free dlc, or those games that have the additional in-game currency (horrible imo) they could credit you some $$.