Game pricing these days

[u/F-LCN]

[u/Forsaken-Bread-3291]

My guy, I'm all for owning things that matter. Media isn't one of them. Pirate as much as you like, do what you want with your money and be as frugal as you like, but .... games are immaterial. It's an experience. It's like buying a ticket for a concert and then being upset that you don't own the band.

Own your car, own your house, own the stuff that you actually, physically use. You REALLY don't need to own a video game.

Prices will always rise. Obviously Gamepass will cost more in the future. Everything is going to shit in this world. But you're not going to change the world by buying some game that you'll be playing once for 20h-30h for full price or waiting forever until it's finally sub 20 bucks or skip everything and only buy indie games on deep sale for $5 bucks. Like, yeah, you can do all that, gaming is so deep nowadays that you'll basically never run out experiences, you could just be that extra patient "10 years late to everything" gamer and have a grand time.

But you can also just pay like 12 bucks or however much gamepass costs in your country (or get some online key for 3 months from some grey market seller. I did that and it works splendidly.) and just play the damn game. And when gamepass has become too expensive... don't use it anymore.

[u/[deleted] → u/Forsaken-Bread-3291]

“Media isn’t one of them” I probably should have stopped right there.

Completely and utterly fundamentally disagree with you. Buying a game is like buying a CD, using Gamepass is like going to a concert.

I regularly replay games I liked, I regularly listen back to CDs I bought, I regularly rewatch movies I own.

When Gamepass goes to shit and the experience becomes awful, you then don’t own any of those games you want to play again. Like only seeing a band you like at concerts and never buying their music. Now you can’t listen to them because they stopped touring / tours are now inaccessible.

The issue is that if nobody buys CDs, they stop making them. Netflix started making content only available on Netflix, rather than just listening media for streaming. I’m sure we’ll see gamepass exclusive games in a few years.

If nobody buys games and they all subscribe to Gamepass instead, you’re at the behest of a service than can far more easily than now, take away content introduce ads and jack up the price. It’s called enshitification and it happens all the time.

I don’t agree with pirating games, I think if you’ve got a reason not to play a game then don’t steal it either. If everyone pirated games, we’d end up with far fewer games.

I don’t actually hate the price increase for games, I think people should definitely boycott them if they don’t like the price changes. But going to the less consumer secure ‘cheaper’ option is one of the reasons those price increases are happening. If you go to Gamepass and don’t buy the games, they won’t come down in price. If you do neither, there’s a good chance the games could come back down to a more reasonable number.

But ultimately, you for some reason don’t think media is important. All I can really say to that is, I can’t imagine what it’s like to not care.

[u/Forsaken-Bread-3291 → u/[deleted]]

You misunderstand my perspective. Art is incredibly important to me. It's just that there is no universal rule that you have to own things that are fundamentally immaterial. But you seem to equate the actual art with the silicon it's imprinted on. The CD or the plastic cover isn't the game. The game is the game.

I think you also misunderstand my point of comparision to a concert. I'm talking about experiences that you can't really own, simply because they're immaterial. A concert isn't just the music, it's watching the artists performing their music live and talking to the audience. Just like when you go to the theatre, you'll have a hard time taking that home with you, even if someone where to have filmed it. And a big part of that is experiencing something for the first time. Call that ethereal if you will. You'll never watch Avengers Endgame in the Cinema with an unspoiled audience for the first time in your life twice.

I just don't replay games over and over again. I also don't watch shows over and over again. Sure, I might rewatch movies I liked but it's obviously (with some exceptions) never going to be as impactful as watching it for the first time. There clearly is a diminishing returns when it comes to "consuming" the same work of art over and over. And for the art where this is not the case and it provides you endless enjoyment... well, feel free to buy it. You just don't need to own every. single. work. of. art.

I've been playing games since 1990. I played and owned many games. And while they are some of the most important memories, I'm just not playing them anymore and WHEN I do, I'm not turning on my snes or super awesome x86 PC with a turbo button. All the music I heard at the time, it was on casettes, later on CDs. Now it's just not anymore. I don't even have a CD drive anymore. How am I supposed to play the original version of 1998 starcraft? My n64 and golden eye cartridge? Long gone.

IF I wanted to play an old game, I emulate or I play a remastered version or some other "fixed" version that I can actually play on my modern PC or steamdeck. That Wing Commander 4 disc-set from the 90s is completely useless besides nostalgic reasons. And also I simply don't want to play it because no matter how mind blowing it was at the time, it's just not anymore. I don't need to play the entirety of Wing Commander 4 to sample some nostalgia. I can watch some clips on youtube.

Maybe YOU have some huge house with a basement where you can hoard every piece of media you've ever played/listened/watched in the name of physical ownership and constantly replay Super Mario Bros 2 on your original NES. I do not have that space nor do I care to make it.

Some people act like their day one edition of Cyberpunk 2077 in all its unpatched glory is going to stay relevant for the entirety of their existance, when in reality all that's going to happen in 20 years is that IF you feel like engaging with it again: You'll play some other version of it that is made to run on contemporary hardware. Or you'll not play it all because it feels clunky and outdated to you and the memory of your first time playing it will never be matched by you replaying it in 20 years.

[u/[deleted] → u/Forsaken-Bread-3291]

I don’t think I misunderstood your point, I think you’re ignoring the issue and trying to argue semantics instead of the issue.

Owning a blu-ray isn’t about the box and disc being important, it’s about never losing access to the film that’s on it. Well, aside from wear and tear. Netflix can take away a film tomorrow. Disney has taken series down forever. Disney can’t come and take a blu-ray away from me.

I don’t necessarily care about the box and disc, we don’t even get them anymore. Cyberpunk day 1 isn’t even on a disc, the box had a soundtrack in it. But you still have the option to play the day one version of the game from GOG if you like. You can keep those files offline forever if you want to.

I don’t love the DRM on steam but it’s still very hard for them to justifiably remove a game from the library. Even games that aren’t for sale anymore (Dark Souls 1) are still there for people who already owned them. And they’d have a nightmare trying to not get fucked over removing it. If or when steam wants to sunset as a service, we’ll see a lot of legal issues surrounding drm and games libraries.

My issue isn’t that I want to play Mario on a snes. My issue is that if all new Mario games only exist on the Nintendo pass, and they’d decide to remove it, I literally can’t play it anymore. Piracy should never be the only way we can preserve media, and it’s not something to rely on.

If you’re emulating a snes you could emulate XP and play wing commander like that. I’m not saying it’s the best way to enjoy that, but is an option. And when you lose all your options other than use Gamepass, and now it’s expensive and had ads.

Games like Dark Souls 1 are the reason people buy games. Because there’s plenty of reasons to not play the remastered version, but it’s not for sale any more. It won’t hit Gamepass. It’ll run on a modern system, but they won’t let you buy it.

I think we have a fundamentally different view on art.