Electronic Arts started out so differently. The best, highest quality games, sold in album cases like vinyl records. They wanted to make their devs into rock stars. M.U.L.E., Seven Cities of Gold, Archon. Every game was innovative in every way.

Much later they'd changed, shifted toward the dark side, slipping way. But they still managed to bring us two of my favorite MMOs of all time: Motor City Online and Earth and Beyond.

MCO was online multiplayer Need For Speed with real classic American cars with real hot rod parts, the real engines, everything. I've not seen anything like it since. Hardly no one wants to pay to license real world cars any more. And you certainly don't get the real engines with the real hot rod parts.

EAB was a crappy FPS but somehow 2D space game, but it had the best crafting and leveling system. You take things apart eventually learning how to build things. Player built stuff could possibly go was high as 200% quality so other players would want to buy your wares. The leveling system had three distinct lines: exploration, combat, and trade. Play the game how you wanted to having fun your way not how they think you should.

Anyway, EA killed them both, turned off the servers, refused to release the server code so player servers or single player modes were impossible. They sent me a coupon for their new Sims game, though.

So fuck EA. Haven't bought a single one of their games since.

Satisfactory for me personally, I enjoy factorio but I like the first person vibe more

It is cheaper. All the money saved just goes to the publishers.

I feel you, friend

I have removed alot of advertising on tv by self hosting my dvd/br content. Best decision i had in a while, its like netflix but content is there forever and always accessible from anywhere in the world (if my upload can keep up). Fair amount of work but no subscription chargers

I don't know, I have removed close to 80% of ads in my life. None on my pc, none on my phone, none when I listen to music, none when I play games. Adblocking, Linux and a dash of the old yarr matey worked like a charm

Then this one should give you nightmares: https://youtu.be/YJg02ivYzSs

Yes, but also the star wars and sims franchise

Only ea games I can think of that I've bought are jedi: fallen order and jedi: survivor. And I only bought them because they're actually good games that aren't monetized like a casino.

I don't mind having the choice at least, years ago Amazon did this with their Kindles (or maybe they still do, dunno). You were given a choice on their Kindle order page, save 40$ on an ad supported version or full price and ad-free. It even stacked (At least once anyways) with other sales they might have been running.

I chose the ad supported model... and then proceeded to root it and remove the ads LMAO

Bold of you to assume the games will even be available to play years later.

Hence all games should only work while online to keep commercials up to date and measure user interaction..., I mean, to provide the best user experience possible. /s

Considering how complex modern games are from a software standpoint, they are fucking cheap as hell

Frameworks, ready to use engines and props and less care for efficiency (see Ark Survival) make it less effort for more results.

Wasn't there some asian guy who made a whole action level in Unity just for fun?

I'd agree with you if the devs were being treated better, games should cost more and be shorter. But the price hikes aren't that. They're pure greed.

That extra money isn't going to pay the developers. EA just shut down multiple studios, including the studio responsible for the critically acclaimed AA game High-Fi Rush, and are already talking about shutting down more. EA has closed more studios than they've released games this year, and the past 3 years have seen record high layoffs - even worse than during the 2008 financial crash. All this while companies brag about record-breaking profits.

And with the rise of digital media, production costs saw a significant decrease. There was a short period of time where physical copies were $60 and digital were $40. Now digital are averaging $70 and execs are already talking about increasing the price to $80-100.

You realize that it's much easier now to make a game than it was two decades ago (see other comment)? That digital platforms make it more accessible for buyers to get your game? That the overall trend in the industry has been to get a game out as fast as possible then try to patch it after the fact, when that wasn't even an option two decades ago (internet existed, sure, but not everyone had good internet)? Sure, the quality of graphics may have gone up, but everything else has been left behind.

Also, saying that people complaining about price is out-of-touch, is itself out-of-touch. Most people have even less purchasing power now than they did two decades ago and you want us to pay even more for a product inferior to what we would've gotten years ago?

that would be fair if these companies weren't incredibly profitable, only increasing that profit, and only using that profit to pay the executive and shareholders.

it's just greed. they don't need the money.

What about DLCs? And micro-transactions? And lack of optimisations? Base games these days are more like beta versions of what used to be provided in the past... It kinda feels like shrinkflation, price is the same but you get a lot less, both in quality and quantity.

It's the implementation that will probably annoy me the most. If the ingame radio station in GTA tried to sell me coke or Pepsi I probably wouldn't even notice since it fits in with the world. But knowing EA they will probably put them in as additional loading screen that you can't skip.