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.
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.
Damn, four in a year?
I think it's sad tyre.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Call_of_Duty
Latest release Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 October 25, 2024
EDIT : What in the name of fuck? So, COD1 was :
[made by] a new studio formed in 2002 originally consisting of 21 employees, many of whom were project lead developers of the successful Medal of Honor: Allied Assault released the same year. [COD 1 released 2003]
MOH:AA :
Development spanned from 2000 to late 2001
COD2 : Released 2005.
So basically, from 2000, they released 3 games within 2 years of each other. After COD2, EVERY SINGLE YEAR a new COD game was released without fail. Holy fuck.
They really might as well have put the annual franchise number on the fucking box. Forget CODBLOPS 7 , just call it COD 2026 (because they always put release year+1 on the fucking product label).
We have thousands of games that cost even less. You should stop behaving like that Silksong's price is somehow outstanding.
It's not that the price in and of itself is outstanding, it's that it's one of if not the most anticipated game of the decade and they could easily have charged twice that and still sold millions of copies, but they chose not to. They doubtless would have made more money if they'd came in at a higher price point, but rather than putting profit above all else, they elected to make their game affordable.
one of if not the most anticipated game of the decade
That's one of, if not the biggest, exaggerations of the decade.
It crashed all major gaming store fronts for several minutes. No other game this decade has done that, and theoretically it should get harder each day as systems scale to handle more traffic. The fact that it wasn’t just one store or half of them is incredible to me and shows how anticipated this game was.
Minutes? Damn near 2.5 hours for me on Steam, and I was seriously trying lol
It was literally the most wishlisted game on Steam, beating out all of the AAA titles. And it's been being hyped for 7 years. If that doesn't make it one of the most anticipated games of the decade, I'm really not sure what metrics you're looking for for that statistic.
Hm. Ok. These numbers are rather unexpected for me. It looks like you're right.
Hyped for 7 years with basically no action or advertising from the devs, too. They didn't need to stoke the hype at all.
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.
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?
Well, of course smaller studios can charge less for their product in order to make a profit. Their expenditures has to be a lot less, and hence they need to make less money to make a profit.
Large studios could make smaller games. Fund 10 games for the price of 1 big one. Expect at least one or two to be absolute gangbusters.
I have to assume that also, it's a game that is definitely not for everyone, and the price reflects that. If I only got as far as I have in 5 hours and decided to give up, I'd have been sore about $40. As it is I'm going to spend a lot more time with it and I'm already happy with how much entertainment I've got for my money.
I can't understand these complaints, honestly. It's not like games are some kind of vital necessity. What's more, I'd say they are luxury goods. So, either you pay for them or just pirate them (or ignore them altogether). Complaining makes no sense.
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 $10 I am paying for this?". If the answer is a more polished and refined product, I'm all for it - but that doesn't seem to be the case.
I doubt this'll be well received, but I actually don't think Silksong should be used to set price expectations. Hollow Knight made a shocking amount of money, massive sales were guaranteed, and the tiny dev team has enough money to pretty much vibe and make cool stuff forever.
Please don't compare other indie game prices to this, when those games can't guarantee their financial security, or massive sales number to turn a profit regardless of price.
Also, unrelated, but reading through the Bloomberg interview, and knowing what they charged for HK, 20$ is actually exactly what I assumed Silksong would cost well before it was announced, the shock for that kinda caught me off guard.
High budget triple A vs indie. Lets not pretend these games are targeting the same audience. There's always been a division between small games with small dev teams and small budgets and triple A (whatever that may mean). Once you see the line, you can't really compare the two anymore. I agree that the lines are sometimes blurred (what even is indie? what is AA? what is AAA?) but I think its clear Silksong was never going to be marketed next to Monster Hunter. A fair(er) comparison would be Hades 2 and the price difference is non longer so extreme.
Or.. you know.. we can add Vampire Survivors to the mix..
Team Cherry is four people and they knew for a fact they were guaranteed to sell millions of copies.
Most games have teams orders of magnitud larger and can't guarantee how well they'll sell.
If Expedition 33, which is from a mid-sized studio and punching above its weight for how few people they have, had set its price on a per-developer basis to match Silksong, it would have cost 200 bucks. Baldur's Gate 3 would have been 2500.
This is a bad take.
Hi-fi Rush launch price: $30
Tango Gameworks employees count: around 100 (in 2024)
Based on your take, Hi-Fi Rush should cost: $500
Reversing that, Silksong should cost: $1.20.
Stardew Valley should cost: $0.30
Idk the meth does checks out.
Hollow Knight seems like mainstream game industry shit to me. Solid game, massive hype, lots of sales. And I wouldn't even remember it in a couple months if not for other people.
It's like how Shovel Knight is a really good platformer but then you play it and it's... just a good platformer. An indie gem! But also, something you've played before.
You know what AAA companies didn't do 20 years ago? Dwarf Fortress.
Shovel Knight is actually fantastic though. You have AAA industry vets failing to meet its standard. Hell, compare SK to Mighty No. 9. Even Megaman can't make a megaman as good as that anymore. Plus it isn't just Shovel Knight, it has the Plague Knight, Specter Knight, and King of Cards sequels which are all genuinely great retro platformers.
No argument about DF though, and I still need to pick that up now that it has an actual UI.
What games do you find memorable, out of curiosity? (It's likely this is a 'you' thing; HK and SK are very memorable to a lot of people, and certainly weren't cookie cutter industry shit. Just curious what does float your boat, though, if not them.)
Tell me you never properly played Hollow Knight without telling me you never properly played Hollow Knight ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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.
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.
If you're up for some constructive criticism: I think the meme would be more effective if you put the silksong price in the lower panel to balance the $70 figure found in the top panel. Said another way, the lower text is missing the suffix "...for $20".
...and I guess while I'm at it, whatever that meme law is about fewer words is better makes me think the top panel could be trimmed down: ~~The~~ gaming industry explains why they need to charge $70 for a game ~~in order to make a profit.~~
indi continues to save the gaming industry
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A collection of some classic Lemmy memes for your enjoyment
