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| Time Mage 938th Post
 
Red Carpet Regular Member++
    
    
    
|  "Fair Play-Videogames are a Rip Off!!!"
, posted Fri 25 Oct 07:19
OK, this is serious. I think you'll agree with me if I say that videogames are expensive. They usually cost (in Europe) around 60-70 €, and I think in the US the prices are also way higher than, for example a DVD.
The shocking thing is, this is not only from the point of view of the user, but also is the opinion of many developers. In fact, because of the videogames prices many game studios goes bankrupcy every year, and the lack of creativity is a constant in the sector: Why bother being creative, if people won't risk their costly saved 60-70€ if the game is not popular enough? If videogames were cheaper people could risk more often when buying a videogame, because they would loose less.
Because of this, some developers, magazine writers and other people, have started the "Fair Play" campaign, in order to try lowering the prices of videogames.
Here's the sites of the campaign:
-UK/Main section
-Spanish section
There's also a link to the French section, but it's not still aviable.
Here you can read many information about game costs, the proposed solutions, an interview with Peter Molineoux about the subject, opinions of many people about it, etc.
SUPPORT FAIR PLAY!!
Gatotsu Zeroshiki!
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| TheBeast 1223th Post
Red Carpet Executive Member
  
| "Re(1):uh huh" , posted Fri 25 Oct 09:30
quote:
I feel that the most reasonable price of a game shouldn't cost more than the price of a DVD. Anything above that is simply ridiculuos.
That's the point.
OMFG games cost too much(uh if their too expensive, dont play)
and most of the money doesnt goto the developer, so lowering the price will hurt em even more
Developers work for the game companies. They get paid, don't they?
The point now is OVERCHARGING for a product that you will be risking your money in, and game companies don't seem to see that point.
Selling a game, to me, is selling a very unique product. At the end of the day, you would want a happy gamer, so that they will buy your product again. Besides selling a tangible product, you are also selling happiness, pleasure, fun, and memorable times to people too. These are positive things that should be shared by the masses. But charging a high price means segmenting the target market to focus a niche one - the rich or the die-hards. This defeats the purpose of creating games!
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| Ishmael 264th Post
Copper Customer
| "Re(2):uh huh" , posted Fri 25 Oct 10:00
Is there anyone around here who actually does work in the videogame industry who can explain the economics that go into making, distributing, and selling a game? I'm certain someone, somewhere is making a good sized profit off of videogames but I'm not certain I trust fairplay-campaign.co.uk to give me the correct facts. Considering just a quick scan of the site turned up hyperbolic nonsense like the following:
"...people who currently quite rightly feel ripped off would buy more games instead of resorting to illegal pirate copies - which the industry insists help to fund terrorism, drug-dealing and pornography, by the way -"
Wha?!? Drugs and pornography -which you would think would make plenty of money on their own- have to rely on illegal videogames to prop up their bottom line?
"But don't games cost millions to make?
Yes, they often do. (The average figure for a game these days is around 1 million, and can rise much higher for certain titles. But the cost of development has nothing to do with retail price. Albums can cost tens of millions of pounds to record, but you can still buy them for 11. Movies can cost hundreds of millions of pounds to make, but you can still see them for 5 or buy them for 15. Movies which only cost a few thousand pounds to make (like The Blair Witch Project) aren't any cheaper to see or buy than super-expensive blockbusters (like Titanic, which cost literally hundreds of times as much as Blair Witch). Books cost almost nothing to write, but sell for similar prices to albums."
First, I'm sure all authors out there will be thrilled to hear that all the work and years of their life that go into making a book seemingly aren't work jack-shit from a financial stanpoint. This also doesn't address that albums, books, and movies have the potential to make a profit for a much longer period of time than videogames. Companies make a great deal of money off of the back libraries of material they have which is something videogames by and large cannot do. For example, take the James Bond movies. The expense of making them was probably recouped in the initial theatrical runs of the films so any subsequent re-release years later -be it on television, videocassette, or DVD- is going to be almost pure profit. Videogames don't have this sort of option. Just a guess, but do games have a window of little more than a year or two to make any money? By then the console the game is on has started to run it's course or another game has come along that has caught the fancy of game players. The only way game companies can have something like a back library is to constant updates and sequels to their popular games or re-release old games on the next generation of consoles and hope that fans will be nostalgic enough to buy the game a second time.
Perhaps a drop in game prices would promote a greater level of creativity and niche title success or perhaps it would bring about more games similar to those bottom-feeding PSX games that sell for $10. Either way I'm not sure this page and the grass-roots campaign it's tied to is the proper way to go about changing the industy.
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| exodus 347th Post
Bronze Customer
| "Re(3):uh huh" , posted Fri 25 Oct 10:10
You can't change the industry this way, it's as simple as that.
Games are *cheaper* than they've been for a while. They're at the lowest point in my lifetime, not that it's so long. Remember how NES games cost $70?? games now cost between $30 and $50. Also, companies who choose to (smaller ones included) can choose to release their games for less, like Agetec and Atlus sometimes do, or like Capcom, Sega, etc etc. Any company that went bankrupt because of this was selling their games for too much/should have distributed it themselves.
Not that I think the prices are fantastic, I just think that you can't change things this way, especially since they've been getting better on their own.
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| Gojira 686th Post
Red Carpet Regular Member
| "Re(1):Fair Play-Videogames are a Rip Off!!!" , posted Sat 26 Oct 00:16
I have seen it, and the campaign is a load of horseshit. Don't bother with it. If you really want to make games cheaper, only buy the low-cost, low-production-value games, most of which suck ass by the way.
I especially love how they twist quotes around. Take this one for instance:
"The price of games is killing innovation."
Wow. That's deep. Except this quote was directed at the cost of PRODUCTION, not the retail price of video games. This is just a plain moronic fabrication. If you could produce a game for less than $100,000 then of course you'd feel better about taking a chance with an original idea. It does NOT work at the consumer level.
Here's another great piece of wisdom:
"Roughly 95% of all games released actually lose money!"
So lowering prices will help games make more money! What genius! I wonder if the automotive industry knows this? They could make a fortune selling cars for $100 each! Or maybe it doesn't work unless there are actually people complaining about it? That's the secret, eh? Just more horseshit.
But my favorite moron quote has to be the load of crap about films costing less. Of COURSE films cost less; the DVDs are produced by about 2-3 people each, maybe 4-5 if they want lots of extras. Movies make money in the movie theaters, where people will pay $6 for absolutely nothing but a chance to watch something. The home market does nothing more than narrowly break even. You need just as many, if not more, people to produce a game than a movie. Their ONLY source of profit has to come from the game's sales. And it's not a matter of selling nothing, because there are materials involved. So in order to pay the tens of dozens of people who are involved in the making of games (both development and corporate) and the materials as well, in addition to allowing the retailer some profit margin (otherwise they wouldn't bother to stock the game), games are priced that way.
Don't be fooled by this propaganda. These people are from the stone age.
GSPX progress: 38% done! New build to be released: 11-7-02
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| Time Mage 943th Post
Red Carpet Regular Member++
| "Re(2):Fair Play-Videogames are a Rip Off!!!" , posted Sat 26 Oct 03:33:
Wow, I'm surprised by your opinions, guys, I thought this could be more popular here... Anyway, everyone is entitled to their own opinion.
About the prices in the US, I see you mention 40-50$ as the standard of videogame prices there. That's what I'm aiming for, at least. Here, games cost 60-70€, and being 1 Euro = 0.98 Dollars (that is, they're roughly equal), we're paying here for a CD or a DVD the same as you (or we) paid for a cart (which production cost is way higher), in the peak of the SNES era.
So, to sum up: Even when salarys here are not as high as in the US, I would be happy to pay what you pay for a game, that is, around 30% less of what I'm paying now. I don't know, maybe this is only a problem in Europe...
EDIT: This is strictly my opinion, and is not based in any of the website's argument, unlike my first post.
Gatotsu Zeroshiki!
[this message was edited by Time Mage on Sat 26 Oct 03:34] |
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"Re(1):Fair Play-Videogames are a Rip Off!!!" 
the image as it shows
"Re(2):Fair Play-Videogames are a Rip Off!!!" 
"Re(4):uh huh" 
