EA's Free-To-Play GM Says $60 Games Are "Exploitative"

[Tom Goldman]

EA's Free-To-Play GM Says $60 Games Are "Exploitative"

EA's free-to-play general manager thinks $60 is too big a price of entry for a videogame.

Along with the current generation of videogame consoles came a 20% hike in the price of the average new release. Games that were once priced $50, are now typically priced at $60, and gamers have just had to accept it. Though EA has plenty of $60 games on the market, general manager of EA free-to-play branch Easy Studios believes the price point is awfully "harsh."

Speaking to RPS, Cousins revealed that he thinks a $60 price unnecessarily puts up a wall that gamers shouldn't be forced to scale. In addition, he thinks it exploits consumers.

"I can't think of anything more exploitative than gating all of your content behind having to pay someone $60," Cousins said. "That's a really harsh business model if you think about it objectively."

Cousins added that free-to-play gaming is much more lenient on consumers, allowing them to walk away without losing anything if they decide a game is awful. Anyone that bought Bomberman Zero [http://www.amazon.com/Bomberman-Act-Zero-Xbox-360/dp/B000VOF32U/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=videogames&qid=1300804864&sr=8-2] at $60 probably agrees with him with all the fury in their being.

In way way though, it seems like Cousins is comparing apples to oranges. Free-to-play games are typically online, multiplayer experiences supported by microtransactions. Currently, there doesn't seem to be a way to switch a single player game bought in a store to a free-to-play model, other than a publisher releasing a demo, which doesn't necessarily tell the whole tale. Heavy Rain [http://www.amazon.com/Heavy-Rain-Playstation-3/dp/B002CZ38KA/ref=sr_1_1?s=videogames&ie=UTF8&qid=1300805080&sr=1-1] would probably have a lot of trouble asking players to pay $1 to "Jason." Games with big budgets have to recoup that investment in a realistic way.

Still, I think most gamers would agree that the $60 price point turns us off to buying as many games as we would like. We've become more cautious about our buying habits, in fear of wasting the cost of a night out on another subpar third-person shooter. Perhaps if publishers heeded Cousins' words and were more honest with themselves about the worth of their products, titles that become failures at $60 could become successes at $40.

Source: Rock, Paper, Shotgun [http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/03/22/eas-cousins-60-games-exploitative/]


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[Phishfood]

Torchlight is a prime example of this. I'd rate it pretty average out of my game collection, but for the price I feel I got more than my money's worth. Never would have bought it at $60. Still waiting for Black Ops to get cheaper before I buy it.

 

[googleback]

The reason I want to see a new pricing structure implemented is because it'll take pressure off of developers to include everything on the "checklist".

Like you could sell call of duty's multi player for two thirds of the price and then the singleplayer for a third. the end result could even amount to more than $60.

allow the consumer to buy what they want or buy it all together for a bundle price. In this day and age its not hard to try it out.

 

[The Rockerfly]

It doesn't annoy me paying £40-45 on a game, what annoys me is when there is content on the game you have to pay to unlock

HINTED HINT FUCKING HINT

EDIT: Actually after I though about it, say the cost of a film is £100 million, what does that come from? Lighting, make up, animation, sound, editors, corporate executives etc but a good portion, goes to celebrities. Take a look at Charlie Sheen, he makes 2 million a week and if a film takes a year to make, think how much is going to the actors who are paid far too much. At least you can feel good in yourself that there are no big shot no talent celebrities making money off of you been suckered into seeing a shit film. At least with games there are millions of reviews and you know what you are paying for.
Sorry my point isn't that clear, I'm going to bed

 

[Therumancer]

Clever. To be honest a lot of those "free to play" games ultimatly cost more than boxed games when you get down to it. To begin with they start out accessible, the idea being to get people hooked, and then start requiring more and more money to remain competitive. People have invested hundreds of dollars into games like "Farmville" over a period of time, sometimes without even realizing how much they have spent.

What's more those $60 games *ARE* using a microtransaction system, you shell that out, and then there is "DLC", every thing a game company can cut away from a game and sell seperatly they do.

What's more the $60 price point is exploitive, but since people pay it, junkie lke, there is no real reason to lower the price. Heck I'd argue a lot of games cost as much as $100 or more for the full experience when you consider the DLC angle.

I'd like to see the industry change, but in the end all ranting about it doesn't matter since they won't change UNLESS people stop buying the products at the current prices.

Truthfully as exploitive as the $60 games are, I think the whole "Free To Play" movement is even worse, it just hasn't fully snowballed yet, but it's getting there. The simple fact that people CAN pay hundreds or even thousands of dollars for things like "Smurfberries" in "free to play" games, shows the problem, as is the simple fact that they games are designed to lure the simple (or children) into wasting vast amount of money on virtual property for a game.

 

[Kaytastrophe]

So the company that charges people 10 dollars who buy a used copy of a game that costs less than 60 bucks thinks paying 60 bucks is a crazy? Hmmm... somehow I feel not everyone is communicating with each other at EA.

 

[Shoggoth2588]

Didn't N64 games used to cost $80 new? I also remember seeing an old Nintendo Power advertising NES games (it was an old issue) for around $75 a pop. I could be wrong though, my memory is garbage.

Compared to other mediums our price point is fine.
films cost what 15 dollars
thats mayber 2.5 hours
a game costs what 60 dollars
so your willing to pay 4 times it for 4 times the length. 10 hours is a short game in my books. (yes im including multiplayer.

Its an expensive hobby. but not more than people can afford.

A great point. Going to the local cinema, you would pay anything between (roughly) $8 (for an early show) to $20+ (if you're watching a 3D film, not counting snacks) for 1.5 - 3 hours of entertainment. Buying DVDs and Blu-Rays runs between (roughly) $5 and $250+ based on what you're buying, the time you get with those discs are greatly increased but it's still a linear medium, movies and TV shows.

For a game you're paying between (roughly) $40 and $120 new for something that will last you at least 4 hours from beginning to end, not counting time spent in multiplayer.

I'm happy with the current price of games. It could be a whole lot worse.

 

[RA92]

I know hardcore gamers who never spent more than $15 on AAA titles because of Steam. So yeah. You don't really have to buy titles at launch date - let all the professional and user reviews come out, let the prices depreciate... and go in for the kill when it's low enough.

 

[malestrithe]

Just like the movies and television.

Some games are given a huge budget akin to a summer blockbuster. A game like that needs to sell at least a million units in order for it to barely be profitable.

The stuff you can get on the Net through the PSN or XBLA are like independent movies. They cost less to produce, but are easier to turn a profit on. Some like Angry Birds and Amnesia become huge successes.

In something that defies logic, the game studio would rather put all of their money into one game rather than spreading them out over multiple ones. It turns out that it is a lot easier to tun a profit on one movie than multiple ones.

 

[RA92]

Didn't N64 games used to cost $80 new? I also remember seeing an old Nintendo Power advertising NES games (it was an old issue) for around $75 a pop. I could be wrong though, my memory is garbage.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't N64 games run on cartridges? Cartridges were much more expensive than CDs or DVDs...

 

[Keith K]

Consumers are capable of deciding what's worth their money and what they find exploitive. Releasing a compelling product and decide what you think it's worth. Consumers can figure out for themselves whether or not to agree with you. But until you release that product, just shut up.

 

[Astalano]

Free to play for the sake of it is also stupid.

Idea! Price games according to popularity. Highly anticipated sequels like Modern Warfare Future Soldier Kill Bad Guy X should be priced at $80-$100, while new IP's should be priced at $20-$30 and only mid range fairly popular games should be priced at $60.

The PC is at the forefront of implementing proper pricing, largely due to digital distribution sales and the massive number of indie and small developers who understand how to price their games (Magicka is STILL selling at $9.99). Digital distribution, unlike retail, allows games to sell for much longer and lowering price causes a much greater increase in profits, so it's beneficial to stray away from standard prices.

We're seeing the upping of prices with many supposedly popular PC titles, although this is mostly bad implementation as publishers instantly assume that if it's marketed for console and ported to PC that PC gamers will shell out $60 for it even though it's not built for PC's. The only developers that can justify a $60 on PC are Blizzard and Valve.

Consoles still lag behind, but I'm sure we'll get digital sales in the future and console gamers and journalists will hail the revolution of digital distribution as Xbox Live 2 and PSN 2 start to actually compete while ignoring that Steam did it 5+ years earlier.

 

[ZombieGenesis]

You mean $60 for a new game, plus another $10+ for all the first day downloadable content.
Right EA?

 

[Missing SHODAN]

Compared to other mediums our price point is fine.
films cost what 15 dollars
thats mayber 2.5 hours
a game costs what 60 dollars
so your willing to pay 4 times it for 4 times the length. 10 hours is a short game in my books. (yes im including multiplayer.

Its an expensive hobby. but not more than people can afford.

But this argument is largely about risk and investment.

If I go to see Drive Angry (haven't seen, just picking a film that I'd deemed 'risky' in my head when I saw the trailer) in the theater and it's awful and I leave early, I'm out $15.

When I bought FFXIII for $60, and decided it was awful, I was out $60. The fact that the game features 40 hours of gameplay or whatever wasn't any comfort when about 15-20 hours in I'd decided my nostalgia for Final Fantasy wasn't enough to overcome the fact that I did not enjoy the game and hadn't enjoy the last 15-20 hours of waiting for the game to magically turn back into FFVI.

The fact that I could have, say, 10-40 hours of awful experience versus 1.5-2.5 hours of awful experience isn't really a comfort at that point.

When games are good, yeah, they're great values for the money. You'll get no argument from me there. However, when they're crap, they're expensive crap. What is being argued here is that people would be willing to try more games if there wasn't the risk that they'd spend a fairly sizable chunk of cash on something which turned out to be completely not their thing.

This would also be less of a problem if you could return video games to the store on account of "it was crap," but the industry has ensured that's not an option.

EDIT - also, it's hilarious for "nickle and dime you" EA having someone talk about how one could price things better. I wouldn't mind being nickled and dimed for, say, a $15 game, but when it's $60 + First Day DLC, that really does feel exploitative.

 

[Sovereignty]

Eh, split single player games into episodes. Sell said episodes for 5-10 dollars a piece. Help the less fortunate gamer get his game on. (Even if he/she has to wait for the next paycheck to catch up. I remember how that goes.)

I mean $60 is too much. I should be able to buy two new releases for $100+tax. It'd certainly make it more feasible to buy more then two games every 4 months. Gaming is a hobby, and if it keeps getting more expensive, I might just have to take up painting.

 

[Anton P. Nym]

Statements like Cousin's drive me up the wall.

Here we have a crowd of gamers demanding 60fps hi-def graphics, with high-poly models and high-res skins, with professional voice-acting and sophisticated audio mixing, for over 20 hours of single-player gameplay... but don't charge the little dears more than you would for a browser game; oh, no, that would be exploitative.

I'm normally pretty careful with my language here, but the only response that even remotely approaches my sentiment about people demanding this is, "Fuck 'em." They don't want to pay what it costs to make the game? Fine; they can not buy the game, and keep on being ignored by studios they way car companies ignore crazies on the street demanding $100 cars that run on water.

-- Steve

 

[LadyMint]

Good man, good man.

I wish game companies would just release base games at a cheaper price and continue to offer optional DLC at a separate price. I think that's the closest to F2P's microtransactions they can come. But yeah, the main reason I don't buy most games when they come out is because they're $50-60 out the starting gate. When I exercise a little patience, I can go to my local used game store and get it for $20-35. (Or in the case of PC games, catch them when they're on sale.) I'd be more inclined to buy games as they come out if they were only $40.

Or, more realistically, it wouldn't hurt if the games were priced based on their content/replayability. I paid $50 for Kirby's Epic Yarn when it first came out, and beat the game in less than a week's time. Took it right back to the store and traded it in full-price for in-store credit on a pre-order. KEY should've only been $30-35 new, IMO. A $50 pricetag is better reserved for games that are designed to take you a long time to beat, like the ones in the Legend of Zelda series.

 

[LawlessSquirrel]

Compared to other mediums our price point is fine.
films cost what 15 dollars
thats mayber 2.5 hours
a game costs what 60 dollars
so your willing to pay 4 times it for 4 times the length. 10 hours is a short game in my books. (yes im including multiplayer.

Its an expensive hobby. but not more than people can afford.

Depends if you're finishing the game in one sitting and never playing it again, I'd say. Since your price to see a movie is a one-shot thing, not a repeatable experience. It now occurs to me you might mean $15 purchase for the DVD, which makes me sad...

"I can't think of anything more exploitative than gating all of your content behind having to pay someone $60," Cousins said. "That's a really harsh business model if you think about it objectively."

I hate to bring this up yet again, but I'm failing to resist the urge. What's more exploitative than a $60 game? How about a $120 game? $140? Then again, I'm really not debating who's got the more exploitative market here. Just letting out a little rant-vent on said topic.

When I can, I pay $60 with a smile. Of course I'd rather pay less, but the $60 price seems fine to me for a full-length game. Dropping the price down if the game's not bulky would be fair, but $60 is reasonable in my eyes.