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

[manaman]

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.

Your average film cost five times what it costs to make your average video game. Your comparing the wrong things.

Movies make tremendous amounts of money when they do well, they sale not only discs, but they have a theatrical release as well. Overall they are different experiences and comparing money used to make, vs average sales, sales, vs average profit, is the only real way to compare them. Length of the content has little to do with the pricing.

$60 may not be to much for you, but sales figures show it is for the majority of people. They are becoming more and more selective in what they buy. The titles that make a profit do extremely well, while the majority of titles only break even at best. To many cheaper alternatives to the AAA pricing are out there. More and more people are buying XBLA and PSN games, renting more, and being far more frugal with those titles they do buy.

Even with money to burn I have been disappointed to many times with games over the last few years to justify buying on release anymore. I don't mind waiting, and letting only the games that really prove themselves get my money. I have purchased more games for my phone over the last year then for all the consoles put together.

i dont have money to burn. I buy games I KNOW i will like, anything else i wait for the price to drop significantly (ok to £30 from £40 but still). And i was comparing value for entertainment not profit for the companies. Value for entertainment even on 60 dollar games comes out much higher than other mediums (except maybe books).

And id argue people are buying indie and downloadable games because they are really high quality gameplay (something a lot of full priced releases are missing)

It's a different media, and there is a reason trying to mix the two has rarely gone well. You can't compare a books value to a movies value by page, because no comparison exists. Would you factor in reading speeds? It takes me a quarter of the time to finish a book as it takes a friend. Yet it takes us the same amount of time to watch a movie. It's the same with a game. Take out all the repetitive game play and you suddenly find yourself with a concise story that in many games is far shorter, and far less in depth then a movie. You pay for a movie for an entertaining story. You pay for a game for an entertaining experience. An action movie could just as easily pad it's run time by having a lead character run down endless hallways shotting generic baddy after generic baddy for hours between the snip-its of story, but it would never work because a movie and a game are completely separate pieces of entertainment.

Then again I am not ever sure what you are really arguing about, you offer the point that a game's price at $60 is perfectly valid because it takes longer to finish the game then it takes to watch a movie, but you then you go on to say that indie games are offering quality game play at a significantly reduced price, and that AAA titles are missing that. Which is it? Is $60 to much, or is it not? Because if indie games are capable of offering superior experiences at lower prices then obviously it is.

Returning to my original point: You can't compare apples to potatoes by saying an apple is better priced because it takes longer to eat. What you can compare is the average profit seen by games VS movies compared to the numbers they sale. That gives an indication of value, because you are, again, comparing things that are fundamentally different.

 

[DTWolfwood]

it would help if they drop the prices after 2 months of sales, or at least when their sale start to drop off. not keep it at $60 for a year+

 

[XT inc]

What He is even talking about. Every gamer I know wishes they could get the full "gated content" for 60 bucks. Thanks to DLC the "full game" costs up to and over $100. In this reality the $60 price tag is the entry fee that Cousins talks about("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.")

All games out there give you a 60$ starter cost. Now at this point one can play and walk away or pay through the 10-15$ add ons that no one denies that content is stripped from the game one way or another, to have day one or month 1 dlc.

 

[Zenn3k]

I've been burned by MANY a bad title.

I'm very cautious with how I spend my money on games now, and I rarely buy more than 3 titles a year, mostly because 99% of them aren't worth buying.

My current 2011 List is as Follows:
-Portal 2
-Duke Nukem Forever
- ?

 

[jurnag12]

Isn't this a guy from a company who charges 60 bucks for the roster update and minor graphical fixes that they prefer to call 'the new Madden'?

 

[Something Amyss]

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

Similar to what I was going to say.

I don't mind the 60 dollar entry, it's the way so many companies (EA included) try and make us pay a 'hefty' investment up front, then cash in via additional backdoor content. It's most bothersome when it's deliberately withheld (On-Disc material) or effectively mandatory ("we know 15 bucks is a lot for 3 maps, but we're going to cripple your ability to find online games unless you're up to date...You don't want that, do you?").

Anyone who's about to utter that lovely "don't like it, don't buy it" canard, note the term "effectively" and think about the meaning.

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.

And with 6 hour games becoming more common....

 

[ninja51]

I think it should be 50 or 40 dollars honestly. Thats how much pc games are and if youve got the PC that can handle it, its a much better experiance than console games. Cheaper, bigger community, mods, easier access to content

 

[darkcommanderq]

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.

Games went from $50 to $60 with the generation gap and the console discount factored in. The xbox and ps3 were manufactured and sold at a loss in order to get people to buy them. Then they priced the games a bit higher to cover that cost lost in production.

You can prove this by just looking at a PC titles price and an Xbox titles price, the PC is the original $50 and the Xbox is $60.

Honestly you all should be grateful the price has not jumped to $70 yet. It takes a lot of work to make a game (even the crappy ones), The fact that the price has been stable for so many years is a good thing.

Did you think it was going to go down with time?!

 

[Necromancer1991]

I would love it if they trimmed the prices down even a little, I mean I can get 2 hand-held titles for the same price giving me DOUBLE the play time, I'm not saying that games should never cost 60$, just that you should consider going back to the old 40-50$ price range that you had last generation, it was much more manageable and took less of my paycheck. I miss the days when I could get like 3 nes games for the price of almost one PS3 game, it's almost ridiculous.

 

[DTWolfwood]

I think it should be 50 or 40 dollars honestly. Thats how much pc games are and if youve got the PC that can handle it, its a much better experiance than console games. Cheaper, bigger community, mods, easier access to content

AAA PC games/ports are also $60, CoD, DA2, Dead Space 2, basically anything coming out of EA or Activision is $60 on PC too >.<

 

[Roxor]

I'm pretty sure one episode of Extra Credits covered how much a publisher gets out of a $60 retail game, and I think the figure they gave was $27. Assuming Valve's commission is a third of the price, they could sell for $45 on Steam and make $30 after Valve takes their commission. The customer pays less and the publisher makes more profit than selling retail.

 

[Dana22]

Microtransactions are more exploitative then retail prices. As shown in Battlefield Heroes.

ps. Ive never paid 60$ for a game.

 

[manaman]

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.

Your average film cost five times what it costs to make your average video game. Your comparing the wrong things.

Movies make tremendous amounts of money when they do well, they sale not only discs, but they have a theatrical release as well. Overall they are different experiences and comparing money used to make, vs average sales, sales, vs average profit, is the only real way to compare them. Length of the content has little to do with the pricing.

$60 may not be to much for you, but sales figures show it is for the majority of people. They are becoming more and more selective in what they buy. The titles that make a profit do extremely well, while the majority of titles only break even at best. To many cheaper alternatives to the AAA pricing are out there. More and more people are buying XBLA and PSN games, renting more, and being far more frugal with those titles they do buy.

Even with money to burn I have been disappointed to many times with games over the last few years to justify buying on release anymore. I don't mind waiting, and letting only the games that really prove themselves get my money. I have purchased more games for my phone over the last year then for all the consoles put together.

i dont have money to burn. I buy games I KNOW i will like, anything else i wait for the price to drop significantly (ok to £30 from £40 but still). And i was comparing value for entertainment not profit for the companies. Value for entertainment even on 60 dollar games comes out much higher than other mediums (except maybe books).

And id argue people are buying indie and downloadable games because they are really high quality gameplay (something a lot of full priced releases are missing)

It's a different media, and there is a reason trying to mix the two has rarely gone well. You can't compare a books value to a movies value by page, because no comparison exists. Would you factor in reading speeds? It takes me a quarter of the time to finish a book as it takes a friend. Yet it takes us the same amount of time to watch a movie. It's the same with a game. Take out all the repetitive game play and you suddenly find yourself with a concise story that in many games is far shorter, and far less in depth then a movie. You pay for a movie for an entertaining story. You pay for a game for an entertaining experience. An action movie could just as easily pad it's run time by having a lead character run down endless hallways shotting generic baddy after generic baddy for hours between the snip-its of story, but it would never work because a movie and a game are completely separate pieces of entertainment.

Then again I am not ever sure what you are really arguing about, you offer the point that a game's price at $60 is perfectly valid because it takes longer to finish the game then it takes to watch a movie, but you then you go on to say that indie games are offering quality game play at a significantly reduced price, and that AAA titles are missing that. Which is it? Is $60 to much, or is it not? Because if indie games are capable of offering superior experiences at lower prices then obviously it is.

Returning to my original point: You can't compare apples to potatoes by saying an apple is better priced because it takes longer to eat. What you can compare is the average profit seen by games VS movies compared to the numbers they sale. That gives an indication of value, because you are, again, comparing things that are fundamentally different.

Simple
I'll type slowly here.
QUANTITY of time spent on any entertainment can be compared. How many hours fun are you likely to spend using said item. If you personally take a day to eat an apple, and enjoy the whole day than that would be the best for you. It allows room for preference.

And yes indie games do have better gameplay? And it is at a reduced price. But those games are shorter hense the reduced price, hows that confusing?

Movies and games are only different in how we consume them. They are still passtimes that we spend our disposable income on. Our dispoable income gets divided according to what we want, a lot of people would pay more for something mostly good that lasts longer than something amazing which doesnt last nearly as long. Entertainment value/hour is a valid measurement solely because we as consumer want the best bang for our buck. And that best bang varies from person to person.

Some people want the longer games and pay more (AAA) some people don't have the time for their investment in such titles to be worthwhile so invest in smaller titles (indie).

I pay zero dollars to go out and play some football with friends. That is fun to me, so obviously all entertainment should be free as the value for playing football for a few hours is far greater then the value for watching a movie or playing a video game.

You probably should reassess using time spent on an activity as the sole indicator of it's value, because as it stands now you are pretty much saying time spent on an activity is the sum total of it's value. There are plenty of things you can do that consume vast amounts of your time that pay nothing for, and some that you even get paid to do. Obviously the value of all activities cannot rest solely on how long it takes to complete them. I would be getting paid the same $8 an hour a kid gets to flip burgers after school, not the amount of money my work actually does earn me, you know when I do work.

 

[Necromancer1991]

Microtransactions are more exploitative then retail prices. As shown in Battlefield Heroes.

ps. Ive never paid 60$ for a game.

How are Micro-transactions exploitative, for the most part they are completely optional in most games that use them, for the most part transactions are limited to cosmetic upgrades in 60% of the F2P games anyway, certain games like to make paying money a way to go around farming for in-game currency which could be construed as exploitative, but it only exploit the lack of patience that most people suffer from. Yes I've run into SOME games that more or less require you to spend REAL money to really progress, but they are the exception rather than the rule.

 

[kaizoman]

I would almost be willing to bet $60 that this guy won't have a job by summer time.

 

[manaman]

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.

Your average film cost five times what it costs to make your average video game. Your comparing the wrong things.

Movies make tremendous amounts of money when they do well, they sale not only discs, but they have a theatrical release as well. Overall they are different experiences and comparing money used to make, vs average sales, sales, vs average profit, is the only real way to compare them. Length of the content has little to do with the pricing.

$60 may not be to much for you, but sales figures show it is for the majority of people. They are becoming more and more selective in what they buy. The titles that make a profit do extremely well, while the majority of titles only break even at best. To many cheaper alternatives to the AAA pricing are out there. More and more people are buying XBLA and PSN games, renting more, and being far more frugal with those titles they do buy.

Even with money to burn I have been disappointed to many times with games over the last few years to justify buying on release anymore. I don't mind waiting, and letting only the games that really prove themselves get my money. I have purchased more games for my phone over the last year then for all the consoles put together.

i dont have money to burn. I buy games I KNOW i will like, anything else i wait for the price to drop significantly (ok to £30 from £40 but still). And i was comparing value for entertainment not profit for the companies. Value for entertainment even on 60 dollar games comes out much higher than other mediums (except maybe books).

And id argue people are buying indie and downloadable games because they are really high quality gameplay (something a lot of full priced releases are missing)

It's a different media, and there is a reason trying to mix the two has rarely gone well. You can't compare a books value to a movies value by page, because no comparison exists. Would you factor in reading speeds? It takes me a quarter of the time to finish a book as it takes a friend. Yet it takes us the same amount of time to watch a movie. It's the same with a game. Take out all the repetitive game play and you suddenly find yourself with a concise story that in many games is far shorter, and far less in depth then a movie. You pay for a movie for an entertaining story. You pay for a game for an entertaining experience. An action movie could just as easily pad it's run time by having a lead character run down endless hallways shotting generic baddy after generic baddy for hours between the snip-its of story, but it would never work because a movie and a game are completely separate pieces of entertainment.

Then again I am not ever sure what you are really arguing about, you offer the point that a game's price at $60 is perfectly valid because it takes longer to finish the game then it takes to watch a movie, but you then you go on to say that indie games are offering quality game play at a significantly reduced price, and that AAA titles are missing that. Which is it? Is $60 to much, or is it not? Because if indie games are capable of offering superior experiences at lower prices then obviously it is.

Returning to my original point: You can't compare apples to potatoes by saying an apple is better priced because it takes longer to eat. What you can compare is the average profit seen by games VS movies compared to the numbers they sale. That gives an indication of value, because you are, again, comparing things that are fundamentally different.

Simple
I'll type slowly here.
QUANTITY of time spent on any entertainment can be compared. How many hours fun are you likely to spend using said item. If you personally take a day to eat an apple, and enjoy the whole day than that would be the best for you. It allows room for preference.

And yes indie games do have better gameplay? And it is at a reduced price. But those games are shorter hense the reduced price, hows that confusing?

Movies and games are only different in how we consume them. They are still passtimes that we spend our disposable income on. Our dispoable income gets divided according to what we want, a lot of people would pay more for something mostly good that lasts longer than something amazing which doesnt last nearly as long. Entertainment value/hour is a valid measurement solely because we as consumer want the best bang for our buck. And that best bang varies from person to person.

Some people want the longer games and pay more (AAA) some people don't have the time for their investment in such titles to be worthwhile so invest in smaller titles (indie).

I pay zero dollars to go out and play some football with friends. That is fun to me, so obviously all entertainment should be free as the value for playing football for a few hours is far greater then the value for watching a movie or playing a video game.

You probably should reassess using time spent on an activity as the sole indicator of it's value, because as it stands now you are pretty much saying time spent on an activity is the sum total of it's value. There are plenty of things you can do that consume vast amounts of your time that pay nothing for, and some that you even get paid to do. Obviously the value of all activities cannot rest solely on how long it takes to complete them. I would be getting paid the same $8 an hour a kid gets to flip burgers after school, not the amount of money my work actually does earn me, you know when I do work.

yeah since you enjoy football go play that free forever. Its just another thing to consume. Im not saying they should be equal. Im saying when comparing things you pay for, how much entertainment your likely to get from them is a good indicator of value. Its the same reason i never intend to visit bruges. And its not the sole thing but it is a valid thing. There are finite spare hours in the day, i would rather make sure what im spending my money on isn't bad value so i can do more fun things.

Well now you are just getting ridiculous. You just placed a value on your time with that last post. Which means things that entertain more in a given amount of time are worth more to you.

How high you value the experience depends on you, but you can't use time as the only indicator of value when comparing two activities that are fundamentally different. Which for all the blustering happening now was what you where doing. If you recognize that you get paid from some activities, some are free, and some you pay for obviously you see that as well, admitting it might just be another story.

 

[Vrach]

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.

Check the price of making a movie vs the price of making a video game. Only games that come close to movie production costs are Starcraft 2 (which became famous for it's 100 million budget) and MMOs.

(note, comparing triple A games with blockbusters as we ARE talking about triple A games here, seeing as we're saying '60 bucks')

 

[aashell13]

I agree. I remember when PC games were about $20 new. I never buy anything on release day, normally I'll wait a year or two till there's a general consensus on the quality of a game, all the bugs have been patched, etc, and then pick it up for 50% off on steam.

my favorite example of this was Force Unleashed. i paid $20 for it on steam, and was happy, but if i had bought it new at full price i'd have been really upset, because frankly i don't think it's worth that much, being basically boilerplate starwars wrapped around a (admittedly very cool) physics engine.