Article on what's wrong with gaming

I also agree with Azrael's comments a little.

"Instead of trying to entertain us they are trying to addict and entrench us into needy greedy uneven and unhealthy relationships with games that pressure and demand we spend innordinate amounts of time with them"

Some games DLC is on the pricey side. Roughly NZ$20-30 to obtain enough credits to buy a horse in Neverwinter for example. But Neverwinter is free some games are like that. Xbox does tend to be addictive too, like you stay up playing Minecraft til like 5am
on a weekend morning and get up 2 hours again at 7 and play Minecraft again. I did this once or twice, some weeknights I even stay up a little past midnight and I usually fail to get 8 hours bedtime and then I end up rushing out the door in the mornings. And
when we're at school or work there's smartglass on our phones. It's kwl for checking messages and who's online, but it can get quite addictive. But that's where self discipline comes in to play. Over new years which is summer if you live in Australia or New
Zealand, during the holidays, some of my friends sounded extremely bored. Maybe the could create an app or encourage us to get outside more or a healthy consciousness sort of app, because it's kind of sad hearing some of my friends stuck to Xbox during the
holidays extremely bored and not doing what I did which was go on holiday in Australia (I live in NZ). I had real fun though too and a chance to do different stuff.

Why do you struggle to believe it?

Look at how many game studios get shut down year on year, look at how many times we hear about studios laying people off. All you have to do is google "game studios shut down" and you get page after page.

Also it cost huge sums off many to make games these day,
I mean Destiny cost 140 million dollars to make. I agree that is one of the more expensive games, but on average it looks like roughly 40 million.

Just look at Square Enix a few of years ago, they made huge losses on just three games (Tomb Raider, Hitman and Sleeping Dogs) all of them triple A games, all of them got decent reviews,

but all of them made losses.

writer seems rather ignorant about a lot of things, i'd agree about the broken games on release, and after Destiny i'd agree about buying DLC blindly, but comparing current gen games to the 1994 NES games is just beyond silly, and there is very little anyone
can do about having network issues, especially when it is an attack on their network by hackers.

i'd also like to know the full story about people being penalized or ban on the beta for The Division, it's one thing to find a bug and be punished for reporting it, it's another thing if you find a bug and be punished because you were caught exploiting
it to ruin everyone else's time with a beta.

Let say a dev/publisher spend 50 million (or more) to make a game.

And there are 5 million copies sold ( not really a best sellers or a success).

5 million x $ 60 = 300 million.Of course there is a part for retailers,consoles royalties,manufacturing,ect (it might represent less than 20%,just a guess).....But still,they're making a profit.

.....

I tend to see it as a 'middle ground' between Shaggy's view and brand's.

I'm... over 40... and it's hard for me to remember when I didn't pay $60 for a game. The price has been that for what seems like forever. Therefore, there is some merit to the fact that the cost to produce a game will follow a natural progression with inflation.

Let's also not forget that people keep wanting more from their games. How often did we see threads in here complaining about how the first games available for the XB1 didn't look or say 'next gen' to some people? The drive to keep games fresh, new and appealing
has a cost since that means a constant demand for the latest in cutting edge tech. Yet there has been a standing price ceiling on base games for a long time.

Of course... no publisher wants to be the "first to blink" in the price war, that would look bad to charge more than the others for just the base game. So they had to seek other means to make up for it.

Introducing DLC packs, then season passes... and they have their work around.

IMO, that work around started the whole problem. People (at least here in the states) have paid the same price for so long, that they take it for granted. Can you imagine the backlash if a company decided to up the base price of a game? It'd be suicidal
to do that now, since there are additional costs associated with the game after the POS.

Since $60 was a decent amount 'back then' people were more understanding that it was a complicated process to make a game. Now, the same cost isn't all that much for a game... so people naturally 'devalue' the work involved. I think the 'taken for granted
train' has been chugging along for so long that stopping it would involve a major industry change that'd be far too risky.

This brings up another fair point IMO. Once DLC became accepted and it became commonplace, this was also the opening for the publishers to take advantage. Once people were accepting of the fact that there'd be more content for a game after the initial purchase,
all publishers had to do was go to work on the best marketing plans to make this content irresistible. Of course, some of the marketing plans are going to look underhanded... and companies want to make more money, so... some very well could be.

But now that the prices of some DLC is closing in... and in some cases surpassing... the original cost of the game, more and more people are going to see it as underhanded... and the problem is, there are always companies that will be underhanded and push
the envelope as far as possible to make more money. And as long as consumers accept it, they'll keep doing it.

In conclusion, IMO they have us over a barrel of sorts. It's hard to compare offerings from company X to company Y in a monetary way if all the offerings start out at the same base price. In addition, we all place a different value on entertainment. Add
to that, once you buy the game, it's hard to say no to the additional content since you're already invested.

Anyway, sorry for the long post.