I get so tired of veiled apologists for the game industry like the clickbait video above. While I can agree with many of the statements made in it, after watching it I had to say something to correct the blatant ignorance and apologist sentiments it contained. So fast forward and my comment ended up being a 4 paragraphs long so probably better I put it here...
Game ON!
$60 price tags have not been around for 30 years, at least not on PC. Console was always more expensive. It's only in the last 10 years that publishers got the bright idea to make more money by raising the price of PC versions of game for no reason other than they could. As for development costs, that's a bunch of BS. Newer game engines have made development easier not harder. I guarantee it took a lot more effort to build Battlefield 1942 with a lot more hand coding than it did for Battlefield 5. That's why the release cycle can be so short. No developer/publisher is going to invest in a game engine that RAISES development costs. As for the economy argument. Wages have stagnated over the past 30 years and not kept up with inflation. So saying we should probably be paying more is outright wrong. The only place that extra money is going is the corporate suite bonuses and shareholder dividends NOT the people that do the actual work! For one thing back in the day, so to speak, you could spend $40 on a good PC game and get ALL the content including any DLC for that price. It's just that publishers have figured out that they can make money just like car chop shops. More money in the individual pieces ( DLC, loot boxes) than the whole car ( game) but you still pay full price and get half the content unless you pay more. It's greed not development costs that are driving the industry to ruin. Even with falling stock prices EA and Bethesda make money hand over fist regardless of how bad the games they release are. Shareholders be damned, they don't care about games just money. Pleasing them is a fool's errand but there's lots of fools out there. You can't treat a game company like a car company. One is selling interactive art the other a simple commodity. Games aren't commodities unless you let the shareholders take over. It's all about the quick buck now. Get the $$$ within the first quarter of release and then hope for the gravy of DLC revenue which pretty much dries up after a year so then they basically give it away. It's why they can have 50% off sales within 6 months of release. Happened with BF5 and BF1. A year after release BF1 premium ( everything) was offered for $20! BF4 paid DLC was given away just before the launch of BF1 and access to the former Premium only dev content as well.
No, the industry is failing under its own weight. Pre-orders ( their favorite con) are consistently down and that's an indication of fatigue of gamers both casual and hardcore. The wool is being pulled off people's eyes and that's a good thing. The industry needs a solid blow to the groin to set things right and it's coming.
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