>Price of games has basically halved from inflation
>Costs of developing games has exploded
>One financial flop can shutter a studio
Reddit: How dare you propose raising the price! Don't you know about muh marketing budget? Just cut that. Corporations are just greedy. MTX- bad, lootboxes- bad, paid DLC- bad, premium special editions- bad, preorder incentives- bad, battlepasses- bad, Steam sales- good, r/patientgamers- good. Only a sucker would buy a game at full price.
*Beloved studio #5000 this year announces a wave of layoffs*
Reddit: This is capitalism's fault.
Thinking about games costing the equivalent of $120+ when I was a kid really goes a long way to explain why we only got a few new games every year, and we treasured them. At $60, even $70, I can basically afford to get anything that interests me if I want it even a little, and so many end up either abandoned at some point or played through once and then never again. It's a meme that every Steam gamer has dozens of games in their library that they bought on sale and never played.
Reddit always wants everything both ways, and I think their purchasing decisions reflect what they really want more than their politics.
I don't think anyone should decide they ought to pay $120 or buy MTX and like it, but a lot of people need a better hobby than raging against AAA studios all day if the only games they bought lately were Hollow Knight and Balatro on a $15 sale.
If every big studio collapsed from an over-saturated and frugal market and we got only moderately budgeted and indie games from now on, I'd regret nothing.
Realistically the biggest studios will always survive, and when GTA6 comes out and makes a billion with a high sticker price, my reaction to millions of Redditors saying they'll 'boycott' it will be "Sure, Jan".
Is there any meaningful distinction between mobile apps like, idk, Angry Birds and classic video games in any way or is it basically one undifferentiated market? I’m thinking in terms of market share, demographics, complexity, time spent, anything. As you can tell from the outdated example, I’m not a gamer. But at the very least, it seems to me when someone self-identifies as a gamer, they mean PC games / video games and not app-based mobile games. Maybe that’s the only distinction.
I'm a lurker by temperament, so you wouldn't know me but I'm an old head. I remember when BE was so small we didn't need the Wumbo Wall. I saw the rise and fall of Draco, and followed the neolib twitter account since damn near the beginning.
All of that to say, I know of you and am here because of your political posting, so I won't complain at all if it increases. At the same time, between the pod and your personal Twitter, I'm not exactly starved of Jeremiah Thought.
I think just trust your instincts and write about what you want.
It's tough to see Roblox doing so well considering that when I've looked at the games on there, it's just an endless sea of the lowest possible quality engagement bait games. So many of the games are basically just keep clicking to earn more gems or whatever.
Lifelong PC & console gamer and I had literally never heard of "Roblox" until this post... Apparently half of all kids under age 16 play it regularly... WOW.
Steam in China is jointly operated by Valve and a Chinese publisher (Perfect World). AIUI, the "Steam China" client has pretty severe limitations on social features and the games available for purchase, but nonetheless accounts and purchases are all on the same network as global Steam.
I am very curious where Roblox's enormous growth came from. I played the original iteration of Roblox *way* back in 2008 or so. I have to assume it has changed enormously since then (though even back then it had the same essential concept -- players create maps which are essentially minigames within Roblox). I do not remember actually ever hearing about it again until much later, and the article you linked at the bottom seems to corroborate this -- the game basically did not exist in a meaningful sense until ~2016, despite having been released nearly a decade before that. What in the world happened? Very different from Minecraft which started out huge and got bigger.
Worth noting that Black Myth: Wukong is, mechanically, a Soulsborne, which is a newish, popular mechanical style for single-player games. We're basically looking at a Chinese *Magnificent Seven* with this title, right down to the fact that the core structure is from a piece of media that was made in Japan.
Am I stupid? How could the Apple and Google App Store gaming download/sales profit be higher than the total game studio profits? The App Store cuts are just that, a cut, not a majority of the purchase or buyer spend on the game…
Regarding your politics poll, what I appreciate about you is that you bring a perspective of how are these political situations manifesting on the internet or how is the internet contributing to /shaping the discussion.
>Price of games has basically halved from inflation
>Costs of developing games has exploded
>One financial flop can shutter a studio
Reddit: How dare you propose raising the price! Don't you know about muh marketing budget? Just cut that. Corporations are just greedy. MTX- bad, lootboxes- bad, paid DLC- bad, premium special editions- bad, preorder incentives- bad, battlepasses- bad, Steam sales- good, r/patientgamers- good. Only a sucker would buy a game at full price.
*Beloved studio #5000 this year announces a wave of layoffs*
Reddit: This is capitalism's fault.
Thinking about games costing the equivalent of $120+ when I was a kid really goes a long way to explain why we only got a few new games every year, and we treasured them. At $60, even $70, I can basically afford to get anything that interests me if I want it even a little, and so many end up either abandoned at some point or played through once and then never again. It's a meme that every Steam gamer has dozens of games in their library that they bought on sale and never played.
Reddit always wants everything both ways, and I think their purchasing decisions reflect what they really want more than their politics.
I don't think anyone should decide they ought to pay $120 or buy MTX and like it, but a lot of people need a better hobby than raging against AAA studios all day if the only games they bought lately were Hollow Knight and Balatro on a $15 sale.
If every big studio collapsed from an over-saturated and frugal market and we got only moderately budgeted and indie games from now on, I'd regret nothing.
Realistically the biggest studios will always survive, and when GTA6 comes out and makes a billion with a high sticker price, my reaction to millions of Redditors saying they'll 'boycott' it will be "Sure, Jan".
Is there any meaningful distinction between mobile apps like, idk, Angry Birds and classic video games in any way or is it basically one undifferentiated market? I’m thinking in terms of market share, demographics, complexity, time spent, anything. As you can tell from the outdated example, I’m not a gamer. But at the very least, it seems to me when someone self-identifies as a gamer, they mean PC games / video games and not app-based mobile games. Maybe that’s the only distinction.
I'm a lurker by temperament, so you wouldn't know me but I'm an old head. I remember when BE was so small we didn't need the Wumbo Wall. I saw the rise and fall of Draco, and followed the neolib twitter account since damn near the beginning.
All of that to say, I know of you and am here because of your political posting, so I won't complain at all if it increases. At the same time, between the pod and your personal Twitter, I'm not exactly starved of Jeremiah Thought.
I think just trust your instincts and write about what you want.
It's tough to see Roblox doing so well considering that when I've looked at the games on there, it's just an endless sea of the lowest possible quality engagement bait games. So many of the games are basically just keep clicking to earn more gems or whatever.
Lifelong PC & console gamer and I had literally never heard of "Roblox" until this post... Apparently half of all kids under age 16 play it regularly... WOW.
Steam in China is jointly operated by Valve and a Chinese publisher (Perfect World). AIUI, the "Steam China" client has pretty severe limitations on social features and the games available for purchase, but nonetheless accounts and purchases are all on the same network as global Steam.
I am very curious where Roblox's enormous growth came from. I played the original iteration of Roblox *way* back in 2008 or so. I have to assume it has changed enormously since then (though even back then it had the same essential concept -- players create maps which are essentially minigames within Roblox). I do not remember actually ever hearing about it again until much later, and the article you linked at the bottom seems to corroborate this -- the game basically did not exist in a meaningful sense until ~2016, despite having been released nearly a decade before that. What in the world happened? Very different from Minecraft which started out huge and got bigger.
Worth noting that Black Myth: Wukong is, mechanically, a Soulsborne, which is a newish, popular mechanical style for single-player games. We're basically looking at a Chinese *Magnificent Seven* with this title, right down to the fact that the core structure is from a piece of media that was made in Japan.
Checked column B, but depending the political fallout of the coming years, I'd be happy to hear more sane takes from JJ.
Am I stupid? How could the Apple and Google App Store gaming download/sales profit be higher than the total game studio profits? The App Store cuts are just that, a cut, not a majority of the purchase or buyer spend on the game…
The $20 billion for Apple/Google is revenue. Game studio profits are profit (e.g. after development/marketing/etc costs).
Regarding your politics poll, what I appreciate about you is that you bring a perspective of how are these political situations manifesting on the internet or how is the internet contributing to /shaping the discussion.