38 replies to this topic

[Donkeymog]

91 on metacritic! Can't wait to play this. Surprised more people here aren't looking forward to this.

[Vicious Parker]

If I had the extra money to spend, I would by this one day one. However, it's too close to christmas, so I have to save my money so that I can spend it on other people. The crap is that?

[Monkeydog]

I don't like spending 60 bucks on video games.

Although once it dips maybe I'll be interested it in getting it depending on your guys' reactions.

[Vicious Parker]

I generally don't, either. However, lately I've been considering my rants about piracy and supporting content creators and that crap, and this is exactly the kind of content I would want to show my support for. And sadly for my wallet, the best way to do that is full price near the release date.

[Donkeymog]

Yeah, I don't have much money at the moment but this is the kind of project I want to support too. Do they still do game of the year editions of things?

[Monkeydog]

I fully support supporting games and all that buuut:

A) This is Bethesda, they will make a lot of this money from this game no matter what I do.
B) No matter what I do not support $60 game prices. Well, at least my wallet doesn't.

[Donkeymog]

Yeah, $60 is pretty ridiculous. I wish there was some way of just supporting Arkane Studios.

I've played it for a bit now. It's pretty good. Reminds me of Thief. Blinking up buildings is a lot of fun.

[Vicious Parker]

I don't want to derail this topic too much, but I feel like we're getting in to an interesting discussion here. Normal Dishonored discussion can resume once some of us have actually played the game...

How much is too much for a new video game? It looks like we all rather agree that $60 is just too damn much. Movies, books, music and the like never cost that much, even new (though movies are slightly different. When you go to see a new movie, typically you're buying a one-time-use ticket). And, at least in the case of movies, they are just as expensive to produce as video games, and often times more so. Hell, new AAA PC games were only around $50 until just a year or two ago, when publishers realized that they could charge console prices, but not pay console license fees, and get away with it. This seems to be counter-balanced by PC games having more frequent and better sales.

But Monkey has a point, too, I suppose. Yeah, Bethesda will likely still make loads off of this game. There's definite talent behind it, so they deserve to make money off of their hard work. But why is that such a bad thing? Should we pay less for the game, or pirate it (note: this isn't me being anti-piracy), just because Bethesda will make a lot of money on the game? After all, you can still show our support through word of mouth, assuming you like the game. Not to mention that simply enjoying the game is showing your support for it.

I just wish big publishers, Bethesda included, thought that way. They just gotta make that money...

[Stars]

I used to be able to suck up the $60 price tag on new games if it was something that seemed like it would be awesome, and I just couldn't wait to play it. But now that I'm so busy and have such a large backlog of games, I have an easy time ignoring them until they drop in price.

This is what I rather wish I had done with games like Red Steel 2 and Mirror's Edge. Not that I didn't enjoy them, but they just went down in price so drastically after a fairly short amount of time. I reeeally wish I had waited on Metroid: Other M to drop to frickin' $5, but I have a hard time resisting Metroid games since I assume they'll be good (I'll be more careful about that in the future. <_<).

[Monkeydog]

I think 50 was a good price for console games. But only for AAA titles.

I kind of like how handheld titles were priced for a while, specifically GBA. 30 bucks for most games, games that were... mediocre usually went for less than that. The higher end titles like Pokemon and Final Fantasy went for more than 30 bucks.

I think games should be based on what they're worth. I know that is an incredibly subjective thought but the general consensus would be that something like Skyrim has way more to it/better quality/more money put into it, so it should worth more than something like Worms. And things like Madden or Just Dance that comes out every year for sure shouldn't be worth a lot. They're just rehashes of the same game, and their value would last much longer if it was all cheaper, I think.
I think the idea that any game should just be $60 is dumb. Very very few games are even worth it. And if they were priced for what they were worth I'd probably be more willing to splurge once in a while on a 60 dollar game...and end up buying games way more when they first come out just because they'd be cheaper, instead of waiting for deep discounts.

[Donkeymog]

/>I don't want to derail this topic too much, but I feel like we're getting in to an interesting discussion here. Normal Dishonored discussion can resume once some of us have actually played the game...

How much is too much for a new video game? It looks like we all rather agree that $60 is just too damn much. Movies, books, music and the like never cost that much, even new (though movies are slightly different. When you go to see a new movie, typically you're buying a one-time-use ticket). And, at least in the case of movies, they are just as expensive to produce as video games, and often times more so. Hell, new AAA PC games were only around $50 until just a year or two ago, when publishers realized that they could charge console prices, but not pay console license fees, and get away with it. This seems to be counter-balanced by PC games having more frequent and better sales.

But Monkey has a point, too, I suppose. Yeah, Bethesda will likely still make loads off of this game. There's definite talent behind it, so they deserve to make money off of their hard work. But why is that such a bad thing? Should we pay less for the game, or pirate it (note: this isn't me being anti-piracy), just because Bethesda will make a lot of money on the game? After all, you can still show our support through word of mouth, assuming you like the game. Not to mention that simply enjoying the game is showing your support for it.

I just wish big publishers, Bethesda included, thought that way. They just gotta make that money...

I think it's humble bundle that allows you to decide what proportion of the money goes towards the developers, the distributors and a charity.

Nearly all of my favourite games have been released by major publishers, traditionally they were the only ones able to finance the games we grew up loving to play. Sure, I know a lot of us (myself included) have been alienated by some of the business decisions they've made (DRM, consolification, decline in difficulty, endless sequels instead of original ideas) but they were always the only ones able to afford to take the financial risk of releasing a game. And, of course, if they were going to be the ones to take those financial risks it's understandable for them to maximize their returns by hiking up prices as far as they'll go.

The problem is that now new technologies have eroded the monopoly major publishers traditionally had on financing, marketing and distribution and they have to be able to compete. Developers who have an awesome idea for a game are now able to decide whether or not they want their project owned and controlled by someone else or whether they should just crowdfund it, distribute it online and keep all the profits for themselves. Independent games have exploded in the last few years and there's been a lot of really great success stories for games that have really deserved it (Minecraft, Braid, Super Meat Boy) whereas AAA titles look more generic to me by the day.

Dishonored is an exception to this, and I think it shows that there's still a lot of room for blockbuster games and for the major publishers too. But I would love it if independent development was what it took to re-assess some of the bad business decisions they've made in the past and to stop hiking up the prices for games.

Obviously piracy is the other new thing - it's technically reduced the price point for all games to $0. And that's a very tricky market to compete in, but piracy hasn't killed the games industry yet, I would even go so far as to say that piracy has done more good than harm for the industry. The challenge is negotiating the correct way to monetize games in a way that suits everyone.

TL:DR

I think people are more willing to fork out money for computer games than ever, but why would you still fork out $60 for a game when there's so many cheaper games you haven't gotten round to playing yet?

[Glaciermage]

Games have been $50 since the original Nintendo days. I'm sure the video game developers have wanted their share of inflation for years. I understand why they raised the price. That being said, I agree with bean. There are so many $20/$30 games out there, it's easy to buy those now and wait for the current games to drop in price.

[Vicious Parker]

Back to Dishonored.

After nearly completing the first mission, the game has now clicked with me. I'm excited to move forward, though I'm going to start over (not a huge loss of time or anything). Though I never quite got in to the Thief games that this is supposedly influenced so heavily by, I can clearly see the influence of games like Deus Ex. The goal isn't just to get from point A to point B and kill some dudes. You really do want to explore the environment as you play, and, at least in what I've seen so far, it is ever so rewarding to do so. One reason I'm going to start over is to play through the whole game with no annoying UI quest markers or anything of that like. I know I will have a bit of an advantage in the first mission, but the game seems to be more enjoyable without the markers on. I might not mind them if they were like Skyrim, and only appeared on screen as you got close to your objective, but the constant arrow pointing just bothers me, and takes away from the experience.

At first I wasn't sure I should play the game on hard, because I died several times during early play, but I don't plan on changing this. The difficult combat has so far made the sneaking and first assassination so much more intense, and I look forward to what else the game has to offer.

Speaking of the assassinations, I am happy to discover that the game offers a non-violent* way to eliminate your targets. Not because I'm a tree hugging hippy, but because it, in my opinion, helps to flesh out character choice a lot more than "sneak down alley A, sneak down alley B, or kill all the guards." I'm going to try to play through the game using all stealth, because I love my stealth, but I'm also not going to make a habit of reloading a previous save if I get caught.

I'm hooked now. I can't wait to play more.

Spoiler

*Non-violent only in that the game listed it as the "non-violent" option. I still branded the man in the face with a hot iron, which is something I think most people would consider mighty violent...

[Donkeymog]

Yeah, I turned off all the UI crap. I'd heard it was a very short game, but I spent hours and hours just getting past the first level because I was exploring everywhere.

Spoiler

While it's cool that they have non-lethal alternatives for targets the first one didn't really make much sense to me. I mean, surely people would understand that he's only been branded because some punk snuck in, knocked him unconscious and then branded him - not because he's a heretic. Also I couldn't figure out where to take the body of the guy I was supposed to save because I couldn't take him between maps. I ended up dumping him out the front where you first enter the map of the assasination but he still apparently died.

[Vicious Parker]

Spoiler

I managed to save him by shooting the target with a tranq dart. It sent everyone in to a frenzy, and set off the alarm, but I still had enough time to pick up the target and carry him to the interrogation room before the windows closed.

[Vicious Parker]

I think I'm going to classify this with games like Mirror's Edge and Beyond Good and Evil. It's short, it's sweet, and it seems to be missing just a little something to make it damn near perfect. I enjoyed this game a lot, and will probably play it again very soon.

[Vicious Parker]

 

I'm pretty excited. Clockworks, and playing as Emily Caldwin? Totes neats.

[toysintheattic]

Yes I agree. I can't wait.

[kspr]

Dunwall should have gotten over that epidemic of mentally challenged npc's by now. The world itself is spectacular, but interacting with the npc's felt like being a kindergarten teacher. if they weren't evil master manipulators, they were dumb soldiers, rich aristocrats, or mentally challenged. the player is the only 'character' with any possible range. the high/low chaos playthroughs didn't seem any different to me. rushing through and raining death on my enemies played exactly the same to me as going through without killing anyone.