General Video Game Deals Thread

[BusbyBerkeley]

I mean, games are more expensive than other hobbies in a lot of ways. If you want to stay current with talking points and the general community it is much more of a money sink than keeping up with the general film community. There's also the upfront cost of buying hardware and keeping that current. Like every week a new game comes out that sounds cool but I can't afford to get them all. I have enough of a backlog that I feel perfectly comfortable waiting for sales prices and generally feel that $60 is way too much money for me to spend on a single game. I stay away from G2A but do semi-regularly buy off of GMG or in Steam Sales. 

 

Anyway, Nintendo is running a sale on refurbished (Old)3DSXLs including some with special edition cases for $110. Solid deal if you don't care about not having a New3DS

[Badfinger]

A game is not too expensive, but gaming is way too fucking expensive. Some games in particular are too expensive. But some aren't and I even occasionally wish I could help that developer more!

[Twig]

IMO gaming as a whole isn't even that super expensive. It's def more expensive than a lot of other hobbies, but... The only way it can ever be TOO expensive is if you feel obligated to keep up with every big release. But even then, the bigger cost, in my experience, is time. Not money, but time. I buy way more games than I'll ever have time to play, and I definitely spend more of my Fun Money on games than anything else.

[dartmonkey]

A game is not too expensive, but gaming is way too fucking expensive. Some games in particular are too expensive. But some aren't and I even occasionally wish I could help that developer more!

Is it? I really don't see it. I think the idea it's an expensive hobby is residual from when we were kids who had to wait for birthdays and Christmas for new blood. Yes, of course there's an outlay for the console, much like there would be for football boots or tennis rackets or club membership, but £40 for a game you get 10-15 hours of fun out of seems good value, no? Perhaps you play it more than that. You keep the product afterwards or you can get rid of it. And I can list the times I've paid £40 for a game in the last 10 years on one hand!

 

I don't know. Yes, there are craploads of games I'd like which I don't have, but I'm not as time-rich as I used to be and that tends to be a larger limiting factor, I think. I'm certainly not money-rich and I get by with a good amount of games, far more than I have time to play. Then again, I don't chase AAA+DLC preorders or anything like that. 

[Bjorn]

Looking at the hobbies other friends of mine have (hunting/target shooting, golfing, various car/truck related hobbies, travel, fishing, gardening, sewing, knitting) gaming is at least on par, or even cheaper, than many of those hobbies.  Even something that seems inexpensive like knitting can end up having a person spend hundreds and hundreds of bucks a year on material.  The golfers I know all spend thousands a year on memberships, green fees, equipment and drinks/food while playing.  A guy I was hanging out with this weekend does a lot of competition target shooting, and said spending a couple of grand a year on ammunition wasn't unreasonable.  The lady is a huge gardener, and spending at least a thousand over the course of spring and summer on new plants, pots, seeds, replacing broke tools, fertilizer, extra water usage and other stuff is not abnormal. 

 

I think people often underestimate just how much you can spend on a hobby when it isn't their hobby. 

[SecretAsianMan]

All hobbies are pretty expensive.  I think the reason gaming seems more expensive than others is the constant reminder due to new releases coming every few weeks/months.  Other hobbies tend to have a large expense occur at once and then forgotten about over time, while gaming is repeated increments of $60 or whatever over a much shorter time span.  Not to mention the sheer amount of things you can spend money on that fall under the category of "gaming".

[Zeusthecat]

Is it? I really don't see it. I think the idea it's an expensive hobby is residual from when we were kids who had to wait for birthdays and Christmas for new blood. Yes, of course there's an outlay for the console, much like there would be for football boots or tennis rackets or club membership, but £40 for a game you get 10-15 hours of fun out of seems good value, no? Perhaps you play it more than that. You keep the product afterwards or you can get rid of it. And I can list the times I've paid £40 for a game in the last 10 years on one hand!

 

I don't know. Yes, there are craploads of games I'd like which I don't have, but I'm not as time-rich as I used to be and that tends to be a larger limiting factor, I think. I'm certainly not money-rich and I get by with a good amount of games, far more than I have time to play. Then again, I don't chase AAA+DLC preorders or anything like that. 

 

I have to agree with you on this. Relative to all the other shit in our world, gaming really isn't that expensive. When people line up every year to buy the new iPad for $800 or new iPhone for $500, a $400 console or two every 5-7 years is a pretty damn good deal. Especially considering all of the features that they are jam packed with these days.

 

And I'm not sure it's fair to say gaming is more expensive than other hobbies just because it costs more money to keep up with all of the latest and greatest stuff. In fact, this is one hobby where that would be incredibly counter-productive because games release more rapidly than you could possibly complete them all unless you only sleep like 2 hours a night and spend every waking hour playing games. Realistically, I would bet that most people could spend the equivalent price of 2 or 3 decent dinners at a nice restaurant and easily bring in half a dozen games per month.

[Patrick R]

Looking at the hobbies other friends of mine have (hunting/target shooting, golfing, various car/truck related hobbies, travel, fishing, gardening, sewing, knitting) gaming is at least on par, or even cheaper, than many of those hobbies.  Even something that seems inexpensive like knitting can end up having a person spend hundreds and hundreds of bucks a year on material.  The golfers I know all spend thousands a year on memberships, green fees, equipment and drinks/food while playing.  A guy I was hanging out with this weekend does a lot of competition target shooting, and said spending a couple of grand a year on ammunition wasn't unreasonable.  The lady is a huge gardener, and spending at least a thousand over the course of spring and summer on new plants, pots, seeds, replacing broke tools, fertilizer, extra water usage and other stuff is not abnormal. 

 

I think people often underestimate just how much you can spend on a hobby when it isn't their hobby. 

 

Also, there is a huge range of commitment levels. I probably spend 30 to 50 dollars a month going to the movies, my cinephile friend spends 100+ dollars a month on blu-rays and DVDs on top of going to the movies. 

 

I only ever buy a game if it's under 10 dollars (unless it's the incredibly rare instance where I'm super excited for a game and buy it day one, like Gone Home and probably Firewatch), so I probably spend an average of 5 bucks a month on gaming. And the only piece of hardware I ever specifically bought for gaming was a wired 360 controller.

[Badfinger]

I think what's being illustrated here is more that everything is way too fucking expensive.

 

I'm actually at the intersection now of my life where I don't have any time OR money, so to SAY gaming is my hobby is really inexpensive because I don't spend any money on it. Yes, I spend more than $500 a year on curling, plus the amortized cost over time of equipment and gas, etc. On the other hand, to play more common sports it's like $200 for the whole year.

 

I'm now curious at my 12 month expenditure on games. I don't buy many $60 joints anymore, but I have bought some! They add up really quickly.

[Turrican]

I think I was the first person to raise the issue of expense. Personally, I don't feel that gaming is too expensive (even pricing in the cost of a gaming PC and console). However, I feel that certain products and developers are exploitative.

Examples would include products like Destiny, Mortal Kombat or Gal Civ 3. It's these blood suckers I object to. I am reasonably wealthy and will happily drop a few hundred quid on games a month if I care to - so it's not the money for me, it's the principle.

For example. I have all the dlc for CK2 and EU4 even though I've never really played them and I will often buy indie games just to support a developer. But when I see consumers being nickel and dimed by dlc that was purposely withheld from the release game or charged hundreds of pounds for "collector editions", all while the companies give away loads of free codes to anyone with a YouTube channel, then I really couldn't care less if these developers get ripped off.

[Bjorn]

I think I was the first person to raise the issue of expense. Personally, I don't feel that gaming is too expensive (even pricing in the cost of a gaming PC and console). However, I feel that certain products and developers are exploitative.

Examples would include products like Destiny, Mortal Kombat or Gal Civ 3. It's these blood suckers I object to. I am reasonably wealthy and will happily drop a few hundred quid on games a month if I care to - so it's not the money for me, it's the principle.

For example. I have all the dlc for CK2 and EU4 even though I've never really played them and I will often buy indie games just to support a developer. But when I see consumers being nickel and dimed by dlc that was purposely withheld from the release game or charged hundreds of pounds for "collector editions", all while the companies give away loads of free codes to anyone with a YouTube channel, then I really couldn't care less if these developers get ripped off.

 

I'm not even sure I agree with you there.  While predatory business models bug the shit out of me (like many mobile games which depend on a small number of whales to support them), stuff like Destiny or the seemingly endless DLC chains of something like CK2 are...what they are.  Games as service are a thing now, and I'm not convinced it's bad.  Games are fucking expensive to make, and developers need to both earn profits and have steady income streams.  The way games are financed and sold has gone through as much upheaval in the last decade as any industry ever faces.  Not every solution is going to be perfect.  Even modest games can end up with budgets of a million dollars or more.  To contrast that, you can build a modest, but rather nice, golf course for $2-$3 million, with a yearly operating budget of maybe a million or so.  Big indie games have budgets like that now, AAA has budgets multiple times that. 

 

Obviously that's comparing apples and oranges, except that it is about delivering hobby as a regular service, which is what things like Destiny, CK2, EU4, etc., are doing, but trying to do it without a subscription model.  It's an a la carte buy in.  Given the costs to build and maintain a modern game, I'm not even sure that $100+ a year is unreasonable for a game that someone will dump dozens or hundreds of hours into. 

[Twig]

I don't understand why it's okay to deem a game "too expensive" just because they have the gall to charge money for stuff that costs lots and lots and lots of money to make. Not to mention the general upkeep that something like Destiny requires.

Just because some developers choose to release free updates doesn't mean those updates cost nothing to develop.

[Patrick R]

... all while the companies give away loads of free codes to anyone with a YouTube channel, then I really couldn't care less if these developers get ripped off.

 

Do you really object to this?

[Zeusthecat]

I've spent about $85 on Destiny and probably have about 175 hours or so played.

 

Some other things I've spent $85 on:

• Dinner at a restaurant for a family of four. We're lucky if that experience lasts us an hour.
• Going to the casino. If we're extremely stingy only playing penny slots and having fairly decent luck we might get $85 to last an hour or two.
• Two day passes to Wet n Wild. Good for about a half day of entertainment.
• One month of cable.
• Having a pest guy come to my house and spend 30 minutes spraying poison to kill ants.
• Getting my teeth cleaned at the Dentist

 

I just don't understand these arguments that even charging $85 for a game and two DLCs is some kind of grave sin. It's a fucking bargain when you consider how easy it is for $85 to evaporate out in the real world.

[Gormongous]

As a counterpoint, I understand feeling like gaming is expensive, even if we can summon up all these comparisons to more expensive hobbies. If you take the cheapest gaming experience (for instance, a free-to-play game on a computer or mobile device that you already own for professional or personal use) and compare it to the most expensive or even to a typical gaming experience (now with DLCs and Amiibos and preorder/early access pricing tiers) it can feel like the amount of money that it costs to game is entirely arbitrary, which can slant towards feeling unfair or excessive if you lack the income to buy games outside of Steam sales or lack the childlike ability to play the same game for six or nine months without pushing yourself to do so (I would give almost anything to have that ability back, honestly).

 

Even the best community, like this one, occasionally pressurizes me towards purchasing decisions that I really can't make, not that I blame anyone, and I'd rather direct that frustration towards the companies that profit from such a culture than the people who simply partake in it.

[SecretAsianMan]

I think I was the first person to raise the issue of expense. Personally, I don't feel that gaming is too expensive (even pricing in the cost of a gaming PC and console). However, I feel that certain products and developers are exploitative.

Examples would include products like Destiny, Mortal Kombat or Gal Civ 3. It's these blood suckers I object to. I am reasonably wealthy and will happily drop a few hundred quid on games a month if I care to - so it's not the money for me, it's the principle.

For example. I have all the dlc for CK2 and EU4 even though I've never really played them and I will often buy indie games just to support a developer. But when I see consumers being nickel and dimed by dlc that was purposely withheld from the release game or charged hundreds of pounds for "collector editions", all while the companies give away loads of free codes to anyone with a YouTube channel, then I really couldn't care less if these developers get ripped off.

 

Yeah I also have to say I don't agree with this.  Like Twig said, games don't update themselves.  Servers don't magically appear out of nowhere and definitely don't require zero maintenance.  Putting a game out to market doesn't mean the work is done.

 

Saying that dlc is purposely withheld from release is disingenuous at best.  There are cases where that's been true (such as the argument about content being on a disc but locked) but I very much doubt most developers are purposely cutting out parts of a game just to sell it to you later.  That stuff usually gets worked on after the development of the main game is finished.  Yes, they could wait longer and include it with the release but then that costs even more money because you don't have a product on the market in the meantime.  I do have a beef with things like season passes but that's a different argument.

 

I don't understand the problem with collector's editions.  If you don't like them, that's fine (personally I think they're pretty dumb) but they literally never have anything absolutely necessary to play the game.  They are completely superfluous and marketed towards enthusiasts and people with too much money.  They contain additional items that cost additional money to make, so why shouldn't they charge more for them?

 

Additionally, be careful not to conflate developers with publishers.  A lot of the time the publisher is the one who's making the call about releasing dlc and the like.  The developers (ie the actual humans who spend thousands of hours making the thing) usually want to pack as much in as they can, and more than likely they'll never see an additional penny in their paycheck regardless of how much dlc is sold.

[Zeusthecat]

Honestly, I think any of today's "bad practices" with pre-order incentives, day one DLC, etc. can in some ways be directly tied to the fact that the price of games has not gone up with inflation. In 1993, a new game could cost $50 or more. If we took inflation into account, new games should be costing us over $80 today. Instead, they cost $60. Meanwhile, game development costs have gone up substantially. They can't raise the price of games any further because we are already all complaining about how expensive they are so they have to get creative with things like DLC and pre-order bonuses and collector's editions.

[Gormongous]

Honestly, I think any of today's "bad practices" with pre-order incentives, day one DLC, etc. can in some ways be directly tied to the fact that the price of games has not gone up with inflation. In 1993, a new game could cost $50 or more. If we took inflation into account, new games should be costing us over $80 today. Instead, they cost $60. Meanwhile, game development costs have gone up substantially. They can't raise the price of games any further because we are already all complaining about how expensive they are so they have to get creative with things like DLC and pre-order bonuses and collector's editions.

 

I mean, true that games' prices haven't increased with inflation, but overall it's also so much easier to make games than it was twenty years ago. There's a host of middleware and development engines so that a game don't have to be coded from scratch, the talent pool is wider and deeper than ever before, and distribution is almost as simple as it could possibly be despite a paying audience that's an order of magnitude larger than it used to be. If we're talking about the dying niche of the triple-A game, then yes, the pursuit of graphical fidelity and Call of Duty-like success has inflated development costs beyond reasonable sustainability, but the vast majority of games don't need preorder bonuses to sell, because of other factors at work in the industry.

[dium]

 If we're talking about the dying niche of the triple-A game, then yes, the pursuit of graphical fidelity and Call of Duty-like success has inflated development costs beyond reasonable sustainability, but the vast majority of games don't need preorder bonuses to sell, because of other factors at work in the industry.

 

And since the games that actually provide pre-order incentives, day one DLC, etc, ARE those AAA Call of Duty tier games, you are essentially agreeing with his statement yes?

[Twig]

It's definitely not at all easier for the types of games that have lots of pre-order bonuses etc to be made. It is, in fact, unequivocally more difficult and more costly.

I know you addressed this but it's a very important distinction to make.

I'd also disagree that it's a dying niche. It is perhaps more niche like than it ever has been before, but the art of AAA is not going anywhere for a while.

[Gormongous]

And since the games that actually provide pre-order incentives, day one DLC, etc, ARE those AAA Call of Duty tier games, you are essentially agreeing with his statement yes?

 

I agree that the tiny fraction of games that are triple-A are probably more expensive than ever. I don't see how that's a particularly useful point, though, when we're talking about the cost of games in general, unless the argument is that triple-A games create the Overton Window of "fair" game pricing.

[Badfinger]

I've spent about $85 on Destiny and probably have about 175 hours or so played.

 

Some other things I've spent $85 on:

• Dinner at a restaurant for a family of four. We're lucky if that experience lasts us an hour.
• Going to the casino. If we're extremely stingy only playing penny slots and having fairly decent luck we might get $85 to last an hour or two.
• Two day passes to Wet n Wild. Good for about a half day of entertainment.
• One month of cable.
• Having a pest guy come to my house and spend 30 minutes spraying poison to kill ants.
• Getting my teeth cleaned at the Dentist

 

I just don't understand these arguments that even charging $85 for a game and two DLCs is some kind of grave sin. It's a fucking bargain when you consider how easy it is for $85 to evaporate out in the real world.

 

I am uncomfortable with you conflating dollars spent to time spent to value across a spectrum of things that can't be equal to most people. Is the value of the game equal to the time spent? Is the value of a meal equal to the time spent on the meal? If that is the case, is the Wendy's Frosty the most valuable food item I can buy? Because that damn thing takes all day to finish. I use my cable subscription almost exclusively on playing games on the internet. Should I value the cost of DOTA, which I can spend no money on directly, at $60+ dollars per month because that's the burden of being able to play it, and how I actually use where that money goes? How do I value necessity compared to leisure? I value the $85 spent at the dentist much higher than I value $60 spent on CoD, whereas I am not big on amusement parks so $85 for passes to an amusement park is a giant burden. At the same time, an amusement park is paying for an experience vs a product (albeit one you may generate experiences with). I'm being extremely unkind to your position and I apologize about that, but money spent on totally different things has radically different value, especially if we're stepping outside of the movie run time==video game play time entertainment crossover.

 

I do, by the way, think that required internet access for so many games is an essentially hidden cost that should be factored into gaming and often isn't considered. I don't think you can just say "Game X cost me $47 in internet this month" like I did in my example, but the cost is there.

[dium]

I agree that the tiny fraction of games that are triple-A are probably more expensive than ever. I don't see how that's a particularly useful point, though, when we're talking about the cost of games in general, unless the argument is that triple-A games create the Overton Window of "fair" game pricing.

 

I dunno, the specific point being made by Zeus was about bad practices that actually do seem to be tied with those sorts of games. A minority in a vast sea of smaller budget games, sure, but despite this they're surely still the most visible section of the market. Especially from the outside in. And also, the types of games that people are usually talking about when they say "gaming is too expensive". So they're kinda the reason this conversation is happening in the first place, right?

[Gormongous]

I dunno, the specific point being made by Zeus was about bad practices that actually do seem to be tied with those sorts of games. A minority in a vast sea of smaller budget games, sure, but despite this they're surely still the most visible section of the market. Especially from the outside in. And also, the types of games that people are usually talking about when they say "gaming is too expensive". So they're kinda the reason this conversation is happening in the first place, right?

 

Well, in his initial posts starting the conversation, Turrican brought up The Witcher 3 and Galactic Civilizations 3 as well as Destiny and Mortal Kombat, so I think that shifting the discussion to focus on the latter titles honestly feels more about picking the triple-A niche, where there's a ready explanation for high price points. I also have been spending a lot of time with some new non-gamer friends and I would say that Minecraft and mobile games are far more visible to them than the latest Call of Duty and Assassin's Creed, the latter two having more advertising behind them than actual mainstream cache.

[Zeusthecat]

I am uncomfortable with you conflating dollars spent to time spent to value across a spectrum of things that can't be equal to most people. Is the value of the game equal to the time spent? Is the value of a meal equal to the time spent on the meal? If that is the case, is the Wendy's Frosty the most valuable food item I can buy? Because that damn thing takes all day to finish. I use my cable subscription almost exclusively on playing games on the internet. Should I value the cost of DOTA, which I can spend no money on directly, at $60+ dollars per month because that's the burden of being able to play it, and how I actually use where that money goes? How do I value necessity compared to leisure?

 

All I'm really trying to do is provide some perspective. There are people that are legitimately angry and bothered by the fact that a game and a couple of expansions can cost $85. I think it is useful for people to look at other things in their lives that they throw that kind of money at without a second thought and take a few seconds to try to reason out why they have such an issue specifically with games costing that much. Maybe the quality of that one hour at a restaurant is greater than the combined quality of all 175 hours spent playing Destiny and that's fine. But I think it is shortsighted to just be angry about how much they cost without putting it into the context of the greater world around you.

 

 

I agree that the tiny fraction of games that are triple-A are probably more expensive than ever. I don't see how that's a particularly useful point, though, when we're talking about the cost of games in general, unless the argument is that triple-A games create the Overton Window of "fair" game pricing.

 

I don't buy a whole lot of games new any more but it seems to me that the $60 games are typically those AAA games with giant budgets while games made by smaller studios with smaller budgets tend to have a price point that reflects that. I would argue that when people are complaining about the cost of games, they are almost always complaining about the cost of $60 games, which is almost always going to be a big budget AAA game. Or sometimes they're complaining that Gone Home costs $20.