Technology

It’s surprising that games are getting cheaper compared to the cost of living. If you take into consideration the fact that games are becoming more expensive to produce, I really don’t understand it.

Gaming is way cheaper for me than it was during the ps2 or ps3 era.

Still, I don’t want games to become more and more ambitious and cost more and more. So, if I get GTA6, it’s gonna be at a reasonable price, maybe even second hand since I don’t need to directly support Rockstar.

I'm okay with game prices going up -- they've fallen far behind inflation over the decades -- though personally I favor DLC rather than one large shebang. Lower risk on both sides.

And there are a lot of games out there that, when including DLC, run much more than $100. Think of The Sims series or a lot of Paradox games. Stellaris is a fun, sprawling game, but with all DLC, it's over $300, and it's far from the priciest.

But if I'm paying more, I also want to get more utility out of what you're selling. If a game costs $100, I expect to get twice what I get out of a competing $50 game.

And to be totally honest, most of the games that I really enjoy have complex mechanics and have the player play over and over again. I think that most of the cost that game studios want is for asset creation. That can be okay, depending upon genre -- graphics are nice, music is nice, realistic motion-capture movement is nice -- but that's not really what makes or breaks my favorite games. The novelty kind of goes away once you've experienced an asset a zillion times.