Umm, yes, as a matter of fact I do know! I've actually worked on a few games (nothing special). I find texturing and skinning to be fun and challenging. I haven't actually been paid for any of my work so maybe I'm justified in not buying games, lol.
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Umm, yes, as a matter of fact I do know! I've actually worked on a few games (nothing special). I find texturing and skinning to be fun and challenging. I haven't actually been paid for any of my work so maybe I'm justified in not buying games, lol.
I haven't done any game per say "we'll maybe a couple of text adventures in BASIC a long time ago. But I have done 3d models for flight simulator and other programs and it is a lot of work. Even though I disagree with the tone of vairox's post, there is a grain of truth in there. People will compare one entainement expense to another. As such, in terms of complexity of programming the game makers have their work cut out for them. They have to keep upping the amount of code, but charge more or less the same as they have been.
I think testers just bring the problems to the devs attention, they wouldnt try to diagnose it I would think.Quote:
Originally Posted by monroeski
Yea that's what I'm thinking with the comparison. Video games are a smaller market, so the price has to be higher because you don't have the volume. Also, with a movie you spend the money, and get 2 hours of entertainment which is the same exact thing every time you watch it no matter what, and there is no interaction between you and the movie. A short game is still 8 hours long, and then you can replay it and do things differently, not to mention multiplayer.Quote:
Originally Posted by [PinPals]Apu
I stand by my previous statement, even if a movie doesn't have a $200 mill budget...even a run of the mill $20 to $40 mill flick, still $9... heck, lame-mart sell them 2 for $9
way way less games will be sold than any given movie, thats why they have to sell them for $50+ one million games sold is like a super ultra mega success...
You can always just be a pirate. Argh!
I've read a few articles about game testers. Generally, companies like to hire people that want to get into the industry at some point, so a lot of the time they tend to have some technical skills that will at least help to diagnose the problem. Even if they don't, they will still need to keep detailed notes and try to recreate the problems over and over; that wouldn't really be diagnosing WHAT happens, just WHEN it happens.Quote:
Originally Posted by Timman_24
Look at it logically. They're not going to pay somebody to just tell them the game crashed a few times in chapter 1.
I dated a girl that was a game tester for Midway.
Being a tester is even less romantic, than your worst nightmare. You hardly ever just play games, and note problems. Most of the time youre given specific lists of actions or events to complete or specific contingencies to run through. And all you do is run these until they break, or youve satisfied some particular set of sucess criteria. Past that its paperwork, paperwork and paperwork, meetings and being called incompetent by the code monkeys.
Ohh to vairox and all his similarly dim-wited cohorts.
When you buy your $60 video game, do you unwrap it, pop it in your CD-ROM Drive and stare at the screen for 87 mins with a litre of cola and 130oz of Orville Redenbacher?
Cause if you do, the problem isnt that games are jip, the problem is...well, youre an idiot.
You pay roughly $20 to take a DVD home and be entertained for, on average, less than an hour and half. So if you get 5 hours out of a $60 game, you broke even. Everything beyond on that is all bonus.
For the OP, your logic doesn't make any sense. You can't say "Well, the game costs millions to make and all they want in return is $60". Publishers/producers are in this to make money, they aren't spending millions because they feel altruistic. They are selling hundreds of thousands of copies (generally) on these games so they obviously recoup their initial outlay and make a nice profit to boot.
I don't think games are much more expensive now then they have been in the past (think consoles) but $60 is a lot of money to some people and considering the fact that 90% of the games out there suck, I see no reason why someone wouldn't want to pirate a game they want - let others pay for it.
I buy my games, but very rarely at full price. I will compare video games to another big market..... Movies. Why would the studios release a dvd of a film that cost over 100 million to make for only 9.99 or 19.99? Because they will sell more and make more money. My beef with the game prices is that they would sell more at a lower price. You see 14.99 for a 360 version of Gun. Why not do that for more games? Build a huge online community. Game companies have less streams of revenues, but they do use advertisements. Games are becoming more mainstream. A mainstream price will help matters. Also things like steam are charging the same for a dl then as buying the packaging. And you don't even get the same rights. Give me a choice to dl for at least 10$ off. Or I'll just buy the packaging making it easier to resell. I think companies should plan for a minor success and profitability and not keep hoping for the big blockbuster.
An arguement that starts off with an insult rarely works. When someone buys a product they expect that the amount of money that went into making it is somewhat proportional to what they are paying to buy compared to similiar products (entertainment media such as cds, dvds, video games). The thing that vairox and others do not consider is that video games tale off very quickly and typically are only purchased once by a consumer. Movies on the other hand have a peak at the theater release, rental release, cable release, and then network tv release. I have on many occasion watched a movie in the theater ($9), then purchased it on dvd ($15), and maybe a second time with additional fotage ($20), and then a third time with my HBO subscription. I know that isn't typical, but each movie has the same opportunies unlike video games where they may be rehashed 10 years down the road in a classics pack or as part of XBL.Quote:
Originally Posted by Isezumi
Back when I was a kid I barely bought a tenth of the games I played, and generally only because I couldn't get them any other way. I never felt guilty about it or seen anything wrong about it.
Now I earn money so I buy my games, not because I now know what's they're really worth but because I've seen too many cool studios disapear because they hadn't enough money to survive.
A game's price isn't really what's on the box, it's more about how much you want it. I only buy full price for a game I can't wait to play. If you can wait then you can find cheaper used games or low cost reissue.
it's utility is a moot point, if it costs $20 million to make a movie that costs $9 then it's a bit ridiculous to ask $50 or $60 for a game that cost $2 mill to make.... yay, you get more use out of the game than the movie, and? should we charge more money for oscar winning movies than movies that were nominated but didn't win? cause it must be better? cause you are getting more out of one disc ? I'll leave the nosense insults alone, how does it look way down there?Quote:
Originally Posted by Isezumi
Yes but as already said, movies make a lot of money in ticket sales, then DVD sales, pay-per view sales, HBO, airlines who show new movies in flight. Hotels who have closed circuit pay per view.Quote:
Originally Posted by vairox
It's utility is not a moot point, a movie on average is 2 hours most games are over 10 hours, and sometimes like Oblivion they can be hundereds of hours. And DVD Box sets of TV show are similar in cost to video games! Why, maybe it's because they have 20 plus hours of content on average? You don't think the amount of hours the entertainment is providing translates into price?!
Really, cause this point is all utility. Its all youre argueing...all youve done is exapanded utility to its base components. And then massacared it. Maybe hoping after youve butchered it so mercilessly that maybe no would be able to recognize that it used to be utility, and you can call it whatever you want.Quote:
Originally Posted by vairox
HerringQuote:
Originally Posted by vairox
This whole time youve been passing out examples like flyers to crappy house parties. Youve been comparing theatrical movie tickets to release games. The movie has to be out before it can win an oscar, so its "Oscar Winningness" cant be a cost valuation factor...it hasnt happened yet. Now if you were to, I dont know, actually compare apples to apples. We could probably go somewhere with this whole "Oscar Winningness" cost valuation factor thing youve developed here. But you keep throwin oranges.
Awesome, you couldnt even make it out of the sentence where you said you wouldnt deal with insults, without making an insult. ggQuote:
Originally Posted by vairox
I was commenting to my wife just the other day about the prices of games. Although, like most here, I don't want to pay $60 for a new game, think how long the price for a new game has been around $50. I remember paying that much for Atari 2600 carts, C64 floppies, Genesis carts, etc. Hell, I paid $80 for KI: Gold on N64 (now that was stupid). I think the gaming industry has done a pretty good job of keeping prices down and the only reason the prices are down is because the demand is so high. There are millions more gamers now than there were 25 years ago. A cart that sold 40k or so copies back then was likely a huge success, now it's more than double perhaps even triple that amount to be successful.
I think if anyone has trouble paying top dollar for a game, they probably should just hold off and wait til the price drops and then pick it up. I don't really see much of a reason to complain about game prices today when you can get it cheaper tomorrow.
On a personal note, 400th post in 6.5 years. Look out 5k, here I come! Woot! :D
And I thought I was slow!Quote:
Originally Posted by PowerCreep
It's quality, not quantity, bro. ;) :DQuote:
Originally Posted by Idiot356
Quote:
Originally Posted by PowerCreep
400 times is 400 times too many. I like it better when you don't post.:)
You can argue about utility and cost to make and duration of play/viewing or whatever you want to do, and it's not going to make a difference. They price the games at $50 and $60 because people still buy them. The industry has been growing by leaps and bounds at those prices, so obviously in practice they are good price points. Everyone would like games to be cheaper, but not nearly as many boycott the full priced games.
Also, movies are in the $20 range in part because they're over in 2 hours. People buy a lot of them. By contrast, if a game is under 10 hours, you have a lot of people saying it's too short. You physically can not play through the same number of games in a given time period as you can watch movies. You can watch a long movie 3 times in the same period it takes to play through a single short game once. Most non-enthusiasts don't stack up a "to play" list like we do. They buy a game, play through it, then move on to the next one a week later. If you can't physically play as many games, you won't buy as many games, even at a lower price.
I knew a lot of people in college that had a household PS2 for 3 or 4 people, and only owned a copy or two of Madden, Tiger Woods, one or two of the GTA games, maybe Enter the Matrix, something like Black, and that was it, over the 4 or 5 years they owned the system. They rented anything else that looked interesting, and that wasn't really all that often.
Making the games cheaper is not going to sell more copies to those types of players, who in my experience are the majority, and existing game sales already prove that the more hardcore will pay $50 or $60 even while they complain.
QFT. Even at $60, we're STILL not back up to N64 prices.Quote:
Originally Posted by PowerCreep
you guys keep forking out $60 for someothing worth $10, I will pay my own pice for it....which need not be discussed round these parts.