JDelekto: Well, I can say that back in the 90's, it wasn't uncommon to pay anywhere from $30 (bargain) to $60 for a PC game. However, back then, I'm sure a heck of a lot went into materials and marketing. Not so much needed on the internet these days. I actually passed up Borderlands when it was on the shelf, I wish I didn't.
Game developers found that it was better to make their game engines (and even games themselves) expandable and re-usable to a certain degree. After all, if you've spent a lot of money on designing the engine for one, why not profit from much less development later?
I think the whole DLC thing got a bit out of hand, but I think creating new games or entirely new experiences out of an existing game is not without some merit that should be compensated.
paladin181: I agree with much of this. I have both Divine Divinity and Beyond Divinity, for example, and paid for both. What I don't appreciate is game developers or publishers deciding to carve up games in the attempt to ruin your game experience unless you pay them more money. They're selling you a full priced game. Either charge more for it out of the gate or stop breaking my game play to tell me a place or item is off limits because I didn't buy a weapon or mission pack for $4.99 (or more in some cases). I realize they're trying to make money, but I don't need to be harassed to keep giving it to them. If content is worth it I will gladly pay for it. I don't want to be berated by the developer "HERE'S A SIDE MISSION IT LOOKS LIKE YOU CAN DO BUT YOU CAN'T BECAUSE YOU DIDN'T PAY $9.99 TO COMPLETE IT! IT'S REALLY FUN, JUST PAY UP!"
It would by like CDPR putting the NPC to start the Heart's of Stone expansion in the main game with a patch, let you talk to them and reference the content you're missing, and then have a pop-up window that takes you to CDPR or GoG to shell out for the expansion to continue. Devs are even worse when they cut out parts of the story that are then later referenced by other missions so you're actually missing out on the story of the game with content that brushes the main story if it's not just a small chapter of it. Like buying a book to realize chapter 12 is sold separately.
I totally agree making a game engine for multiple games, or expansions that add a small game to the main game is cool. Charge for that. Just don't make the base game a shitty experience because you want to squeeze more money out of your customers. "PAY US EXTRA FOR THE GAME TO NOT SUCK" is not a valid marketing scheme.
You have a good point there. I agree, don't half-arse a game in the attempts to further profit off of filling it out later. However, you have to look at it on a case-by-case basis. It's probably not good to announce you're coming out with an expansion prior to releasing the game (you can already see the heat that come from the Witcher 3 announcements), because then people will assume they are not getting a full game and feel they are being short-changed.
I'm not saying that people don't do this, but what I'm saying is that I typically give people the benefit of the doubt and assume I'm getting a complete game with the ability to get even more games in the future.
With forward references and back-references between game and add-ons, it's difficult to tell whether there was a chapter missing or a new book to be read.
JDelekto: Well, I can say that back in the 90's, it wasn't uncommon to pay anywhere from $30 (bargain) to $60 for a PC game.
Randalator: If that's true, then I call "luxury".
In the late 80s and early 90s new games in Germany usually cost 120 DM (or $75, the equivalent of almost $130 by todays standard) and you had a choice of either buying them full price or gambling and hoping they would eventually show up in a bargain bin or a compilation. They were very likely to just disappear from the market if you waited to long, because pre digital distribution limited stocks were very much a thing...
And most of the time you didn't even have shops selling games. If you were lucky there was a shopping center with a small games section or a hardware store with an even smaller games section but most of the time you had to use mail order instead. Actual mail order, where you sent in an order form by snail mail or occasionally by calling a hotline (again "luxury").
Gaming really was a niche market and many mail order services were nothing more than industrious nerds selling games from their basement. Being a gamer in the 80s/90s could really suck at times...
It was probably "luxury" at the time, however, I remember when a 500MB hard-drive was about $2000 US and only a few years later did it only become in the 3-digit range. Unfortunately, I think a 10MB hard-drive was all I could afford back in those days. :)
Being a gamer in the 80s/90s was better if you could get a group together and play them, especially the Infocom or Scott Adams' adventure games. Also same with the Sierra adventures as they came out too. Having many minds in the same room was almost as good as a hint book; but there wasn't a "walk through" you could Google.
