Posted August 18, 2013
What do you think about that?
I see it all the time and, frankly, I cannot stand it.
I understand how someone might ask how long a game is, etc. to see if they are willing to spend the money on it, but that is a specific question with a specific answer to each person. My problem is when I see that seep into general discussions about a game.
I hate it when a review alternates between "it had a deep a story with very interesting gameplay concepts" and "but it costs X therefore you should not buy it", making sure it will no longer be relevant in just a few months when the price changes.
I hate it when people say "a game that costs X should last Y amount of hours", which is the mentality that leads to games full of grinding or endless firefights, trying to justify its price.
There are the experimental games. You're not fighting someone, or you're not doing this or that, therefore it's not worth its price.
Dealing with prices is a fact of life, sure, I don't want to take that away. But maybe that is something we shouldn't treat like it's an intrinsic quality of the game that it is or isn't worth a certain amount of money.
Understand that my problem is that I know that what I find worth something will not line up with other people's opinions (not to mention all the stuff about regional pricing that often happens), sometimes I just want to find out about the game itself, how good it is. Not about how in Papers, Please you just check documents so it shouldn't cost $10, or how Alpha Protocol has bugs and isn't all that polished so I should only buy it at 75% off for $5. Just how good the game is.
This is more of a rant really. I doubt people will glean some sense out of these ramblings. I just ran into way too many discussions lately that said nothing about the game and were just people saying "it's not worth this much" and "yes, it is" back and forth at each other.
I see it all the time and, frankly, I cannot stand it.
I understand how someone might ask how long a game is, etc. to see if they are willing to spend the money on it, but that is a specific question with a specific answer to each person. My problem is when I see that seep into general discussions about a game.
I hate it when a review alternates between "it had a deep a story with very interesting gameplay concepts" and "but it costs X therefore you should not buy it", making sure it will no longer be relevant in just a few months when the price changes.
I hate it when people say "a game that costs X should last Y amount of hours", which is the mentality that leads to games full of grinding or endless firefights, trying to justify its price.
There are the experimental games. You're not fighting someone, or you're not doing this or that, therefore it's not worth its price.
Dealing with prices is a fact of life, sure, I don't want to take that away. But maybe that is something we shouldn't treat like it's an intrinsic quality of the game that it is or isn't worth a certain amount of money.
Understand that my problem is that I know that what I find worth something will not line up with other people's opinions (not to mention all the stuff about regional pricing that often happens), sometimes I just want to find out about the game itself, how good it is. Not about how in Papers, Please you just check documents so it shouldn't cost $10, or how Alpha Protocol has bugs and isn't all that polished so I should only buy it at 75% off for $5. Just how good the game is.
This is more of a rant really. I doubt people will glean some sense out of these ramblings. I just ran into way too many discussions lately that said nothing about the game and were just people saying "it's not worth this much" and "yes, it is" back and forth at each other.
