Jim Sterling / James "Stephanie" Sterling / James Stanton/Sexton & in memoriam TotalBiscuit (John Bain) - One Gaming Lolcow Thread

Moja Zemlja said:
Jim talking about the gay indieslop he wrote for.
Click to expand...
This is basically Jim having an imaginary interview with himself because nobody wants to talk to him about his gay indieslop game and how stunning and brave he is. I love it.
PixarsTedKennedy said:
They used to cost more if inflation is taken into account. I paid 80 dollars for Phantasy Star 4 in the 90s which is like 120 in today's money.
Click to expand...
You need to take economies of scale into consideration as well. Games used to cost more, relatively speaking, but sold less units and so were more expensive to produce (on top of already being more expensive if they were cartridge-based).

If you look at the best-selling games for the SNES, Genesis, Playstation and Playstation 2, after factoring out pack-in titles you'll see the highest-selling game number goes up every generation as gaming became more mainstream.
PlatformGameEstimated Units Sold
SNESStreet Fighter II Turbo4.1 million
GenesisSonic The Hedgehog 27.5 million
PlaystationGran Turismo10.8 million
Playstation 2GTA: San Andreas17.3 million
Couple this with the fact physical games have become much cheaper to produce, with almost no bespoke components any more, and they should actually cost even less. Especially digital versions which have literally no overheads except the bandwidth costs to transfer them to customer's machines.
 
  • Like
  • Agree
  • Informative
Reactions: Barry Williams, CheesyBoy, Irene and 22 others and 9 others
Oliver Onions said:
You need to take economies of scale into consideration as well. Games used to cost more, relatively speaking, but sold less units and so were more expensive to produce (on top of already being more expensive if they were cartridge-based).
Click to expand...
Not just cartridges, remember when many games didn't have saves and instead password systems? It cost extra money to put in the RAM and battery for saves. To say nothing of things like the Super FX chip right in the cartridge.
 
  • Like
  • Agree
Reactions: Barry Williams, CheesyBoy, Endless Torment and 5 others
Waifu Denier said:
Not just cartridges, remember when many games didn't have saves and instead password systems? It cost extra money to put in the RAM and battery for saves. To say nothing of things like the Super FX chip right in the cartridge.
Click to expand...
Also a lot of people either forgot or never considered how much work went into things like the instruction books, which were borderline strategy guides because games back then didn't have handholding tutorials.

Here's the Link To The Past manual as an example. It's filled with unique artwork and tons of general graphic design, all of which someone had to be paid to do and then you need to pay someone else to have it printed and bound and delivered to the packing warehouse where someone else has to be paid to sit and put one inside every box.

I'm sure it wasn't super expensive overall, but it definitely cost more than the nothing you get inside modern physical game cases.
 
  • Like
  • Feels
Reactions: Barry Williams, CheesyBoy, Kuritan Deplorable and 4 others
Oliver Onions said:
Also a lot of people either forgot or never considered how much work went into things like the instruction books, which were borderline strategy guides because games back then didn't have handholding tutorials.

Here's the Link To The Past manual as an example. It's filled with unique artwork and tons of general graphic design, all of which someone had to be paid to do and then you need to pay someone else to have it printed and bound and delivered to the packing warehouse where someone else has to be paid to sit and put one inside every box.

I'm sure it wasn't super expensive overall, but it definitely cost more than the nothing you get inside modern physical game cases.
Click to expand...
Plus physical retailers usually take way more than 30% than what steam and other online stores take.
 
  • Like
  • Agree
Reactions: PixarsTedKennedy, There Is Light At The End, Oliver Onions and 1 other person
Oliver Onions said:
Couple this with the fact physical games have become much cheaper to produce, with almost no bespoke components any more, and they should actually cost even less. Especially digital versions which have literally no overheads except the bandwidth costs to transfer them to customer's machines.
Click to expand...
Server space isn't free and it's not as cheap as people think. Whoever convinced you zoomers that the internet is free wants hanging.
 
  • Agree
Reactions: Baguette Child
FedPostalService said:
Server space isn't free and it's not as cheap as people think. Whoever convinced you zoomers that the internet is free wants hanging.
Click to expand...
I guarantee it's still cheaper than the old methods of production, especially for companies like Microsoft who probably own endless warehouses filled with servers.

Anyone who believes billion dollar corporations are so poor they have to charge $80 to download a video game (permanent access not guaranteed) should be buying bridges from me.
 
  • Like
  • Agree
Reactions: Barry Williams, CheesyBoy, GhaeicSD and 6 others
consul_dondas said:
(I'm aware Nintendo does actually quality check, and doesn't make news by firing everyone below the CEO after release.)
Click to expand...
Not only that, but Iwata famously cut his own pay so they wouldn't have to fire employees after they fumbled the WiiU, which is insane given how readily Sony and Microsoft will shutter studios for seemingly any reason.

Nintendo are interesting because the shitty things they do are generally unique, like creating artificial scarcity by removing games from digital sale after an arbitrary period of time, never (or barely) discounting their first party titles, charging money for the Switch 2 tech demo when PS5 gives you Astro's Playroom for free, and the complete and utter shambles that has been Switch Online.

I've always been curious why they are like this because it often seems like genuine stupidity rather than malice.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Billy_Sama!, Barry Williams, Sneaky khajiit and 3 others
well people want """"better"""". if it's too expensive, then make it cheaper. stardew valley was not a megahit due to cutting edge ray tracing bullshit.
Click to expand...
The problem there is Stardew and it's devs have no obligations. It's the same as pretty much every entertainment industry nowadays, problem is with investors and all that shit. Considering there is a legal precedent that you should prioritise your shareholders over your employees.

Some company like Ubislop can't just make their own Stardew because the people invested in the company are retarded vultures. You can't go to these people and say 'we want to take a risk, this game will cost 5mil to make and has an 80% chance of not making that money back but it has a 20% chance of going mega viral and making 100x the production cost'. Shareholders do not care about that shit, not the main ones at least, they want something consistent. Especially when you look at how terribly Ubisoft's non series games have done. AC origins did pretty well, make another one of those please. Oh, AC odyssey also did pretty well? Another. Then valhalla does insane numbers and they want another of those, but people say they're bored by mirage. But investors will still point to the first two and say 'why can't you do that again'. So they try, give the people that Japan game they've wanted for over a decade, but people are just bored of the formula so it sells like shit and the company gets bought out. Ubisoft had a formula that was proven to work, investors want that sort of shit, all they care about is their own roi so they would much rather you stick to a proven formula than risk wasting their money.

It's another reason why every major company has been constantly pushing for better graphics even though they are now at the point of it barely being noticeable. If you have some retarded old business suit you can't sit him down and give him a 2hour Stardew demo, he's too busy touching little kids and doing coke for that shit. He wants to come in and see something impressive, most of the time the only option game studios have for that one thing is just how the game looks. And even if the game sells like shit the company now has a large number of high quality assets, Ubisoft could probably make a decent amount of money selling their models on some asset store, they'd have more trouble doing that if they went for something hyperstylised instead of realistic.

It's why all the offline single player games still have microtransactions, you can't tell people who only give a shit about money that you're going to choose to not include something that on the surface seems like it can only ever make more money. They don't care if the game will be a worse product because of them because they just care about their own roi. It's the same retarded thinking of 'star wars sells make three more of them please' but to an even more retarded level. If you ask most older people they might be able to name a few games like cod and that one fort game their grandson loves, but they're not going to be in touch with gaming culture. Even the majority of gamers would look at Stardew and think it looks boring considering most gamers never go further than playing the yearly slop from the top 10 publishers. Stardew is a massive risk and basically impossible to sell to shareholders, that's why games like Stardew will only ever come from indie devs who don't have a fucking retarded legal obligation to the retards who think that their upper class version of gambling should be stable and guarantee a return.

Moja Zemlja said:
I really have nothing to say about it, just another filler episode.
Click to expand...
Video's still under 50k after a day. Truly fell off. Most 100k sub channels that post once a week can get that number let alone 700k. I just take offense to him saying that two point games are what games should be. Ok I've not seen anything on the newest one but the last few were obnoxious reddit tier humour that only really appealed to that sort of haha so quirky xd randem type streamer who would have a laughing fit over the shittiest joke going. I know he probably means like value for money and all that shit loads of content for the price, but I've always seen that series as the Illumination but for games instead of films.
 
  • Like
Reactions: CheesyBoy and DEBIRU MAN
Can't quote the post, fuck it.
You need to take economies of scale into consideration as well. Games used to cost more, relatively speaking, but sold less units and so were more expensive to produce (on top of already being more expensive if they were cartridge-based).
Click to expand...
But also, the number of people who work on a game is higher proportionally than the number of people buying the games. The software cost is higher. The amount of work to be put in is higher. Hell, the amount of time people work on a game for before it's finalized and shipped is higher than it ever would have been in the 90s.
 
The Fatriarchy said:
Hell, the amount of time people work on a game for before it's finalized and shipped is higher than it ever would have been in the 90s.
Click to expand...
True, but to go back to what Mr. Onion said, it's by their ambition, not consumer demand. No one demanded Assassin's Creed to be a yearly franchise of ever-increasing scale. No one pre-emptively said Callisto Protocol has to be hyper-realistic with half a TB of particle effects and monster regeneration. There are rumors that the upcoming Nintendo Direct will reveal that Mario Kart World will be grand enough to justify its asking price. It might. But how many said, "If the new Mario Kart isn't open world, I'm not buying it"?

I think something that should be said more is the industry trying to scale operations was their doing, and any expectations for the modern normie audience was set by them - and it's stupid to then turn around when you priced-out that very audience.
 
  • Agree
  • Like
Reactions: Baguette Child, CheesyBoy, Lowlife Adventures and 2 others
That's retard bullshit too. If people didn't want things to be bigger and better we would still be on shitty beep boop Atari games. If something is not better than last time, what's the point in buying something better? Just because YOU don't want something better doesn't mean that isn't how most other people feel about it. It's almost entirely non-gamers who go "You already have a Nintendo. Why do you want a Super Nintendo?"

And they do buy them. And they do want more. And they don't want it to be the same.
 
  • Disagree
  • Autistic
Reactions: Eadred, TATE MOOOOOOOOOOOOOOODE!! and Gloria The Glorious
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back