sorry for the commercial

If you're up for some constructive criticism: I think the meme would be more effective if you put the silksong price in the lower panel to balance the $70 figure found in the top panel. Said another way, the lower text is missing the suffix "...for $20".

...and I guess while I'm at it, whatever that meme law is about fewer words is better makes me think the top panel could be trimmed down: ~~The~~ gaming industry explains why they need to charge $70 for a game ~~in order to make a profit.~~

What a weird example to use.. You don't understand the economic difference between paying a small indie studio vs paying 500-1000+ devs making complex 3d games where the work of setting up one character dwarves the work of one sprite based 2d character?

Silksong is a beautiful game worthy of all the praise in the world, but this comparison makes no sense.

Big development team ≠ valuable game
The argument implied here is that because more money was poured into development, the value of the game is higher.
It's putting the cart before the horse. The business logic on display by the studios is that they deserve a profit for the investment of making the game, and they have a right to charge more because they paid more to have the game made. That's just … not true, or at least shouldn't be the logic of the consumer. A game is only worth the value it brings to the player (which is of course subjective).
The argument being made here is that the $1M fancy character creator and it's dev team CAN be compared to the work of a handful of sprites by an artist - and the fact that the value is either on par or in the small artists' favor ought to be seen as damning to the larger studios.
To you specifically, @FreddyNO and regarding complex character creators specifically: do you really see value in them? My experience is that they're something I do once at the beginning of the game, but usually within a couple hours I'm wearing enough new equipment to all but fully conceal every choice I made … save perhaps overall skin-tone; plus in most 3rd person games i spend most of the game looking at the characters backside whereas the c.creator focuses on mostly the face. I get that a good character creator adds cost and complexity - but are you sure it really adds value?
Those devs have already been paid. You're not actually paying the devs by buying a AAA game.
This is about returns on investment.
How many more copies would be sold of, lets say, GTA6, if the sales price were to be in the 20-40 dollar range instead of 70 dollar? Would that amount be able to offset the lower price point to satisfy the investors?
Ah, yes, because the take away is that we need 1000+ dev studios churning out yearly slop franchises after 18+ months of crunch to justify their price tag, yeah?
- No the takaway is that its a bad comparison.
- Why does a taxi ride cost more than a bus ticket? Isn't that unfair!
- No, but you need different size teams to make 2D jumping game and Skyrim.

I was born at the beginning of the 1983 video game crash before Nintendo revived the medium, and I suspect another crash is in our future. Late-stage capitalism isn't helping either, but here we are!

Most modern AAA games don't appeal to my old ass, but I remember games when they were made by people who like to play games. These are our modern indie studios and it brings joy to see them succeed.

Maybe a AAA crash cause they keep aiming for the cash grabs and battle pass/cosmetic slop. But I've been buying too many indie(ish?) games lately and I have not been disappointed by the majority of them.
- Have you guys all beaten the entire library of PS2 games or soemthing? There are infinite backlog options vs waiting around for this industry to get to a good place, but im all for fighting against this nonsense with our wallets. I see a battle pass in a game I simply avoid it.

The video games industry needs to learn to not be afraid of letting games cook for a little longer. Silksong took a long time to come out, but what we eventually got was a good game made by a small team. Imagine if instead of the 500+ team members working on the next annual release of Assassins Creed, they peel off 50 artists, writers and programmers to create a new IP over the course of the next 5-7 years? Kind of like the original decision to do just that which got us... Assassin's Creed for the original Xbox.

There has got to be a good balance between "Here is EA Sportsball 20XX, that will be $70 please." where you get an underwhelming and uninspired annual release title with minor changes from the previous year, and Duke Nukem Forever or Cyberpunk 2077 that were trapped in decades-long development hell and released a sub-par, buggy product.

It's not the $70 price tag that's the issue, it's "what am I getting for the extra $10 I am paying for this?". If the answer is a more polished and refined product, I'm all for it - but that doesn't seem to be the case.

indi continues to save the gaming industry

Arguably Team Cherry is much, much leaner/more efficient. They don't have to pay starving managers and CEOs industry standard salaries so they can feed their families 😁

Once again the parasite class ruins things.
- I feel like everyone knows the ownership class is ruining everything, but no one wants to do anything.
  But that's not true. I just hang out with people with more class consciousness, I guess. The average idiot probably blames the queers and the non-whites. "They had to raise the price of CoD because of all the money spent on sensitivity and diversity!" is probably something a dud sincerely believes.
  Sometimes I wish real life was more like some video games, and I could just crouch behind those people, snap their neck, and dump the body in a bush with no consequences.

I doubt this'll be well received, but I actually don't think Silksong should be used to set price expectations. Hollow Knight made a shocking amount of money, massive sales were guaranteed, and the tiny dev team has enough money to pretty much vibe and make cool stuff forever.

Please don't compare other indie game prices to this, when those games can't guarantee their financial security, or massive sales number to turn a profit regardless of price.

Also, unrelated, but reading through the Bloomberg interview, and knowing what they charged for HK, 20$ is actually exactly what I assumed Silksong would cost well before it was announced, the shock for that kinda caught me off guard.

$20 doesn't make sense for AAA games with budgets in the $100 million range. Maybe we need fewer of those though.
- The thing is, producing another copy doesn't cost you money. So, if you price it at $20 and 4 people buy it, when only one person would have bought it at $80, then you've made the same money.
  They only decide it to put the price as high as they do, because they hope to extract as much money as possible from the fools that buy at release. Then they later put it on sale in hopes of also collecting the money from those not willing to pay $80.
  On some level, I assume these folks know how to make as much money as possible, but the same time, I do feel like the hype around Silksong would be a fraction of its size, if the game cost $80.
- maybe it's the other way around. I'm not convinced budgets in the $100 million range makes sense.

Arizona Tea is thinking about raising the price of their tea from $1 to $1.29 for the first time in 30+ years, but the fourth Call of Duty game to come out this year needs a 15% price hike.

Let that sink in.

Wait, they didn't already? I feel like a year ago, it magically went up to 1.25 everywhere by me, so I just assumed they actually raised it. Some good news is I have seen it in grocery stores on sale a lot for .66 a can which kind of works out to the same price as the jug so I will just get a bunch of cans instead.
- No, they did not. That's just the greedy stores near you: https://www.today.com/food/news/why-arizona-iced-tea-costs-more-than-99-cents-at-some-stores-rcna160216
Damn, four in a year?
- I think it's sad tyre.
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Call_of_Duty
  Latest release Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 October 25, 2024
  EDIT : What in the name of fuck? So, COD1 was :
  [made by] a new studio formed in 2002 originally consisting of 21 employees, many of whom were project lead developers of the successful Medal of Honor: Allied Assault released the same year. [COD 1 released 2003]
  MOH:AA :
  Development spanned from 2000 to late 2001
  COD2 : Released 2005.
  So basically, from 2000, they released 3 games within 2 years of each other. After COD2, EVERY SINGLE YEAR a new COD game was released without fail. Holy fuck.
  They really might as well have put the annual franchise number on the fucking box. Forget CODBLOPS 7 , just call it COD 2026 (because they always put release year+1 on the fucking product label).

Huge gaming studios churning out reskinned versions of the same franchises that have been running for a decade+ with no real original content? $70+. Indie gaming studio putting out original content? $25.

Not to defend big companies, but big companies have larger operating costs and they have more corporate responsibilities, to companies and people who fund them.
AAA game costs tens or hundreds of millions to make. Indie game can be made with 50k.
When game costs +40 million to make, you really cant take much risks and cant expect that the guys with the wallet wont want to interviene with you.
- That’s all indirectly what I meant. Spend big money ant take no risks, players get expensive game with nothing original.
Yes because something like cyber punk is obviously as much work as silk song.
- Is cyberpunk part of a franchise? You are missing the point completly.

Silksong was primarily developed by 3 people. For comparison, Baldur's Gate 3 was developed by around 300. There are probably more than 700 people making Battlefield 6.

Didn't some AAA studios complain that Baldur's Gate is "only" 60€ and too high quality, so it sets unrealistic standards/expectations.
- Of course they did. They want to sell barely working alpha builds for hundreds of dollars. Good games for a fair price screw up their plan.

There’s just no way you could ever convince me that a 2d side scroller should ever be over $30.

100%. Terraria should be the standard. If you’re making a 2d side scroller it should hav as much content as terraria/promise to deliver on it later, or be $15 or less.

We have thousands of games that cost even less. You should stop behaving like that Silksong's price is somehow outstanding.

It's not that the price in and of itself is outstanding, it's that it's one of if not the most anticipated game of the decade and they could easily have charged twice that and still sold millions of copies, but they chose not to. They doubtless would have made more money if they'd came in at a higher price point, but rather than putting profit above all else, they elected to make their game affordable.
- Is it uncommon for people to make games for fun, not to get as much money as possible?
  Why would they even need more money?
- one of if not the most anticipated game of the decade
  That's one of, if not the biggest, exaggerations of the decade.

I don't care about Hollow Knight or Terraria or Blasphemous. I am not interested in souls-likes, platformers, or metroidvanias.

How I feel since last few years.

I mean, frankly, I agree with you ... but there are tons of other games in other genres of style and gameplay....that are also under $70 bucks, at or close to that $20 mark, that are pretty damn good.
They may not be as meteorically popular as Silksong...
But the point of the OP image is that... you do not in fact need a AAA production budget and AAA 'graphics quality' and MTX and FOMO and alo that garbage... to be able to have a successful game.
That you can in fact have a more modest yet also more focused approach, and create a break-out hit.
The point here is not 'Silksong popular!'
The point is 'Silksong proves that AAA development paradigms and business practices are ludicrously wasteful and not mandatory; there will always be other ways to be a successful game creator.'
Ok?
- Is that not a relevant thing to say?
  Not OP, so I don't necessarily feel this way about skong, but have you ever had your feed filled with discussion of something that you just don't care about? And then you go talk to your friends and they're also talking about it? Then you talk to a relative and they're asking you what all the fuss is about? All while you give 0 shits about it?
  I've been there, and it's easy to just get plain annoyed at the subject coming up, even if innocuously. It's the real life equivalent of squidward tuning into boxing because it's not about cardboard boxes, only to be greeted with 2 cardboard boxes going at it.
  And if you're somehow in doubt that skong has satuarated discussion everywhere
OK, that's a valid opinion and your personal taste. People should not judge that or think it weird, but it's nothing special either...
Freedom of Speech depicts a scene of a 1942 Arlington town meeting in which Jim Edgerton, the lone dissenter to the town selectmen's announced plans to build a new school, as the old one had burned down,[9] was accorded the floor as a matter of protocol.[10] Edgerton supported the rebuilding process but was concerned about the tax burden of the proposal, as his family farm had been ravaged by disease.[11] A memory of this scene struck Rockwell as an excellent fit for illustrating "freedom of speech", and inspired him to use his Vermont neighbors as models for the entire Four Freedoms series.[12]
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_Speech_(painting)
For anyone curious about the source of OP's image.
May I suggest Satisfactory or perhaps Plan B: Terraform?
But have you played Ori and the Blind Forest?
- No
You're not alone. But we can't deny that there is a market for them. And if you're honest with us and yourself I'm sure you have an exception. Mine is Remnant. Loved From the Ashes and I put in a lot of time in the second one as well.
I agree, I think they’re overhyped, low budget kiddie games. Like if I got charged more than $30 for silksong, I’d feel ripped off.
- EA releasing the same game each year for like $80
- What a dreadful take.
- 🤡🤡🤡
  Don't feed the ragebaiters/trolls LOL
  (Good rage bait though, if intended as such :p)

Hollow Knight seems like mainstream game industry shit to me. Solid game, massive hype, lots of sales. And I wouldn't even remember it in a couple months if not for other people.

It's like how Shovel Knight is a really good platformer but then you play it and it's... just a good platformer. An indie gem! But also, something you've played before.

You know what AAA companies didn't do 20 years ago? Dwarf Fortress.

Shovel Knight is actually fantastic though. You have AAA industry vets failing to meet its standard. Hell, compare SK to Mighty No. 9. Even Megaman can't make a megaman as good as that anymore. Plus it isn't just Shovel Knight, it has the Plague Knight, Specter Knight, and King of Cards sequels which are all genuinely great retro platformers.
No argument about DF though, and I still need to pick that up now that it has an actual UI.
What games do you find memorable, out of curiosity? (It's likely this is a 'you' thing; HK and SK are very memorable to a lot of people, and certainly weren't cookie cutter industry shit. Just curious what does float your boat, though, if not them.)
- Not him but:
  Risk of rain (returns) Hades 1/2 Nebulous fleet command Star sector Homeworld 1, cataclysm (emergence), 2 Battletech (!!!!!!!) Spaz 1 (not 2!) Mechwarrior 2 Mechwarrior 5 mercs/clans Terraria FTL Steamworld games (all) Cortex command (interesting pile of shit) Kerbal Etc... So much.
  More or less mainstream games: Helldivers2 (!!!) Xcom (ufo: enemy unknown) Xcom Xcom 2 Civilisation Etc..
  With Games, like with all art, it's impossible to point to 1 or two which are the best. I've read many books, watched many films, series, plays, listened to music and played a lot of games.. i can't just pick one or two which where "the best". I can name a bunch which where great though.
Tell me you never properly played Hollow Knight without telling me you never properly played Hollow Knight ¯(ツ)/¯

CEO needs another yacht

High budget triple A vs indie. Lets not pretend these games are targeting the same audience. There's always been a division between small games with small dev teams and small budgets and triple A (whatever that may mean). Once you see the line, you can't really compare the two anymore. I agree that the lines are sometimes blurred (what even is indie? what is AA? what is AAA?) but I think its clear Silksong was never going to be marketed next to Monster Hunter. A fair(er) comparison would be Hades 2 and the price difference is non longer so extreme.
Or.. you know.. we can add Vampire Survivors to the mix..

yaRrr the $70 games

!piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com

Well, of course smaller studios can charge less for their product in order to make a profit. Their expenditures has to be a lot less, and hence they need to make less money to make a profit.

Large studios could make smaller games. Fund 10 games for the price of 1 big one. Expect at least one or two to be absolute gangbusters.
- That might not quite be true. You can’t have 1000 people make Hollow Knight overnight. It’s like the old adage of 9 mothers making a baby in one month.
  The closest thing would be to split the studio internally into 10 small teams, and have them each make a game over a long period of time; maybe that’s what you were implying.
- I don't think a flood of low effort games is the solution you think it is.....
I have to assume that also, it's a game that is definitely not for everyone, and the price reflects that. If I only got as far as I have in 5 hours and decided to give up, I'd have been sore about $40. As it is I'm going to spend a lot more time with it and I'm already happy with how much entertainment I've got for my money.
- This is me too. I took a bit longer than expected to get back into the flow of HK (sequels amirite?), but once I did.. I'm obsessed lol
I can't understand these complaints, honestly. It's not like games are some kind of vital necessity. What's more, I'd say they are luxury goods. So, either you pay for them or just pirate them (or ignore them altogether). Complaining makes no sense.
- Exactly. The alternative to most companies setting prices dictated by what they can get away with charging is some kind of state involvement in setting prices, or even in production - you can imagine that in a communist state, there might be a government-run game studio, for example, and it would put out games at a certain price point calculated to be acceptable to the government's goals and ideals.
  I think this could actually work just fine, and think it'd be a great way to solve the problem of copyright. But we also shouldn't kid ourselves: the government isn't going to take vast amounts of money it could allocate to healthcare, transport, etc and allocate it to non-essential entertainment like video games. Look at government expenditure on the arts nowadays. So there would be fewer video games coming out in that system, and fewer opportunities for a Hollow Knight to come out of it all.
Not to mention it’s a smaller game. And people will point to that it took 6 Years to make. It really shouldn’t have taken 6 years to make it. What were they doing, working one guy to death on it?
- In my experience, most people who complain about the length of time it took to develop something like a game have no experience in relevant fields and don't understand how long it really takes to do the bare minimum for even a 30 hour game experience, much less to make it a quality experience.
  I could hammer out a "game" with dozens of hours of "content" in a week that perhaps a single digit number of people will buy before immediately requesting a refund. Making something good is what takes time. It involves a lot of steps of going back, seeing what works and what doesn't, revising, and reiterating.
  Breath of the Wild by comparison also took about 6 years to make with a team of 300 people. Silksong apparently was developed by a team of 3. While I doubt they were living the high life the entire 6 years, I also have doubts they were working each other like slaves. Therefore I believe they were likely working at a more normal pace for game development, and it simply takes that long to make a quality experience.
- Well considering only 4 people work on the game, and one of them only does the music, probably, yeah.

Isn't silksong an indie game not an AAA game developed by hundreds of people? The 20€ pricetag for few people team seems very fitting, nothing special.

I think the reason the corporations are mad is because the £20 game is better than their £100 game. If too many people realise that you can buy good games at lower prices they will stop buying piles of shit for £100.

$70 is just not that much more than $60.

I think the only people complaining about $70 games are people who don't buy their own groceries.

I buy my own groceries and j refuse to spend 70 on a video game. Because I have to buy my own groceries.
- Prices go up.

There are 4, already wealthy guys, doing it as a passion product.

So to be clear, you think every dev should give up their payday?

Why? How do you come to such conclusion?
They could easily push the price and accumulate even more wealth and peeps would still buy it.
in the gaming industry (doesn't apply to indie games) devs get paid regularly before any game releases, and they maybe get a nice bonus if the game does well. and from then on all profits go to the production company, the devs see nothing of the millions the game they created makes
- You're just describing employment in pretty much any industry, not just gaming. Employees trade the insecurity of potential revenue down the line for a guaranteed fixed payout in advance.
  I make software for pharmaceutical machines, my labour alone has literally enabled billions of revenue over the past decade, I'm not seeing any of that either.

Team Cherry is four people and they knew for a fact they were guaranteed to sell millions of copies.

Most games have teams orders of magnitud larger and can't guarantee how well they'll sell.

If Expedition 33, which is from a mid-sized studio and punching above its weight for how few people they have, had set its price on a per-developer basis to match Silksong, it would have cost 200 bucks. Baldur's Gate 3 would have been 2500.

This is a bad take.

Hi-fi Rush launch price: $30
Tango Gameworks employees count: around 100 (in 2024)
Based on your take, Hi-Fi Rush should cost: $500
Reversing that, Silksong should cost: $1.20.
Stardew Valley should cost: $0.30
Idk the meth does checks out.
- I'm not arguing that's what games should cost. I'm giving context on why Silksong can afford to be 20 bucks but other games cannot.
  I'm a bit confused about your math, though. How do you get 30 cents? Even assuming a single dev (which is not strictly the case) starting from Silksong you get five bucks instead.
  Are you starting from Hi-fi Rush? If so it's probably worth clarifying that the very next thing that happened to that team is they got shut down by Microsoft on the back of Hi-Fi Rush not doing that well (I'd argue for reasons unrelated to the game itself) and only got to keep running because Krafton bought them out.
  So definitely a case against "games should be cheaper".
This is a bad take.
Yours sure is.
- At least they had a take, unlike you.
- I'll forgive the zero content response because, frankly, it was right there and we all had to get it out of our systems early.