You know those days when PC games were more expensive...

[Wyrmlord]

They would cost $70 or even $80 in the early days - that's for any possible software, not just videogames.

They were specialty products, made for niche people easily willing to pay more for them, and they were the only market in whom developers used to be interested.

And they all offered their own special variety of a game, and could afford to charge more, since they did not have to compete with people making the same sort of game, like they do now.

Since it was all a wide variety, each offered only for specific individuals interested in that small variety, they could spend their budgets making it only according to what those specific individuals wanted, and would get all their money back from those specific individuals. Although it was expensive enough to keep other buying groups out, it's not like they would have been interested in their product anyway.

Those small niche-oriented buyers of games themselves took greater efforts in finding the games they wanted to find, and the makers of games did not have to make much effort on their own end to advertise their product; and they would be shipping it out to demanding consumers by mail order anyway.

The time on marketing was obviously saved, and that meant they could easily spend more time on decorating and dressing up their product as much as possible, so the game would come with cluebooks, a large colourful detailed manual, a nice catalogue of other games they would be glad to ship to you as well, some nice collectibles, in-game lorebooks, and even a little prologue to their documentation with the developers specifically writing to you about how much they enjoyed making their game for you, how they went about making their game, and how they feel about their project and the fact that people like you willingly buy what they worked so hard on.

Sometimes, you would beat the game, and make a tremendous accomplishment with it. You could draw out your final score and mail the developers proof of your beating the game, and they would personally take their time to prepare a certificate congratulating your amazing accomplishment in your party's long journey in negotiating through the hard bossfights and puzzles they put through your way. It would be written in an elegant font, with your name beautifully pressed on to it, your high score labelled, your rank as a person who beat the game (Master, Grandmaster,.etc), and their personal signature and the team's stamp of approval of your brilliant accomplishment.

 

[Salem The Cat]

This seems to be the opposite point of the ongoing thread "videogames aren't important", which argues that having everyone + parents + dogs playing videogames has allowed us to evolve into the current situation of XTR3M3 rpg standards. Making all games better.

 

[Emotional Vampire]

It's just Wyrmlord talking.

 

[Andhaira]

How else do you think Richard gariott became a billionaire Wyrmlord? He got into the MMO market right before it exploded via Ultima Online.

 

[FeelTheRads]

Wyrmlord transcends time.

Either that, or he's again talking about things he read on Wikipedia like he actually lived them.

They would cost $70 or even $80 in the early days - that's for any possible software, not just videogames.

You're a fucking moron. Even in the "early days", when your father was wiping of for the first time your never born brothers of his sheets, there were cheaper games and budget releases of the more expensive ones. And software cost 70-80 USD? Ahahaha. It's very funny. Moron.

PC elitist... who thinks games were loaded from CDs to speed-up the loading.

Really, fuck off and die or something. You suck.

 

[Azrael the cat]

They would cost $70 or even $80 in the early days - that's for any possible software, not just videogames.

They were specialty products, made for niche people easily willing to pay more for them, and they were the only market in whom developers used to be interested.

And they all offered their own special variety of a game, and could afford to charge more, since they did not have to compete with people making the same sort of game, like they do now.

Since it was all a wide variety, each offered only for specific individuals interested in that small variety, they could spend their budgets making it only according to what those specific individuals wanted, and would get all their money back from those specific individuals. Although it was expensive enough to keep other buying groups out, it's not like they would have been interested in their product anyway.

Those small niche-oriented buyers of games themselves took greater efforts in finding the games they wanted to find, and the makers of games did not have to make much effort on their own end to advertise their product; and they would be shipping it out to demanding consumers by mail order anyway.

The time on marketing was obviously saved, and that meant they could easily spend more time on decorating and dressing up their product as much as possible, so the game would come with cluebooks, a large colourful detailed manual, a nice catalogue of other games they would be glad to ship to you as well, some nice collectibles, in-game lorebooks, and even a little prologue to their documentation with the developers specifically writing to you about how much they enjoyed making their game for you, how they went about making their game, and how they feel about their project and the fact that people like you willingly buy what they worked so hard on.

Sometimes, you would beat the game, and make a tremendous accomplishment with it. You could draw out your final score and mail the developers proof of your beating the game, and they would personally take their time to prepare a certificate congratulating your amazing accomplishment in your party's long journey in negotiating through the hard bossfights and puzzles they put through your way. It would be written in an elegant font, with your name beautifully pressed on to it, your high score labelled, your rank as a person who beat the game (Master, Grandmaster,.etc), and their personal signature and the team's stamp of approval of your brilliant accomplishment.

I can certainly understand the logic behind your arguments, but I think you're overlooking a few things. I simply don't think that the higher price in older days resulted in more money in developer's pockets, lower risk (though higher COSTS have certainly catapulted risk-averseness upwards) or better games. The higher cost then was due to 3 things:
- less efficient distribution paths. Shipping and freight generally have become much more efficient over the last 15 years (in all industries), lowering distribution costs. Add that to internet delivery, more efficient and cheaper to transport packaging, larger retailers buying in bulk and better retail/wholesale integration (pre 1990s it was standard to have at least 1, often 2 or 3 middlemen between the publisher and the end retailer - i.e. publisher sells to national distributor, who sells to state/city distributor, who then sells to the store, each adding on their own profit, whereas now it is publisher straight to retailer much of the tme). Much of that extra price in the early days ended up in the hands of support industries and logistics costs.
- small economies of scale - larger market always means each unit is produced cheaper. In 1980s and 90s the smaller scale of developers and publishers meant that (a) development costs were a MUCH higher relative to total costs, (b) the cost of disks, and later CDs, was many times greater than today, and actually occupied a substantial chunk of the manufacturing costs, and (c) flow-on effect on distribution costs when they were forced to ship in smaller units
- subsidiary products. Previously games came packaged with a lot of 'hard' bonus materials - maps, fancy boxes, large manuals etc, that added a substantial amount on to the final cost. These days you might get special videos as a bonus, but whilst they cost a lot to make, the final cost once distribution and manufacturing is taken into account is far less than including the old cloth maps that used to be standard.

If higher prices had meant more money in developers' pockets, I'd agree with you. But I think they just meant more money went to waste on trivialities and logistics. Remember that when Doom broke ID software from a couple of hippies living in their office to becoming a megastudio, it (a) was INCREDIBLY cheap, and included a substantial game for free, but (b) cut a ribbon through the bulky logisitics costs of the time, by sidestepping retailers and the multiple wholesaler middlemen and selling straight to consumers via shareware. The fact that it made so much profit, despite being at the top of the tech of gaming in its time, tells you something about how much money usually went to waste just getting the product from the publisher to the gamer.

A much bigger contributor to the crap games problem is the other end of the industry - the spiralling costs. Instead of superior tech being used to increase efficiency and lower costs, it has constantly been used to raise the resources used in games (without always bringing a proportionate increase in technical quality, let alone gameplay quality), making game creation increasingly expensive. That means that it is near-impossible to make a commercially viable game while retaining a 'small-team' artistic vision. It also has massively increased the commercial risk involved in any sizeable ingenuity - who wants to try a new idea, or gamble on the gaming market being intelligent, when you've got $50million on the line?

What does that mean in the end? Well, as you've said, prices have gone down. Now they weren't exactly raking in massive amounts per game beforehand, due to infrastructure and distribution costs. But now their costs have skyrocketed at the development end - publication is cheaper than ever, but development is costing more and more. So I guess I'm not actually disagreeing with you - but it isn't JUST a matter of the overall profit-per-unit going down. It's also that the cost of innnovation is skyrocketing, whilst the costs of publication are dropping. Which means that there is a massive commercial bias towards making games with next to no innovation (to keep the skyrocketing development costs under control), but that appeal to a mass market (to take full advantage of improved distribution efficiency). Whereas the games most harmed by the market trend are those requiring substantial innovation to keep the market interested, while servicing a smaller segment and hence getting less savings from distribution efficiencies.

 

[Zakhal]

We still have expensive niche games i.e hardcore strategy:

War in the Pacific: Admiral's Edition will have a stand-alone price of $79.99 Download / $89.99 Physical.

Cant recall any rpg games though. Mortal online physical was close to 80$ but its more like niche pvp mmo than rpg.

 

[JarlFrank]

I'd pay 80 € for another good dungeon crawler in the style of M&M or Wizardry, but preferably with an isometric viewpoint like ToEE.

 

[Salem The Cat]

I'd pay 80 € for another good dungeon crawler in the style of M&M or Wizardry, but preferably with an isometric viewpoint like ToEE.

What about.....TOEE?

I though Wizardry 8 was better, though TOEE is still quite good.

 

[Zakhal]

I would easily pay 80€ for TOEE with bigger and better campaign. TOEE's battlesystem is one of my favorites. I doubt they could keep uo the production values of TOEE with niche budget though. It could be an 80€ game that looks and sounds like Geneforge at best.

 

[JarlFrank]

I'd pay 80 € for another good dungeon crawler in the style of M&M or Wizardry, but preferably with an isometric viewpoint like ToEE.

What about.....TOEE?

I though Wizardry 8 was better, though TOEE is still quite good.

ToEE is already... when was it released? 03? 04?
Well, it's already about 5 years old. There haven't been any dungeon crawlers (at least on the PC) at all since then, except for a few indies.

 

[King Crispy]

The only PC games that I can remember that cost over $60 were limited and collector's editions, and I've been playing them since the beginning of the industry. Most PC games have been and remain around the $49 mark.

That being said, Wyrmlord makes a good point. The Olde Days of PC gaming were much more personal, and the feeling of accomplishment when finishing something like Wizardry or one of the Might and Magics was really something. Now, you can finish off a typical RPG like Mass Effect in a single weekend. That was UNHEARD of back then. In fact, RPG's were often absolutely brutal, almost to the point of being sadistic in their glory days.

 

[Zomg]

Azrael has the correct analysis.

I'll add that the AAA blockbuster model has already permanently ghettoized/genrefied games, the way comic books were permanently ghettoized and genrefied into what they are now, which is either shit or metashit. The interesting part is already over.

 

[Weresloth]

I remember spending $50 on an intellivision game....and this was when I was a poor college student what a sucker I was. Too bad you can't really pay according to how much you liked or how much you played a game. There are games I would easily have paid $100 for in the past by how much I enjoyed them or how much playing time they gave to me. And there are games I paid $55 for that weren't worth $10.

 

[Salem The Cat]

I'd pay 80 € for another good dungeon crawler in the style of M&M or Wizardry, but preferably with an isometric viewpoint like ToEE.

What about.....TOEE?

I though Wizardry 8 was better, though TOEE is still quite good.

ToEE is already... when was it released? 03? 04?
Well, it's already about 5 years old. There haven't been any dungeon crawlers (at least on the PC) at all since then, except for a few indies.

Oh...something new. I can't think of any good isometric dungeon crawlers since TOEE.

 

[Annie Mitsoda]

I remember when stores didn't price-fix, but went by demand. A game (console OR PC) that SHOULD retail at $30 - TOPS - could get pushed to $70 or more. I remember this. Buying Aladdin for the Sega Genesis off my neighbor (at the ripe old age of 14) for a grand total of $15 was such the best deal, considering it was going for $60+ at Target at the time. Good game, too.

I always wanted to have more PC games. My parents weren't the type who liked buying them - I had to hope for Shareware (wheeee.) or games borrowed from a friend. Eye of the Beholder was a copied floppy (sorry, Interplay - er, except you're dead. Er.), and I have NO IDEA where Phantasie came from. I'd go to friend's houses (especially the one with the gamer parents - oh, what paradise that seemed to me! She had EVERYTHING!) and admire all the neat knickknacks that seemed to come in every box. They'd each get pushed aside in favor of the newest and latest, but yeah - I do remember "feelies," and I do miss them.

It's harder to get that setup now. Merchandising costs money, and more crap in the box makes it weigh more, which cuts down on shippable units. It's a business, and cuts get made. It's pretty butts, but at the same time, I like that if I want to, I can say "fuckit" to the brick-and-mortar stores and get something from Steam or another direct download service.

Something I do like, though? When those "feelies" take another format. When we get developer commentaries, or unlockable art, or whatever. The dev comments on Portal, the "behind the scenes" stuff on the Ratchet & Clank games (which must have been a bitch to get in because of stronger requirements - their publisher IS Sony, who could have gone NOPE, no non-game stuff on the disc, FUCK YOUUUU). I like those. A lot of times those don't happen because the rush to get crap done for the game ITSELF is far more pressing, but for those companies who still do that - I salute them.

 

[JarlFrank]

Back then we all copied floppies, because it was so damn easy (and there was a scanner at dad's office so he could copy manuals too, for the awesome copy protection of back then). Good old times. Heck, I want these copy protections back. They were incredibly cool.

 

[Luzur]

i remember paying like 2800 SEK (or 387 US dollars) for a Commodore 1541-II discdrive with money i got mowing lawns and washing cars in my old neighbourhood.

and according to the reciet i still have i payed 245 SEK (33.97 US Dollars) for Phantasie II for C64.

 

[JarlFrank]

Dad paid about 4000 marks (which was maybe between 2000 and 2500 USD back then) for his first PC, which was before 1990. Last weekend I fired it up again and it still works. Installed Might and Magic 3 from floppies. It took long. But it was awesome. Native DOS on an old PC with a tiny screen is the only true way to play DOS games. Somehow a lot more fun (maybe because of the added nostalgia feeling) than DOSBox.

 

[King Crispy]

Very cool.

 

[mondblut]

Don't forget inflation. $40-45 of 1989 are easily $70-80 of today.

 

[Luzur]

Dad paid about 4000 marks (which was maybe between 2000 and 2500 USD back then) for his first PC, which was before 1990. Last weekend I fired it up again and it still works. Installed Might and Magic 3 from floppies. It took long. But it was awesome. Native DOS on an old PC with a tiny screen is the only true way to play DOS games. Somehow a lot more fun (maybe because of the added nostalgia feeling) than DOSBox.

got that right, my brother had a couple of old computers (a VICTOR V386VM http://www.datasalen.se/Utstallning/Dat ... v386mx.htm and a IBM 486) that i grabbed in his last big spring cleaning and fired up at home, first thing i installed on them was Wolfenstein 3D, Tunnels and Trolls and Might and Magic.

 

[Jigawatt]

They would cost $70 or even $80 in the early days - that's for any possible software, not just videogames.

What is this madness? Videogames still cost that much
GTA 4 = $99.95
XE says 99.95AUD = 82.815USD

 

[Secretninja]

I thought video games were illegal in Australia.
I took my old 486 apart a while ago. It was fucked, and I don't ever remember having to fuck with dos on it. Then again, my dad did most of the setup. We had some fucking monstrous laptop type computer, that had a fold up screen and shit, but it was broken by the time I ever got around to wanting to mess with it.

 

[Bobtheblob]

If you don't recall games being more expensive then either you were not around or are totally full of shit.

From a 1991 Article for SC II and Ultima VII...

Both Wing Commander II, which involves space combat, and Ultima VII, ... Both Strike Commander and Ultima VII cost $79.95 and will be available in the fall. ...
Related web pages

No 'special', 'limited', platinum', 'Game of Year', or 'Will cause your genitals to explode into fiery infernos of pure epic awesomeness' editions either.

This was in 1991 dollars too and believe me, they bought a hell of a lot more.

EDIT: typo(s)