Companies think we're stupid. Stop proving them right?

The latest kerfluffle with the $40 Batman Season Pass is just the latest in a long line of these companies pushing boundaries and seeing just how much money they can suck out of us. Remember when games were $50 or $60 and you got a complete product? Remember when there weren't $200 versions of games out there? Remember when it seemed like we were not getting nickeled and dimed constantly?

They think we are stupid folks and the reason why is that we keep proving them right. Stop preordering games because of some lame cosmetic item you will likely never use. Stop agreeing to purchase an item before you even know of it;s quality. Stop buying season passes that are almost never worth the investment. Stop blindly accepting that this is the way things are and need to be.

They don't. This stuff only exists because we as consumers blindly agree to go along with whatever garbage we are fed. This should be something that fans of videogames across the spectrum can agree with and come together on to demand change. Demand better.

Companies we are stupid.

Production costs are much higher than they were, so they need to find ways to break even? I can make my own decisions on what i want, and usually this kind of stuff is ancillary to the main game anyway. Also meh.

I'll just wait for the inevitable GOTY edition with everything included. Between my backlog, MGS V, Halo 5 and (maybe) still Bloodborne I'm more than set for this year.

Ugh, yeah. It said my thread title was too long and after editing it down I didn't take a close enough look.

THE REVOLUTION WILL BE NOT BE PREORDERED.

(but if you do you'll get a beta key for the next one)

I used to be irritated by these practices but these days it's so easy to not buy into any of that stuff and still enjoy more gaming then I can eat. Even franchises like Battlefield and their player bases have organized themselves in such a way that the offered seasons passes are rarely essential purchases.

I don't even blame the people who do buy the season passes either. If you've got a game you like and pocket money to burn why wouldn't you? If the season pass content is essential I either wouldn't buy the game in the first place or at least wait to check if the total cost is worth the content I want.

Don't pre-order games.

I'm usually super cautious with my money and I dont support *companies whose practices I I don't appreciate (*read: Activision)

I find myself saving a lot of money on DLC at least.

I think we're just vastly outnumbered by dumb-ass people with too much money.

Remember when games were $50 or $60 and you got a complete product?

I distinctly remember playing Septerra Core and hitting the game breaking bug in the lava section that makes it impossible to complete the game, so...no.

Remember when there weren't $200 versions of games out there?

I own a Neo-Geo, so....no.

Remember when it seemed like we were not getting nickeled and dimed constantly?

I used to play at arcades, so...no.

As for season passes, I find them easy to ignore. The vast majority of them don't even have worthwhile content for me to spend my time with. If a game has DLC that looks to be worth playing, I have no problems with purchasing it. I'll go through the same basic decision process when deciding whether or not a preorder is worth it. Last game I preordered was Bloodborne and I'm having a real good time with it.

@excast: I've always enjoyed the mentality that if someone doesn't agree with you, you must be stupid. Remember when $60 got you a complete product? You mean 99% of the games I've ever purchased? DLC is almost always extra content that wouldn't be there if it wasn't for DLC and I enjoy that. I enjoy having the opportunity to buy extra content for games I like. Do you really think they'd just start including all DLC if people stopped paying for it? No. They'd stop making it or the more likely scenario is that they'd just stop making games altogether.

Games cost a lot more money to make but people aren't willing to spend more up front. Would you rather spend $100 a game that didn't include extra content or spend $60 on a game and have to option to spend another $40 on addition content if you like the game.

Was Mortal Kombat a better value option with its 7 fighters and single tower than MKX because they didn't make any extra content? Is MKX somehow incomplete?

Maybe it's a bigger Season Pass and the $40 is justified.

@lukeweizer: They've said it's six months of steady content and "includes more super-villains, Batmobile skins, advanced challenge maps, extra character skins, new story missions, and race tracks."

I love me some Batman, but I don't think I'm going to drop €100 on a game and a season pass. I might pick up the pass when it goes cheaper or if there's worthy content in it. But right away? No way. Not a chance. I've never bought a season pass on release and that's not about to change now.

€40 is a lot to ask for a season pass. That's expansion level money. That's what I put at €40. An expansion. Something that I'll buy long after I've finished the main game.

I'm curious what you would like as an alternative? The costs of making games continues to climb. Inflation in general is kinda a problem and no one is immune from it. The way I see it, this seems like a good comprise. You get the base game for $60. The lion's share of the experience. However, this is a way to add additional optional packages for those who are willing to pay more.

I understand the frustration that there are parts of the game you want to play, but you can't because you don't want to pay more. But the only alternative I can see is that they package everything together into some kind of $120 price point or something. And $120 is pretty expensive for a lot of folks.

As long as I'm satisfied with the content in the box, I'm okay with a company trying to sell me dlc. The issue for me (and it's something I've fallen prey to before) is the compulsion to own all the dlc for a game so that I have the "complete" package. The reality is that most dlc being sold for games isn't worth purchasing, at least not a full price. As opposed to trying to demand a change in the dlc model, I just want to get better at not buying what I don't need. Especially in terms of the add-on content for a game.

They charge $20 for things that 15 years ago would have been free by implementing a code.

The last season pass I paid for was Forza Horizon. Don't think I'll be making that mistake again.

Remember when all games looked like the games indie teams make today? Remember when we paid full prices for those? Who the hell would buy a 2D platformer for 60 bucks?

It's like some weird digital alchemy where, about 8 months or so after a game's release, all of its vital pre-order content transmogrifies into a lower priced GoTY edition. And me as the true sorcerer (aka: broke-ass gamer who can hardly afford any game on release day) reaps all the benefits.

Magic!

To me, this is entirely what "pre-orders" hinge on. The feeling of a "complete product" may be a bit subjective, but some games are entirely complete without any of the pre-order nonsense. We'll know when it's out, of course, but for now this one seems to be the same. Offering content that wasn't ripped from the game (Destiny... anyone?), but rather created in addition to it to try and give folks who want it a little extra so that the company can make more money off its original release isn't necessarily evil.

At this point, I appreciate trailers and games that don't push "Pre-order NOW!", but I also don't bemoan those that do.

You mean back when they called it Expansion Packs instead of DLC because most people couldn't download anything yet?

Clearly you never played Street Fighter 2 on console (or its many iterations)

Or Clayfighter.

Which I think is also an important point as to why we find ourselves in the position we are in now. Game prices really have had little room to go up because they started at such an inflated price point in the infancy of the medium. Nintendo games that could be developed in a year or less sold for nearly the same price as games today which require hundreds of people working for multiple years. But does that mean the price is too low today or that they were just gouging people in the past?

This is hardly the forum to have this conversation, everyone here has made up their minds and aren't really the ones pre-ordering garbage in the first place.

The reason there's so much DLC is that it offsets the cost of development, in order to justify the budgets they used in most AAA games, that $60 would need to be much higher. However, I don't see why they don't just make cheaper games, if you make several smaller games with the same money you just dumped into one big one, you run less of a risk of failure and don't have to offset your losses with shitty overpriced color packs.

Or you can wait a month or two... video games are one of the few things that depreciate (in value) faster than a car.

OR consider the video game industry is only possible because of slave labor (mining rare earth elements/minerals and foxconn style production) that's used to build the tech.

I think it depends on your history with gaming. I spend $70-80 canadian dollars for Star Fox. Now that game would considered a downloadable game for 15-20. There used to be expansion packs for games that people complained, just like we are now, that it should have been in the full game. We hate this Pre-Order/DLC crazyness because it makes us feel like we are not getting a complete game. Whereas when I bought StarFox there was no DLC for it. I will say though, if I could have got more maps for the multiplayer back in the day, I would have spent the 10 bucks.

Not gonna lie I'm part of the problem. I buy season passes all the time. I've spent $200+ in DLC for Dead or Alive Last Round. Including the $93 season pass.

They charge $20 for things that 15 years ago never would have been made or been an option to play in the game. What game in 2000 were you playing where you could enter a code to unlock huge sections of game play?

If you were on PC you might get lucky and be able to buy an expansion pack for $20 to $35. If you were on a console you'd just have to wait two years and spend another $60 for the EX version of the title.

"Race Tracks"? What?

Sounds like a pretty mish-mashey list of content. Kind of telling that story missions is the 2nd to last thing they list. Only in front of Race Tracks, which is what everyone wants from a Batman.

And what does "more super-villains" mean? Does that not fall under new story? Is it just a character model in the Jesus pose standing somewhere in the game?

Maybe this sense of grandiosity, galvanization, and righteousness could be channeled and directed at something that really matters. Maybe now is the time in your life to make that change. Maybe it is also the time to learn when a thread title is too vague, and when the use of a question mark is appropriate.

People have a weird perception of how the video game business "used to be". It was always about extracting the maximum amount of money out of its audience (just like every business/industry) - it was never some sort of altruistic oasis. Game companies (and by extension, all companies) do not care about you and have never cared about you and will never care about you.

I agree on both points. Most of the people pre-ordering games and buying season passes are people who are very invested in a hand full of games and value those extras enough to pay a premium. Those people are either not on this forum or they aren't price sensitive enough to care about floating some extra money.

On the production end the current triple A model of game creation is far too expensive to sell games for their current price point without selling additional content. So there are two options. Either you find additional ways of making money from your triple A product (which leads to the games as service model). Alternatively, you can scale back the scope of individual games and try to release a bunch of smaller games by dispersing the cost and the developers that would work on one triple A title (Ubisoft is doing this a bit with games like Child of Light, Grow Home, and Valiant Hearts. Double Fine is doing this as well with their multiple teams). I personally prefer option B since it lets smaller teams have more creative control, take more risks, and shoot for more niche markets. I'll take a game that is hyper-focused and executed perfectly over the triple A poo-poo plater (hi Ubisoft's triple A releases!).

I had a much longer thread title, but 60 characters is sort of limiting.

In regards to pre-orders specifically, I agree that it's not the smart way to buy anything. Waiting even 1 week is infinitely better than being stuck with a lemon, or buying something at an inflated price just for meaningless goodies.

@zippedbinders said:

It's an interesting idea, but the problem is a little more complicated.

I feel that most of the audience WANTS big games. They want big expensive adventures. Even the bomb crew seems to be getting restless with the lack of big AAA titles for the new consoles. I think a lot of people are fed up with smaller indie games. Companies don't want to look like they are moving backwards, they want to one up each other with flashy graphics and games. I think there is a problem where the gaming industry moved too far forward too fast in terms of the graphical standard for games, but I understand why they did it. They want games to look as good as they possibly can to stand out.

Also, the cost of making a game can be complicated. Batman probably had a metric shit ton of expensive graphics rendering and engine work to get to where it is today. That has little to do with the length of the game itself. After you do that foundation work, it makes sense to produce a lot of content with it in the form of DLC and maybe even more games (like Far Cry Blood Dragon). What I'm saying is, it's not as easy as cutting the length of Batman in half and then now charging $30.

To me, the $60 price point is this shaky middle ground between all this concepts. High enough that it covers costs so you can make flashy games. Cheap enough so a lot of people can buy it.

Game prices have been the same since the early 90s, and the cost of creating games has skyrocketed. Honestly, you have "stupid" people buying poorly valued DLC and ridiculous collectors editions to thank for video games not currently costing upwards of 100 dollars right now.

With the season pass, I'll wait until most / all of the content has been released, I'll do some research, and I'll decide if the add-on is really worth my time and money. If not, I won't support it, but I'll still be glad that its existence helps continue to keep the cost of games the same as they've been for over 20 years now.

I've never bought a season pass. The only games I've played where I bought enough of the DLC to justify it are Skyrim, Total War, and Mass Effect, and I don't think any of them had one.

Is it that games are underpriced now or that prices were just absurdly out of whack back in the day?

@koolaid: But how much of the audience that wants big games even know about indie titles and what they offer now? I feel like I didn't fully appreciate how great a small indie game could be until I played something like Braid or Bastion, both of which I wouldn't have known about if not for Giantbomb. Maybe if a few standout indie games were given the marketing push that triple A games receive, then we could see more people looking for those types of games. I don't think you could afford to market them as much as a triple A game, but just some kind of joint marketing venture that shows off indie titles could be huge.

@excast:

Probably a bit of both. Remember way back then games weren't on disc. If you had a large game, say a JRPG, and you needed to include more sprites, you would need to have a larger circuit board. If you ever opened up some of the cartridges you will see what I mean. Simple puzzle games usually have much smaller boards while more complex ones have larger ones. When mass producing a product changes like that can easily affect the end price.

@spaceinsomniac: According to an inflation calculator, $52 in 1992 is equivalent to $88 in 2015. $69 in 1992, for Super Street Fighter Alpha 2 or Ultimate MK3, is $117 in 2015. If anything, we are paying less now than before, DLC included. I have no point to make here and am not defending DLC, this is just a plain observation.

I really, really, really, really, really like Batman and the Arkham games (I preordered that Batmobile edition). Can I be excused from this, ma'am?

Borderlands 2 had a great season pass, which I purchased based on the quality of the Borderlands 1 DLC. I was not disappointed.

@spaceinsomniac: Yeah, if I liked those games enough, those looked like a good value.

People who visit gaming websites and make informed decisions about buying video games probably represent less than 5% of all purchases...

so you're kinda preaching to the wrong crowd.

You're right about the audience wanting big expensive adventures. It always amazes me how many people complain on the Playstation blog whenever they announce the new PS+ games for the month. There are always lots of people there complaining about only getting "garbage indie games." At first I thought it was just because the games Sony was offering were bad, but they still complain when the games are great (like Transistor). The mentality seems to be that anything without cutting-edge graphics must be indie (though even games that aren't actually indie but are 2D get this complaint, Valiant Hearts for instance) and anything that is indie isn't even worth getting for free. The funny thing is that they often want AAA launch titles instead like Knack and Killzone, both of which are mediocre (at best) games. They want the games that look good and show off the system. I think this is a sad state of affairs, but it seems to be the one we're stuck with. Maybe the Playstation blog is just frequented by the worst kind of people, but I doubt it.

There's also the problem of marketing games. Big flashy trailers are more appealing to people who don't follow games regularly. You can show off Uncharted in 30 seconds and have it look amazing. That's much more difficult to for any indie game without flashy graphics.

So have I (I still preorder games too). I don't see it as a problem though. Companies offer a product and it's up to consumers to determine if it's worth it. In my case, with the types of games I play, I usually feel like worth it and I rarely, if ever, regret it. If this make me stupid then so be it.

Implying Arhkam Knight is an incomplete product. I'm not against all DLC. It can be more content for more money instead of cut content. Making good DLC is expensive and laborious. But I still don't want to spend so much. I don't even want to spend 60. It sucks having to wait exceedingly long times for almost all games now.