The much anticipated indie title No Man’s Sky
However, the internet, or rather certain subsections of the internet, have recently been thrown into uproar after the price of the game was revealed, and it’s being charged at $60 (£49.99 here in the UK). Many people consider the price tag AAA, and have become very, very, upset considering that No Man’s Sky is being touted as one of the biggest indie games of all time, and therefore should not be sold at AAA pricing.
Now, I am not here to tell you which side of this fight is right or wrong, but I am just here to try and get a few questions asked (and then to rhetorically answer them because it’s my article and I can do what I want to MOOOOM!)
The first question I have is, ‘Does how many people, or which studios, made a game really need to be the deciding factor on pricing?’. I cannot count the amount of times that I have paid full price for games and then felt disappointed with what I got. I mean think about it, how many of you bought things like The Order: 1886 and discovered that the game has about 2 hours of actual gameplay, and that you have been completely short changed? Would that situation have been different if the game had only cost you £4.99, and you’d gotten a short but sort of decent experience out of the affair?
Now for a counter example, how many people would have minded paying slightly more for a game like The Binding of Isaac or FTL? The amount of hours of gameplay inherent in either one of those games means that paying by the hour would have been extremely expensive, but because they’re both indie titles we expect only to pay a fraction of the worth of the actual content.
Honestly, for most people it should be plain to see that just because a game is indie or triple A doesn’t mean it should have a built in price tag. It’s what you get out of an experience that should be the deciding factor (rhetorical question answering: check).
My second question is: ‘Why were so many of you okay with paying that price for triple A titles?’. It’s a well-known fact that part of the reason for such heavy prices these days is that video game budgets are getting so bloated and huge (for instance GTA V cost $265 million to develop and market….wow), so to make up the cost games have to cost more. Although this does make sense and there are certainly some games where the price tag can feel justified, there are at least as many that would have done better by having a smaller budget and costing slightly less.
So here’s the final point of this article, getting upset at the cost of No Man’s Sky at this point is entirely pointless. We have no idea how much the game is actually going to be worth by the time it comes out, it’s possible that we truly will get thousands of hours of enjoyment out of No Man’s Sky
At the end of the day, it’s a much better idea to remain skeptical of the pricing and wait until we actually know how enjoyable it’s going to be. Seriously, if that game’s not worth the $60, we just have to wait a while and the game will have come down in price, well at least on steam it will have, if you’re planning on playing it on PlayStation 4, then you’re probably just going to have to pay the $60.
14 comments
Personally this article surprised me, I never expected anything else. The very fact that it’s an indie team shouldn’t mean anything the term itself is loose, while Hello games is “hardly” indie in this case with the amount of backing and promotion Sony has given this game, even saying they’ve treated it as a first party game. Many gamers seem to have grown pretentious and think they deserve whatever they expect, even when they are ignorant of many of the facts. I’ll admit I don’t know plenty of things about the industry and especially about this game, obviously, but from what I seen and what everybody else knows, this game is huge and has taken a good amount to time and resources to develop if $60 is too much don’t play at launch easy as that. Also I’d wager many of the people complaining about this price bought Battlefront (I’d bring up The Order here too like you did but nobody bought it). Personally I’m hyped for the game but I’ll wait a few days to see if it’s worth it for me.I didn’t expect this post to be so long.
It’s the internet. Good sense doesn’t apply here.
There’s no reason why the game SHOULDN’T be $60.
79.99. Ps4 limited edition. I pre-ordered it. I fear no reprisals.
I was looking forward to playing this game, but not for $60. That seems too much for something that looks like it will become very repetitive after a short while. $20 seems more appropriate. That, or advertise the hell out of ALL of its features. So far, all I know of the game is that you run around randomly generated worlds, and mine for crystals. That doesn’t sound $60 worth to me.
That doesn’t make any sense at all.
Call of Duty is even MORE repetitive, whether talking single-player- which seems to last about 5 hours- or multiplayer. But not only do people NOT blink at paying $60 up front, but they JUMP at the chance to buy multiple DLC packs at a third of the price of the whole game. Hell, there’s usually VERY little difference between the new CoD and its predecessor, and yet it’s perennially one of the best sellers of the year.
And that’s just that one AAA franchise; there are entirely too many for which you can say the exact same thing.
Why treat NMS any differently?
You’ve hardly seen anything of the game, but you seem to have an idea what it should be worth? How does that even make sense? How can you, knowing full well that you don’t have a grasp on the whole of the content, come to any sort of conclusion about the worth of the title?
Finally, what’s with the frequently-used detractor “repetitive?” You DO understand that describes every game ever made, don’t you? Tetris is repetitive, Final Fantasy is repetitive, Battlefield is repetitive, Fallout is repetitive. The trick is in making the repetition enjoyable. Solid game mechanics and enough variety in the tasks given to ensure it doesn’t get too stale too quickly. Not telling the gamer everything that’s coming, so that there are still some surprises when he or she plays. That’s what makes a game good.
You can’t make a game that has endless variety and is NEVER repetitive. That’s impossible. So why hold that against this game, especially if you’re not going to do the same for any others?
I love the URL for this page. lol
“smh” more and more self-entitled ness. Will it ever end?
How is this news? For at least a year and a half this has been widely known that it would be a full priced title. Maybe even two years? I don’t remember if it was gamescom or E3 but at some event they said they had hired a bunch more people and upped the production value so it would be a full retail title. This stopped being a small game the second it won every E3 award multiple years in a row. There are plenty of indie games I would never consider spending 60 dollars on this isn’t one of them.
$60 is a risk strategy.
In my opinion No mans sky is a $20 game + Hipe = $30 game
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!!!!! All the stupid ass ponies coming out to defend this…???? Sony ponies love sucking Sony dick!!!
Fantard alert!
Fantard alert!
This is why i never pre order games. I wait till they are out, people have played beyond all the marketing hype, and ive watched a bunch of reviews and gameplay videos. Then i can make an informed decision. Oh, and also wait for a steam sale.
The Binding of Isaac team consisted of maybe 5 people, tops. Let’s be generous and say the budget was $2 million (probably closer to $500 000).
GTA V, as you say, cost $265 million to develop and market.
Should both games sell for $60? If every single game released with a $60 price point, no one in their right mind would develop AAA games anymore. That said, I would be willing to pay $30 for Binding of Isaac: Rebirth, because it really is a fantastic game with tons of replayability.
I disagree with NMS retail pricing because it was developed by less than 15 people, and is developed and published by the same company (i.e., indie title). As such, they don’t lose an x amount of revenue to a greedy publisher. Steam probably pockets 30-40% of sales revenue, but that’s no different than all the other games on Steam. I really want this game, but out of principle I’m not sure I want to fork over 60 bucks for it. I would gladly give 30-40 though.
I really hope this doesn’t set a precedent for future indie titles, where everyone and their grandmother will start selling their indie games for $60 a pop.
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