#21 What's the value of a game?
The price of video games debate has reared its ugly head again. It was always inevitable that the arrival of a new console generation would be accompanied by the debate - but what’s surprising is just how forceful the manufacturers and developers are. Rather than slowly raising prices by a few dollars here or there over the lifecyle of the system Sony have bitten the bullet and announced a £10/$10 price rise across their titles will be the norm - citing increases development and production costs. Other studios have followed suit - building on the argument by pointing out how long games sat at the same price.
Having worked on games launches, I have some sympathy with the argument. Games development is hugely expensive, even before you factor in the marketing costs. And when you see a huge prestigious title like Marvel’s The Avengers result in a $63 million loss for Square Enix, you can understand the desire to raise prices. (No that’s not a typo - they really did lose over 60 million bucks on this one game).
But, even if you have sympathy with the need for a price this generation, the timing for this is beyond awful. We’re in the middle of a global pandemic, and while anyone lucky enough to be able to afford a £450 console at launch probably isn’t too worried about an extra tenner here and there on games, it does add up fast for family’s looking to invest. And it sends a terrible signal - the gaming industry has already profited massively from Covid-19 - doubling down on that now just looks crass.
What makes this argument even more complex is how quickly the focus inevitably comes on how many hours of gameplay is on offer and whether the game represents good value for money.
But why are we trying to reduce the value of art to a simple monetary transaction? Surely there are better ways to measure the value of the experience - ones which don’t come from dividing one number by another.
The challenge from doing this is they remove certainty and comparison from the experience. People cling to hours on offer as a way to compare apples to apples, but comparing games shouldn’t be that reductive. Instead it comes down to a personal judgement call - and here’s a few things I’ll use to judge for myself the value of the games I buy for the PS5.
1) Moment to moment enjoyment: Is this something I enjoy the actual gameplay of? If so great - i’m getting value from the experience. It’s the same approach you’d take to any new book or TV show - is this bringing me pleasure as I experience it. If not - it’s not valuable to me. But if it is, that entertainment is worth what I paid for it - especially in these uncertain times.
2) Walk-awayablity: How easy is it to put the controller down and do something else? If I’m happy to load another game or go read a book or make a snack, it’s a sign i’m not valuing the experience - even if in theory I’ve got 50 hours of gameplay for my money, if they’re not hours I’m committed to then what’s the point?
3) Emotional response: This is the crucial one for me - is the story making me think about something in a new way or provoking an emotional response? If it is, I don’t care how much I’ve paid - i’m grateful for the experience. The Last of Us and it’s sequel demonstrate this perfectly - neither is the longest game in existence, but i’d not trade a single moment of what I experienced for extra filler to make the game longer or make me feel I got more value out of it. I’ve had more than enough value from the ways both games challenged my view of the world and left me thinking about their stories as I drifted off at night.
4) Shareability: Do I want to tell my friends about this on What’s App the second I finish playing? Or do I want to go online and tweet about the joy the game’s given me. If the answer is yes, that’s a pretty clear sign it was a valuable experience to me. Firewatch is the perfect example of this - it only took a few hours to complete, but the second I put the controller down I was immediately on my phone telling people how much I’d loved it
5) Replayability - If a game only takes an hour to theoretically ‘complete’ a single iteration, that seems like poor value for money by anyone’s standards. But, there’s an entire genre of games out there - roguelikes - which make this their central hook. They’re devilishly difficult and reset to zero every time you die. But the experience is so compelling that you come back again and again - even when you’ve finally ‘completed’ the game. If a game offers that or offers a world or story i’m desperate to revisit, that is a value in its own right, without any need to consider the monetary costs.
All of these give much more interesting ways to judge the value of a game beyond the length of time it takes to complete - and more importantly, give gaming a value beyond just consuming hours of our lives. It places the emphasis on what really matters- the enjoyment we get from the experience - both in the immediate moment of playing it and further down the line.
That’s all for this issue - join me next week as I struggle to contain my excitement about the arrival of my PS5.
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