I Want To Be Ripped Off

It’s general opinion that we gamers get ripped off by ‘the man’, and the facts are plain to see that games are substantially higher priced than all other forms of entertainment – you can pick up a CD or DVD for £10 - £15, get the Internet for under £20, have Cable TV for not much more, and yet, despite the decreasing price of components, we gamers still have to pay £40 for the privilege of getting a disk to insert in our £150 consoles.

This may sound like I’m doing this for controversy and just to be different, but I LIKE games having high prices. I like having to save up for weeks to get them. I enjoy having to juggle my finances just to be able to afford ‘Go Go Super Happy Jump Jump: Pyon Pyon Pyon’*. I enjoy the task of wheeling and dealing on E-Bay just so I can go and blow my money in Stockport on the weekend. It’s all a part of the experience for me. It’s like game trying to get a game, teaching me NEVER to waste my money on a Megaman game ever again. (*fictional game name)

Thing is, if I could get games for pittance, I simply wouldn’t enjoy them as much as I do now. And I know. I was one of the masses that had my Playstation chipped to play copied games. I had a collection that was modest in comparison to any f my friends – my 30 was pitiful to their 100’s, but still, my thirst was insatiable – I’d read a review in OPSM 10, order the game from my Uncle's mate and then take it out of my chunky grey machine and put Premier Manager 98 back in – I just didn’t respect games anymore. They were an object that I could obtain easily and were of little value. I began to dislike gaming.

I fear that, if the prices of games dropped to below the £20, that it would have the same detrimental effect on my gaming habits, and, again, would lead to a dislike of gaming.

These are dark days for gaming, what with all this bankruptcy, and developers going out of business despite the number of consoles shifted, and developers really need all the money that they can get from games they develop, and if they don’t it’ll mean yet less games due to lack of money, meaning less games, meaning less money and so on and so forth. It’d start a very vicious circle for developers.

There are a few people who argue that, if the prices were dropped, more people would go out and buy the games, having a positive effect on the developers. I admit that it would have a positive effect on sales, and a huge one at that, but it’d mean that publishers would have to sell each disk to shops for around £5, and very little of this money actually gets back to the development houses to make more games. For the development teams to actually turn a profit on a game, they’d have to spend small amounts of time on it, thus costing them less money and meaning less risk for them. In turn, this would mean shorter, less detailed games, meaning more tedium for the gamers.

The Question is, would you rather spend £40 on a detailed, 20 hour game, or the £10-£20 that the game campaign people want games to be on a short, bland game?

There is the argument that games should be priced according to quality on content, which is a good idea, but with many flaws. *Beware: Stereotypes ahead* Lets use ‘Go Go Super Happy Jump Jump: Pyon Pyon Pyon’ as our example once more. Girls across the land would love how it combines the dance – mat with putting on make – up, all whilst tormenting teenage boys, whilst Boys would hate its bright colours, and dispise the fact that one of the mini-games tests how many men you can kick in the ‘private parts’ in 30 seconds. What price would you give the game? Would you charge different prices for boys and girls? The fact is that the level of enjoyment changes from person to person, and so a price on depth simply can’t be put.

People also don’t realise just how much it COSTS to make a game – it’s not like making a movie or CD – in both the aforementioned types of entertainment you don’t have a say in what happens – you can’t decide the storyline, or how long a character spends in one scene. There is no possible way you could ‘break’ a CD or Movie (unless you snap it, or course). People believe it’s a simple case of idea, drawings and published. They don’t understand that it takes hours of highly skilled, highly paid labour to make, test and publish games.

It’s like those blackmail adverts that the NSPCC, Oxfam and seeming every other charity seem to do around Christmas – your extra £10 could help create another game, or even keep a games company alive

High game prices may not be best for your wallet, your mother or whoever buys you your games. What it is good for is the industry. You’re paying for quality. Just remember that the next time you’re bitching because you can’t afford a new game.

Written by: Matthew Britton
Date: 15th August 2003
Email: matthew.tribute@ntlworld.com