As we head into the greatest time of the year, my wallet starts to cry out for mercy. There so many great games coming out. Off the top of my head there are 5 titles in November alone that I must have. Thankfully I am an adult and I handle my business, so I can spend as much as I want on games. This of course doesn't stop me from attempting to try to get the most for my money. I look for sales, see who has the best rewards program and invest accordingly. While doing my window shopping through Amazon, Gamestop, Xbox Live and Playstation Network I came across something very disturbing. Perhaps it's just me, but things look a little bleaker than previous years. Not the selection, as much as all the extra jive. I know developers have to make their money and, unlike music or movies, I've never pirated a game and never will.
But holy crap does every game need a season pass?
The profit margin for videogames is very slim. I feel like developers almost have to hold back a bit just to make back the money they put into a game. Who doesn't love a little politics in their entertainment medium of choice. In 1982 Space Invaders had generated $2 billion dollars. Today, videogames are a $92 billion dollar industry. When you have that kind of money, you're going to have politics. Everybody wants their hand in the pie. From Season’s Passes to DLC, it's not really difficult to believe that developers finish a game and then spend the rest of their development time trying to decide what will be a part of their downloadable content.
It's really beneficial when publishers and developers are one. It absolutely sucks and is inane most of the time(remember Oblivion’s horse armor), even the optional ones set a new standard of playing. If you don't have all of the map packs, good luck finding consistent matches. There was a time when we hoped it would go away. We continued to accept it, facilitate it and quietly complain. Now, it's too big to stop. There is way too much money being made. It's like the entire development process has changed. Post release profitability seems like it's in discussions from the first storyboard. Gameplay talks include powers that can be sold, and stage design talks have to bring up map packs.
Gears of War began charging money for colored guns in a $60 game in its third installment, something that used to be a built-in customization option in an already expensive game. Mass Effect 3 added a co-op mode that had built-in micro-transactions for loot that otherwise would take hours and hours and hours to unlock and the latest news is that Dragon Age: Inquisition, one of the most anticipated titles of the year, will include micro-transactions. Even the next Assassin’s Creed is expected to have micro-transactions.
EA is on track to break a company record in potentially earning $1 billion in revenue from DLC. In a Bloomberg feature on the release of Madden NFL 15, they talk about the inordinate amount of micro-transactions in the game, including one for $99. So it’s clear that much of the revenue from EA’s sports releases comes from charging extra for in-game items instead of include them in the main game. This is not new and fans will be familiar with the Ultimate Team system – a mode that may earn EA Sports a whopping $50 million alone, according to an estimate by industry analyst Doug Creutz from Cowen & Co.
Cowen & Co., an equity research group, estimates that the extra content EA is charging in their lineup of 2014 releases could bring in a billion dollars this year. This will be a new record for EA in an age where the current-gen gaming platforms are pushing digital content more than ever. Think about the last time you visited the home page of your favorite place to play. How many ads were there? What was offered to you to enhance your videogame experience? Hell, even the much-loved Playstation Plus free games and the much maligned Games With Gold are simply ways to get you to spend money. The rationale behind this is simple: give a mouse a cookie, bet that sucker will want some milk. At its peak, Candy Crush Saga was bringing in an estimated $700 thousand dollars a day. That's roughly $29 thousand dollars an hour. When I have off time I usually play for a few hours at a time. So my $60 dollars I spent pale in comparison to the bigger picture and the bottom line of developers and publishers. Mainly publishers. There's no mystery and no real grand scheme. There is one motivating, driving factor.
Money.
No one will argue with paying for a good experience. As we start the second year in a current console generation, we need to ask ourselves how much are we willing to pay. I'm not judging any developer or publisher. I'm not even saying we should demand more. Right now videogames are expensive to make and, for the foreseeable future, expensive to play. The sky is blue and the grass is green. It just is what it is.