It's always been fascinating to me how entertainment is valued- especially video games. (Note: this isn't directed at
you Dan, it just got me thinking!) On the whole, people seem to value playing games less than many other types of fun, or commodities. You see people complaining like children on Steam over how they got screwed out of five dollars when they've spent several hours playing something that a bunch of people slaved over for a long time, but will not bat an eye on paying three times as much for fast-food that will be scarfed down in five minutes. (Or paying ten times that for a shot of very fine whiskey.)
A movie costs up to around $20 for an adult and that's roughly two hours of non-interactive entertainment. A game, on the other hand, involves you in ways movies do not. (That's not to say they are "better" of course, just different, and games today can engage people emotionally almost the same way that movies do, even if it's more rare.)
If someone is playing a game and having fun doing it, what amount of playing time needs to be met before the game has reached the same value as a film?
Around 1985, a Star Trek game that looked like this cost about
$120 in a computer shop (I remember seeing it at a mall as a kid):
https://img.purch.com/rc/600x450/aH...lay1UaGUtS29iYXlvc2hpLUFsdGVybmF0aXZlLmpwZw==
Compare that to what you get today for a lot less, Battlefront for example. (Naturally, things like potential sales numbers and team size play a big part in pricing.) I think this is especially interesting since I'm currently working on a "passion project" indie game. (It's called "
Lone Star Pilot™... think the space exploration of 1980s game "Starflight", the slow submarine-in-space combat of "The Wrath of Khan" and the melee derelict-infiltration combat of "Aliens", as viewed from Gorman's perspective.) When it's done it'll have
several man-years of work put into it by only 2-3 people, but it's not going to have triple-A production values. It'll have fairly primitive, if unique, graphics but hopefully give maybe 20-40 hours of gameplay that will be pure joy to a small core group of maybe a few thousad but utter boredom to most others. And I already wonder what kinds of discussions will be taking place, depending on what it ends up costing.
Sorry for the derail... but it's very interesting to see how games are valued.
I think you're seeing a few factors at work.
1. Entertainment is not valued consistently by consumers. By that, I mean there isn't an absolute continuum on which all entertainment is valued by the consumer, such that it's really legitimate to compare the cost for a movie and the entertainment it provides against the cost of a game and the entertainment it provides. Consumers value these two commodities differently. Even though they're both "entertainment," I think consumers just think of them...differently, and therefore evaluate them differently, and
therefore value the experiences they provide differently.
2. A big part of what you're seeing is driven by the economics of the industry itself. The price for a video game has generally remained stable for a long time. It's risen with inflation, but it's actually probably lagged behind inflation itself. So, a $30-40 PC game in 1992, adjusted for modern dollar values, probably cost
more than the $50-60 game you get today. Still, games have basically hovered anywhere between $20 and $60 for a looooong time. Some publishers have tried to goose this by offering things like pre-order incentives, special limited editions, and, of course, pre-purchasing DLC through things like Season Passes. But the absolute cost to the customer still basically hovers at around $50-60 for a basic game, with around $20-40 for the "expansion packs"/season pass/whatever. Compare that to the cost of a movie ticket, which has steadily risen over time from $5 to anywhere from $10-15 nowadays (Depending on the theater).
3. I think the interactive nature of the game necessarily makes consumers
more critical of them. The game is supposed to entertain you differently compared to a movie. Your interaction with it is the yardstick by which you measure it. There are tons of factors that contribute to the end-user experience in a PC or console game. The UI, ease of controls, smoothness of gameplay, innovative gameplay design, sound design, graphical design, network connectivity, etc., etc., etc., to say nothing of
story. A film has to do some of that, but it's a completely different experience. What's more, again by virtue of the long history of game design, the expectation is that a game will provide anywhere from 15 to
unlimited hours of entertainment. A movie just has to entertain you for 2-ish hours. What's more, I think that, because of that expectation, people will tend to keep
trying to make a game entertain them, even if it doesn't initially. In some cases, they will indeed end up enjoying it more as they become more familiar with it, but in many many cases, I think people just become more frustrated because they kept trying to find something entertaining about the game, and it kept failing them. Whereas with a bad movie, your own investment can be much less significant, both in terms of time and in terms of emotional investment. For example, I thought Crouching Tiger was a dumb movie. Pretty visuals, otherwise garden variety Kung Fu Theater story, and a lame ending that didn't really satisfy me. But what I didn't do was keep watching, and watching, and watching, hoping to find enjoyment. With games, though, I've definitely struggled and struggled to try to
make the game entertain me, and gotten increasingly frustrated with it when it didn't (I'm looking at you, Dark Souls...). That naturally influences the consumer's reaction to the game.
Also, your game sounds intriguing! Will the melee combat be turn-based or real-time?
