I don't deny there are ways for the individual to work around this. My issue is that there are people out there who sit in offices intentionally doing everything they can to bleed people dry of every penny they can, and that they're doing it in a way that I believe erodes deeper criticism of videogaming. When people discuss films, books, comics and other media, the topic of cost is very rarely addressed except in extreme circumstances. When it comes to modern games, the primary topic of discussion is price - is the game """""good""""" enough to warrant that price tag? It boils the topic down to a very binary metric, which in turn diminishes engagement.
People in this thread have mentioned JRPGs because they're longer, and so to them, by default are more financially satisfying. I'd argue however that the only reason we use that as a metric of judgement in the first place, is because of this toxic developer/consumer relationship. Developers pad games because they know a longer run time is more compelling, specifically because they know they're charging ludicrous prices
I can talk about how companies intentionally being evil and greedy to make money, but on the other hand how business is cannot be understood properly when you reduce nature of business into how ordinary people lives like because a company is an organization that can only exist because of customers as long as they make enough profit to justify their operation and costs. So despite it has relation to "being evil" and "greed" this is more about fundamental element to survive as a company.
Business 101:
1- Know what kind of industry you plan to survive in: Video game industry.
2- Know your rivals: Capcom, Sony, Nintendo...
3- Know how your rivals survive and what is usual in the industry: DLCs, broken game launches that require a decade fix, service models, DRM, Denuvo...
4- Know your target audience:
- Rich enough people. Profile of rich people: Spending money on things they won't even use is therapeutic for them. They often buy anything that is popular just because they want to be a superior person in the social level they believe they belong to.
- Ordinary folks who can afford video games: They often buy games in huge sells.
5- Know how to sell video games:
- Digital disturubation services are a hot cake. Those people even buy physical games anymore? Just to satisfy such people we can only afford to produce limited collectors edition items though.
- Rich people pre-orders, no problem with that but we know not everyone wanna pay that much so from time to time our games being on sell matters to strategically use the sell potential of the game to make money as much as we can to survive and most importantly we can afford to start development of another game without risking having a business death and shutdown our company + we gotta make sure we have money enough to bounce from fails + make sure to have money enough to deal with potential economical crisis + make sure to have enough money to face changes in the industry to keep up + make sure to have enough money so we can afford to pay our employees + make sure to have enough money for in case how taxes is in our country and the countries we make business with changes + make sure to have enough money for in case of crisis in our country and even global crisis like wars, natural disaster and whanot so we can have money to relocate and protect our asset... This shit is so money based it's based a lot on how much money you have so you can survive yo.
6- Constantly scan society to make sure our video games won't offend, it can be enjoyable for people so basically we can release a video game people would buy.
Long story short video game industry one of the hardest industry for companies to even exist, so you're asking a lot when their operational cost increase but they are still being generous just because all they can do is like they spend $59 for production but they ask $70 to compensate their cost and make enough profit. To make a significant profit they have to sell games around a few millions to cover their cost + make enough money to ensure they can survive in next 5 years especially when dark days comes if it ever.
X- Business Fail 101
It doesn't mean despite companies does whatever they can to survive they always make realistic decisions. Spending too much budget on games that only can attract little kids and then asking $40 price is stupid. Personally I think asking AAAA price for this shit Silent Hill fuck game stupid too. People will buy it but what is important is something what most companies cannot do:
V- V for Victory necessary Business 101 fundamental reality: Being able to relate society. I often see that those who had great life assumes most people in the world also have unfortunate lives. Most people who works in a company that is rather "above layer" had a family who never had to think about not using TV for a week to save for electricity bill to afford food. They didn't have to live with debts. They were educated in university but they never thought how much it costs. They have no idea of ordinary struggle of how much ordinary people always have to suffer from. This shit is beyond of "oh no because this game is expensive I'll skip buying da new iPhone phone this month!" but when people complain about price of games it is what these company guys imagine why. They believe "you spend $200000 on gacha waifus in random porn game so we know you can afford $100 for our way better video game that is actually meaningful to play". This is where how even Public Relations department of companies being stupid on analyzing society wrongly and they having a target audiance that really doesn't exist. It make them confused when their game fail to sell more than 2 millions but when it sells a lot they praise their development team and they shut down the team by saying good bye "we will always remember you when we discuss about our past successes" lolol.
In this context the fundamental compnay level mistake is so many people in the company believe video games released before 2010 was like "developed by cavemen without any cohorent mind and edacuate real deal education to develop video games but we are expert at video game development by experience and proper education" mentality. That's why they believe, despite they are not gamer, it make them develop Netflix fuck BS fake games just because "Netflix makes money a lot" + "I don't care about what is a game but this is what I want games to be" and they develop games by following basics of how to direct a movie but they try to twist it to video game format. That's why they think as long as you put cutscenes and pew pew shooting and then walking with "cinematic BS" game gotta sell because this is not how "ancient games" were like. If you had asked them why pre-PS3 era games sold they would say "people didn't know what a video game supposed to be but they bought these games just because there was no other game to play, now we compete with so many cinematic games we had to hire a whole crew as if we developing a movie". That's is the prime reason why video game prices increased just for nonsense budget to cover so they can put nonsense "cinematic experience" no one asked lolol. Another BS of this topic is in job market how video game development started to be legit so much there are people educated for different aspect of video game development and therefore they believe fresh out of collage they became "god of game developer" whose video game development education can surpses "uneducated twats like Hideo Kojima" so they ask tons of money or "no one will work for you, mate. If you want pay me satisfactoraly then you better make the cleanining lady the video game director and make the ordinary video game tester the head of programmers despite he doesn't even know how computers works" lolol. In the end tons of people in companies believe video game industry is just like movie industry and video games are just interractive movies. They seriously believe that and this is how they define "AAA" and "AAAA" video games anymore and this is what they try to do which their brain fart mentality causes a big reason for price increase. They believe "fuck gameplay, just put a social message, dude these walking simulator games are so popular so instead of scenes that characters walk make the characters walk to save budget, more than real-life realistic graphics that make your RTX 4090 scream like A donkey, sexy characters, tons of nonsense dialogues and BS to watch just because people pay for Netflix" because "this is what you want so pay us $100, ensuring to produce games you want really expensive yo" lol.
In the end price is one thing, the real thing is companies started to believe so much world population gotta mean necessary +2 million sale considering how much "rich enough people" there gotta be and video gaming is a popular hobby so it make them delusionally believe their games will necessarily sell lol.
TL;DR: Current prices is because of ensuring company can exist, economy, politics, to ensure they can start developing new games even when they failed hard in previous game so they can bounce from hell and also how stupid they are due to the delusion that if they don't release Netflix-like games they can't sell well that significantly increases budget a lot, job market increased how much employees want or they won't work for companies, they sacrifice ordinary people to rely on rich people to make profit because they believe most people have tons of money to spend mindlessly ("so why not they would buy our $100 games?") + they rely on the mentality of considering how much people exist in our world they are so sure they will necessarily sell more than +2 millions no matter what fuck game they release for whatever price just because video gaming is a popular hobby anymore.
