Brian Intiger, creative director of the Insomniac Games, in an interview with BBC discussed the eternal issue of price ratio and duration of video games and, in particular, Marvel’s Spider-Man 2.
As you probably know, Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, like other exclusives for PlayStation and most AAA-IGR, is sold at a standard price of $ 69.99. As for the duration of the game, according to IGN estimates, with very fast passage, you can get to the credits in 18 hours, and 100%passage and receiving the coveted platinum trophy will take from 25 to 30 hours.
But is it so important that the game lasts a certain number of hours in relation to financial costs? For Intigara, the question is different: Inomniac Games seeks to make a quality game that will fully satisfy the consumer, regardless of the number of hours necessary for its passage.
For us, the main thing is the experience we want to get, and the quality we want to achieve. Obviously, we also think about things like "Hey, someone is going to spend so much money on the game", Therefore, we want to give them an experience that is worth it. Our work is to make sure that the buyer feels that, regardless of the duration of the game, it costs the money spent that it costs invested.
As already mentioned, the duration of Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 is from 18 to 30 hours, depending on whether you want to participate in side effects and at what pace you will take place. In the coming months, the Insomaniac Games will also offer the reasons to return to New York with the emergence of a regime "A new game+" By the end of 2023, as well as possible extensions that have not yet been announced.
If the game brings pleasure, then you want to stretch it longer. And if stretching occurs due to the grind and dumb -generated repeated tasks, then you should not. If it is 18-30 hours of high, then why not?:)
But I am another incomprehensible (Soryatan for a lot of text, but even I wanted to be painted):
Okay earlier, the games were only on disks, no digital stores. The price of production, the price of a disk, the price of logistics for its distribution by stores and the wrapping of these same stores were laid down in the price. I exaggerate of course, but for example the developer released 1 million discs in roughly and sent them around the world with a price tag of 10 bucks, thereby earning 10 million bucks. There was a strict calculation between price and purchasing ability, roughly speaking, 100 bucks each in those days would take units.
Now another situation is that there is no logistics, but unit boxing publications (in Japan, for example, because they are Old Believers). Games are sold in 99% of cases in digit, and the figure is just a unique key, and these keys can be an infinite set.
And now the developer complains that the development costs a lot of money – and sell the game 70 bucks for the key. So, purely my IMHO lies in the fact that 10 million people buys a game of 70 bucks (we know this from reports on the sales of certain titles, again I averages. There are games that have not dispersed a million, there are those that have parted dozens). So it seems to me that if the games were sold now 10 bucks, and not 70, it would be much more than the gasters to buy them. Really more. Let’s say once every ten, or even twenty. And in terms of grandmothers, it turns out that it is more profitable to sell 100 million copies of 10 bucks than to sell 10 million copies of 70 bucks. And returning to the question that "delivery" the consumer games are carried out through the figure, it is deeply incomprehensible to me what prevents this.
Ultimately, a decrease in the price will solve a number of problems:
1. There will be much fewer pirates because 10 bucks can afford that everyone, but many. But not all, not all, many are waiting for discounts or cracks, that is, ultimately the game for 70 bucks buy at the start the most devoted Zhdunes and fans.
2. There will be fewer complaints about the quality of the game, since 10 bucks are not something that you risk so much buying conditional, unlike 70 bucks, when you get out of this most, you will boil and make the refund. You also write an angry review.
3. In the online games there will be much more community, since more people were able to afford the game. And even if a large percentage has eliminated as it usually happens, there will be many users all the same in the game. Therefore, online projects will live longer, a lobby and so on are filled faster.
Well, in general, I don’t know why it doesn’t reach marketers that by creating a game, they can endlessly sell it without any problems since they simply generate licensed keys that give the right to legally download this very result of the development (game). This is not the production of cars or tanks, where to continue to produce the product, you need to extract metal on an ongoing basis, cast it, supplement the other physical components of TD. You wrote the game code once and that’s it, copy it endlessly, sell the keys to these same copies! But for some reason it doesn’t reach them.