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NoahFuel [any] @hexbear.net

people are right to be upset their hobby is pricing them out.

"Mario 64 was 60 dollars in 1995 meaning that it would be about 100 dollars today"

Pay has NOT kept up with inflation. People are poorer.

Folk need to stop pretending like people have as much money as they did in the 90s. Rent costs, house prices are astronomical.

Xbox's business is still impacted today by outpricing people with their initial Xbox One reveal pricing a decade ago.

Nintendo Treehouse comments are absolutely packed with people complaining about prices.

Again, I'm vastly aware that game budgets, inflation etc have increased!

but Pay has NOT increased accordingly. I don't know the solution, but that's the reality.

And I make these points as someone who is lucky enough to earn well enough to just buy them regardless. Most aren't as fortunate.

Game bubbles regularly disregard the poor, unfortunately, as the industry has an above-average number of middle-class background workers.

Price increases combined with physical knock effectively prices the poor out of legally gaming (Buying directly from them/the digital store)

77 comments

  • Counterarguments:

    1. Piracy is easier than ever. You really shouldn't be paying for games in 2015, let alone 2025.
    2. Most games that are resistant to piracy are AAA slop that's not worth playing in 2015, let alone 2025.

    For almost everything else, I agree, people should be pissed that they're being priced out of their hobbies. But for games, all I can muster at this point is "you still pay for games?"

    And there's another point to consider: games used to improve leaps and bounds relative to their predecessors. When you bought SM64 in 1996, you're not just buying a generic game, but you're buying one of the first 3d platformers, a paradigm-shattering game. It's $60 (or however it costs in 1996) to go from SMW to SM64. Can you name a single contemporary game that has the same leap in progress from SMW to SM64? You absolutely can't. You could make the same argument for the old classics like Doom 1 or Starcraft. Going from Warcraft II to Starcraft is worth the 60 bucks while another iteration of a long-running series where barely anything changed isn't. I would argue if you try to value games using genre-defining classics of the past as a guide, the vast majority of games aren't worth $5 since the vast majority of games aren't era-defining or genre-defining or even that good, which is why piracy is the way to go.

    • While I agree that Mario 64 is genre defining, I could probably name 20 indie games that I find more fun, ( subjective I know) without much difficulty. I would even go as far as to say that Hollow Knight or Celeste easily rival Mario 64 in terms of enjoyment, even if they arent as historically significant.

  • All of my hobbies and interests are getting priced out of my reach: video games, tabletop games, fursuits, 3D printing, photography, etc. The only thing I can do is get up, go to work, and try to survive.

  • thing is, economics of scale should reduce the price of digital games (which are essentially unlimited supply) and even the physical games which are at least manufactured using ubiquitous SD card technologies (a 256GB card, more than any game on the NS2 will be, costs like £30 at retail). Of course, software incurs a labour cost that is factored into software prices.

    The only part of the commodity in question that could conceivably increase in price across a generation is the console, due to new/modified factory lines, retraining of staff etc. and the R&D that went into it.

    We know from experience that software for these consoles does not need to increase in price over generations. Development costs are independent of the target platform beyond the cost of purchasing devkits and licenses (which is zero for a first party studio).

    Perhaps a new system means your assets can be higher quality so you spend more time making them or something, but even then most assets are compressed and simplified, so in that sense a new platform would save some effort since optimisation is less necessary.

    Point being, I might know jack shit about LTV and economics in general but the choice of inflating software prices is exactly that: a choice. It's a simple accounting decision to try and exhaust extra revenue streams by inflating every aspect of your platform's costs until they impact your profits.

    It sucks for many of us, but Nintendo is just doing what Zynga and EA and Ubisoft did long ago: they're sacrificing their reputation and overall sales numbers for the suckers who will dedicate their entire existences to funnelling money into these companies who have discovered the rent-seeking phase of capitalism.

  • The funny thing about this take is making and distributing a game has never been cheaper, just cos the cost of games hadn't gone up in price doesn't mean companies were doing this out of charity... Also games have gone up in price indirectly with dlc, season passes, battle passes, cosmetics, lootboxes.

    Damb the game companies are so kind and nice to us that must be why they're raking in more cash than ever before!

    By the looks of things nobody except ultimate goobers hold this take anymore fortunately

  • im nearly convinced all these people saying that shit are bots meant to condition people into being okay with being screwed.

    all the justifications are bs. like you pointed out, how pay hasnt kept up

    in addition, im not sure how companies feeling the need to spend 300 million dollars on a video game somehow makes it our problem that we have to pay for. the top people at these companies are making bank. clearly they aren’t hurting for funds. why should we all have to pay for their lifestyle and then be gaslit with this “modern games are just so expensive to make” shit

  • Yeah, it's what anti-marxist and anti-intellectual society does. The most energy someone will put into an internet argument is repeating a fake stat they saw someone else say on social media. And the $90USD price people kept repeating incorrectly.

    • Also, you can see people empathize a lot more with Nintendo than they do the people buying and playing the games. They enjoy putting themselves into Mr. Nintendo's shoes and how they'd price games and make profit in the company. They do not enjoy thinking about if they were poor and couldn't afford it at all.

  • my hot take is gaming is not a hobby and never was... its a past-time. its semantics but whatever.

    a hobby is something like painting, or fixing up an old car, or doing some amateur music production with a friend... something creative or something that develops a creative skill. sports also dont count as a hobby. past-times can be pretty cheap or free, like hiking.

    • This is an absurd take. Even by this pointlessly reductive definition of a hobby, plenty of video games and sports still count. Do you honestly think there's more creativity involved in fixing a car than creating an entire city in City Skylines, or figuring out new tricks on a skateboard? Watch a video of Danny MacAskill on his bike and ask yourself if that's honestly less creative than fixing a car.

      • Do I think that there is more creative skill in rebuilding a car, getting involved in metal fabrication and so on, than place some pre-made digital assets around a city in a video game? Yes, I absolutely do and I think it's ridiculous to pretend otherwise.

        I go into hobby shops all the time. They sell kits for building RC cars and planes and boats. They sell stuff for painting or sculpting. A craft shop also sells the stuff for hobbies. I have never been into a hobby shop that sells footballs, or baseballs, keyboards, skateboards, or anything else. These aren't hobbies. Some of these things are sports, which are different.

        For the record I do both things. I do hobbies like painting miniatures. I enjoy past-times like watching shows and video games. I also do outdoor activities like kayaking or just doing nature walks/hikes. I'm not belittling any of this stuff. You do whatever you like in your free time. Only you can decide the exact value of what you do.

    • That is certainly a hot take. I guess you also dont consider reading books a hobby since that is basically the same as watching tv ? Or working out also isnt a hobby since its not creative ? And gaming also isnt a hobby. So I guess I dont have hobbies :^)

      • Working out is absolutely not a hobby by any definition of the word. Reading books and watching TV are definitely past-times. Sure, it can be enriching, like how a sport can exercise the body. Not a hobby, though.

    • come on, this is a bit curmudgeonly. ridiculous to say sports don't count lol

    • I mean, not to get "they targeted gamers" on anyone here but some games do fit that definition. Especially in the era of games like Minecraft which became mediums for creativity and skill.

      It might be less tangible than a physical painting but people make art and express creativity in videogames, even games where those expressions aren't intentional.

      I'm not too fussed about whether it is or isn't a hobby (either way it's enjoyed enough to piss people off) but I wouldnt want you to assume that videogames cannot be used to develop or express creativity either.

    • Gaming is practically cheap or free too. There are computers everywhere and abandonware, emulators/roms, piracy or magic like openttd or openmw.

      Communism isn’t mere treats. We may not even be able to promise people much like that anyway.

  • Some people have bought in the chud cultural war and in mindless contrarianism defend multi million dollar companies. Like babe you aren’t owning anyone but yourself.

  • Inflation is good now actually? So chuds should be going on the defense of Bidenomics now right? Biden's only economic policy was "cause inflation" so he should be the chud hero

  • Pay has NOT kept up with inflation. People are poorer.

    Do you have any kind of source for that beyond just vibes? Cause generally speaking, pay absolutely has kept up with inflation for the last 30 years. There are plenty of reasons to hate game companies but "won't someone think of the treats" isn't very compelling lol

    • There are plenty of reasons to hate game companies but "won't someone think of the treats" isn't very compelling lol

      fuck Nintendo and all, but it sounds like you're arguing only rich people should be able to afford video games... ://

      Cause generally speaking, pay absolutely has kept up with inflation for the last 30 years

      are you referring to US?

      it hasn't kept up with inflation in the US. you can check almost any median wage chart v. inflation.

      edit: just randomly: 137% inflation since 1990 whereas wages only increased 34.3%.

      https://inflacalc.com/inflation/us/1990/to/2024

      https://www.gobankingrates.com/money/economy/median-american-household-income-over-last-40-years/

      https://politicalcalculations.blogspot.com/2025/01/median-household-income-in-november-2024.html

      the picture is even more dire with you compare it to an accurate CPI like True Living Cost or Common Man [sic] CPI.

      if you're talking about inflation in video games (i think you are), you're probably absolutely right that it hasn't increased compared to the median wages.

      • Your links seem to agree with me? This is from the third one, income adjusted for inflation has still increased.

        fuck Nintendo and all, but it sounds like you're arguing only rich people should be able to afford video games... ://

    • If a person is lucky to have a job that does inflation matching that’s great but I know a lot of people that are barely making a dollar more per hour than was common a decade ago while the cost of everything has gone up astronomically. To me it’s not really about “think of the treats” as much it is everything has gotten outrageously expensive (which the treats are just a component of), particularly the last 5 years, while they’re cutting assistance, and minimum wage is still like 7 bucks.

      • Who are these mythical people that are making a barely a dollar more than a decade ago? In the last five years alone, the bottom 10% saw the largest real wage growth (i.e. adjusted for inflation) in decades.

77 comments