Bullfrog Productions, game featured: Populous, acquired by EA in 1995
Maxis, game featured: Sim City 2000, acquired by EA in 1997
Westwood Studios, game featured: Command and Conquer - Red Alert, acquired by EA in 1998
DreamWorks Interactive LLC, game featured: Medal of Honor, acquired by EA in 2000
Honorable mention to Mythic Entertainment/Bioware, acquired by EA in 2006
Song referenced: Runaway Train - Soul Asylum
Huh. Pricey for early access.
However what I will say directly is that non of the following ups came ven close to catching the spirit of the first. The biggest aspect of they miss is that I. the first, your agents are semi autonomous. You can directly control them, but they also just kinda do their own thing if you want.
The play style was more of a mix between like… a 4 person shooter squad and maybe… warcraft where you can just send the units off to do something.
I loved syndicate, but not any of the followups and especially not satellite reign. It completely missed the point of the first game, which was almost more resource and unit management.
Whu? What early access games are you playing? The only ones I’ve seen be less than 30 dollars for early access are games that were never going to be 30 dollars in the first place.
Well I don’t pay for early access, which to me, seems like it should be cheaper because you are buying something in a less than finished state.
Also, $30 for any new title, seems high.
I know I have railed against the “AAAA” grasp at $70 price point for new games (and I will continue to do so) but making games does cost something. And, unless you’re only buying indie ‘experiences’ with runtimes in the refund range, I think $30 is reasonable for a video game. Especially when sales will knock that down by at least 50%, eventually.
It just goes to show, no matter what position you have, someone will exist that goes further.
Oh you are more than correct. I’m just slow to buy games because there is such a large backlog of amazing games out there. For example, I only played Witcher 3 last summer.
Also, I’m old. PC games used to be much cheaper in terms of real physical dollars. And they were no better or worse than what is available now. An example I can provide is quite literally, Syndicate. I got it as part of a one of those big cardboard sleeves of 6-10 cds you could buy from places like compucenter or other big box stores. I think it was on the order of like… $10-30? It was a mix of demos, freeware, and full games. I know for a fact that in the same sleeve that I got Syndicate in, I also got Populous and Realms in the same pack, either 1993 or 1994. At least one or two of the CD’s were just a bunch of demos or small free-ware games. Those were the games I remember and it had 5 other games, at least.
So in inflation adjusted dollars we’re taking $35. For all that. Practically new, when there was no such thing as digital distribution. These days everyone seems to think their “whatever” game is worth, a lot? But like, it didn’t used to be this way. What would be considered AAA games were simply cheaper (for the PC versions) in real inflation adjusted dollars, back in the day.
There was a fundamentally different spirit around games back then, especially PC games.
The Realmz demo was such a good game, I probably put hundred or thousands of hours in. And I bought a bunch of the expansions. Its mind-boggling to me how they weren’t sued into oblivion by D&D, because it was basically a clone of AD&D. The expansions, you quite literally just mailed them cash and got mailed back codes.
Pretty sure the “spirit” back then was just a combination of the same indie spirit as now and the moneymen selling low because they weren’t sure parents would be willing to buy that much, at the cost of the video game makers? Now, the money knows people like games and those owners exploit both the makers and the consumers.
But that doesn’t mean real craftspeople should give away their work for some vague artistic pride. Not even looking at what that same $35 dollars will get you today vs in the 80s or 90s.
This isn’t to castigate you, or anyone, waiting for price drops and sales. I do too. But saying all games are too expensive does not go.
I think part of it thats being missed is that the teams of people who came together to make these games, they were much much much much much smaller.
Realmz, the example I gave, it was three people. In total. Design, marketing, management, everything. Even “big” game development companies were tiny by today’s standards.
This has two effects that I identify. The first is increasing costs. You have far more people doing less work. More overhead, more teams not directly connected to creating the thing. Because of this approach to developing games, they do cost more.
Also, games, because they are more expensive, need more financing, and thus need a broader general appeal. We got more design by committee, and less design by people building the game they personally wanted to play, which may not have broad appeal.
However, I think that becomes a flywheel of bad design/ bad implementation. The counter examples to this point are games like dwarf fortress, the original Dota, Stardew Valley, Animal Well. These are games with a practically singular creative vision for what the game should be, and they gain huge traction and followings. And the common thread, is that the people who made these games, they built the games they themselves wanted to play.