Skankerzero you are wrong, i'm the second to point this out to you. you have the right idea but its backwards. below is a graphic that i found.
ps. I love it when someone has already done what i originally set out to do. its truely a beautiful thing. especially for time wasters like forums, to explain to someone something so basic.
yes the dollar is weaker cause the purchasing power of today's dollar is less, commodities like milk, bread etc cost more today than they did in 1950 or whatever year. those comprise the items that determine inflation rates so a game that's priced $60 today should theoretically sell for $36 back then. but new games were never priced like that back then hence games are cheaper now than games in 1993 that have been adjusted for inflation.
that's all without getting into the world economy argument cause that's a huge headache to discuss without both people having knowledge of economy history (bretton woods/ nixon shock) and what money actually is (lookup fiat currency and hell why not also lookup anything on value theory)
One thing forgotten. Volume. There are more players then there ever have been worldwide. So though a unit is cheaper, the volume of sales can make up for it..... Sometimes.
There is also the idea that many games these days are short versus in the past with longer playthroughs.. So if you go on an hourly rate, dollar to dollar (without inflation). The older would win.
I guess what I am saying is yes, inflation wise games are cheaper. But there are these other factors to consider before calling for higher prices... Which is another thing. The amount of competition out there from all these different devices.. its going to drive the price down from where it otherwise would be. The industry as a whole across all devices would have to agree to raise prices. I don't see that happening.
@oXYnary
There's a lot of short older games without a lot of content. They often used perma-death to extend play times. There's many old games that take less than 3 hours if you can play it straight through without losing. In modern games we use multiplayer to extend play time.
@oXYnary
There's a lot of short older games without a lot of content. They often used perma-death to extend play times. There's many old games that take less than 3 hours if you can play it straight through without losing. In modern games we use multiplayer to extend play time.
Most games from any era will last less than a hand-full of hours playing straight through without dying or restarting, cut-scenes notwithstanding.
Multiplayer is a different can of worms entirely; a way to get more playtime out of less work/content (ie people playing the same thing/area/mission repeatedly for a while).
I think the average $60 game has about an 8 hour play time. Of course you could play some older games for a lot more than that, but for most games you were still paying $60 for hour a few hours worth of content you HAVE TO repeat over and over. Besides RPGS.
Replies
ps. I love it when someone has already done what i originally set out to do. its truely a beautiful thing. especially for time wasters like forums, to explain to someone something so basic.
yes the dollar is weaker cause the purchasing power of today's dollar is less, commodities like milk, bread etc cost more today than they did in 1950 or whatever year. those comprise the items that determine inflation rates so a game that's priced $60 today should theoretically sell for $36 back then. but new games were never priced like that back then hence games are cheaper now than games in 1993 that have been adjusted for inflation.
that's all without getting into the world economy argument cause that's a huge headache to discuss without both people having knowledge of economy history (bretton woods/ nixon shock) and what money actually is (lookup fiat currency and hell why not also lookup anything on value theory)
One thing forgotten. Volume. There are more players then there ever have been worldwide. So though a unit is cheaper, the volume of sales can make up for it..... Sometimes.
There is also the idea that many games these days are short versus in the past with longer playthroughs.. So if you go on an hourly rate, dollar to dollar (without inflation). The older would win.
I guess what I am saying is yes, inflation wise games are cheaper. But there are these other factors to consider before calling for higher prices... Which is another thing. The amount of competition out there from all these different devices.. its going to drive the price down from where it otherwise would be. The industry as a whole across all devices would have to agree to raise prices. I don't see that happening.
There's a lot of short older games without a lot of content. They often used perma-death to extend play times. There's many old games that take less than 3 hours if you can play it straight through without losing. In modern games we use multiplayer to extend play time.
Most games from any era will last less than a hand-full of hours playing straight through without dying or restarting, cut-scenes notwithstanding.
Multiplayer is a different can of worms entirely; a way to get more playtime out of less work/content (ie people playing the same thing/area/mission repeatedly for a while).