The Witness and the price of games
 

MOD EDIT: This thread was split off from 'What are you playing right now' after this post.

Oh, The Witness. It's that game that I have never played.

Which costs goddamn almost 40€

And the creator (who also made Braid) is upset because people are pirating the game a lot, and is bad at connecting the dots. It's funny, because the game is about connecting the dots, at least I think it is.

This price is bullshit. It's an AAA type of game price. I'll never buy it at that price unless it's as good as MGS in terms of quality, quantity of content, and polish. And I doubt an indie dev consisiting of mostly one guy could achieve all those things in their game

AAA games on Steam are generally at least 50% more than this. And he's spent almost eight years on it. And it's apparently quite a big game. And it's certainly very pretty. Seems like a fine price to me.

Yes but are you seriously expecting Varrok to be reasonable about anything ever?

I can't really say, because I have not played it, but for an equivalent of 40 euros I can buy games like Bloodborne, boxed and with multiple times of everything, I think.

You can do only so much when youre a small indie dev team. From my perspective the price tag should be around 50% of that.

EDIT: FA beat me to it.

Also yeah she's right fuck that The witness sucks monkey dick and Jonathan Blow is a greedy asshole Fuck him as well.

It doesn’t matter how big an indie game is, no one wants to pay more than a few bucks because it’s “just an indie game”.

It's not about that.

Or.

Maybe it is about that? Let's think about it for a second.

An indie game. A game by an independent developer team, without a publisher. A small team, Thekla cosists of max. 15 members (according to wiki). The Witness is a puzzle game, with a 3D world with a simplistic, but vivid artstyle where you can freely roam, but with 2D puzzles (according to the reviews). I saw a few videos and the puzzles do not look particularily impressive, from a technical point of view:

http://i.imgur.com/CM2cdho.png

Some simple grids, lines and squares. That's all the puzzles, afair.

Now, pay close attention (especially you, Manco): I don't say the puzzles are bad. Maybe they're one of best, most mindblowing puzzles ever. But they're just squares and lines.

On the other hand we have Bloodborne, from lack of better price comparision, which is made by From Software, by around 220 people. (If it's like Dark Souls, then) it features carefully planned level design, unique art style, tons of high-quality 3D and 2D models and textures, detailed animations, cutscene directing, balanced rpg elements, days (if not months) of conceptual work of many smaller sub-teams, probably voice acting, writing, controls tweaked to perfection, quality testing and more and more and more... all packed in one video game, and, judging from the reviews, they all did a hell of a good job.

Those 40 euros put food in the mouths of all of them, all 220 people.

My point is: even if The Witness is a good game (I don't know! The reviewers have mixed opinions), the amount of work of 15 people is definitely not worth the price that's an equivalent of work of 220 people, who also did probably as great.

How can you even argue that?!

Simple: buying a video game isn’t a value proposition of “how many people’s families am I feeding?”, it’s a value proposition of how much you expect to enjoy the game.

I'm afraid you've never heard of price/quality relationship and don't really know the real value of money

I’m afraid you’re gonna make another post implying that the pricing of entertainment should be reduced to how many people worked on it.

Sure, disregard my lenghty post in favor of your tl;dr interpretation.

I did not say, or mean the thing *you* are implying.

Also, you know what?

Go fuck yourself.

You're basically ignoring everything I say on these forums, sometimes responding with ad hominems. It pisses me off when I'm actively trying to express my points with as many logical and rational arguments I can think of in a foreign language (it's extra hard) only to hear your stupid one line bullshit. You should seriously consider changing your fucking attitude. You are not 13 year old, goddamit!

Oh, you guys. You suck. Go fuck yourselves. I'm not making any arguments because that would be dumb and pointless. Fuck thyselves.

Surely Bloodborne was more expensive than The Witness upon release? The Witness doesn't seem like a AAA game price either. AAA games usually go for about £50 these days and the Witness is going for £30. It's a type of game that isn't going to appeal to everyone but it's also supposed to have 40+ hours of game time or so. Some websites claimed from 70-100 hours if you're an absolute completionist. And if you buy into the gameplay it's supposed to be a rewarding time - rather than being the mindless grinding you find pads out most AAA titles.

I don't think it really matters whether it took 15 people 7 years or 200 people less than one year to create a game like this.

I mean what about games like Shadow of the Colossus? Obviously more complicated in terms of number of mechanics and world interaction but I can imagine similar arguments saying it's a big empty, lifeless terrain with only 16 enemies and takes about 7 hours to beat and it should be way way cheaper than the latest Ratchet and Clank.

Sometimes a five-paragraph argument is so bad it can be refuted with a one-liner.

It's the labour theory of value (Varrok) versus the subjective theory of value (Manco).

I generally prefer games with a unique idea and a lot of passion put into them than most of the generic garbage AAA studios churn out.

The game cost is decided by whoever makes it. They can charge as much as they like and it's up to people to decide for themselves if they want to pay it. If Varrok doesn't think the price is justified you shouldn't try to convince him otherwise. I don't believe in judging goods by who is getting how much money from them though - if I think a game is worth the money I'll buy it, and if not I don't. Coincidentally I don't buy AAA games any more.

I wasn't angry because Manco didn't agree with me. I was angry because I think he's prejudiced against me to the point that he'd ignore or misrepresent my statements, because "it's only Varrok, he's wrong by default".

Thanks for more serious responses guys.