7 ms·

Unions would very likely increase game prices. I will happily pay more for games in exchange for better conditions for game developers.

cazum 8y ago
Game prices are going to increase anyway. Last year, EA made over a billion dollars in profits. If they aren't using that money to improve the working conditions of developers, what makes you think the solution is to give them more money?
- Rebelgecko 8y ago
  When you look at the prices of the games themselves, they're fairly cheap today. For the last couple console generations, the cost of a new AAA game has been consistently around $60. A NES game 30 years ago could cost $50, but when you take into account inflation that's about $100 in today's money. Companies like EA seem to make up for that by selling more copies of games, having deluxe editions, and jamming in microtransactions.
  - falcolas 8y ago
    Only the most bare-bones version of a AAA quality title will cost you $60; the absolute minimum of content which could still be called a game. To get access to all of the content (frequently including story content), you're looking at a $100 starting point ($70-$90 for the "deluxe" edition, $30 for a "season pass"), going ever-upwards with the more in-game content and physical ephemera you want. And that doesn't include any in-game transactions.
    - maccard 8y ago
      >Only the most bare-bones version of a AAA quality title will cost you $60; the absolute minimum of content which could still be called a game That's fairly disingenuous - the last game I bought at full price was Spiderman. A quick Google says the the average user on the default difficulty clears the story in about 20 hours. Sper metroid came out in 1994 (25 years ago), and the same quick search says that most people will clear it in 8 hours or so. Single player games today are also regularly putting out free balance patches (nioh), large free content updates(Gran Turismo) and smaller chunks of paid content that rival the size of other games for very reasonable amounts (Witcher 3).
    - zeroname 8y ago
      The production value behind those "bare bones" titles is still magnitudes larger than what you had back then, while the "play time" is at least comparable. Statistics show that most people never finish the games anyway (I certainly don't) so it's only fair that those people who must really play everything pay extra.
    - anth_anm 8y ago
      I didn't spend a penny beyond 60 on God of War of RDR2 and I feel like I've gotten a very complete and good experience. I'm not interested in spending stupid money on RDR2 online. I don't really care if companies do push that. I do think lootbox gambling is a problem.
jressey 8y ago
Labor cost does not determine a product's sale price. That is a disastrous myth. Demand changes selling price. If a company cannot price to sell to their demand because of capital or labor costs, the free market has stated that the business is not viable.
- Wohlf 8y ago
  You are correct, but I would caveat that labor cost is just one of many factors in determining the minimum price a product can be profitably sold at.
- jakeinspace 8y ago
  For any particular company or even country to some extent (since the games industry is quite globalized), this is true. However, if there were widespread unionization among many of the biggest studios then that could conceivably lead to a market-wide price hike, which would be largely absorbed by consumers due to a lack of suitable substitutes. Yes, the supply/demand equilibrium point would shift and demand would likely drop somewhat, but I think it's quite likely that the market demand for top-tier games isn't perfectly elastic.
  - Retric 8y ago
    The optimal selling price for a game does to change becase developers add a fixed cost. Suppose you have 1 Billion in fixed costs and 1$ in per unit cost and are given two options. The equation is just (number sold) * (unit price - unit costs) and that 1 Billion dollar fixed cost is irrelevant when maximizing profit (or minimizing loss). What it would do is reduce the number of games created, as the industry becomes slightly less profitable. Which would then spread consumer spending over fewer titles and thus recuperate the burden of a union.
- darawk 8y ago
  > Labor cost does not determine a product's sale price. That is a disastrous myth It's not a myth. It just depends on whether the pricing is demand driven or supply driven. Commodity products absolutely have their prices set by costs (labor among them).
Wohlf 8y ago
Game prices have already increased via less consumer friendly practices. Predatory monetization schemes like lootboxes (i.e. gambling), DLC (mixed bag), cosmetics, always online DRM, company specific storefronts, digital sales, "early access" and releasing unfinished games have all reduced costs and increased profits while sticker prices remain static. Sticker prices have even gotten better sometimes since many games go on deep discounts quickly.
- mikepurvis 8y ago
  I've really appreciated Skill Up's commentary on this, particularly in the context of his AC: Odyssey and COD: Black Ops 4 reviews: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dOrKtZsoy30 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dOrKtZsoy30 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HL8HfoCzCB0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HL8HfoCzCB0 Both are thoughtfully argued and well worth watching.
- SolaceQuantum 8y ago
  I would be incredibly supportive of a game developer union in which developers can push back against being made to practice these unethical behaviors.
  - starik36 8y ago
    Unions traditionally are there to defend the interests of its members, not to address consumer related unethical behaviors.
    - SolaceQuantum 8y ago
      I guess I was thinking more like a guild, then? I licensing boards? "Sorry I can't shove random RNG-for-money, boss, I'll lose my membership/license".
      - Apocryphon 8y ago
        These union-skeptical comments like the GP rely upon the assumption that unions a hypothetical tech union would look identical to failed unions of the past, and are incapable of doing anything different. Example of a modern non-American union where workers exert control to better the company over management decisions: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13986889 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13986889
Jach 8y ago
I'll happily pay the lowest price they'll sell the game to me for, and routinely wait for years after a game's initial release to get that low price. Nothing stops you from buying multiple copies of a game you like and want to support. Or going to https://www.mobygames.com/ https://www.mobygames.com/ and looking up the Credits for a game you like to find the devs to contribute to directly.
- jonathankoren 8y ago
  How do you contribute to a dev directly? Also, how do you decide who to contribute to? When it comes to AAA games (which is who is really exploiting their employees rather than indies) it sounds like you're picking someone at random, (e.g. "Today's your lucky day Shading Engineer #4, please accept this venmo.")
manfredo 8y ago
Developers will probably just move development to Asia or Eastern Europe. At the end of the day, unionized devs will be at a substantial competitive disadvantage against ones that are willing to put in more work. We all say we'll happily pay more for the same product. But those words often aren't backed up by actions.
- the-pigeon 8y ago
  And the game quality would suffer. General software development gets moved overseas and comes back all the time. Software development is hard. Pushing it to a cheaper third party usually increases costs a lot in the long term due to the increase is development complexity and generally a decrease in worker skill. A strong union can also prevent companies from moving some jobs overseas.
  - manfredo 8y ago
    > And the game quality would suffer The Witcher 3 was a pretty good game (Polish developers) - many would call that an understatement. The Uncharted series since 2 or 3 relied heavily on outsourced development (especially for art assets). Arma 3 was developed by Czech devs. These countries probably produce lower budget games on average, and don't have lots of existing infrastructure to leverage. But that makes what they have accomplished all the more impressive given what they were working with. What makes you so confident in the class that developers in countries with lower costs of living are worse than ones in wealthy countries? Do you think that Polish or Bulgarian developers are on average worse than American ones, and it so do you have something to back up that claim?
    - Jach 8y ago
      There's also, I dunno, all of the Japanese games that people love. Chinese companies are also starting to increase and market overseas, and some of those games are high quality. South Korea too. Asia is a powerhouse for entertainment software, even if we might argue they have a long way to go for business/enterprise/SaaS software.
naravara 8y ago
Maybe. It’s also possible that being less able to offload the costs of bad project management onto your workers will just make them pursue more realistic project plans. I see lots of AAA games loaded down with unnecessary cruft that adds little value to the overall experience and it makes me sad to think a bunch of poor devs probably had to grind through crunch to add it. I expect it’ll be a little from both columns.
- astura 8y ago
  Genuinely curious as to what you consider "unnecessary cruft."
  - klodolph 8y ago
    If you look at most AAA games from a structural perspective, they are generally composed of many systems and modes of play. Compare to indie games, which typically have a much smaller number of different systems and modes. Think of a first-person shooter. You can add the ability to upgrade weapons and armor (a system) and add a fishing minigame to provide resources for upgrades (a new mode of play). Specifically, look at Just Cause 4. Your basic systems core to the gameplay are shooting things, the grappling hook, the parachute, the wingsuit, and vehicles. The unnecessary cruft is stuff like your ability to upgrade the grappling hook, the deployment of squads to capture territory, and supply drops. My impression is that AAA studios aren't stupid... they know that these extra systems and modes don't contribute much to the game. But they do contribute to customer's evaluation of whether the game is worth spending $60, and this contribute's to the bottom line. This is the same reason why manufacturers pack needless features into a product and skimp on core functionality. People are more likely to shop on the basis of feature lists than on the quality of core functionality. This is why I'm skeptical... the unnecessary cruft is there because it drives purchasing decisions, so it's not going away unless you change the way people purchase games.
  - Jare 8y ago
    RDR2 got a famous one https://comicbook.com/gaming/2018/09/21/red-dead-redemption-2-ps4-xbox-one-horse-testicles/ https://comicbook.com/gaming/2018/09/21/red-dead-redemption-...
hawski 8y ago
I would guess that maybe just less games would be made.
TheGRS 8y ago
We pay so little for games these days. Even the big titles still sell at $60. They inflate the price through DLC and other add-ons, but it does seem like something like a RDR2 should cost at least $80-100 these days. The unfortunate side-effect is that smaller studios often charge much less for their titles than what they should in an effort to please customers who are conditioned to pay very little, and then can't make up for price in volume.
- TulliusCicero 8y ago
  > We pay so little for games these days. It's true. A lot of people complain about $60, but that's significantly cheaper than what NES games cost back in their heyday (adjusted for inflation). And just look at not just team size and effort (probably 50-100x comparing modern AAA games to NES titles), but amount of content: most NES games used difficulty to pad out their length greatly; a gamer who's reasonably skilled at, say, Contra, can beat it in like 30-60 minutes. In comparison, a game these days with a 6 hour campaign is thought of as pretty short, and usually they have other content other than campaign: challenge modes, multiplayer, minigames, etc.
  - TheGRS 8y ago
    Its a weird industry. If you're there for appeasing people who enjoy art, story and gameplay, there's now a market for that. And those people don't mind either paying a little more for the title nor a 2-3 hour long game, as long as the experience is great. But if you're there to chase teenagers for their parent's money, or even just the lowest common denominator of gamer, you'll probably have a bad time. Those customers want very long campaigns, AAA graphics and as low of a price point as possible.
reading-at-work 8y ago
This is pure speculation, but I'd imagine they would increase game quality too. Many AAA games are heavily marketed but lacking in depth and features; it would make sense that if game designers had more power in the organizations they work for, they might be able to push back against unrealistic publisher-driven deadlines which lessen game quality.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

cazum 8y ago

Game prices are going to increase anyway. Last year, EA made over a billion dollars in profits. If they aren't using that money to improve the working conditions of developers, what makes you think the solution is to give them more money?

Rebelgecko 8y ago
When you look at the prices of the games themselves, they're fairly cheap today. For the last couple console generations, the cost of a new AAA game has been consistently around $60. A NES game 30 years ago could cost $50, but when you take into account inflation that's about $100 in today's money. Companies like EA seem to make up for that by selling more copies of games, having deluxe editions, and jamming in microtransactions.
- falcolas 8y ago
  Only the most bare-bones version of a AAA quality title will cost you $60; the absolute minimum of content which could still be called a game. To get access to all of the content (frequently including story content), you're looking at a $100 starting point ($70-$90 for the "deluxe" edition, $30 for a "season pass"), going ever-upwards with the more in-game content and physical ephemera you want. And that doesn't include any in-game transactions.
  - maccard 8y ago
    >Only the most bare-bones version of a AAA quality title will cost you $60; the absolute minimum of content which could still be called a game That's fairly disingenuous - the last game I bought at full price was Spiderman. A quick Google says the the average user on the default difficulty clears the story in about 20 hours. Sper metroid came out in 1994 (25 years ago), and the same quick search says that most people will clear it in 8 hours or so. Single player games today are also regularly putting out free balance patches (nioh), large free content updates(Gran Turismo) and smaller chunks of paid content that rival the size of other games for very reasonable amounts (Witcher 3).
  - zeroname 8y ago
    The production value behind those "bare bones" titles is still magnitudes larger than what you had back then, while the "play time" is at least comparable. Statistics show that most people never finish the games anyway (I certainly don't) so it's only fair that those people who must really play everything pay extra.
  - anth_anm 8y ago
    I didn't spend a penny beyond 60 on God of War of RDR2 and I feel like I've gotten a very complete and good experience. I'm not interested in spending stupid money on RDR2 online. I don't really care if companies do push that. I do think lootbox gambling is a problem.

jressey 8y ago

Labor cost does not determine a product's sale price. That is a disastrous myth. Demand changes selling price. If a company cannot price to sell to their demand because of capital or labor costs, the free market has stated that the business is not viable.

Wohlf 8y ago
You are correct, but I would caveat that labor cost is just one of many factors in determining the minimum price a product can be profitably sold at.
jakeinspace 8y ago
For any particular company or even country to some extent (since the games industry is quite globalized), this is true. However, if there were widespread unionization among many of the biggest studios then that could conceivably lead to a market-wide price hike, which would be largely absorbed by consumers due to a lack of suitable substitutes. Yes, the supply/demand equilibrium point would shift and demand would likely drop somewhat, but I think it's quite likely that the market demand for top-tier games isn't perfectly elastic.
- Retric 8y ago
  The optimal selling price for a game does to change becase developers add a fixed cost. Suppose you have 1 Billion in fixed costs and 1$ in per unit cost and are given two options. The equation is just (number sold) * (unit price - unit costs) and that 1 Billion dollar fixed cost is irrelevant when maximizing profit (or minimizing loss). What it would do is reduce the number of games created, as the industry becomes slightly less profitable. Which would then spread consumer spending over fewer titles and thus recuperate the burden of a union.
darawk 8y ago
> Labor cost does not determine a product's sale price. That is a disastrous myth It's not a myth. It just depends on whether the pricing is demand driven or supply driven. Commodity products absolutely have their prices set by costs (labor among them).

Wohlf 8y ago

Game prices have already increased via less consumer friendly practices. Predatory monetization schemes like lootboxes (i.e. gambling), DLC (mixed bag), cosmetics, always online DRM, company specific storefronts, digital sales, "early access" and releasing unfinished games have all reduced costs and increased profits while sticker prices remain static. Sticker prices have even gotten better sometimes since many games go on deep discounts quickly.

mikepurvis 8y ago
I've really appreciated Skill Up's commentary on this, particularly in the context of his AC: Odyssey and COD: Black Ops 4 reviews: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dOrKtZsoy30 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dOrKtZsoy30 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HL8HfoCzCB0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HL8HfoCzCB0 Both are thoughtfully argued and well worth watching.
SolaceQuantum 8y ago
I would be incredibly supportive of a game developer union in which developers can push back against being made to practice these unethical behaviors.
- starik36 8y ago
  Unions traditionally are there to defend the interests of its members, not to address consumer related unethical behaviors.
  - SolaceQuantum 8y ago
    I guess I was thinking more like a guild, then? I licensing boards? "Sorry I can't shove random RNG-for-money, boss, I'll lose my membership/license".
    - Apocryphon 8y ago
      These union-skeptical comments like the GP rely upon the assumption that unions a hypothetical tech union would look identical to failed unions of the past, and are incapable of doing anything different. Example of a modern non-American union where workers exert control to better the company over management decisions: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13986889 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13986889

Jach 8y ago

I'll happily pay the lowest price they'll sell the game to me for, and routinely wait for years after a game's initial release to get that low price. Nothing stops you from buying multiple copies of a game you like and want to support. Or going to https://www.mobygames.com/ https://www.mobygames.com/ and looking up the Credits for a game you like to find the devs to contribute to directly.

jonathankoren 8y ago
How do you contribute to a dev directly? Also, how do you decide who to contribute to? When it comes to AAA games (which is who is really exploiting their employees rather than indies) it sounds like you're picking someone at random, (e.g. "Today's your lucky day Shading Engineer #4, please accept this venmo.")

manfredo 8y ago

Developers will probably just move development to Asia or Eastern Europe. At the end of the day, unionized devs will be at a substantial competitive disadvantage against ones that are willing to put in more work. We all say we'll happily pay more for the same product. But those words often aren't backed up by actions.

the-pigeon 8y ago
And the game quality would suffer. General software development gets moved overseas and comes back all the time. Software development is hard. Pushing it to a cheaper third party usually increases costs a lot in the long term due to the increase is development complexity and generally a decrease in worker skill. A strong union can also prevent companies from moving some jobs overseas.
- manfredo 8y ago
  > And the game quality would suffer The Witcher 3 was a pretty good game (Polish developers) - many would call that an understatement. The Uncharted series since 2 or 3 relied heavily on outsourced development (especially for art assets). Arma 3 was developed by Czech devs. These countries probably produce lower budget games on average, and don't have lots of existing infrastructure to leverage. But that makes what they have accomplished all the more impressive given what they were working with. What makes you so confident in the class that developers in countries with lower costs of living are worse than ones in wealthy countries? Do you think that Polish or Bulgarian developers are on average worse than American ones, and it so do you have something to back up that claim?
  - Jach 8y ago
    There's also, I dunno, all of the Japanese games that people love. Chinese companies are also starting to increase and market overseas, and some of those games are high quality. South Korea too. Asia is a powerhouse for entertainment software, even if we might argue they have a long way to go for business/enterprise/SaaS software.

naravara 8y ago

Maybe. It’s also possible that being less able to offload the costs of bad project management onto your workers will just make them pursue more realistic project plans. I see lots of AAA games loaded down with unnecessary cruft that adds little value to the overall experience and it makes me sad to think a bunch of poor devs probably had to grind through crunch to add it. I expect it’ll be a little from both columns.

astura 8y ago
Genuinely curious as to what you consider "unnecessary cruft."
- klodolph 8y ago
  If you look at most AAA games from a structural perspective, they are generally composed of many systems and modes of play. Compare to indie games, which typically have a much smaller number of different systems and modes. Think of a first-person shooter. You can add the ability to upgrade weapons and armor (a system) and add a fishing minigame to provide resources for upgrades (a new mode of play). Specifically, look at Just Cause 4. Your basic systems core to the gameplay are shooting things, the grappling hook, the parachute, the wingsuit, and vehicles. The unnecessary cruft is stuff like your ability to upgrade the grappling hook, the deployment of squads to capture territory, and supply drops. My impression is that AAA studios aren't stupid... they know that these extra systems and modes don't contribute much to the game. But they do contribute to customer's evaluation of whether the game is worth spending $60, and this contribute's to the bottom line. This is the same reason why manufacturers pack needless features into a product and skimp on core functionality. People are more likely to shop on the basis of feature lists than on the quality of core functionality. This is why I'm skeptical... the unnecessary cruft is there because it drives purchasing decisions, so it's not going away unless you change the way people purchase games.
- Jare 8y ago
  RDR2 got a famous one https://comicbook.com/gaming/2018/09/21/red-dead-redemption-2-ps4-xbox-one-horse-testicles/ https://comicbook.com/gaming/2018/09/21/red-dead-redemption-...

hawski 8y ago

I would guess that maybe just less games would be made.

TheGRS 8y ago

We pay so little for games these days. Even the big titles still sell at $60. They inflate the price through DLC and other add-ons, but it does seem like something like a RDR2 should cost at least $80-100 these days. The unfortunate side-effect is that smaller studios often charge much less for their titles than what they should in an effort to please customers who are conditioned to pay very little, and then can't make up for price in volume.

TulliusCicero 8y ago
> We pay so little for games these days. It's true. A lot of people complain about $60, but that's significantly cheaper than what NES games cost back in their heyday (adjusted for inflation). And just look at not just team size and effort (probably 50-100x comparing modern AAA games to NES titles), but amount of content: most NES games used difficulty to pad out their length greatly; a gamer who's reasonably skilled at, say, Contra, can beat it in like 30-60 minutes. In comparison, a game these days with a 6 hour campaign is thought of as pretty short, and usually they have other content other than campaign: challenge modes, multiplayer, minigames, etc.
- TheGRS 8y ago
  Its a weird industry. If you're there for appeasing people who enjoy art, story and gameplay, there's now a market for that. And those people don't mind either paying a little more for the title nor a 2-3 hour long game, as long as the experience is great. But if you're there to chase teenagers for their parent's money, or even just the lowest common denominator of gamer, you'll probably have a bad time. Those customers want very long campaigns, AAA graphics and as low of a price point as possible.

reading-at-work 8y ago

This is pure speculation, but I'd imagine they would increase game quality too. Many AAA games are heavily marketed but lacking in depth and features; it would make sense that if game designers had more power in the organizations they work for, they might be able to push back against unrealistic publisher-driven deadlines which lessen game quality.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]