Wardogs lead Joe Brammer argues that games need to cost more, and that GTA 6 could’ve been the trendsetter.
Double Fine founder Tim Schafer spoke to BBC News earlier this week, saying that after industry-wide struggles and what have become yearly layoffs and restructuring from Microsoft – which recently saw Double Fine returning to independence – he doesn’t “understand the economics of making games to be honest.”
He adds, “I just assume it’s, like, someone is being greedy somewhere. But I hope it is a cycle, and I hope it bounces back.” Given we saw the likes of EA CEO Andrew Wilson get an enormous bonus last year thanks to the success of Battlefield 6, after laying off some of the developers behind it, I’d say it’s a pretty sound theory.
However, Brammer says the economics of game development are “not complicated” and that it comes down to the fact that “games too cheap, cost of development too high.” The price of games has remained pretty static for a while now, with the bump to $70 occurring at the start of this generation, while Nintendo and Rockstar have hit the $80 mark with Mario Kart World and GTA 6.
On GTA 6, Brammer says Rockstar “had a chance to raise the bar and they didn’t do it, so we’ll keep going round,” while citing that Wardogs currently costs almost the price of a one-way train journey for him in the UK. He adds, “Let’s not pretend we don’t know why, guys like Tim should stand up and say ‘games need to cost more’, not act like we don’t know.”
And while it’s certainly true that the cost of games does not scale with the price of development now, it may be a bit of a Pandora’s box situation. Outside of mega franchises like GTA and Mario Kart, many people will likely not be willing to spend more money on the average game. Not long after Mario Kart World’s price was announced, Xbox announced it would be charging $80 for its upcoming titles, before running that back months later, presumably seeing it wasn’t working out too well.
Granted, that also has the factor that Xbox was offering the same games for the price of a monthly subscription, but after being used to $60-$70 price tags, many may not be willing to give other games a chance at $100.