How much should a video game cost?
My first gaming console was a Nintendo Entertainment System, I remember when my dad brought it home when I was 5 or so. It was released in 1985, so when I got it in the early 90’s, it was already a few years old. In fact, it is likely that the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) was already out. I got my first Gameboy around the time Pokemon Red and Blue came out, which was 1995. The system itself had been out for about 6 years at the time. So, as a baseline, my family was never able to afford a game system with games at the time of release at market price.
As I got into college and started having my first jobs, I always bought the games or systems when they came out, depending on my interest. Money wasn’t always a factor, but sometimes release titles were. I was not going to fight the crowds and drop the money on a system that did not release with a game I wanted to play. I remember many cold lines to get a copy of the latest Pokémon game outside of Gamestop.
Another factor to consider is the rise of mobile gaming, which did not exist in the 90’s. Some of the most popular mobile games are actually free-to-play. Candy Crush Saga, Pokémon TCG Pocket, Pokémon Go, and Monopoly Go, among others, can all be downloaded and played on your phone for free. However, each of these games uses an in-game currency that can be bought from an online store. These are referred to as Microtransactions. You get the game for free to play – but at some point, either to continue to play, progress faster, or unlock special items, you have to pay.
As an example, let’s examine Pokémon Go. When you download the game, you can jump in and start leveling up. You can catch Pokémon, you can spin the stops, you can start to make progress in the game. At a certain point, based on experience, you can start to enter gyms and do raids, which is where you get better Pokémon. Ultimately, the end game of Pokémon Go depends on what your personal goals are, but you can summarize them like this: PVP Battling, Raids, Max Battles, and finishing the Pokedex (catching all the Pokémon). All of this can be done without paying, but it will take significantly longer. All items needed to beat the game are in the game, but in order to progress faster or get cosmetic items, you have to pay.
There are other games that you have to pay in order to be able to win. I recently downloaded a game that was a political simulators. You could get the game set up and start making decisions, but you eventually ran out of money and would need to buy currency from the online shop in order to progress. These are called free-to-start games. You can start to play them for free, but in order to continue you will need to buy something.
For me, I have a very firm, and I think logical, stance on the issue of Microtransactions. If it is a cosmetic item, such as a shiny Pokémon or a special background, then I am fine with it being locked behind a pay feature. Cosmetic items do not give you a direct in-game advantage. For example, additional raid passes in Pokémon Go are bought with real currency. They arguably give you a player-power advantage as you have more chances to catch a high-IV Pokémon, but you can also do that in the game with enough grinding on free passes. In this case, if you are buying additional raid passes, you are doing raids, which you can do for free, at a faster rate. But, there is nothing you can do with the extra raid passes that you cannot do without them.
If it involves player-power, then I think it should be included in the base game or be offered to players for free if it is added in later. This is especially true for games that are player-vs-player rather than player-vs-environment. In this example, if a Pokémon was only available via a raid that you had to pay for to enter, then I would be against that. Fortunately, this is not the case. There are some edge cases, for me, where you can sometimes get early-access to a Pokémon if you attend a large, in-person event and pay a ticket, but these happen rarely and the Pokémon is usually released within a matter of a few weeks to the general public.
Monetization is also not a bad thing, especially in games that are free to play. Again, with Pokémon Go, a lot of time and effort go into the game on behalf of the programmers – both for new content and for bug fixes. Servers and other infrastructure need to be maintained in order for the game to continue to be played. Creating and maintaining a live game is not free, so at a minimum for a game to continue to publisher must at least make their expenses back. But also, people deserve to get paid for their work. Niantic as put out and maintained Pokémon Go for 8 years now, and they deserve to make a profit off of it, in addition to the cost of maintaining the game.
So how much should a video game cost? It depends on the game. I’m more open to microtransactions in Free-to-Play games than I am if they charge a price for the base game. I’m more open to microtransactions in games if they don’t give players power advantages over other players. In general, I don’t care about monetizing cosmetic items that are not required to play the game. So, it is hard to say without knowing the details of the game – but I think these are principles that guide my feelings towards game monetization.
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