Why does this game cost so much?

[Yhan Yhan]

$50 for this game. Vice City with GTA3 only costs $30 together at Best Buy right now. I realize this is a fairly small company but come on. I would gladly pat $25 for this game, but not fifty. email me when the price oges down.

[ January 26, 2004, 02:44: Message edited by: Gandalf Parker ]

Oh I'm sure that they will be putting you on their email list right away.

[diamondspider]

Years ago I was browsing a bookstore that had a particularly huge selection of books on chess: a game that I had enjoyed for years.

I wanted a book covering openings as I was getting more serious about the game.

I notice a very thin book in amongst the many other larger volumes and pulled it out. It was a small booklet covering an obscure variation of the English Opening: only that one variation.

I actually liked this opening but I'd never seen a book that was so specific about such a tiny slice of chess arcana.

I flipped open the front page and noticed the price: $20! (note that this was over 20 years ago so that would be more like $35 dollars of today's money). This seemed very steep when a 3 inch thick book that covered, in brief, every major opening costed the same price and was on the same shelf.

At first I couldn't understand how such a small book could cost so much, but then it dawned on me: how many of these books would they sell?

Someone put untold hundreds or thousands of hours into researching, compiling, typesetting, and printing this book and yet the content would only be precious to those players who enjoyed this level of very specific information about chess.

To them it was gold, actually to me it was also since I was exactly the sort book I was looking for without even knowing they existed.

Did I buy it? Of course, and it was worth every penny to me as it would be to anyone who had such refined and specific tastes in chess.

The nice thing about products that appeal to vast masses of people is that by selling so many it is easier to get back something substantial for all the work it takes to create something.

On the other hand, the nice thing about having refined tastes is that, while they may often be more expensive, they can sometimes offer a kind of quality that goes beyond what the masses can really appreciate without being an bit of an aficionado in regards to the subject matter.

[Targa]

Good example, Diamondspider. To put it another, shorter way... it's kinda like saying "Why should I spend so much money on a Rolls Royce when Hyundai's are so much cheaper?".

[Raz 24]

This game is worth more than 50$ gamplay wise!

[PvK]

Yes. As I wrote in an email to an old gaming pal earlier today,

"Dominions II tramples ***. Not only that, but after tramling *** with a group of zombie elephants, it then hacks *** to bits, incinerates it, and ressurects it to fight for its side as cannon fodder to distract its opponents from the real attack force mustering in its undersea kelp citadel, where it is summoning unmentionable horrors through its Cthulod void gate. Awesome game. Totally addictive and wonderful."

When I compare the gameplay of GTA III to Dominions, I think, "ok, so GTA III had a graphics budget in the millions, is a real-time 3D action game with some nice parts to it, but it holds my attention about 1% as well as Dominions." GTA III has titanic economic advantages, being backed by budgets and ad campaigns in the millions, hit sales, pop/corp media reactions, console sales, etc, so that's one huge unfair advantage. I actually find GTA III pretty fun as far as it goes, but compared to Dominions, for me, it doesn't go anywhere near as far on my personal fun-o-meter. GTA III scores about 1% compared to Dominions in gameplay areas such as consistent world design, number of things that can occur, impact of player actions on the game world, options to try new strategies, etc. For examples:

* In GTA, you can cause massive chaos, and it has essentially zero impact on almost anything. Walk around the block or turn your back after obliterating all the traffic on a downtown street, and the game tends to forget anything at all happened, and regenerates a random new peaceful street.
In Dominions II, the game remembers many variables for every character in the whole game world. Lasting injuries to specific body parts, armor damage, hunger, disease state, experience, who they killed (in case someone casts Vengeance of the Dead on them, or they enter the Hall of Fame) - and those are just the things tracked outside of combat.

* In GTA III, the game world has lots of completely illogical limits on what can and can't be done, and the way (generally singular) to get around them is equally illogical. Gee, this metropolitain area is completely isolated from anywhere else - no one can get off the island, but business goes on as usual. The one bridge off is blown, and the subway is "under construction". There is no way to obtain a boat, waiting for them to fix either the bridge or the subway will avail nothing. What's the ONLY way to open them within the game world? Oh, do missions for the underworld until you get to the end of the missions, and suddenly there's a scripted reason for there to be a boat. By the way, once you sail the boat to town part two, instantaneously the bridge gets fixed and the subway re-opens. Also BTW, there is practically no good reason to limit it that way, except arcade game mentality, to keep you from the new mega-expensive new graphics for a while. Gee, such freedom - to kill people, run errands, or do mob missions. What if you don't do mob missions? Practically nothing in the game world will ever change. What if you fail at a mob mission? You get to try it again, or maybe try another mob's mission. Gee. What if you want to do some Lasting damage to one of the mobs, outside a scripted mission? Sorry, persistent world state data is limited to under 100 pieces of information - that'd be too complex, and cause intelligence requirements for the mission scripters.
Little or no such nonsense in Dominions. Quite the opposite. Heaps of possibilities. Be a monolith, a dragon, a plague of undead wiping out the entire world, lead a faerie realm, customize magic paths and abilities through innate magic, items, modding... Turn off the sun. Perform cross-breeding experiments. Etc etc etc.

In short, there's no other game that offers what Dominions does, and if you appreciate Dominions, it's well worth the $50! The developers have put years of very creative and well-considered work into the game. Why does it cost so little?

PvK

[ January 26, 2004, 05:07: Message edited by: PvK ]

[PhilD]

Originally posted by Yhan Yhan:
$50 for this game. Vice City with GTA3 only costs $30 together at Best Buy right now. I realize this is a fairly small company but come on. I would gladly pat $25 for this game, but not fifty. email me when the price oges down.

You can see it this way: Dominions 2 might save you a lot of money.

I got Dominions 2 preordered as a birthday present in October. I haven't bought a PC game for myself ever since (I bought KOTOR for a Christmas present for my girlfriend, but that doesn't count). With the few games I got as Christmas presents, and that I have yet to play, I think I've been saving a good amount of money with this game. Plus, it's also a game, you can even enjoy it

[Leif_-]

Originally posted by Yhan Yhan:
$50 for this game. Vice City with GTA3 only costs $30 together at Best Buy right now. I realize this is a fairly small company but come on. I would gladly pat $25 for this game, but not fifty. email me when the price oges down.

Simple. Dominions II is a niche-market game and has a much narrower marke-segment than for instance GTA3. Niche-products are almost always more expensive than similar mainstream products. This is both because the economics of scale are better for the mainstream products, and because the consumers in a niche-market are willing to pay more for something in the niche they're interested in.

[Andy]

US$50 is well below the average shelf-price of a new-release PC game here in Australia, and for the best thing I've played in years I consider it a real bargain

[PvK]

I wonder (a wee bit) how many hundred thousand copies of GTA III were sold before the price went down...