Proving Some Sort of Point about Video Game Pricing

I published a post about the $15 MMO subscription price… it feels like a while back because I wrote most of it in April and then didn’t get around to posting it until the middle of this month… that went on about Moore’s Law, software, and how the cost of everything in tech doesn’t really go down over time.  It is mostly just the capability of hardware versus price that keeps changing.  The same dollar buys you twice the computing power every other year.  It doesn’t affect the cost of food, gasoline, or rent.

The primary question in the whole thing was whether or not the $15 a month subscription price for MMORPGs… and, by extension, the $60 box price for AAA games… was really a reasonable expectation 20 years down the road from when they were set.

Daybreak subscriber prices

Raph Koster has opined on the cost of making video games for years and has data to back up what he says.  The post came from a discussion that started in the comment thread from a post on this blog.

Given the small, rather niche audience that this blog has, I was interested to see what responses, if any, I might get.  The responses were a bit nuanced, though I would say there was a bias towards not paying any more than the current $15 a month.

And then Massively OP picked up on my post and asked the question of the staff and their own wider audience and… well… I can see why Raph Koster said that studios don’t dare raise prices from the current set standards.

Seriously, the staff and most of the comments come across not just against any raise in price, but often insisting that we should be paying less.

A couple of reasonable souls allowed that the overall rate of inflation might justify something like $17-20, but most people were adamantly against any such thing, often for very subjective reasons, like feeling that this game or that isn’t delivering as much content as they once did.

Is it reasonable to expect, as example, Lord of the Rings Online to deliver as much content when they’ve gone from making $100 million back in 2013 to something around $14 million in 2020?

It doesn’t matter, people feel cheated, that they’re paying as much or more due to cash shops and are getting less for their money.

No need to put a bullet in price rise idea, it is clearly dead already.

Of course, as I opined in the thread, the video game industry hasn’t exactly done itself any favors.  The wealthy Bobby Kotick or Tim Sweeney are the poster boys for greed, making obscene amounts of money while keeping pay and benefits for the people who do the work well below what comparable ability would earn a person other tech segments.  When Kotick’s compensation is cut in half and still looks obscene, that says something… it says that video game companies are making plenty of money already, thank you very much.

And the fact that Steam added 10,263 games to its online store in 2020, long complained about by developers both due to the regular sales that have cut the average sales price for titles and the 30% tariff Valve takes off the top of every sale (something the rent seeking Tim Sweeney wants a cut of, which is the only reason he is battling with Valve, Google, and Apple… it certainly isn’t the concern for gamers he professes),  seems to indicate that there are a lot of developers out there that are just fine with the situation as it is.

I say that because, in a rational economic situation, self interest would drive some, if not most, of those developers to seek better paying jobs in industries where their talents would earn them considerably more in compensation.  But video games are emotional, a “dream job,” that people will sacrifice to pursue.  (Or is it the corrupt developer career path they are seeking?)

Then there is how consistently two-faced various companies have been about monetization in the face of their inability to raise box prices.  It is always fun to call out EA for saying dumb things like that their pseudo gambling lock boxes are ethical and fun surprise mechanics as they target children by advertising in a toy catalog, but the industry group that represents them tried to upstage the FTC hearing on industry practices by holding a press release where the promised, cross their heart hope to die, that the industry could regulate itself even as Activision patenting game matching algorithms that would pair cheapskates up with those who paid to win to get superior gear so that they would feel the need to spend in order to compete.  As I said previously, this is all a very strong approach to getting the industry regulated.

And so I suppose I cannot really blame the people commenting that they should be paying less for games.  The big players in the industry have cultivated an environment where the whole thing feels like… a business?

Wait, that can’t be right, can it?

Zen and the Art of Minecraft Maintenance

In my thrashing around to find a game that would scratch the seemingly unscratchable itch for something to escape into fully I launched Minecraft.

It had been a while.

About a year ago I wrote about finding the pillagers associated with the Village & Pillage update, but my play time tapered off from there.  Over the summer I downloaded the latest copy of the world… coming up on being five years old soon… and cancelled my Minecraft Realms account.  It wasn’t all that expensive at $7.99 a month, but that was also the monthly price for Disney+, so I closed that down and went off to watch The Mandelorian.

So to go back to the world meant running it locally, something I hadn’t really done in ages.  I went looking for hosting for a shared world almost immediately after starting to play.

Logging back into that last save of the world, I traveled back to the core area along the rail lines I had built over the years.  There I found a hole blown in a section of track.

This happens sometimes when you are traveling by mine cart.  A creeper will be close to the tracks and you’ll roll on by and be close enough to the creeper to set him off… and boom, there goes a section of track.  But that is in your rear view mirror and, as some of us were taught apparently, what is behind you doesn’t matter.

That gave me a mission idea.  I decided to go ride the rails once more to check the track integrity and repair places where it had been blown up.  I packed up some rail supplies… track pieces and redstone torches… and set out on my ride.

Replacement track in hand

It is a long ride to roll down all of my overland rail routes.  I have the great loop I made back in the day as well as the rail line that runs from the north end of the loop up the road and rail line that I built to connect the northern mansion.  To cover the whole thing takes about a half dozen day/night cycles in the game even if you’re not stopping along the way.

So I rolled on down the line, running into a couple more breaks in the rails.  They appeared to be clustered around one stretch of track though, so I was able to carry on and just sight see.

I was interested in how the game would perform locally.  For most of the life of our Minecraft world, originally founded back on Father’s Day 2015, it has been online and hosted by Minecraft Realms, which has had its issues over the years.  The servers tend to be a big laggy during peak hours so moving by mine cart can end up with a lot of rubberbanding or stops and starts as the server tries to keep up with your movement, loading up new chunks as they approach.

It was better on my own machine, but not as much as one might have hoped I suppose.  I had thrown Minecraft on a regular drive rather than an SSD, so I hadn’t optimized for performance, but even a local drive ought to do okay.  I got some lags now and then, though I suspect the power manager’s desire to spin down any drive the moment nobody is accessing it might play into that.  I should tinker with that setting.

But it also wasn’t an apples to apple comparison.  Over on Minecraft Realms they limit your view distance so that you only load a relatively few chunks at a time.  On my machine I had the view distance set out to maximum, so I was making the game load up a lot more data.  So that probably plays into the lag I was experiencing from time to time.

It was worth it however.  After years of playing with a horizon that was very close, rolling across the world with the horizon set much further away was… immersive in a way I had forgotten Minecraft could be.

It is hard to find a screen shot that does the feeling justice.  With the minimum view distance it is very easy to get lost in the world, to lose sight of landmarks very quickly, to not know what is just over the next hill because the horizon is so close to hand.  But now I could see much further out, see things down the line or off to either side; towns, animals, different biomes.  It was quite pleasant.

Looking out as I roll along

So I made my way around the loop and then on my way up north to the mansion, stopping every once in a while at one settlement or another to spend the night or explore a bit.  I rolled through a lot of places that were just vague memories.  It was a very relaxing tour, which wound up at the mansion where I found my heard of llamas.  I had forgotten about them.

A bit of my heard and the mansion

I stayed there for a while, poking around a bit and clearing out a few zombies and skeletons who had taken up residence.

After that I went into the nether to take the rail line there back to the main loop, which takes 1/8th the time.  But even wandering around a bit in the nether I found the expanded horizon aspect of the game to be an improvement.  Being able to see further changes the feel of things more than I expected it would.

Back in the world and up in the clouds

I am somewhat torn by this.  I did quite enjoy the shared world aspect when I had the world hosted.  That helped make the world what it is.  But now, rolling around it by myself with my horizons literally expanded, it makes the game seem more appealing.

I suppose there are hosting services that would allow this sort of view distance to be set, but no doubt it would cost.  Minecraft Realms is as cheap as it is largely because it limits what you can do.  There are always trade offs I suppose.

What to do with WoW Classic as it Ages

Retro, nostalgia, progression, classic, tag them with whatever prefix you choose, but farming the installed base with a promise of an old school experience has gotten a serious boost of legitimacy with the pending release of WoW Classic.  It is no longer just weirdos led by Daybreak and Jagex, or the desperate like the late Trion Worlds, playing the old school card.

Classic is as classic does

That Blizzard has gone there means that they are convinced of the viability of such a venture.  We have certainly seen, time and again, the success of such servers.  There is even a set pattern, with the launch seeing an overwhelming crowd show up, followed by a winnowing down of the nostalgic player base as the sight seers and the never-satisfied purists wander off.

There remains a solid and enthusiastic core of players who will see things through to the level cap, doing all the things from raids to faction grinds.  But even they begin to fade when their goals are met, leaving behind the truly dedicated who just want to keep on playing in the old content over and over.

At that point with something like EverQuest Daybreak will just unlock the next expansion.  Some of those who lapsed will return, the raiders especially, and the server will keep going.  EverQuest is pretty much the extreme example on that front.  With a substantial base of past and current players and 25 expansions to unlock, one of their progression servers can keep on going for ages.  The Fippy Darkpaw time locked progression server, which Potshot and I played on, went live back in February of 2011 and is still moving along.  It merged with Vulak server, its launch twin, back in late 2017, but is still there otherwise.

Eventually though Daybreak will merge servers back into the live population.  Over on EverQuest II they will soon be merging the Fallen Gate server, which opened up in mid-2017, into the live Antonia Bayle server.  EverQuest II not only lacks the depth of expansions, but also doesn’t have quite the same fame or player base on which to draw.  Special servers there tend to wrap up much sooner than with its elder Norrath sibling.  But that is where they all go eventually.

The same happened with Rift Prime, the Rift retro server, which died off pretty hard once they got to the Storm Legion expansion.  There is always a certain wry humor to be had when the retro server follows the same path as the original live servers did back in the day.  The population that remained was offered transfers onto live servers.

But WoW Classic will be different.  Blizzard, perhaps going overboard on the purist aspect of nostalgia for the old world, has rolled up WoW Classic as a semi-independent game.  Your subscription gets you access to both WoW and WoW Classic, so you’re covered there, but it will be a different client using a different sort of server and will have its own character database, so even if you’ve used up all of your character slots in WoW you will have 50 open slots, 10 per server, with WoW Classic.

With EverQuest, EverQuest II, Rift Prime, and LOTRO Legendary the special servers were only variations on the live product with some flags set to limit access to content and changes to things like experience gain.  Otherwise they used the same client and the same launcher.  This sets WoW Classic apart.

In the short term I expect that WoW Classic will be successful, but what happens in the longer term?  While there is some progression planned in the form of raid unlocks, which will keep the raiders engaged… and they’ll likely lead the charge to level cap in any case if on can draw from the EverQuest retro experience… after that there doesn’t seem like much of a plan.  So what can Blizzard do?

• Leave the Servers to Run

The easiest answer I suppose is to just leave things as they are once raid progression has been done.  There is a certain demographic that will just want to live and play in the WoW Classic environment, staying forever in 2006.  Others will show up late or won’t care about being there on day one or will want to get to level cap at their own pace.  And there will be people who will come and go from WoW, since one subscription pays for both.  Given the size of the WoW player base, that might be a viable path for years even if Blizz doesn’t do anything further.

• Roll Fresh Classic Servers

The magic which Daybreak has discovered in their EverQuest progression servers is that there is a sizable demographic that just likes a fresh server launch and playing through the progression.  Daybreak can drop a fresh progression server every year or so and will see a swarm of people show up to play.  It keeps people subscribed, it keeps that demographic happy, and it gives people who want to be in the mad rush of a server launch but who may have missed previous chances a place to go.

I suspect that we will see something like this with WoW Classic.  The fact that there is raid unlock progression means that the experience won’t be static and so after the last unlock there will be people who missed out and/or who will want to start fresh.  This seems like a pretty easy choice to keep people playing WoW Classic.  The question will just be the timing of new servers.

• Head for the Dark Portal

As noted, Daybreak revitalizes its retro population by moving on the next expansion, so it seems like Blizzard ought to be at least thinking about getting on to that as well.  In fact, we know they have.  The question is, how to you get there?

Given the Blizzard solution to the Vanilla WoW question was to go back to the original client, you can hardly expect anything less when it comes to The Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King.

But how do you get there from WoW Classic?  Do you eventually convert those servers to servers for The Burning Crusade?  It almost feels like you have to if you want to get the whole “unlocking the dark portal” event.  But what about people who want to stay behind in vanilla, and there will be some?

Given how WoW Classic came to be, does this mean a third (or more) special client to keep and maintain for a third type of WoW server?

If WoW Classic proves to be a success, if the money is good, I suspect Blizzard will want to do something further on the nostalgia front.  The questions will be around how long it will take them to get there, where will they stop, and how will they get players into these middle timelines.  Server conversions?  Transfers?  Something else?

• Other Options?

There are probably other distinct options, not to mention a plethora of variations on the theme, that Blizzard could pursue.  Blizz could, for example, go the “Disney vault” route and only roll out WoW Classic servers every five years or some such.  There is a possibility that they will decide the whole thing isn’t worth the effort and  just let the WoW Classic servers linger on with light maintenance, or even shut them down after some time has passed.  I doubt the latter, at least in the near term, but I suppose it could happen.

The question remains though, what will Blizzard do?  Time and audiences do not sit still and it feels like a big WoW Classic launch will only whet player appetites for other retro options.

Being a Distraction from Venal

We formed up again in Venal last night to put pressure on the locals.  There were several citadel timers in play around Deklein, so we formed up in Venal to be a force for which GotG would at least have to account.  If the fought us that would draw them away from the timers, which other groups were planning to contest.  If they let us be then we could get up to mischief of our own.

Ishtars were the doctrine for the night and we were given a bridge after we undocked to get us to the locals.

I wonder how many bridges I’ve take over the years…

That got us to WLF-D3, the gateway system to Deklein via DKUK-G and the GotG staging system to counter out move to Venal.

We moved around the system, visited next door, came back and decided that the locals were going to stay away to deal with the timers deeper in Deklein, so we went looking for targets of our own.  The first on the list was an Athanor that was mid frack, a giant hunk of moon being drawn slowly towards it.

The moon chunk looming large

We were not going to be able to stop the frack, which would require us getting it down to the structure timer, but the Athanor was in the process of being unanchored.  All we had to do was get the first timer set and the unanchoring process would be halted and would need to be resumed again after the timer passed.  So we pulled up to shoot it.

Ishtars strung out and shooting

A gunner got going on the Athanor and began lobbing bombs at us, so the small stuff had to warp off and logi had to wake up for a bit and cover anybody who caught the brunt of a couple of bombs, but otherwise we carried on.  The wind up for a bomb was such that when the Ishtars were stopped and had sentry drones deployed they could pull the drones, take the blast, then drop them again to carry on shooting.  We succeeding in putting the Athanor into its first timer, scuttling the unachoring.

We then spent some time shooting at a POS, deactivating a few modules.  Shooting a well armed POS is a bit different as the weaponry will start shooting even is nobody is gunning the POS.  As we did that the news came down the line that the GotG had successfully defended its timers and it seemed like we might be headed home at that point.  We started moving back towards our staging.

However Asher stopped us a few systems into the trip then turned us around and back to DKUK-G.  We were going to see if GotG would take a fight when they returned home.  In DKUK-G it seemed like we were being setup for a capital drop.  Asher said they were trying to draw us in, bubble us, and drop carriers on us.  We bounced around the system a bit, then went through to WLF-D3 again where we ended up facing off against GotG’s Eagle fleet on the far side of the gate.  Things went well for us there, the Ishtars chewing up their logi and then burning down Eagles until they started moving off.  Logi had some work to do, but we kept most everybody alive.

The Oneiros I was in during the fight

NCDot had some Jackdaws around as well and we managed to pick off a couple of those including the ship of LadyScarlet, the CEO of Destructive Influence, a corp whose alliance history shows it being in Band of Brothers, KenZoku, and IT Alliance, all past foes of the Goons, so every time she is on grid she is the first target called and there is a cheer when he ship goes up.  Blasting an old foe is always a morale booster.

We also blew up another of Hendrink Collie’s Monitor FC ships.  Expensive ships are always fun to blow up, though they are getting cheaper as production of them ramps up.

We ended up in control of the grid around the gate, in sight of their Keepstar, not too far off from where Sort Dragon lost his titan on Saturday. (See this Reddit post for a screen shot.)

Trailing our coats in sight of the enemy Keepstar

Overall GotG won their objective, but we managed to extract a cost and give them a few minor headaches.  The battle report from both fronts showed the ISK war well in our favor.

Overall Battle Report for the Evening

Things were tilted more in our favor if we exclude the other front and just look at the battle report for the Venal end of the engagements.

The Venal end of the night

That was the sort of fight we’ll take every night if we can get it.

Afterwards we went back to our staging and stood down.  There was an AUTZ timer coming up in a couple of hours, but staying up until 07:00 EVE Online time on a weeknight is well beyond my capability.  And so it goes, we continue plinking away at GotG.

The Blood Raiders Shipyard Destroyed

There was a chance that I might see the Blood Raiders Shipyard destroyed.  After it was hit, the timer was set locking in when the final assault would come.  I was working from home and the timing was such that it ought to have come out of its reinforcement cycle at just about the time my day was done. I still had my alt parked in the system and the shipyard was sitting there waiting.

Eyeballing the Sotiyo in my Buzzard

As a toiled away I saw the pings come up for the fleets destined for the final event.  There appeared to plenty of interest as a second fleet had to be formed.  As the timer approached I logged in and warped out to a spot I had setup about 600km off the structure so I could see how this was all going to turn out.  I started a long, lazy orbit as the fleet of Punishers showed up and spread around the their target.

Ball of Punishers around the shipyard

A second fleet was watching gates while a fleet of TEST interceptors showed up in system as well and setup on a perch from which they could warp in and take pot shots at the Punisher fleet.

Once the time counted down the Punisher fleet opened up and started plinking the target.

A Punisher blazing away

As before, Blood Raider ships spawned, but they seemed at a loss when faced with the tiny T1 frigates motoring along in orbits around the shipyard.  CCP did not update anything for this particular run.

A Blood Raiders Omen just loafing about, not even trying…

The only real hazard for the fleet came from the TEST Interceptors who would warp in to try and pick off a target every so often.  They were successful, but Jay had stocked ships in the local station so people were able to warp off, reship, and rejoin the attack.  I planned to join in the assault as well, once the structure went down far enough.  I had scrounged a light missile launcher and some missiles locally so I could get in and plink it.

However, at about that point I had to leave for a bit.  I was on the hook to pick my daughter up after school and drive her downtown, something complicated by the advent of early onset Friday afternoon rush hour traffic.  It took more than an hour to get her, drop her off downtown, and get back home, by which time the event was over and most everybody had gone home. (I did see SynCaine in local for a minute or so after I got back.)

I had warped in to launch a couple of missiles at the shipyard before cloaking up in a safe spot and head out, but my shot was too early and I did not even get on the kill mail for the structure.

I also missed the comedy finale, detailed over at INN, where TEST pilot named Karl Kox zipped to the structure wreck in a Claw interceptor and scooped up blue print copies for the Chemosh dreadnought and Molok titan, only to be blown up.  With his ship went the Chemosh blue print, but the Molok surivived and was picked up by Hudders, another TEST pilot in a Claw who was also blown up in short order.  With him went the Molok blue print, and so the drops from the event went *poof* just like that.

And so it goes in New Eden.

So there I was on grid where the Blood Raiders Shipyard had been, cloaked up and looking around.  A fair number of Blood Raider ships were still roaming around rather aimlessly.  I saw a fleet of Blood Raider Augoror cruisers looping and turning and making patterns in search of a purpose.

Augoror fleet does a star burst, just to form up again

I watched the ships move about, then switch to the overview that showed wrecks on the field.  Loot looked to be fairly readily available, with an unlooted Jackdaw wreck visible to me.  I warped over to it, motored into range and found some light missiles on it.  I took those and then started to head over to some wrecks a ways away.  As I drew into range I suddenly got the CAPSULE EJECTING message as the Buzzard blew to bits around me.  A Blood Raiders Chemosh dreadnought had locked me up and one-shotted me.

These things are a menace to the space lanes

That was why there was still loot on grid; grabbing it was a hazard.  I bookmarked my wreck and warped to the station.  On docking I was given one standard issue Ibis corvette, the rookie ship you are handed by the game when you have no ship.  I decided to warp back out and see if I could quickly scoop up some of the items that dropped.  The Sisters expanded probe launcher and the covert ops cloak were worth some ISK, so there was no point leaving them sitting on grid.

I warped out the wreck and then ended up sitting there because I couldn’t fit all of the stuff from the wreck into the cargo hold of the Ibis.  I ejected one item, but as I sat there deciding I was once again blown up by the Chemosh.

An Ibis in the act of exploding

That lost me the probe launcher and some of the probes, but there was still the cloak to be had, and an Ibis is free, so I warped off in my pod for the station and shipped back up in an Ibis.  Then I warped back out to the now increasing pile of wrecks.  This time I laded a bit too far off the spot, but even as I got there to loot the Chemosh popped me again.

That thing must be doing pretty well to hit an Ibis so quickly.

Fortunately the loot fairy was kind to me and I only lost a couple of probes and that single unit of tritanium in the explosion.  The covert ops cloak and the coprocessor II were both still there waiting for me.  So I grabbed another Ibis, warped out, landed right on top of the wreck, looted quickly, and aligned to warp off.  Even as I was moving, the Chemosh took a shot at me.  This time he missed though.

Ibis gets past the beam of death

I was able to warp off safely.  I made it to the gate and through and back up into Delve without incident.  The event had been over for long enough for any hostile gate camps to have either given up or been driven off.

Anyway, that was my own little side adventure.  Soon the search will begin for the next incarnation of the Blood Raiders Shipyard.  Maybe a blue print will survive through the next event.

This past weekend’s Talking in Stations broadcast has some time devoted to the event and includes Imperium FC Apple Pear talking about what happened and how the Punisher plan came into being if you are interested in that.

Rise of Kunark Vote on Stormhold

Over on the EverQuest II nostalgia server, Stormhold, the march of expansion unlocks continues.  The unlock vote for the Rise of Kunark expansion… I keep typing Ruins of Kunark, because the original EverQuest expansion is much more meaningful to me… and the names are so similar… has been sent out to players.

Yes or No on Kunark

Of course, this brings us to one of those nostalgia server issues which I alluded to last week in that, even if a company decides to go down that path, it is tough to please all of those interested or to find a pace that doesn’t alienate some chunk of your audience.

In this case the Rise of Kunark expansion… the subject of perhaps the only spot-on prediction I have ever made on the blog… which, among its other features, raises the level cap to 80, doesn’t do a lot for me as I am still pottering about in the low 20s.

And I haven’t hit 23 yet

Now, this is mostly my problem.  Since the Stormhold server launched I haven’t played very much, and even when I have been playing the game has been in third place behind EVE Online and Minecraft. Which isn’t to say I haven’t played at all.  If I had rolled up a fresh character in WoW and put the same amount of time into him, he’d be into Mists of Pandaria by now.

I am not sure on which game that reflects the most poorly.

And the fact that I have been playing solo hasn’t helped.  Unlike the live servers, unnamed heroic mobs are not soloable on Stormhold, but a lot of the quests I have been running drive you straight into their arms.

So close to me goal…

Stormhold would have been an excellent opportunity to play with a small group.  Even a healer and a tank together would have owned.  But solo and playing a Shadow Knight, a brand new class for me, has made things a challenge and kept progress down.  I run into quests I cannot finish at level solo often enough, then I have to go find another path to level up on, so I can return later when I can overpower my way through the original.

On the other hand, putting expansion unlocks to a vote every 60 days seems like a fairly brisk pace.  Well, to me in any case.  And so far, only one expansion unlock has been voted down, a vote that led to the usual amount of acrimony in the forums.  No matter which way the vote goes, somebody is unhappy and wants to share.  The forever war between those who want a classic environment that sits static and unmoving and those who want to race to the top and unlock the next bit of content goes on.

Of course, I was happy enough to seen Echoes of Faydwer show up after the last vote.  That added some more 1-70 content, the emphasis for being on the late teens and early twenties, didn’t raise the level cap, and represented an important change in the history of the game.

Now though, with Rise of Kunark, we’re getting into content I didn’t even finish the first time around… even though it went live back in late 2007.

I may not be enthusiastic for the expansion to unlock, but it won’t change my play style at this point.  I am way too far behind the pack to catch up so I will continue to meander along at my own pace, dying to heroic mobs until I am at least a few levels above them.