Playing video games has never been a cheap hobby. As with everything else these days, gaming is getting more expensive by the day and the majority of the community's compliance in accepting wholly unnecessary norms like light-speed console cycles, huge bump in price for a single game, and other money-hungry post-release content access schemes signaled to the game developers and publishers that they can get away with everything. Of course, those who approach this hobby with some degree of intelligence don't have to suffer with everyone else. I have written in the past that for me, personally, I consider $39.99 as the sweet spot for a price of a single game. I came to this conclusion in 2011: that was a lifetime ago. This means that a lot of indie games are easy for me to justify getting because they are usually way cheaper than that even to this day. Still, with the number of games I have in my library, I still tend to wait for some kind of discount, unless of course, I truly want to play a game that bad.
I have seen a lot of people in gaming forums who look at gaming prices in a wholly different perspective: price per hour of entertainment. It's another method of justifying purchase of course as we all justify things in different ways. I just don't see the validity of this practice as a gamer who started during the birth of the hobby. Many games in the past can be easily completed in one sitting. They normally last about an hour to two hours on average. Of course, they are also quite replayable and those who justify pricing by the hour do sometimes include this in their equation. What is really the true value of a game? Is it the overall satisfaction and entertainment you get out of it or the number of hours you spend in it; perhaps a combination of both? I have also seen gamers demanding the games they purchased to be continually patched by the developers until the end of time or said games are considered "abandoned".
I love me the Chicken Invaders series but still no 75% discount? Pass!
Different people have different money situations. That is of course, the primary factor in everything we get to do in this world we live in. But I think that it is easy to get distracted by any kind of game longevity debate. With purchasing power, or lack thereof, comes entitlement. That's not necessarily a bad thing but sometimes, people get so caught in it that suddenly, you can't have fun with the hobby anymore. An example of this is the digital rights management debate. A popular DRM used these days in personal computer games is Denuvo. Check out the forum on any Denuvo-infused titles on Steam and you will find people who make proclamations that they want those games but will not get them until Denuvo is removed. Some even post follow-up discussions to check on the status of such removal. Sure, if you don't like something, don't support it but the problem I see here is that these individuals want these games so bad but unable to see past a self-inflicted paranoia. In my experience in gaming all these years, I have never encountered any issues with the Denuvo DRM. Securom? Yeah, that was nasty, primarily because it was a hassle to manage. But silly Denuvo? The funny thing about this whole thing is that Steam itself is the mother of all DRMs, but these people are unable to see this fact whatsoever and if they really cared, they would only have a Good Old Games account since that service sells actual DRM-free games.
Apparently, this crazy tier of pricing is not the problem. Denuvo is the problem!
A game may be too expensive, or it may be too lacking in content, or it may contain an additional DRM. or it may not be available in physical format: there are plenty of reasons to avoid making a gaming purchase. I do it all the time for a lot of different reasons, but I also understand that sometimes, I have to make exceptions to the rules that I set for myself. Sure, $39.99 is the max price I would ever pay for a complete game, but I have paid a lot more for games that I just had to have now. I hate "Early Access" titles, but I have bought quite a few and I ended up being satisfied with most of them. Because you know what? We are not immortals. I make exceptions when I know that doing so would make my life a little bit brighter, a little bit happier, sometimes drastically so. If I want to experience something so bad and I am able to do so, why would I wait when I may not even be here the next hour or the next day? As we live this life as sentient beings, the sense that life keeps on going, the experience of the now, is prevalent, intoxicating. The promise that life is forever doesn't just come packaged with religion. It is innate in all of us, no matter how false it is. Do what makes you happy, as long as you do it responsibly as in, you still have to make sure you can pay the bills. The digital games we buy lose all their monetary value as soon as we hit that "purchase" button. I am sure that physical games don't sell much nowadays either. What you get out of your gaming purchase is something that you have to quantify emotionally. At the end of day, does anything matter as we fade into nonexistence? Live your life, have fun with it. Life is not forever. Neither are your video games.
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