 With the dawn of the new generation of consoles, prices for full-price, retail videogames shot up from the previous $50 average price point to a $60 price point, which is, for the mathematically lazy, a 20% increase. Around this same time, a number of studios began developing and releasing an increased number of high-budget, single-player only action games. Many games in this style provide players with about 12 hours of total playtime, which is incredibly long compared to the average film, but incredibly short when compared to the number of hours that people might spend in the multiplayer modes of games like Halo 3, Left 4 Dead, or (if you really hate fun) The Darkness.
The argument has been made over and over again that the number of hours that a game provides players with is in no way related to the quality or value of the game. While I understand this point, I have to disagree and say that for most "average" people who don't use $20 bills as toilet paper there is no reason to purchase a $60, single-player only game. With services like GameFly and even old-school, slightly disease-infected brick and mortar rental stores, single-player games like Bioshock can be simply rented and completed over the course of a week, all for less than $5. Is Bioshock worth $60? Absolutely. However, that's not my point.
My point is that games with no replay value, lackluster multiplayer, or no multiplayer at all aren't doing anything to convince gamers to buy when they could simply rent at a much more wallet-friendly price. For example: I rented Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway from a local, probably malaria-laden rental store early last week. Every night I spent just a few hours with the game, and by Thursday night I had finished it. Admittedly, I had a blast with the game for the duration that I played it. It certainly had some problems (largely with the AI, which sometimes did things like force my soldiers to hump a sandbag) but to put things simply, Hell's Highway is a good, fun game.
Upon beating it, however, I looked at the multiplayer option on the main screen and cringed. The shooting in the game isn't the greatest in the world, and I felt that since I had already beaten the long, story-driven campaign, I could simply go back to my copy of Halo 3 and play the more polished multiplayer there. This isn't a knock against BiA: HH (or "BIIIYAHH!!" as the kids call it) at all. I had a great time with it, and felt like the price for the rental was a great deal. The thing is, if I had paid a full $60 for it (as I'm sure it was priced upon initial release) I would have felt cheated.
Single-player games or games with little replay value are in a bad position in the current economic state of the world. There may be nothing that can be done for them, but if games like the upcoming God of War 3 don't offer some sort of incentive to keep playing after the campaign ends, gamers might find themselves showing up at Blockbuster instead of GameStop after its release. If Hell's Highway were a downloadable game with no multiplayer whatsoever, it wouldn't ever even come in contact with the problem of offering content that people would only rent it for. Renting would be impossible! That's a discussion for another day, though. Go rent some games, everybody. And make sure you wash your hands afterwards. Those places are nasty.
UPDATE
I forgot to mention this in the first published version of this article, but with single player games like Fallout 3 or Fable 2, which provide tons of hours worth of play, the "rent" option doesn't really apply. It's a good point that games like these and almost all RPGs can give a fantastic single player experience by itself and still be worth the full, $60 price. I'm sticking to my guns about shorter, average-length "action" games like God of War 3 being friendlier to the rent option, however. That is in no way a knock against their quality (which obviously, no one could comment on in the case of God of War 3, since it hasn't even been released yet), but it simply says something about what might be the most intelligent decision when it comes to spending money on the part of the gamer.
UPDATE DOS
Also, much discussion has come up about "supporting the developers." I'm all for that, and more power to those who are willing to shell out $60 every time a decent game comes out, but I'm much more willing to let capitalism do its thing while I practice good money management. If I bought every game I wanted to give a try for full price instead of simply renting, I'd be one broke Caucasian. So props to those of you who are worried about supporting the industry with your dollar, but I'm a consumer, not a fund raiser.
 |
