memes

Arguably Team Cherry is much, much leaner/more efficient. They don't have to pay starving managers and CEOs industry standard salaries so they can feed their families 😁

Arizona Tea is thinking about raising the price of their tea from $1 to $1.29 for the first time in 30+ years, but the fourth Call of Duty game to come out this year needs a 15% price hike.

Let that sink in.

We have thousands of games that cost even less. You should stop behaving like that Silksong's price is somehow outstanding.

Huge gaming studios churning out reskinned versions of the same franchises that have been running for a decade+ with no real original content? $70+. Indie gaming studio putting out original content? $25.

I don't care about Hollow Knight or Terraria or Blasphemous. I am not interested in souls-likes, platformers, or metroidvanias.

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How I feel since last few years.

The video games industry needs to learn to not be afraid of letting games cook for a little longer. Silksong took a long time to come out, but what we eventually got was a good game made by a small team. Imagine if instead of the 500+ team members working on the next annual release of Assassins Creed, they peel off 50 artists, writers and programmers to create a new IP over the course of the next 5-7 years? Kind of like the original decision to do just that which got us... Assassin's Creed for the original Xbox.

There has got to be a good balance between "Here is EA Sportsball 20XX, that will be $70 please." where you get an underwhelming and uninspired annual release title with minor changes from the previous year, and Duke Nukem Forever or Cyberpunk 2077 that were trapped in decades-long development hell and released a sub-par, buggy product.

It's not the $70 price tag that's the issue, it's "what am I getting for the extra $10 I am paying for this?". If the answer is a more polished and refined product, I'm all for it - but that doesn't seem to be the case.

What a weird example to use.. You don't understand the economic difference between paying a small indie studio vs paying 500-1000+ devs making complex 3d games where the work of setting up one character dwarves the work of one sprite based 2d character?

Silksong is a beautiful game worthy of all the praise in the world, but this comparison makes no sense.

I doubt this'll be well received, but I actually don't think Silksong should be used to set price expectations. Hollow Knight made a shocking amount of money, massive sales were guaranteed, and the tiny dev team has enough money to pretty much vibe and make cool stuff forever.

Please don't compare other indie game prices to this, when those games can't guarantee their financial security, or massive sales number to turn a profit regardless of price.

Also, unrelated, but reading through the Bloomberg interview, and knowing what they charged for HK, 20$ is actually exactly what I assumed Silksong would cost well before it was announced, the shock for that kinda caught me off guard.

Well, of course smaller studios can charge less for their product in order to make a profit. Their expenditures has to be a lot less, and hence they need to make less money to make a profit.

Silksong was primarily developed by 3 people. For comparison, Baldur's Gate 3 was developed by around 300. There are probably more than 700 people making Battlefield 6.

High budget triple A vs indie. Lets not pretend these games are targeting the same audience. There's always been a division between small games with small dev teams and small budgets and triple A (whatever that may mean). Once you see the line, you can't really compare the two anymore. I agree that the lines are sometimes blurred (what even is indie? what is AA? what is AAA?) but I think its clear Silksong was never going to be marketed next to Monster Hunter. A fair(er) comparison would be Hades 2 and the price difference is non longer so extreme.
Or.. you know.. we can add Vampire Survivors to the mix..

There’s just no way you could ever convince me that a 2d side scroller should ever be over $30.

I was born at the beginning of the 1983 video game crash before Nintendo revived the medium, and I suspect another crash is in our future. Late-stage capitalism isn't helping either, but here we are!

Most modern AAA games don't appeal to my old ass, but I remember games when they were made by people who like to play games. These are our modern indie studios and it brings joy to see them succeed.

Hollow Knight seems like mainstream game industry shit to me. Solid game, massive hype, lots of sales. And I wouldn't even remember it in a couple months if not for other people.

It's like how Shovel Knight is a really good platformer but then you play it and it's... just a good platformer. An indie gem! But also, something you've played before.

You know what AAA companies didn't do 20 years ago? Dwarf Fortress.

indi continues to save the gaming industry

If you're up for some constructive criticism: I think the meme would be more effective if you put the silksong price in the lower panel to balance the $70 figure found in the top panel. Said another way, the lower text is missing the suffix "...for $20".

...and I guess while I'm at it, whatever that meme law is about fewer words is better makes me think the top panel could be trimmed down: ~~The~~ gaming industry explains why they need to charge $70 for a game ~~in order to make a profit.~~