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.
Wait, they didn’t already? I feel like a year ago, it magically went up to 1.25 everywhere by me, so I just assumed they actually raised it. Some good news is I have seen it in grocery stores on sale a lot for .66 a can which kind of works out to the same price as the jug so I will just get a bunch of cans instead.
No, they did not. That’s just the greedy stores near you: https://www.today.com/food/news/why-arizona-iced-tea-costs-more-than-99-cents-at-some-stores-rcna160216
I don’t care about Hollow Knight or Terraria or Blasphemous. I am not interested in souls-likes, platformers, or metroidvanias.
How I feel since last few years.
Ok?
Is that not a relevant thing to say?
Not OP, so I don’t necessarily feel this way about skong, but have you ever had your feed filled with discussion of something that you just don’t care about? And then you go talk to your friends and they’re also talking about it? Then you talk to a relative and they’re asking you what all the fuss is about? All while you give 0 shits about it?
I’ve been there, and it’s easy to just get plain annoyed at the subject coming up, even if innocuously. It’s the real life equivalent of squidward tuning into boxing because it’s not about cardboard boxes, only to be greeted with 2 cardboard boxes going at it.
And if you’re somehow in doubt that skong has satuarated discussion everywhere
As I See it what theBat wrote is as legit as what I wrote.
It’s all just a giant chain of brain farts.
I mean, frankly, I agree with you … but there are tons of other games in other genres of style and gameplay…that are also under $70 bucks, at or close to that $20 mark, that are pretty damn good.
They may not be as meteorically popular as Silksong…
But the point of the OP image is that… you do not in fact need a AAA production budget and AAA ‘graphics quality’ and MTX and FOMO and alo that garbage… to be able to have a successful game.
That you can in fact have a more modest yet also more focused approach, and create a break-out hit.
The point here is not ‘Silksong popular!’
The point is ‘Silksong proves that AAA development paradigms and business practices are ludicrously wasteful and not mandatory; there will always be other ways to be a successful game creator.’
OK, that’s a valid opinion and your personal taste. People should not judge that or think it weird, but it’s nothing special either…
Freedom of Speech depicts a scene of a 1942 Arlington town meeting in which Jim Edgerton, the lone dissenter to the town selectmen’s announced plans to build a new school, as the old one had burned down,[9] was accorded the floor as a matter of protocol.[10] Edgerton supported the rebuilding process but was concerned about the tax burden of the proposal, as his family farm had been ravaged by disease.[11] A memory of this scene struck Rockwell as an excellent fit for illustrating “freedom of speech”, and inspired him to use his Vermont neighbors as models for the entire Four Freedoms series.[12]
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_Speech_(painting)
For anyone curious about the source of OP’s image.
But have you played Ori and the Blind Forest?
No
You should try it. If a jaw-dropping, tear-jerking masterpiece like that can’t pull you in then you are revenant and your soul has already left you.
I agree, I think they’re overhyped, low budget kiddie games. Like if I got charged more than $30 for silksong, I’d feel ripped off.
EA releasing the same game each year for like $80
But the players have new haircuts!
What a dreadful take.
🤡🤡🤡
Don’t feed the ragebaiters/trolls LOL
(Good rage bait though, if intended as such :p)
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.
Not to defend big companies, but big companies have larger operating costs and they have more corporate responsibilities, to companies and people who fund them.
AAA game costs tens or hundreds of millions to make. Indie game can be made with 50k.
When game costs +40 million to make, you really cant take much risks and cant expect that the guys with the wallet wont want to interviene with you.
That’s all indirectly what I meant. Spend big money ant take no risks, players get expensive game with nothing original.
I just wanted to point that its not because the companies are some inconpetent cartoonisly evil entities, but its because of real live necessities and i bet there is plenty of talented amd passionate people working there too.
I would also not belittle AAA games. There are plenty of people who enjoy the yearly NHL and CoD releases and thats okay. Its not that differend that some people like mindless action movies and some people like artsy movies.
I think the same gatekeepy gamers that make fun of people just playing NHL or CoD are the same snobby people who make fun of casual players that just like to play match 3 games. Let people have fun.
FC is literally like 75% of EA’s income. I wish they took more risks with stable income like this. The problem is the large amount of people they keep hiring are product managers with business degrees. Stangleholding the creatives who love games with conservative business strategy and market research.
Yes because something like cyber punk is obviously as much work as silk song.
Is cyberpunk part of a franchise? You are missing the point completly.
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.
Large studios could make smaller games. Fund 10 games for the price of 1 big one. Expect at least one or two to be absolute gangbusters.
That might not quite be true. You can’t have 1000 people make Hollow Knight overnight. It’s like the old adage of 9 mothers making a baby in one month.
The closest thing would be to split the studio internally into 10 small teams, and have them each make a game over a long period of time; maybe that’s what you were implying.
Well, yeah, that’s how you do it. No reason to have one AAA sized team for ten small games.
I don’t think a flood of low effort games is the solution you think it is…
The latest Call of Duty game, Blacks Ops 6, is estimated to have a budget between $450,000,000 and $700,000,000. 1/10th of that budget ($45M to $70M) is still more than the entire development budget for The Witcher 3 at $35,000,000. The only thing they would likely need to cut back on is their marketing budget of $35,000,000.
You could probably make a hell of a lot of AAA games for the same price as GTA 6.
It’s what indie games already are. Following Sturgeon’s law, 90% of indie games are garbage. We venerate the 10% that aren’t.
This is an interesting point. With the decline in AAA game quality over the past… 5 (?) years, i wonder what percentage of them are garbage vs not. Because IMO, I’ve seen very very few that even twinkle, let alone shine, and i love blockbusters (though 2025 is shaping up wonderfully)
I have to assume that also, it’s a game that is definitely not for everyone, and the price reflects that. If I only got as far as I have in 5 hours and decided to give up, I’d have been sore about $40. As it is I’m going to spend a lot more time with it and I’m already happy with how much entertainment I’ve got for my money.
This is me too. I took a bit longer than expected to get back into the flow of HK (sequels amirite?), but once I did… I’m obsessed lol
Not to mention it’s a smaller game. And people will point to that it took 6 Years to make. It really shouldn’t have taken 6 years to make it. What were they doing, working one guy to death on it?
In my experience, most people who complain about the length of time it took to develop something like a game have no experience in relevant fields and don’t understand how long it really takes to do the bare minimum for even a 30 hour game experience, much less to make it a quality experience.
I could hammer out a “game” with dozens of hours of “content” in a week that perhaps a single digit number of people will buy before immediately requesting a refund. Making something good is what takes time. It involves a lot of steps of going back, seeing what works and what doesn’t, revising, and reiterating.
Breath of the Wild by comparison also took about 6 years to make with a team of 300 people. Silksong apparently was developed by a team of 3. While I doubt they were living the high life the entire 6 years, I also have doubts they were working each other like slaves. Therefore I believe they were likely working at a more normal pace for game development, and it simply takes that long to make a quality experience.
Well considering only 4 people work on the game, and one of them only does the music, probably, yeah.
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.
Big development team ≠ valuable game
The argument implied here is that because more money was poured into development, the value of the game is higher.
It’s putting the cart before the horse. The business logic on display by the studios is that they deserve a profit for the investment of making the game, and they have a right to charge more because they paid more to have the game made. That’s just … not true, or at least shouldn’t be the logic of the consumer. A game is only worth the value it brings to the player (which is of course subjective).
The argument being made here is that the $1M fancy character creator and it’s dev team CAN be compared to the work of a handful of sprites by an artist - and the fact that the value is either on par or in the small artists’ favor ought to be seen as damning to the larger studios.
To you specifically, @FreddyNO and regarding complex character creators specifically: do you really see value in them? My experience is that they’re something I do once at the beginning of the game, but usually within a couple hours I’m wearing enough new equipment to all but fully conceal every choice I made … save perhaps overall skin-tone; plus in most 3rd person games i spend most of the game looking at the characters backside whereas the c.creator focuses on mostly the face. I get that a good character creator adds cost and complexity - but are you sure it really adds value?
You’re confusing my point about a bad comparison with implication of what I value. I get it, easy connection to make, but they’re two different things
I’m not confusing your point about a bad comparison. I’m confused on your point about it being a bad comparison because I disagree. I believe they’re comparable. If there’s a reason they can’t be compared, perhaps you haven’t explained it as well as you think you have?
I asked about your values because I believe you are trying to to make a point about the economics of large vs small studios, and I want to understand. So rather than imply I was insinuating something (language that suggests I understand you, but am being willfully subversive), could you actually answer what was outright an attempt to understand your point?
Why do the back-end costs matter to the consumer? I do understand the difference between the two and that’s what makes the original meme funny.
Either you’re confused or you disagree. That’s fine.
Ah, yes, because the take away is that we need 1000+ dev studios churning out yearly slop franchises after 18+ months of crunch to justify their price tag, yeah?
No the takaway is that its a bad comparison.
it’s not. one being infinitely more wasteful for a lesser product that costs more doesn’t make it a bad comparison.
No, but you need different size teams to make 2D jumping game and Skyrim.
Why does a taxi ride cost more than a bus ticket? Isn’t that unfair!
Those devs have already been paid. You’re not actually paying the devs by buying a AAA game.
This is about returns on investment.
How many more copies would be sold of, lets say, GTA6, if the sales price were to be in the 20-40 dollar range instead of 70 dollar? Would that amount be able to offset the lower price point to satisfy the investors?
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.
Shovel Knight is actually fantastic though. You have AAA industry vets failing to meet its standard. Hell, compare SK to Mighty No. 9. Even Megaman can’t make a megaman as good as that anymore. Plus it isn’t just Shovel Knight, it has the Plague Knight, Specter Knight, and King of Cards sequels which are all genuinely great retro platformers.
No argument about DF though, and I still need to pick that up now that it has an actual UI.
Tell me you never properly played Hollow Knight without telling me you never properly played Hollow Knight ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Team Cherry is four people and they knew for a fact they were guaranteed to sell millions of copies.
Most games have teams orders of magnitud larger and can’t guarantee how well they’ll sell.
If Expedition 33, which is from a mid-sized studio and punching above its weight for how few people they have, had set its price on a per-developer basis to match Silksong, it would have cost 200 bucks. Baldur’s Gate 3 would have been 2500.
This is a bad take.
This is a bad take.
Yours sure is.
At least they had a take, unlike you.
Well, I don’t have to have a take as my opinion is reflected in this meme. If I have to attack the top half of it, we would be here all day, so I don’t want to bother anyone with it.
OP here had a response to the opinion expressed in the meme. All you did was say “I disagree”.
You don’t have to have a take but if you’re going to go to the point of writing something, not having anything to contribute is annoying and that’s what I’m complaining about. Understand?
Good, now go back to downvoting everything you disagree with, like everyone else does.
Good, now go back to downvoting everything you disagree with, like everyone else does.
I don’t know who you are talking about.
Do you understand why your original comment was annoying?
Did I explained afterwards my stance on this, yes. Did I downvote everyone whom I disagree with on this? no. Who is annoyed by that practice, you and only you.
I’ll forgive the zero content response because, frankly, it was right there and we all had to get it out of our systems early.
The first Hollow Knight was released at the same price. They never had a guarantee, yet they still delivered the game with basically the same quality level that leads to Silksong being so highly anticipated.
They just did more of what they are doing without asking for more DESPITE their first game blew up. For comparison, you could look at CDPR keeps expanding due to their initial Witcher success and lands on the disastrous launch of Cyberpunk 2077 (GOG is still a really good thing they end up making though)
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.
100%. Terraria should be the standard. If you’re making a 2d side scroller it should hav as much content as terraria/promise to deliver on it later, or be $15 or less.
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.
Didn’t some AAA studios complain that Baldur’s Gate is “only” 60€ and too high quality, so it sets unrealistic standards/expectations.
Of course they did. They want to sell barely working alpha builds for hundreds of dollars. Good games for a fair price screw up their plan.
indi continues to save the gaming industry
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.
Maybe a AAA crash cause they keep aiming for the cash grabs and battle pass/cosmetic slop. But I’ve been buying too many indie(ish?) games lately and I have not been disappointed by the majority of them.
yaRrr the $70 games
