The Price of Video Games - A Comparison to Movies
I'm going to do a comparison of video games to movies, because I think there are some similarities in the economics of how things work.
I'll start at the bottom of the food chain - commercials.
Commercial movies are those web-based BMW clips of people acting out these strange stories while driving BMW's latest automobiles. The gaming equivalent is "Corvette" or "Ford Auto Racing" (which apparently uses the Gran Turismo engine). They're cheap/free and they have very small supply and very small demand. How companies convince people to pay for their advertising is beyond me.
Next up is the direct to video/television movies which are roughly analagous to the $20 start price video game.
I don't have a lot of good examples here because - frankly - who remembers these things anyways? Oh wait - Mutha Truckers 2 will be $20 - there you go. Now that's exciting. This is almost as bad as the commercial except that there's an attempt at originality here, just not a very good one.
My next category would be your classic high budget box office bomb.
Remember "Stealth"? Neither do I. The video game world is littered with way too many examples of games that had a lot of money behind them, but were just horrible when they finally came out. My classic example (which I am certain someone would disagree with) is Mech Assault 2 : Lone Wolf. All the video game editors loved this game until it launched. Then the bad reviews started. I'm not sure I will ever spend $50 on another video game after buying that.
The next category is the cult movie and in the video game world, the equivalent is games like Psychonauts and Killer 7.
Great critical acclaim, but sadly no one buys them. Years later, small groups of people will form fansites on the internet joining together in praise of the game/movie, and sometimes enough interest generates in these sites and a sequel is born. Usually and unfortunately, these works usually just pass into obscurity.
My last category is the triple "A" blockbuster.
Star Wars. Halo. These are some big names. They usually start with a good idea and get executed to brilliant precision by the people who work on them. Star Wars was just plain weird, but George Lucas found a way to make it accessible enough to make it the most successful movie series of all time. Halo started out as hum-drum RTS (which would have ended up in the "cult classic" section in my opinion) and evolved into one of the most popular shooters of all time. I won't argue the merits of this category, but popularity obviously means that enough people liked it to spend money on it. That's got to count for something.
In my next blog entry, I'll editorialize on how the cost of production and marketing for each category directly relates to the price and ultimate success of the games or movies.
I'll start at the bottom of the food chain - commercials.
Commercial movies are those web-based BMW clips of people acting out these strange stories while driving BMW's latest automobiles. The gaming equivalent is "Corvette" or "Ford Auto Racing" (which apparently uses the Gran Turismo engine). They're cheap/free and they have very small supply and very small demand. How companies convince people to pay for their advertising is beyond me.
Next up is the direct to video/television movies which are roughly analagous to the $20 start price video game.
I don't have a lot of good examples here because - frankly - who remembers these things anyways? Oh wait - Mutha Truckers 2 will be $20 - there you go. Now that's exciting. This is almost as bad as the commercial except that there's an attempt at originality here, just not a very good one.
My next category would be your classic high budget box office bomb.
Remember "Stealth"? Neither do I. The video game world is littered with way too many examples of games that had a lot of money behind them, but were just horrible when they finally came out. My classic example (which I am certain someone would disagree with) is Mech Assault 2 : Lone Wolf. All the video game editors loved this game until it launched. Then the bad reviews started. I'm not sure I will ever spend $50 on another video game after buying that.
The next category is the cult movie and in the video game world, the equivalent is games like Psychonauts and Killer 7.
Great critical acclaim, but sadly no one buys them. Years later, small groups of people will form fansites on the internet joining together in praise of the game/movie, and sometimes enough interest generates in these sites and a sequel is born. Usually and unfortunately, these works usually just pass into obscurity.
My last category is the triple "A" blockbuster.
Star Wars. Halo. These are some big names. They usually start with a good idea and get executed to brilliant precision by the people who work on them. Star Wars was just plain weird, but George Lucas found a way to make it accessible enough to make it the most successful movie series of all time. Halo started out as hum-drum RTS (which would have ended up in the "cult classic" section in my opinion) and evolved into one of the most popular shooters of all time. I won't argue the merits of this category, but popularity obviously means that enough people liked it to spend money on it. That's got to count for something.
In my next blog entry, I'll editorialize on how the cost of production and marketing for each category directly relates to the price and ultimate success of the games or movies.
posted by Jason at
6:00 AM
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