One nit (Destiny)

by Kahzgul, Tuesday, June 23, 2015, 21:54 (3249 days ago) @ Cody Miller

Overall I liked what you had to say, but this part rankles:

I get that your one animator had to work for a day or maybe two to make it, but that ain't worth $5 to over 1 million players.

I get the use of slight hyperbole as a matter of trying to make a point, but minimizing the work of animators, mocap artists, and techs is kind of gross. I think most people not involved with game dev would be absolutely astonished at how much work goes into something as seemingly "trivial" as creating a dance cycle.

And, if you don't raise the prices of your games, then the more and more work it takes to make games nowadays becomes less and less valuable in aggregate. This is why people balk at 10 bucks for 3 maps, since 60 dollars got them something that was way more than 6x the work. So either a 60 dollar price point undervalues the animator's work, or a 5 dollar dance emote overvalues it. You can't have it both ways.

This is again why I think it's best to treat everything in aggregate as 'the game' and not break down the value of each individual element by work, since they are all important in serving the game's overall quality.

Firstly, not all of the work is done by the animator. Second, map packs are much better ROI on a per-unit basis than whole games. Third, I thought you hated microtransactions? Now you're defending them, even when they're overpriced? I'm confused.