Worth more than a sticky nickle
People love to complain about the price of games, and I get it. With the number of games these days that come out broken, half-complete, or crammed to the gills in microtransactions, it’s easy to get cynical. But, holy shit, do we need to learn to pick our battles. Complaining about a large company like Capcom selling a game they pulled out of the oven three months too early is one thing, but winging at an indie studio because you think its game should cost $15 instead of $20 probably isn’t the Iwo Jima style hill to die on you think it is. A developer for the indie mech game Brigador took to the Steam forums earlier today to explain why.
With a dash of gallows humor, Hugh Monahan describes how the team has spent the past five years working on Brigador entirely out of pocket with no external support. With the asking price of $20 (of which they will only see $10 after Steam and the taxman take their cut), they’ll already need to sell 25,000 copies of the game just to make the equivalent of working a minimum wage job for the past five years (which would have likely been less stressful than the seven day workweeks they spent toiling on Brigador).
In comparison, he notes that other things people consider to be worth at least $20 include trashcans, a single pair of Calvin Klein underwear, or a poster of Nickleback. Kind of makes you think about how much you really want to stand on principle over $5.
Not that “ohhh, but we werked weely hawd on dis!” should be a get out of jail free card, and Monahan himself recognizes that “it’s possible to struggle valiantly and still make poo.” If a game is a stinker or a bad deal, don’t be afraid to say it. At the same time though, maybe think for an extra second or two before rushing off to a forum to haggle over the price of a game like it was a knitted hat in a flea market. People work hard on these things and give up a lot to make them. If the game is worth your time, it’s probably worth as much or more than the grisly visage of Chad Kroeger leering down on you from above your headboard.
