This is one of those thoughts that has percolated in my dysfunctional little brain for a while now, but when I was idling scrolling through the Switch eShop sales page looking for interesting indie stuff to impulse buy and probably play five minutes ever, it jumped back out and now it’s blocking the bathroom door, so I guess it’s time to address it before the situation escalates. A new shmup, Moon Dancer (which looks pretty dang cool) is on sale, but squinting above it, I see the original price is $18.99 USD. The Steam version is $14.99 regular price with the option of a soundtrack bundle.) Now, I’ve seen the sentiment crop up in reviews that the price of a game shouldn’t affect its rating, and as someone who is into kind of nichey stuff, it’s a factor I get stuck thinking on a lot.
I like a lot of smallish studios’ work, the indie scene feels like the place to find titles that are either imaginative or at least similarly cozy to the stuff I grow up with, with a dash of excitement of discovery on top from finding something quality that hasn’t been completely overhyped and overexposed online. I don’t honestly know if WayForward and Inti Creates are considered indie anymore, but they’re at least able to keep their own identity and mostly avoid the big trends that make high profile companies’ outputs feel so bland and samey. I also personally know a few people home-brewing their own passion projects and/or self-publishing and the amount of work that goes into it is huge and admirable. Major props to people who spend years going “I’m making a game!” and banging at it ’til it actually happens.
The thing that gets me is that game pricing feels like it’s just all over the place. Honestly, most feel ridiculously generous, like full length RPGs with original art and engines selling for $20 or less. My beloved ZeroRanger is still technically under construction after four years while keeping the same $12.99 price point, and it’s probably my favorite shmup. So when you get a release like say, Darius Burst CS, which isn’t quite mainstream but well regarded in its genre, releasing for $50 (base game, it has/had numerous $4.99 DLCs), it’s kind of a tough sell for me. (Also it seems to be delisted now? I went to check the price and I can no longer add to cart on Steam.) And the hell of it is like, I still kind of want it, in a “gotta support the scene!” kind of way. I was willing to buy it on a steep sale one of the few times it did and I burned some Amazon credit on Deathsmiles 1+2 since I like 1 a lot and never played 2, but they were both a bit beyond an impulse buy for me. I have a similar problem with fighting games, I love both genres and appreciate the replay value your get out of replaying them and improving over time, but at the same time, they’re both kind of a short experience by default, and if it doesn’t click, then I’m going to probably get each character’s ending and shelf it forever.
I realize that shifting from talking about indie projects to ports of existing games to home console or updating them is a different ball game, but it’s hard for me to separate the two when I’m scrolling through the listings. Ultimately, they’re both a product and an experience, and when I see someone pouring their blood, sweat and tears into something then selling it for $3.99 or giving it away for free out of love for what they’re doing and another listing is a decades old arcade game, optimized for current systems for $7.99, it feels kind of off to me. Arcade Archives does do great work, and I nabbed some of their ports in spite of being really easy to just emulate the stuff, but at the same time, I’m thinking “this is a good port, but they didn’t make this.” And where do you even place things like the Pixel Game Maker series of releases or commercial RPG Maker projects? There’s effort there, in the writing, graphics, generally, though there are some games that just do the bare minimum and release it to Steam because they’re allowed to. There are some really impressive games coming out of Maker engines, and you definitely can’t knock them making game development more accessible to people who otherwise couldn’t (hell, I purchased Pixel Game Maker myself recently hoping it clicks and I can make something some day.)
I’m not really saying that indie devs are underselling themselves or that porters are gouging their audiences here, more that ‘value’ isn’t entirely about cost but a factor I can’t entirely ignore when I’m game shopping or reviewing something. I’ve dropped ten or fifteen bucks on more duds than I can remember but also gotten hours of fun from games in the same bracket. I’m also guilty of overpaying for weeb trash games because, well, that’s just how niche things go. Sometimes you have to bite that bullet if you want to play Darius Burst CS badly enough or want to import a Super Robot Wars or tiddy ninja RPG. When something enters niche hobby territory, there’s usually a price hike, look at photography on real film. You used to be able to get disposable cameras for cheap at any drug store, now it’s basically a hipster luxury territory.
Let’s step away from the cozy side of the games market for a bit here. I know, I don’t do it much either, but it’s okay. Just hold my hand and don’t follow anyone from Blizzard anywhere. I love my Switch, ok? It’s probably one of the top three consoles I’ve regretted least buying. But Nintendo continues its proud tradition of pricing everything at $50-$60 and never budging from launch price and that makes buying into first party games really tough for me unless peer pressure is involved. I play Mario Kart pretty regularly with friends after finally caving on it, and Smash Ultimate is a good time even if I rarely do multi player with that one, but I’ve been kind of hemming and hawing about Breath of the Wild for years at this point. I don’t play a lot of open-world games, and I honestly haven’t played much 3D Zelda, but the near universal fellating of BOTW has me wondering, like- is this the one? Is this going to be the open exploration phenomenon that makes me not mind forgetting what the hell I’m doing while wandering around lost in the woods? Genshin Impact sure wasn’t. I got super into Honkai Impact, its stage based brawler cousin, and after a while I thought “Hey, maybe it would be fun to go back to Genshin and see how much these two games have in common.” Since I haven’t gambled myself into a cardboard box as of writing this, I think you can guess how well that went. So, I haven’t pulled the trigger on BOTW. Splatoon always looked kind of neat, but I don’t really want to pay full Nintendo price on a ‘maybe,’ especially knowing that they have something of a shelf life with finite Splatfests. Also Inklings keep cutting me off in Mario Kart offline circuits and I’m kind of developing a grudge. It just irks me that Nintendo never cuts the price on these games unless they make it to best-seller status or completely fucking bomb (I got Other M for 12 bucks new at GameStop back in the day) when most companies would give it a break a few months or a year out.
This has all been kind of a roundabout way of saying “I don’t like paying more than $20 for short games but also don’t want them to stop making them.” So many indie games sell low it kind of feels like being spoiled, but as an artist I’m also pretty painfully aware that selling low is an easy way to get takers, period. I’d hate to wind up as the equivalent to one of those assholes who gets a quote from an artist and insists “no way it should be that much, anyone can draw if they try and if you do it for fun why are you charging me at all?” So, love and respect out there, earnest indie devs and those of you out there who bust your bottoms making quality game ports and collections.
