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If we don't start to stand up now and speak out against it, it will only get worse.

Mad-A
Honored Guest
The fact that these games are charging 40-50 dollars for games that only last 2-3 hours is insane. If we keep paying for it, it will only continue or get worse. We need to stand as a community and express the displeasure together. I love Oculus, I'm here to support them until the end, but I can't keep buying these games for that much and being done in one dang day!
72 REPLIES 72

Dieslow
Expert Protege

CrashFu said:

P.S.  Put this in perspective: A copy of a new-release movie costs $20-30 and typically lasts 1.5 hours. $40-50 for an interactive, highly-immersive VR experience that lasts "only 4 hours" is not worth a proportional amount to you?

P.P.S.  Some of us, particular gamers and VR-users with full-time jobs, or other responsibilities or hobbies, really appreciate shorter, higher-quality games and experiences these days.  Especially since the "long" ones usually don't actually have 10x as much content, but rather the same amount of content with 90% time-wasting filler. Somebody explain to me, when did the purpose of games and other entertainment products stop being "to entertain us" and start being "to waste as much of our time as possible?"  You want to do something boring for 40 hours, I'm sure you've got housework piling up, go do that.



Oh man do I love those 2 P.S ! Great comparison to the movies and, like you mentioned, I'd rather play 2-3 intense hours than waste my time. Where is the fun in having to drive/walk to some location then having  to get to another location to finally see something happen ? Pointless in my opinion while it can be fun in the beginning it quickly gets boring after a couple of hours.

CrashFu
Consultant
It's really clear that some people just don't understand the kind of time and money it takes to make these games, or how running a business in this industry works.

If consumers refuse to pay a fair price for a game "because it's not long enough", the developers aren't just going to start working on a longer game to appease you. They can't at that point;  They were counting on the last game's sales in order to fund the next project, and LONG games take SIGNIFICANTLY more money to create, especially if you want that longevity to come from actual content and not just time-wasting  (most of a game's budget is hourly wages for employees and the cost to use the office its made in, IE the longer a game takes to make the more expensive it is)

Which means if they DO make another VR game after you refuse to buy one, it's almost assuredly going to be SHORTER or LOWER-QUALITY than the last, something they can crank out in a hurry and sell cheap to recoup their losses.  But seeing as developing for the emergent VR market was already such an unsure risk, chances are that if a developer's first VR attempts fail, they're just going to stop making VR games altogether.

And you think some other developer, watching someone else's million-dollar game fail to sell is going to think "Well if I spend four times as much money as they did, I'll have better results"?  Hell no, those other developers are going to think, "Well there's no point in spending that much money on a game if it won't sell."

How paranoid do you have to be to believe that developers are intentionally making games as short as possible, that they're trying to somehow scam you into buying "unworthy" games for "too much money"?   Nobody's trying to scam you, in fact it's incredibly generous for them to sell these games for THIS cheap given the size of the market; normally when developing for a market this small, a developer will easily charge $100 per game.

Game developers are not your enemy. You are not AT WAR with game developers.  You can't punish them into doing what you want.

In fact, if you want longer games, there's really only one way you're going to get that:  Pay full price for what they're releasing now, so that the developers (and or their publishers) will have the funding and confidence necessary to make more games, and send those developers POLITE feedback saying you'd like to see bigger, longer games in the future.

There is no self-respecting game developer on Earth who does not WANT each game they make to be bigger, better, and more-impressive than the last.  But they can't just go from 0 to 40-hour-epic, and they DEFINITELY can't make those longer games you desire if they go bankrupt from a bunch of cynical penny-pinchers boycotting and trashing their games.
It's hard being the voice of reason when you're surrounded by unreasonable people.

cybereality
Grand Champion
At this point in my life, I actually appreciate games that are high quality, but clock in around 4 - 6 hours of gameplay. I work and have other hobbies, I don't want every game to be a 40 hour RPG, that's just daunting. It's about quality, not quantity. I mean, if you go to the theaters to see a new 3D movie, tickets can easily be $15-18 bucks (depending on where you are) for a 2 hour experience. So paying even $40 for 6 hours doesn't seem like such a bad deal. As others have said, game development is expensive. For example, GTA V cost $265 million to produce. Most VR games are not at that scale, but developers need to get an ROI somehow, and that's probably not by selling their games for 99 cents. 
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vannagirl
Consultant
Some reductions in home i notice earlier

Its true then, oculus do sales  😉
Look, man. I only need to know one thing: where they are. 

Javelin396
Adventurer
For me, the most recent offender of a vr game being overpriced for the amount of content is , as someone else stated, Killing Floor Incursion. The gameplay itself was good but it was just too darn short (and it doesnt have alot of incentive for replaying it) and the matchmaking coop never worked no matter how many times i tried to do it. that said, it's also the kind of game i would've been pretty impressed with too 8 months ago when i first got my headset/touch controllers. also would've been more impressed with it  had the market not been too saturated with these kinds of games that offer similar experiences at lower cost.

Horrorscope
Explorer

CrashFu said:
Put this in perspective: A copy of a new-release movie costs $20-30 and typically lasts 1.5 hours. $40-50 for an interactive, highly-immersive VR experience that lasts "only 4 hours" is not worth a proportional amount to you?





What if I'm not buying movies anymore, like most? I get your point, but game makers have to find their market to.

Horrorscope
Explorer


At this point in my life, I actually appreciate games that are high quality, but clock in around 4 - 6 hours of gameplay. I work and have other hobbies, I don't want every game to be a 40 hour RPG, that's just daunting. It's about quality, not quantity.
I agree and to me sure it's about quality, but it is more like... "Ok I get your mechanic, it was fun learning and fun playing but there's a point the mechanics in most games start getting stale". So yes I do like much shorter games now, price being reasonable to for a short experience, assume shorter development time as well.

Zenbane
MVP
MVP
I think the development time has been impressively short. I have over 50 VR titles and we're barely 1 year in to mainstream consumer VR as a gaming platform. If we shorten the development time any further... we'll likely all be playing 100 versions of Candy Crush VR :'(

Anonymous
Not applicable
These days the really big games tend to be about replayability. Look at League of Legends, Dota, Overwatch, Hearthstone, etc.

The time played in those games doesn't come from copious content, it comes from a set of really strong base mechanics around which a lot of diversity and player choice is built.

Robo Recall is a really good example of this where they've built a very robust 10-second experience and then scaled it over a variety of maps, unlocks, and interesting scoring system. I've already spent well over 10 hours in that game and I'm still more than happy to just jump into a level and have fun trying to get another star or beat my previous score. And what's really impressive is that they've achieved this within a single player experience.

If you expect beautifully tailored, bespoke stories told in the form of an RPG that spans hours of play time, you're going to have a bad time, especially this early in VR's life. As Zenbane just mentioned, VR as a mainstream gaming platform hasn't been around long enough for these types of games to exist.

DarkTenka
Trustee

CrashFu said:


How paranoid do you have to be to believe that developers are intentionally making games as short as possible, that they're trying to somehow scam you into buying "unworthy" games for "too much money"?   Nobody's trying to scam you, in fact it's incredibly generous for them to sell these games for THIS cheap given the size of the market; normally when developing for a market this small, a developer will easily charge $100 per game.


VR, being a new technology, has attracted a wide audience of both gamers and non gamers. I don't know which category you fall into here but it seems like you are in the non-gamer or at best casual gamer category.

The thing is, gamers know exactly what to expect from publishers who create content - for profit. You state they are being paranoid, I'm telling you they are well justified in their cynicism. AAA game publishers will take a mile for every inch you give them, if they think selling a $50 2 hour experience is profitable they will not endeavour to make it any longer. Gamers are already accustomed to being completely shat on by AAA publishers in this regard, EA or Activision would jump at the chance to half the amount of content of their next Call of Duty or their next Star Wars Battlefront while keeping the same price tag - if they thought they could get away with it. We don't want to see the entire VR industry start like this out of the gate only to get worse and worse as the years go buy. God knows its already going to shit for flat gaming alone.

If a publisher invests a million dollars into making a short experience with stale/uninspired gameplay then whats the point? Why not just spend more time fleshing out the games mechanics? Creating more levels? Making the game more challenging or more interesting in some way?

No, if a AAA publisher can't find a way to invest their money and time into development responsibly I would rather we didnt have any AAA VR games. At this point indie developers and AA developers are doing a MUCH better job at making enjoyable VR experiences.