There is a lot of people vouching for video game base prices to increase, and one of those many people happens to be the founder of Bethesda: Christopher Weaver. Not only does he give his opinion on loot-boxes and microtransactions, he also feels that games should generally cost more.
You say you don’t know Christopher Weaver? Well, the man happens to be the founder of Bethesda and one of the creators of The Elder Scrolls franchise. Although he, Weaver, hasn’t had direct involvement with Bethesda for a while, he’s currently busy interviewing video game pioneers to make an archive history for a Smithsonian project.
Weaver these days spends his time teaching video game development and managed to catch the attention of RollingStone. The publication site posted up an interview that featured his thoughts on a myriad of topics, and one that stood out the most revolved around loot-boxes, microtransactions and games costing more.
According to the publication site, we learn about Weaver’s stance on the aforesaid topic:
“While Weaver is busy interviewing video game pioneers, the industry continues to move ahead at full steam, and even if he isn’t directly involved, he can’t help but have opinions on some of the latest developments in gaming.
When I asked about how video games should make money in the wake of the loot box-ificiation of AAA titles, Weaver’s first response was to criticize the freemium model.
“I’m not a big fan of people believing that you get something for nothing,” he says. “If you want to try something like a single chapter first or subscribe, I’m ok with that.””
RollingStone went on to bring up titles like Star Wars: Battlefront 2 and Middle-Earth: Shadow of War. After the site brought up the two games, Weaver warned that players will continue to rebel against the service type strategy. The publication site noted Weaver saying:
“This nickel and dime approach to payment may well backfire as it interferes with the flow of a game and disallows for players to lose themselves in its play-world,” he says, adding that, the best solution may simply be paying more for new games up front rather than having to deal with hidden costs. “Players may have to absorb the increasing costs of creating AAA games to allow publishers to remain profitable.”
The topic on loot-boxes, microtransactions and game price points increasing ended with Weaver saying that…
“The nice thing about teaching students is, I don’t have to worry about the economics anymore”.
The thing is, Weaver isn’t the only one who believes that video games initial price point should increase, there seems to be some people who want this push to go through.
Bend Studio, the ones working on Days Gone, happened to be encouraged to increase the price point when the topic was about moving to a new studio and not about video games having a higher initial price point.
https://twitter.com/BeoW0lff/status/933374294951899136
The true question is, what will happen if a mass amount of people stop buying these games that come out for $80-$90 plus at launch?
