I can no longer afford to play video games the way I want to – Reader’s Feature

A reader is attracted to Silksong because of its low price, as he worries he’s being priced out of buying triple-A games on a regular basis.

I’ve been very interested in all the hype for Hollow Knight: Silksong this week. I’m not that much of a fan of Metroidvania games but one particular factor caught my attention: the price. Indie games are known for being cheap but over the last few years they’ve been increasing more and more in price, until they’re no longer the impulse purchases they used to be.

Such is the way of the world but unlike the water bill or groceries, video games are not essentials that I cannot do without. Well… they seem like that at times, but my wife certainly does not agree and I can’t in all honestly say she’s wrong.

I’m not on the bread line so much that I can’t afford to buy indie games, but I do dread what they’re going to cost in a couple more years’ time, when it seems likely that they’re going to be creeping into the low end of what retail games used to cost.

This is all for perfectly understandable reasons, with modern indie games having better graphics than ever. Although I do dispute whether being bigger and having more content is necessarily always a positive.

Maybe it’s just me, but one of the appeals of indie games is that they rarely overstay their welcome and they’re very much in and out. I don’t want them to turn into 40 hour epics, especially if that’s the reason they increase in price.

We’ll have to wait and see though. Silksong is apparently very big and that’s cheap, so hopefully that will encourage other indies to keep the prices down. Not that I want to do them out of money or anything, you understand, but when you’re buying a non-essential thing like a video game you want it to fit your needs, not necessarily those of the people that made it.

But my biggest issue is the ever increasing price of triple-A games. They’ve got to the point now where I feel I’ve essentially been priced out of high-end gaming. Even Nintendo games are super expensive now and… it’s not a case of them not being value for money but the fact that the money they’re asking for is just too much for a video game.

There’s a limit, I feel, for how much you can waste on something you’ll play for 20 hours or so and then never touch again or have any ability to sell on second-hand. I will make exceptions here and there but basically I can’t buy and play games the way I want to anymore.

If I hear about a new triple-A game coming out the chances of me actually getting it are now much lower than it used to be, and it’s not really because of a lack of interest. And don’t get me started on the consoles. There is no way I am going to drop hundreds on a new lump of plastic that I need a YouTube video to tell me what it does differently to the old one.

I feel that video games are increasingly becoming only for the rich. With the majority of people just playing free-to-play rubbish (which I have no interest in) and the comfortably well off the only ones able to pick up new retail games whenever they want, especially single-player games with limited use.

I don’t know what the answer is here, especially as I’ll probably be a huge hypocrite and buy GTA 6 next year, even though I know it’ll probably be even more expensive than things currently are. How many other games I’ll buy next year though I couldn’t say. Resident Evil Requiem? Maybe, if it’s on cheap. Anything else, I’m not so sure. They’re just too expensive.

By reader Scoobie

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