
Why Do Gamers Undervalue Video Games so much? - Red_Tarsius
http://gamasutra.com/blogs/MichaelGnade/20140620/219551/Why_Do_Gamers_Undervalue_Video_Games_so_much.php?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+GamasutraNews+%28Gamasutra+News%29&utm_content=FaceBook
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padobson
There's a fundamental difference between gaming and movies/music/books that
isn't mentioned here: star power.

Movies have super star actors. Music is driven by super star musicians. A lot
of times, the name of an author is bigger than the title on a book.

While dedicated gamers may know well who is making their games, the majority
of gamers do not, and don't need to. If you go to a movie or a concert, you
can see the face of the actor or musician. An author's good name is extremely
important in selling a book. At the same time, you can play through a game for
60 hours and never spend a second thinking about who made it.

This opens the door for game studios to treat the labor of game developers
like a commodity, which allows them to sell their games like a commodity,
which allows gamers to demand so much for their money.

Anecdotally, I went to college to learn how to make games. I did, and when I
got out, there was heavy competition for $40k-$50k jobs working 70 hours a
week building menus for games. Instead I became a mercenary coder for the
highest bidder and made more than that working 20-25 hours a week.

I used the 40ish hours a week I saved to play video games.

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chazu
The author's ratio of hours played to price is very different from mine, and
surely from those of many players. There's no real basis for his argument that
I can see. We live in a world where lots of gamers routinely drop $80-$100 for
collectors editions of games months before they're released.

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globalpanic
Racked up over 700 hours on Counter-Strike: Source (over 400 on CS Office
alone). Probably paid around $10 for it on Steam. Fantastic value.

