It was barely 10 years ago when the status of triple A was a coveted status to hold among games. It was seen as proof of quality and usually held by games released by industry titans. It never was any official metric or seal of approval of anything, and the past couple of years has made that ever more apparent. There has been a clear rise in indie games, for the people not aware these games were made by a smaller studio and usually with a smaller budget as well. Gone are the days when the big studios set the bar for quality, the roles have been reversed. The quality and cost of most indie games are outpacing the bigger studios by massive margins. Studios like EA and Ubisoft, who were industry staples, are now seen as greedy cash grabs with games whose quality leave a lot to be desired. Their greedy and player unfriendly business practices are almost legendary among most people who play video games somewhat regularly.
A couple of days ago Ubisoft revealed their next installment in the long-running Assassin’s Creed franchise, and while the world is conflicted about some of their narrative decisions, I can’t help but be absolutely appalled by their pricing practices for this new game. The base game costs 70 dollars, which is already a lot, but then you can buy day 1 dlc and 3 days early access if you pay 100 dollars. Or for the real big spenders out there you can get some cosmetics on top of that if you pay 120 dollars, almost double the base price. Meanwhile there is a plethora of indie games that cost a fraction of that while they probably offer just as much gameplay. Now what people do or do not spend their money on is their own prerogative of course, and clearly there is a market for it otherwise these price options wouldn’t exist. I, however, can’t help but feel like it’s a dangerous precedent, prices go up while quality keeps going down. Except in the indie game industry where prices rarely exceed 40 dollars and the games are incredibly well put together, on top of that, the communication between the developers and the gamers is a lot more open and you genuinely see the enthusiasm of the dev team, something which is not always apparent in the big studios.
