the cost of fun

One of the worst things you can do is to become too big. As that old saying goes "The higher they rise, the harder they fall." This goes for pretty much everything. With game budgets going over the roof these past few years, I feel that the fall is coming. This will NOT be like the video game crash of '83, but it will be close. While video game sales have never been higher, so has the cost into making them.

When Dragon's Lair came out in 1983, it cost a total of 1.3 million to make. This included animation, programmers, coders, sound, the entire staff and the tools they need to create it. Because of the hand drawn animation style, it must have taken a little longer than normal to make it at the time.

One of the primary reasons for the Video Game Crash was because of over-saturation. There was consoles nearly everywhere and having multiple versions of the same game was a new thing at the time, consumers was just not that interested anymore. It didn't help when the games that was being made was a poor man's Pac-Man and Space Invaders. While E.T. would be the sole reason for the Crash, it wasn't the only one that caused it.

Then in 1985, A little card and toy company named Nintendo decided to create their own console. They had a big hit with the arcade with Donkey Kong in 1981. The cost into making Donkey Kong was around 100,000. When the new system came out, the Nintendo Entertainment System, it arrived with Super Mario Brothers. Because they wasn't doing arcades anymore, the cost to create it was probably less than Donkey Kong. This isn't including the advertisement the game had prior to launch.

Then the video game industry was risen again. Nintendo had a huge hit with there hands with Mario, Zelda, Final Fantasy, and more. Then a new company called Sega joined in shortly after. Nintendo's response to the Sega Genesis was the Super Nintendo. All was good until Nintendo teamed up with Sony to create something new. When plans fell through, instead of Sony ditching everything, they released it instead as the PlayStation. The console war has heated up.

While the console wars themselves was heating up, so has the price of creating them. I couldn't find the budget for the 64bit era, but I can imagine it was around to 1 to 5 million mark. This included advertisements. While the price was that low, the developers was more than willing to create more new IPs. The risk of failing wasn't as high.

When Sega no longer made consoles, their last being the Dreamcast. Microsoft took Sega's place with the X-Box. The price of making a game would have most likely doubled. While that did happen, new IPs, and risk was still being used. Some of the most popular games of this generation was born here. Call of Duty, God of War, Pikman, and Halo. While Call of Duty was more of a PC game, it didn't stop Activision from releasing the series to the PlayStation 2, Gamecube, and the X-Box.

It is in this generation that are showing signs of danger. Not a massive decline like in '83, but a risk of being to big. One of the first massive big budget games was the original Gears of War for the X-Box 360 for 10 million. While this was a lot back then in 2006, it's not so much now. The average budget of a game is 18 to 28 million dollars per game. The rise of a the budget also raised the price of the game itself. Most games now are 60 bucks minus tax in the United States. The price of the game could be higher, depending on where you live.

It's not that often that a game breaks the 18 to 28 million mark, but it is becoming more and more likely. When Santa Monica completed God of War III in 2010, the cost was around 44 million. In 2008, Rockstar Games released there most expensive game to date, Grand Theft Auto IV. GTAIV cost 100 million to make with over 1000 staff working on it. It is considered as one of the most expensive game to make. Any other developer might have cracked under all that money. Taking the playful tones of the past GTA games, GTAIV became serious with its subject matter. Most companies now would never do that with all that cash on the line. The big advantage that Rockstar had was that the series will still immensely popular. At the time of its release, it shattered record sales.Then nearly all the games that was being released was Open World. While there was Open World games before that wasn't part of the Grand Theft Auto series, there was an explosion of it. We are still feeling the effects of it today. That was until the Modern Warfare series. It's just one massive loop until something else shows up.The rising cost of trying one up each other is beginning to show.While more IPs is being made, like The Last of Us, Watch Dogs, and Remember Me. The chance of succeeding is slowly becoming unlikely. While I do believe those games will be successful, they still have a modest AAA budget. Resident Evil 6 is Capcom's biggest game to date. It's basically 4 massive games in one. Besides the obvious action route, I believe the game is doomed to fail. Not the action or how the game could be good, but by the cost of creating it. To bring back even half of the cost of the game, it would need to be successful.

All is not lost. If there is one thing that has been on the rise lately, it's the indie games. They don't need millions upon millions of dollars just to create that next big blockbuster. While the work is long and difficult, the accomplishments is worth it. This year's PAX East and PAX Prime has shown of a large amounts of excellent indie titles. From Antichamber, Guacamelee, Mark of the Ninja, and many many more. One of the first massive hit for the indie game scene was Braid. Braid was released on the X-Box Live Arcade and the entire budget was 200,000 to create. Braid was a massive hit and it easily stands besides AAA titles as one of the best games of this generation.

While million dollar projects has a tag of 50 to 70 dollars, the more lower cost games scan sell to 15 to 20 bucks a game. This allows for easy access, more chance of a success, and that success can lead to more risks, more IPs and cheaper costs. The AAA game will always have a place. The indie games that will show them that just because you have the ability to spend millions upon millions of Dollars just to make one game, doesn't mean you have to.

The Joys of Easy

Despite what you may have heard, there is no real way to play a single player game. No matter what game you get, you should enjoy it the way you want it. If that means playing on easy, then so be it. I am not going to say "This is the only way to play that game" or "Play Better." You spend sixty to seventy bucks on a game. There is no right way to play, unless you are playing in multiplayer. The only right way to play multiplayer is fair. No hacks, no cheats, no abusing the system. Be fair to yourself and to others, so everyone can have a good time.



Sometimes, you just want to set back and enjoy the ride. This is where Easy comes in. When I play a game for the first time, I play it on normal. This way I can have the full experience. When I finish that game on Normal, I sometimes play the game on hard. Most of the time, however, I will play it on easy just to enjoy the mechanics and the story of the game. Easy is a good thing in a number of reasons. It helps non playing gamers enjoy the game without feeling overwhelmed, and you, as the player, can do more stuff that you couldn't do otherwise. I've been playing Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception quite a bit lately, and the difficulty I've been playing it on is on Easy. I actually find it more enjoyable to play it on easy than normal for a number of reasons. Despite the trouble of having one button do two different things, the circle button being the grapple and roll action, the hand to hand combat in Uncharted 3 is quite fun to mess with. It's not Batman: Arkham series deep mind you. However, it is fun to catch a weapon in midair and firing at someone the second you catch it, or pulling a pin off an enemy and kicking them away. In these fights, you are the most vulnerable, so going hand to hand in normal or higher isn't a wise choice to be making. If I saw one of those heavy guards, I would never try to fight it hand to hand, even if he was the last man standing. On easy, I can just run up there and try to beat him down. I may get hit by a stray bullet, but at least I KNOW I can take this one enemy out in the matter of a few hits. This makes the combat styles of hand to hand and gunplay become much more blurry.



Playing the Uncharted series on easy makes me enjoy the story that much more. Uncharted is one of the few games I don't play for the difficulty, despite beating Among Thieves on hard. Some game actually benefits from playing the easy mode. Most of the time, however, Normal mode is the best way to go. The Arkham games comes to mind. You want to keep that combo going, but you want to keep that health that normal has. You can play those games on easy, if you like. But the enemies go down a little to fast to really dig in to the fighting system that game has.


Granted, there are some draw backs into play a game on Easy. You won't have that true sense of accomplishment the game can have on you that you can get on hard, or even normal difficulty has. The other thing is that it is possible to beat the game a little too fast. This also contributes of how many times you have beaten the game. It's a small set back, but at the end of the day, FUN should be the main factor of a game. If you are playing a game on normal and you are not having any fun because of the difficulty, bring the game down a peg. Anything to make the game you spend your money on fun. Except multiplayer, remember: Be Fair.



Recently, there have been talks that there could be an easy mode patched in for Dark Souls. Dark Souls, to me, is a lot of fun. The main reason for this is because of the difficulty. I have no problem with this. To me, to keep that balance between easy and normal is to let you keep the souls when you die. The absolutely frustrating thing about Dark Souls is losing all of your souls. You can have hundreds of thousands of souls saved up only to be gone by dying by your stupid mistake. The thought of losing all those souls is much more frighting than facing a giant boss. If you die the first time you face a boss those souls are gone. If you die before you get a chance to pick them back up again, those souls are gone for good. This makes facing the bosses easier because that main threat is gone. You don't care about the souls anymore, just the boss that you must face alone. Oh, it's still hard, but that jolt of dying won't be as bad as losing that much souls.



It's perfectly find to want a challenge. If you played a game enough times that thrill might be gone. This is the time where you feel confident enough to try it on a harder difficulty. You can make a game as complicated as you like, if you add an easy mode, that should be accessible enough. If you want to try things that you can't do in normal mode or higher, easy is perfect for that too.