There are a lot of shady business practices that go on in the video game industry, from graphics downgrades to day-one downloadable content (DLC.)
But a lot of the practices that bother consumers the most, from DLC to pre-order bonuses to micro-transactions in full-priced games, are a result of one unpleasant truth: Video games really ought to cost more thanks to inflation than they do today.
Colin Moriarty makes this point quite well over at IGN when he reminds us that NES cartridges were selling for $50 in 1990; N64 games often cost as much as $70 in 1998, or about $100 in today's money, all thanks to inflation.
So when I saw this picture posted to Twitter by my colleague Jason Evangelho, I couldn't help but chime in with this (admittedly unpopular) observation.
In 1994, it cost about $2.49 to buy a 20 oz box of Oreo cookies.
In 2014 it cost about $4.49 to buy a 14.3 oz box of Oreo cookies.
This reflects the relatively higher price of manufacturing one box of Oreo cookies and the rate of inflation. Oreo cookies haven't gotten that much more expensive to manufacture, but inflation has settled in and made a smaller box cost nearly twice as much as a larger box twenty years ago.
Video games, on the other hand, have seen skyrocketing development costs, with much larger teams required to create a AAA product than in the past. Besides the larger teams, voice-acting and scoring and various other additional costs have been added. (Voice-acting didn't used to be a very big piece of the pie back in the day, before professional voice actors were taken seriously in the industry and celebrities were brought in on a regular basis.)
Competition has also become far more fierce in the video game industry, and marketing budgets have exploded especially for high-profile games like Destiny.
The fact is, games are actually cheaper than they were before and yet they cost quite a lot more to make. That's why we have DLC and micro-transactions. To balloon the cost of an under-priced $60 game closer to the inflation-adjusted $100 it should be at.
The alternative is cheaper games and smaller budgets, something that seems plenty unlikely these days.
I'm not a fan of all the revenue models and business practices deployed in the video game industry, but there's little denying that games ought to have gotten more expensive over the years. The suggestion in the above picture that we are getting merely the "bun" and have to pay for all the add-ons applies to the discount airline industry more than video games. A typical AAA game isn't nearly so pared down as this image suggests. Meanwhile, much of the cost is going into more expensive assets and development, which along with nostalgia may make gamers feel more ripped off than they actually are.
On the other hand, maybe some of the ways game creators are spending money is equally problematic. Maybe the trend toward big-budget, cinematic experiences and marketing oversaturation needs to shift back a gear or two. It's a race to the bottom. There has to be balance. If games ought to be more expensive than perhaps we need to demand that modern games also meet certain standards of quality control that only a handful of companies seem to hold to, such as Nintendo.
It's a complicated issue. I'm not claiming otherwise. The burger picture just strikes me as gross oversimplification.
There are a lot of things that go on in the industry that I find problematic, from the rise of questionable Early Access titles, to equally worrisome crowdfunding, to games with little to no replay value being sold at full retail. Not to mention free-to-play quandaries, shady monetization, and so on and so forth. But your basic, AAA video game selling at $60 is a steal just in plain economic terms. That doesn't mean it's going to be good, but it sure is cheap---all things considered.
Update:
A lot of people have pointed out that cost of distribution has gone down over the years. Discs are cheaper than cartridges. Digital is cheaper still. This is one way game makers can and have lowered costs.
Others have noted that the growing size of the video game market offsets inflation, which is also true. However I would still argue that in spite of both these factors, costs have ballooned in game development especially for AAA releases. This means game creators either need to raise costs, find other ways to increase revenue (i.e. IAPs, DLC, etc.) or lower cost of development. Since the first and third both seem unlikely, we're left with increased use of add-on content, sometimes in a fair and positive way, and sometimes as "nickel-and-diming."
