Tobold's Blog
Friday, November 22, 2024
 
Avowing my price sensitivity

I was watching a preview video of Avowed, Obsidian Entertainment's next big role-playing game, to be released in February 2025. Now I am not the biggest fan of Obsidian; I own both Pillars of Eternity games on Steam, but only played the first one for 16 hours, and the second one not at all. Pillars of Eternity II : Deadfire is on my list of games I want to play only since patch 5.0 added a turn-based mode. I simply never was a fan of the previous real-time combat of the series, and seeing Avowed being even more action-combat centric made it look not very interesting to me. Saw the first half of the video, and thought that this was a game that I would skip.

And then the content creator said a single phrase that changed my mind: Avowed will be on Game Pass on day one. Suddenly I was thinking, "Oh, I am going to play this!". While Game Pass isn't free, and has increased in price this year, I still consider it very good value for money in general, and have an ongoing subscription to it; so it kind of feels like playing Avowed for free, "no added cost", as opposed to buying the game for $70 on Steam.

I am not poor, and can afford buying $70 games. But this event still shows that I am somewhat price sensitive. Paying $70 for a game and then not liking it just feels bad, even if that $70 is not missing for rent money. On Game Pass, I can try out a game for free, and if I don't like it, it doesn't feel as bad as if I had bought it. It just feels a lot safer. That makes games that I am only borderline interested in a lot more attractive. I felt the same thing about Ara: History Untold, nice enough to play for free, but would have hated to have paid $60 for it.

Of course there is something like circular logic operating here. It feels as if I am playing the Game Pass games for free, while simultaneously me playing a lot of games that would cost $60-$70 on Game Pass justifies me paying €144 per year for the subscription. In the end, I am still paying $10 to $20 per game, depending on how many I try in a year. But the one thing it does for certain is removing that "should I buy this game?" decision process, and the possible regret connected to it.

- posted by Tobold @ 10:01 AM Permanent Link
Comments:
I get a lot of seemingly interesting games from Humble Choice, or pick them up very cheap when Gog has a sale. I get good value out of those. But I have to say I commit more to the ones I buy separately or sometimes in a targeted Humble bundle.

However my situation is different because I rarely care about the expensive blockbusters and buy a lot of indie games. (Currently I am playing Inscryption which I picked up for about $15.)
# posted by Blogger Gerry Quinn : 22/11/24 11:25
 
I'm with you on Avowed. If it wasn't on gamepass I likely wouldn't be playing it as it very much seems like Skyrim but in the Pillars universe which I don't know... it sounds okay but also extremely dated. For as much as I enjoyed Skyrim I'm not necessarily craving that experience again.

Gamepass in general is amazing. I don't stay subbed all year as I cancel it when I don't feel like playing anything but It's been the only reason I've played certain games that I normally wouldn't buy these days like the recent Call of Duty or Frostpunk 2.
# posted by Blogger Bigeye : 22/11/24 19:01
 
I have a hard time even considering spending $70 on video games that I'm really looking forward to. I fully understand inflation and can calculate purchasing price equivalency between games of yesterday and today and realize that games cost about the same "purchasing power" as they did 15 years ago. However, I still have a hard time with it when it comes time to spend my money. I typically wait for sales and avoid games as a service where other players are the content as a result. I always chalk that up to just being "older" now, although it probably has more to do with the fact that I'm frugal.
# posted by Blogger Janous : 22/11/24 20:05
 
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