@Rithrandil What your forgetting is what many companies rely on - if it's not in front of your face people don't notice.
Take a can of baked beans, they are still in the same size can but are now 14oz instead of 16oz. Or what about things that used to have a dozen of something and now have 10, or 8 items? Candy used to be sold by 1/4lb (4 oz), now it's sold per 100 grams, which is 3.4 oz! So you can easilylook at prices and think their the same,when you are not paying the same!
Except those prices also have increased. Candy bars used to be a nickle, now they're 1.50. Cans of soda used to be 25 cents when I was a kid, now they're over a dollar.
Now onto gaming: You gave the example of Baldur's Gate, but didn't that game come in a big box with a 100 page manual and map? Won't Sims 3 come in a DVD case with 20 page manual and an online manual/pdf manual?
Yes, but that's a different type of game. What are they going to pack in with Sims 3? I like all those extras but they are not necessarily part of "the game".
Another way to look at it - how much gameplay was in Baldur's Gate? 100 hours?
I dunno, for me about 15 to 20, without skipping much.
What about shooters back at the same time? Usually 50-60missions and 30-40 hours of gameplay.
30-40 hours of gameplay in a shooter? What games are we talking about here? Halflife came out then and it was nowhere near that long.
Do you remember back then a single game with less than 15 hours of gameplay?
Yes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:1998_video_games I'm sure most of those fall into that category.
No,because there wasn't any. Compare that with recent years. Bioshock - 15 hours, Dreamfall - 12 hours., Dead Space - 12 hours COD4 - 10 hours, probably the most expensive - episodic gaming - HL2 EP1 was only $20, but it only had 5 hours gameplay. So on a dollar for dollar basis, if HL2 EP1 was a 30 hour game like in the late 90's, it would cost $120!
Except games have never been sold on a dollar-per-hour gameplay cost formulation.
Finally, something you cannot quantify, and that is gameplay replayability. I believe that games pre, say 2003, were generally more full of content and therefore gameplay and replayability than what we started getting after 2003.
Possibly, but that is a matter of personal opinion and not really verifiable. There's also probably a bit of nostalgia in there as well.
That's not to say there weren't crappy games pre 2003 and no good games after, just that generally, as corporate ideals took over and accountants decided on what games would be released, gaming became more shallow.
You also have far more games being made today and the user base has expanded. The "core gamer" is no longer the main target. If you made a game today with mid/late 90's sensibilities mixed with 2009 technology it probably wouldn't sell well.
I would just say of the year Baldur's Gate was released - 1998 - with games like Starcraft, Half Life, Grim Fandango, Thief the Dark Project, Unreal and others all being released in that one year, probably beats by a mile any gaming year since. And certainly in the year of Sims 3, we are likely to not have one classic game released.
Classic by whose definition? This is all subjective, remember, and if we want to go by pure sales, numbers, reviews, and enjoyment then the Sims 3
will be a classic. The Sims 1 and 2 were.
Gamespot, in 2008, reviewed just 52 PC games. The average review score was 69.5%. Does that sound like good value for money?
No, but I don't use gamestop to make my purchases. If they reviewed 498 games and gave them an average review of 95.3% would you be happy?
The December 1998 edition of Computer Gaming World, by comparison, had 48 reviews of PC games. 48 reviews in one month versus 52 in a year.
On so many levels, I would rather go back to my $50 1995-1998 games than I do go back to my 2005-2008 $50 games.
You mean your 65.76 dollar 1995-1998 game and your $50 2005-2008 game. Adjusting for inflation and all. The problem is you're comparing classics with average for today. That's like someone saying modern filmmaking is crap and bemoaning the lack of "great movies" because he's comparing everything to the Godfather II.
