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- Thread starter paul willingham
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So post your suggestion in the AC forum. There is a thread for this
Don't tell users that, this forum is perfectly fine for game suggestions and any kind of game problems. Also anytime you link to the Assetto Corsa forum make sure to hide the link behind text so that you don't advertise the name of other forums. Like this.So post your suggestion in the AC forum. There is a thread for this
They have the capacity to run the entire Assetto Corsa support sections over here. Just attach your logs and they will investigate.
I don't like to see ads in something I've paid for either, but there's a couple separate issues with your points.
First, a modern AAA game can not cost the same as a game from 20 years ago and still make money. Games are hugely more complex these days, in every single way. Coding, physics, art, sound, everything. For instance, a high poly car in SCGT, circa 1999, was under 1000 triangles. Now, they're 100 000. AAA games have massive development teams and long development timelines because of things like this. A high end game in the late 90s could be built in a couple years with a team of 20. A high end game today takes a team of 100 and takes 3-5 years. That's a massively higher cost in development. Add to the fact that wages are higher now, as well, than they used to be. That all means that it has to cost more than it used to, even if it sells 5-10x as many copies as an equivalent would have 20 years ago. Marketing budgets are bigger now, too, and they need to be because there's so much more competition in the market. Now, there's another thing to consider; inflation. $40 in the mid 90s was worth more than $60 is today, realistically. So we're, really, paying less for our games in the grand scheme. Also; digital distribution? That didn't happen simply because it was cheaper, it happened because people embraced it. It happened because Valve created a good platform for it, and people used it. If the people didn't use it, everyone would still be buying everything hardcopy - but most people don't. That's a huge win for developers.
As far as cutting down packaging to a DVD box? I absolutely, 100% support that. The old boxes were wasteful, and vastly too large. They didn't make any sense what-so-ever. I sure don't have anywhere to put them. I'm glad hardcopies get sold in a smaller package. Manual? Most games genuinely don't need a manual anymore because so much is made easier in installation and setup. And, if we're being honest, it takes less time to Google something to find an answer than it does to find your manual, look up the index for something that sounds vaguely like what you want, then find the page, then read through it all to realise it's not giving you the answer you need, so you have to faff about for an hour to find it. Google is a wonderful thing, and we really didn't really have that luxury 20 years ago - at least, not on the scale it is today. A small manual or a folded map can be put into the DVD case if the developer wants to. Also note that every single thing that goes into the box is another huge hassle, logistically, for production. Most people genuinely don't understand manufacturing, but it's a logistical nightmare. Removing a bunch of those things means that a game developer no longer needs to have an expert on hand to deal with that stuff, and they can focus on what the company was made for: development.
As for extra income through donations? Look at modders. Very few get any donations, and the ones that do get very little. And it's not for lack of skill/ability - the best modders produce content superior to what comes from game studios (given they aren't held to the same performance standards that studios need to adhere to re: texture sizes, polygon budgets, etc). Most people won't bother, and it would probably cost a team like Kunos more in man-hours to set up and publicize such a thing than they would get back in returns from it. Make something cost something, and people will buy it. Give something for free and ask for donations and people will just take it. The only way for a game developer to make more money without injecting ads is to charge more, and/or supplement continued development with DLC. In all honesty, I think Kunos' prices on DLC have been very generous.
There's also the cost per hour aspect of it. Many of us will spend thousands of hours in a $70 game. When you've put that much time into it, as far as I'm concerned you don't get to complain about the price. I've never understood why people are fine to spend $2K on a gaming computer, $600 on a steering wheel and $800 on a VR headset, but then complain about $8 for a DLC package. The disconnect there is huge. Not to mention that, VR aside, all the expensive hardware we buy has a much larger profit margin built into it than the software we use it with does.
Private data mining is a valid concern, of course.
Note: none of the above was meant as an attack in any way. Just me mumbling aloud about this stuff, because I do genuinely feel like a large portion of the gaming community genuinely just doesn't understand what it takes to produce the subject of their hobby, and while there are shady developers and publishers worthy of ire, not everything warrants the pitchforks.
