The Subjectivity of Value in Video Games

[00:00:10] Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to another episode of the Pre-Order Bonus Podcast. I'm one of your hosts, Cameron Warren and I'm joined as always by the pixel professor, Jacob Price. It's April 24th, 2025. We're back to talk about video games. And I've got a bone to pick with Jake.

[00:00:30] All right. Okay. You know, switch to pre-orders. I'm sitting there. I've got three tabs open on my phone. I've got two different apps. I've got my wife on Target. I'm on Walmart. We've got all of our financial information filled out. Here's Jake casually while he's playing the marathon alpha.

[00:00:54] Clicking the button on the Target website. Gets it into his cart. His wife has to put the information in. It's not even in. He's not even signed in to his account. He gets one. I don't. You know, is the world just? No, it's not.

[00:01:10] So just to add a few details to this. So, yeah, Cameron and I and a couple of friends, we are playing the marathon alpha and we're in the middle of a match. I'm like with two of our friends. There's like five of us in a group chat. We're in two different groups. And I was like, oh, guys, the switch to pre-orders like in a few minutes. And they're like, okay. And I was like, all right.

[00:01:36] So I like get I get target.com up and I pull up the switch to page and everything. And I'm like not really playing the game. I'm just like hitting refresh. And in mountain time where Cameron and I live, that means pre-orders go live at 10 p.m. 9 59 target just crashes. Like it crashes before 10 o'clock hits. Yeah. Everybody's just refreshing. And so crashes. I'm like, oh, man, I don't know.

[00:02:05] I'm over here hitting refresh letting my teammates die. Like Jake, where are you? I was like the website crashed. They're like, Jake, we're in a match. It's not like, you know what? Whatever. I'll just kind of leave it be priorities though. You know priorities. I leave it be and play more of this match. And then I think we start a new match. And then suddenly target.com comes back alive. It just like comebacks alive. It's on the switch to pre-order page.

[00:02:34] It's I'm like, oh, add to cart. It adds to cart. I have another cart. And I'm like, oh, wait, I got one. It's in the cart. It's like trying to I'm like, oh, my gosh, you have to sign in to check out. I don't have a target ID. I don't have a target login. And so I'm like, honey, do you have a target sign in? Oh, my gosh. She's like, yeah, let me sign in. She's like, oh, wait, I forgot my password. She. No. So we're sitting.

[00:03:03] Dude, we're sitting at this page. I'm letting my teammates die a second time around in a match. My wife tries to pull it up on her phone. She's like, this is going to take too long. So she just resets her target password. This is making it even worse. She resets her target password on her phone. And then logs in on target.com. And there it is. We just need to hit check out one more time. We fill in all the credit card information.

[00:03:33] My teammates are, you know, furious at me. Actually, my wife at this point is filling it in. I'm like standing right next to the computer and I'm continuing to play. And then she fills it in and then hits like purchase or finalized purchase, whatever. Something went wrong. I was like, oh, man, we made it this far. And so I come back to the computer. I just sit over here. I just kind of like click and go something goes wrong like two times or something. And I'm like, man, I think we lost it. There's no way we still have this in here.

[00:04:03] And so I like play a little bit more. I like come back like a minute or two later, hit purchase and it goes through. Oh, my gosh, bro. Dude, that's insane. So I was on that actually makes it even worse. So I hate you even more. No. So I was on the target. The Walmart app. Walmart app was just no go. So that was the first mistake. My wife was on the target app. I think, honestly, that was a mistake.

[00:04:33] I shouldn't have been on the app because I think the apps, the apps and like the website share separate like backends. And usually I think the mobile ones like slower. So I shouldn't. I shouldn't have done that. I should have been on the website like on my actual computer. But I was playing marathon. Although it was funny when the pre-orders went live. I was like with one hand just moving my guy. Like in one direction. Like not even fighting.

[00:05:02] You faked it way better than I did. I was like, sorry, guys. But I wasn't saying anything. I was like pretending to. I did not get one. However, I'm not too stressed about it. I did sign up for. There's like there's like all these services where you can sign up to like check if things go back in stock. Yeah. So to add insult to injury, I got one in my cart today. Wow. Because I have the notification on my phone where it'll tell you immediately when it goes back in stock.

[00:05:31] And this is like on Telegram. So I had a Telegram come through. I happen to just be looking at my phone. And the only way it works is if you happen to catch the notification immediately. Right. If you see it come up, you're golden. You open Telegram. It's got the link right there. You hit the link. It's walmart.com. Yeah. Add the cart. It's in my Walmart cart. I'm good to go. So I go and I get to the checkout page and I notice it's $5.50. And I'm like $5.50. Like that seems like a lot of tax.

[00:05:59] So I go back and I noticed that for some reason it automatically added like the Walmart protection plan. Oh, no. So I go to remove the protection plan. It just takes the whole thing from my cart. It's all right, though. I'll catch one. I actually was able to get a PS5 like in the height of the COVID shortage using the service.

[00:06:25] But even if I don't, I have the I actually feel like I opted in pretty early to the Nintendo.com like opt-in thing. Yeah. And because anyway, so. I was listening to a podcast and I listened. A guy got four. What? It's like him and his wife were on like four different websites and they just got them. And I was like, dude, you suck. That's insane. Like you suck straight up. Such as the adventures of the Switch 2 acquisition.

[00:06:55] Because you know what, Jake? We got to play Donkey Kong. You know what I'm saying? Like Donkey Kong is looking real hot and looking real good. And so we got to have that Switch 2 for Donkey Kong for DK. Bonanza. Got to have it for DK. I managed to snag the bundle. So we'll at least have Mario Kart World at launch. Very nice. My kids are just honestly, they're super excited for the Tears of the Kingdom performance upgrade.

[00:07:25] Oh, dude. I'm excited for that. I'm going to replay Tears with that 60 FPS 4K boost for sure. I'm going to hop back in and just kind of chase down some more armor sets and do some random things because it looks good. I also asked on Blue Sky because I was too lazy to look at myself. Pokemon Scarlet is getting an update. It'll be, I think, a free boost. So maybe. Is that game actually going to be playable? We hope.

[00:07:54] I'm hoping that'll give me the motivation to actually finally beat the DLC in that game. But we'll see. Very nice. Well, ladies and gentlemen, we were going to talk about Vowed today. But we have a special arrangement in store for that one. So we're going to hold off. More to come on that. Still going to do a Vowed, which is going to do it a little bit later.

[00:08:22] I have been bad at playing video games. I am absolutely buried at work, as you might imagine, being working at Bungie during the Marathon Alpha. So I have not been playing a lot of video games. So what we're going to do instead is we're going to do an episode and we're going to have a discussion on value in video games. Yes.

[00:08:49] And I'm going to kick this off by asking Jake a question. Let's hear it. And that is, at what price? And I asked you a similar question. And this is pretty topical given the Switch 2 catapulting us into the new age of video game pricing. Right. Okay. With $80 digital games, obviously. At what price? And I asked you this about the Switch 2 console.

[00:09:20] And that problem has been solved because they didn't raise the price. They did raise the price of accessories. At what price are you priced out of video games? Where you start to go, you know what? This is a hobby that I really love. But there's no way I'm not buying any video game ever. Brand new. At what price are you priced out of new video games? Let me caveat that. Because I think you're always going to have discounted to get you back in the game. But when are you like, I can no longer play video games new?

[00:09:49] I think that's a great question. And I'm glad that you're saying new games. Because one of the craziest things I think about the video game industry. Actually, maybe it's not all that crazy. Maybe it's not all that unique to the video game industry. But dude, you wait a year for AAA titles. And you can probably get it at least 50% off. Right? Yeah, 100%. Unless they're Nintendo. Unless they're Nintendo titles. Important caveat, right?

[00:10:20] I would also say that with indie games. Dude, sometimes those games will go on discount 2 or 3 months after launch. It might be a small discount. It might just be 10, 15, maybe 20%. But within 12 months, most indie games, I feel like you could get them for 60% or more off. So if you exercise 12 months worth of patience.

[00:10:45] As a gamer, you could be playing all the big games and all the little games for much less money. So when it comes to a brand new game. Oh, man. I don't know. I've already bought. I've already purchased like $70 games before. So like Tears of the Kingdom. Right? That retailed at $70. Isn't that right? That was like Nintendo's first $70 game. I believe so. Let's see.

[00:11:13] I'm trying to think of other $70 games that I've purchased. There are not a ton. Because you don't buy a lot of games new because you've got Game Pass. So I'm imagining what? It's mostly going to be Nintendo stuff, right? That's like buying new. Like right out of the gate. Unless it's like a Ghost of Yote or something crazy. That's exactly what I was getting to. Ghost of Yote. If the retail price was $70. Which I don't know if it is. Is it $60 or $70? It is $70, right?

[00:11:42] I don't know if they've said yet. Oh, maybe they didn't say yet. I imagine. What's the pre-order? Can you pre-order right now? I don't think so. Oh. I don't think pre-orders are live. Where are they? No. I don't think so. They just released a new trailer with the release date. But I do not believe that they have released a price. Do you think there's a possibility Ghost of Yote? Well, I guess. Sorry. Continue with that.

[00:12:12] Oh, wait. Here we go. The standard edition of Ghost of Yote will be $70. Oh, okay. So they're not matching Nintendo yet. But it's only a matter of time. Here's the deal, though. I love Ghost of Tsushima so much. And folks, if you're new to this podcast, Cameron and I are the biggest Ghost of Tsushima fans that I know. Oh, yeah. 100%. If they had what a price set standard at $80, I still would buy it. $90.

[00:12:42] $90, I think, is my limit, man. I don't know. I would probably say, you know what? For a game that I really, really want, dude, I would be really tempted. But $90 freaking dollars. $90. That's how much. That's basically what we're paying for Switch games, essentially. I mean, yeah. I mean, Mario Kart World, I would not have purchased it outside of the bundle for $80. That, to me, was already too much.

[00:13:09] Honestly, Mario Kart World for $70 probably would have been too much for me. Yeah, that's a lot. But games where, from a studio that I love, making a sequel to a game that I love, you know, dude, you could tempt me with a $90 price tag. Like, they're not making Elden Ring 2, but if from software were making Elden Ring 2 and they were pricing at $90, I would be extremely tempted. I would be super duper tempted to grab that at that price.

[00:13:37] I think $100, it doesn't matter what the game is. It's a hard no. I'm going to wait or I'm going to try to cobble together some gift card money from somewhere and I'm going to get that at a lower price. So, I would say that my cap for 95% of games is $80. Yeah, it's an interesting conundrum, right? Because we are price anchored to $60. And our generation is price anchored to $60. Yeah.

[00:14:05] And then I think the older generation is probably price anchored to also, because $60 was around for a long, long, long, long time. Right. Right? It was around forever, like, since the 90s. And the Gen Z, the Zoomers are price anchored to free. Yeah. Wild. So, to get the Zoomers to pay for a game is like pulling teeth. It's like, you got to like, it's like, oh, it's not free.

[00:14:30] It's almost like shocking the fact that a game is not free because the Zoomers just grew up on Fortnite and Minecraft was. That's basically free, right? I don't know. Minecraft is... 10 bucks or something. I mean, it's probably 10, 20 bucks at this point. Who knows? Everybody already owns it. Maybe it's 10, 20 bucks. Yeah. So, you're paying 10 bucks for Minecraft. You're getting Fortnite for free. And you're getting Apex for free. And maybe... And then maybe your dad buys Madden.

[00:14:59] And like, that's it. Maybe your parents buy like Nintendo games. Maybe. But even if they do, it's basically like Mario Kart. Right? Right. That's like the general masses. But it is this interesting... Like, we're all price-angered, right? So, if the prices go long enough at a certain price and it's not too high that it scare shocks the market away from the product, suddenly that price anchor becomes 70.

[00:15:28] And then over several more years, the price anchor becomes 80. And then behavioral psychology says that suddenly 80 bucks becomes... Oh, yeah. That's normal. And so, if I pay 70 bucks on the discount, I'm suddenly saying, oh, I'm saving money. Right. Right? So, it's a really interesting thing in like pricing and like market dynamics and how that works. Because everybody at first is super shocked and mad and angry.

[00:15:57] But then eventually they're anchored. And so, then one stuff's priced less than that or right around that, suddenly they're no longer angry. It's just, you know, Nintendo happened to be the first one that took that level and raised it up to that new level that all these platforms are going to be. And they're probably going to be even more, right? The PS6 will be $600. Right. No question. Yeah.

[00:16:22] I just, I'm really curious because we're seeing, I feel like a bunch of games coming out priced at 40 and 50 bucks. And I... That's where it gets interesting. Yep. So, what I want to know, because I agree with you, right? I think the price anchor, if it hasn't shifted from 60 to 70, we're still in that process. And people are more and more comfortable with a $70 game. But then you have these games that were just, it just feels like it's that much cheaper.

[00:16:52] Spending 40 bucks on a game or 50 bucks. I think South of Midnight retails for 40 or 50 bucks. Right? Grounded, I think, retails for 40 bucks. Prince of Persia Lost Crown, didn't that retail for 40 bucks? Maybe. Maybe 50? Yeah, I think so. 40 or 50. 40 or 50? 50? Those games are, I mean, they're looking that much more enticing. I'm interested in a Souls-like called AI Limit. It's 35 bucks, man.

[00:17:21] And so, I'm sitting over here and I'm like, which game do I buy first? The first Berserker Kazan or AI Limit? First Berserker Kazan is 60 bucks. AI Limit is 35 bucks. I'm like, and the way that I think about that is like, dude, 35 bucks? That's nearly, that's 25 bucks. That's cheaper. What if I just get that and wait for Berserker to go on sale? Right?

[00:17:45] So, I love that this is happening because it's causing some sort of fracturing in how we understand value of games. Which, if you didn't guess it tonight, that's actually what we're going to talk about. We're going to talk about these ideas, valuing games. This was actually recommended from somebody from our Discord, Aru. So, thank you. We're using the sheet that you sent us as a kind of bullet points for tonight's conversation.

[00:18:06] But yeah, I just think the value is fracturing, but probably only for people who are really paying attention to games. Because I think on the whole, yeah, the price anchor has moved or is moving from 60 to 70. And then people are just kind of okay with that. So, the mom who goes to Walmart to buy their kid a video game for their birthday or like for Christmas, assuming the kid hasn't told them exactly what they want.

[00:18:35] Or that the kid doesn't ask for Fortnite bucks. Or the kid doesn't just ask for V-Bucks. They look on the shelf. They see GTA 6 for $100. Right next to it, they see First Berserker Kazan for $60. Which one do they buy? This is their kid. Now, in the case of GTA 6, I think their kid is going to be like, I want GTA 6. Like, no question.

[00:19:03] Because they're going to spend $1 billion on marketing for GTA 6. And GTA 5 is so huge that they probably know about it. Well, and between those two games, the mom or the parent that's going to buy the game has heard of GTA. Right? Yeah. And they're probably like, I don't want my kid to go kill hookers in an alleyway. You know, I feel like I'm really out of touch. So, when Cameron and I grew up and GTA Vice City San Andreas was really blowing up.

[00:19:31] My parents had no idea what those were when I was a kid. No idea. They had no clue what it was. And so, my parents... No clue. I mean, now they probably would because they never turn off Fox News. But in between... That's another story? Yeah. So, if I was a kid right now, my parents would definitely know what GTA 6 is. And there would be some controversy around like, oh, you murder hookers or something in this game. I mean, 20 years ago, that was a massive conversation.

[00:20:01] My parents had heard of GTA. And they're like, Jake, I don't want you playing GTA at your friend's houses. Like, they specifically told me that. Right? I am curious. And sorry, we are kind of getting off topic here. The parents have heard of GTA. But do they care what GTA is? Or do they still... Are we still having that conversation about GTA is poisoning our children's minds so that they're going to grow up to be gangsters that kill hookers? Or... I don't know. Regardless... I don't know. But, I mean, the point...

[00:20:30] I mean, it is on topic in the sense that we're talking about. Is GTA 6 worth $30? Because let's say that this is... You know what? Is GTA 6 going to cost $100? Do you think? Dude... That's... Will be $90 at least.

[00:20:59] Because they just watched Nintendo do this. And guess what, folks? That game... That Nintendo game is going to sell incredibly well. And let's not kid ourselves, right? I mean, I saw a headline today that Switch 2 pre-orders or launch sales are expected to be somewhere between 6 and 8 million. And that's like 2 million more than PS4 or something ridiculous. Right. So, yeah. I mean, I think $90 is maybe the minimum.

[00:21:28] I think they could get away with it. And should... I guess being true to this conversation, which is the subjectivity of value, should GTA cost $100? Ooh. You ask the guy who's looking at the... Who's crunching the numbers over at Rockstar? Dude's like, game should be $150. We've been working on this for... Should be $200. Yeah. How many years have we been working on this? How much content is in this? How many people we got to pay?

[00:21:57] How is my CEO going to get a bonus so he can buy a third yacht? You know, this is a $200 game. But... This is the hard thing where it's like, companies exist to make money.

[00:22:12] But we happen to enjoy and love and discuss and have a podcast about a hobby that relies on exchanging monies to have access to our hobby. Yeah. And that hobby then is dictated. This is a hobby like probably most hobbies that people engage with, right?

[00:22:40] It's a hobby that happens to be dictated by corporate entities of which we do not have control. We have some modicum of control over. Right. The only control over we have these corporate entities is if we buy the thing that they put out or not. Mm-hmm. And so value is truly basically determined by whether you personally care how much it costs. If you're mad about that, it does not matter.

[00:23:10] The value of that thing is determined by what the collective group is willing to pay for it. And so if GTA 6 comes out at $100 and it sells more than any other game ever made, then it was worth $100. Yeah. And you can be mad about that. Same thing with Mario Kart. Mario Kart. The only way that Mario Kart was not... The only way that your thoughts around the price of Mario Kart being too expensive or validated is if it comes out and it flops.

[00:23:40] Because the price is too high. Because the collective group says, I will not pay $80 for this game. It's way too expensive. And that's a complicated one, right? Because that involves like, you know, what are the market dynamics of... Are there enough people out there, you know, who have enough extra spending money that they can go out and they can drop $80 on Mario Kart? And Nintendo has unequivocally said like, yes, we believe that that's true and we have no question about that.

[00:24:10] That's going to do nothing except boost our sales of this game that has sold 50 million copies of Mario Kart 8. Right. Should Mario Kart cost $80? Does it need to cost $80? It probably doesn't need... You know, Nintendo would probably be fine if Mario Kart 8 cost $60. Right. They'd probably be fine. Right. We as the consumers would benefit from that, but they wouldn't make as much money. And that's just the world that we live in.

[00:24:39] They want to make more money. Yeah. And I think that's kind of a reality that's maybe specific to Nintendo in particular. That, dude, Mario, Legend of Zelda, Pokemon. I'm sorry. Maybe GTA, Madden, and FIFA can go toe-to-toe with those titles, you know? Yeah. That is the top tier, I feel like, those six titles, and I'm sure I'm missing some. But, like, those games are going to sell pretty much no matter what.

[00:25:07] Pokemon Scarlet and Violet sold incredibly well, despite being probably the worst, like, in terms of software performance, the worst performing games I've ever played from Pokemon. Like, mainline games that had issues I had never seen in a Pokemon game before. But they still sold Buku bucks, right?

[00:25:29] And so I think that when it comes to, like, the value in games, dude, those hard-hitting, long-standing franchises are pretty hard to stop. They have to trip themselves up, I think, in order for them to flop. Because there's just too much history and goodwill behind those franchises and titles. Like, Legend of Zelda, dude, I mean, they delivered with Breath of the Wild, obviously.

[00:25:57] And they delivered with Tears of the Kingdom. And it's hard to imagine a world in which, and obviously Nintendo's in this position to spend time and money to make whatever the next Legend of Zelda mainline game is incredible so that it doesn't fail. You know? I mean, these behemoths, I feel like it is really hard for them to topple them.

[00:26:21] Some franchises, this pains me to say, but there were some long-time franchises, I think, were probably ones that just could carry. Massive sales on reputation alone. I kind of think Halo is maybe one of the few that's like, oh, eh. Yeah. We'll see. We'll see what the new Halo is like, right? And I know there are others, but, dude, I don't know.

[00:26:44] I think you're right in that those corporations get to dictate those prices because they've earned a lot of goodwill in history with those games for the people who play those games. Don't get me wrong, because there's a bunch of indie gamers who are going to complain about Madden and FIFA all day long. They're not playing those games, but they're also not the target demographic for those games. So when it comes to the question of the subjectivity of value, right?

[00:27:10] The old conversation around this was like, oh, well, this game is 100 hours and costs 60 bucks. So your value per hour is so much higher than this other game that only lasts 10 hours. Right. And has way less content. Is that a real thing? Like, this debate's been had, you know, for a year, for decades even, right?

[00:27:37] I think I started to see this debate crop up when Skyrim came out. And Bethesda games are really good at this, right? Super huge, open world, massive amount of content. Assassin's Creed, the newer Assassin's Creed game, same thing. Massive worlds, just like so much unbelievably, unbelievable amounts of content.

[00:27:57] So in terms of value, like if you want value for your dollar, it is absolutely true that if you play a game like Skyrim or the Oblivion remake or BG3 or, you know, one of the Assassin's Creed games, those games are so big and so huge and so monstrous. Like, you are getting value, more value in terms of more stuff.

[00:28:27] But I think in the past few years, we've now reached a place where just having more is no longer good enough to define your value. It not only has to be, I think nowadays, it's more important to have enough. And enough, I think, means around like the 30 to 40 hour mark. If I had to just throw a number out there.

[00:28:57] But it has to be super high quality. And I think because of the explosion of information, like the access to information around games and game TikTok and games Instagram and game reviews and all that stuff, right?

[00:29:13] I just think the general public is not buying very many, if any, games that don't have a massive marketing campaign behind them or a massive historical following that people just know about. Yeah. Okay. So if you're like a new entry into the market, in order to really break through, you have to have crazy marketing or crazy word of mouth, which means that your critical reception has to be huge.

[00:29:39] So you can't just make massive game with tons of content. It has to be pretty big game with a really high quality level of content that gets a good critical reception. And critical reception not only means like reviews on review sites, but like does it go viral on TikTok? Right. Right. Right. Are the kids talking about it? Are people, is the word of mouth super strong? Or is the word of mouth super negative? And that that's going to potentially like tank your game. Yeah. So. Yeah.

[00:30:09] Sorry. I didn't mean to interrupt. No, go ahead. I'm good. I'm good. I just think a great example of what Cameron's talking about here is Skull and Bones. The quadruple A game. Yeah. A hundred percent. Right. What did this launch at? I can't even remember. But game obviously took tons and tons and tons of money to make. The like premium edition was like 150 bucks or something. Something outrageous. Right. That game.

[00:31:04] I don't know. Is like crap. If the performance is bad. If the negative word of mouth destroys a game. The game sinks and it's not financially successful. Right. And then your value kind of goes down. We have too much information now. Right. If people don't see like a clear new hook that makes them feel excited or compelled to go dive into that game world. It's going to die. No, no question.

[00:31:30] So I kind of wonder though, is the problem with that with too much information about these games as they're coming out. Does that actually make players when they choose to play a game just offload what value for a game is because the right answer to subjectivity, the subjectivity value in games is that each gamer develops their own taste and preferences in a game and they make selections on the games

[00:31:58] that they want to buy based on what they think that they're going to enjoy best. But if we're talking about things like virality, if we're talking about critical reception broadly, how much are players just offloading the idea or the potential value of a game to somebody else's judgment rather than their own? And so I kind of think that to me is a bigger problem.

[00:32:25] Like just if you were going to like, listen, and I've got my favorite YouTubers and I've got my favorite, you know, podcasters who are analyzing games and it's okay to have other people's opinions kind of inform you, but are they informing your decision or are you making your decisions solely based off of what other people believe the value of a game to be? And we live in an age where content typically is based on clickbait titles. Like dude, very often will I see a nuanced title about any video game.

[00:32:53] It's either this is the best thing that happened or this is the worst thing that happened, right? 100%. And so I think coming from, this is obviously somebody who's coming from a professor in the humanities, my bigger concern would be is cultural value being determined by somebody else? Isn't the individual offloading the assessment of value to somebody or some other entity rather than allowing themselves to make that own judgment call because they risk, they're afraid of losing

[00:33:21] money when buying a new game. Sorry, we're getting a little, maybe a little too heady here, but that's where I'm at. No, I think it's, I mean, that's, I think that's happening to everybody in every part of their lives. Yeah. Oof. Not just when it comes to video games, right? Because of the, because of social media, social media, it's like we pick our vacations based off what an influencer told us was a sick vacation, right? Like we pick our books we read because somebody recommended it on, you know, on Instagram.

[00:33:50] We pick the games because it got a nine on IGN. Right. Very, very rarely. And, but I think that the market exists. I think the market exists in such a way where you, we don't have the freedom to just try things because we have to exchange money. And so, yeah, we, our money is precious.

[00:34:20] And unless you have like so much extra spending power that you can just go buy whatever you want and you can just try it and you can just go try stuff and kind of make your own assessment without that, you need some kind of thing to tell you like, this is worth your hard earned cash. Right. And so I admit like, yeah, when, when I look at a video game, I want to play, if it gets bad review scores, I'm not going to play it unless it's on Game Pass. Because on Game Pass, then I can go try it.

[00:34:50] I was just going to say, we're going to talk about this at the end of the episode. This is the last category, but what Cameron's getting at, it's like, oh shoot, what if this is actually an advantage to a subscription service? Sure. You get a narrow scope. You don't get access to every single game to do a sort of trial run of them. But does it help kind of shift the balance in favor of you making an individual judgment call about something that might be valuable to you? Because how... Would I have paid, yeah, would I have paid 30 bucks for blueprints? No.

[00:35:21] But I put like five hours into blueprints because it was on Game Pass. Right. And it, yeah. So that is changing. Yeah. I don't know. I just... Folks, if we can move beyond the hours equals dollars conversation here, I think that would be really great. Like I said, I think it's a good entry point into the conversation. But I just think, to me, I'm going to give a non-answer. Very classic sort of humanities approach here.

[00:35:50] Determine your own rubric for what value in a game is. And then use that rubric when you're trying to determine if you want to buy a game. So, for example, for me, going back to the first Berserker versus AI Limit, they both are games that are enticing to me. I like Souls-like games. I've watched trailers. I've watched gameplay. And I'm trying to make a judgment call about which one I want to buy. If it comes down to just like, hey, my budget is tight, then go with your budget is tight. AI Limit is $25 cheaper.

[00:36:18] Pick that one up, you know, because everything else about that game might check a box, right? Or it's just like, you know what? The first Berserker has some other qualities. I don't know. Has a better art direction or an art direction that seems more appealing to me. I don't know. You just got to make that call for yourself, I think, at some point. Rather than just making an entire decision like, ah, this doesn't seem great. Because I've seen way more, for example, reviews, positive reviews for the first Berserker Kassan

[00:36:47] than I have seen for AI Limit by far. But AI Limit still is compelling to me from what I've seen from it. So it's like, I don't know. I don't need a discount that option as a game. Just because, yeah. So for my process for picking what I want to buy, I will watch a trailer, read a preview or whatever, watch a YouTube video, assess if I think it has a cool idea that I like, and kind of visually just gut check it.

[00:37:17] But I'll wait for the reviews to come out, and I'll usually listen to several reviews on YouTube and on podcasts if it's a game I'm super interested in. And especially, I'll listen to even more if it's a game that I was super interested in and it actually scored lower. Ooh, yeah. Because I want to hear specifically, what are the problems that people have with it? And how do those problems line up with the type of gamer that I am? Yeah. And the things that I like in video games.

[00:37:45] And if I come away from those reviews and I hear, oh, you know what? This was the issue that that person had. I actually like this about this other thing. So I'm still going to give it a shot. Yeah. And so then I'll end up. So I actually will pay more attention to reviews if I've assessed that I'm interested in a game and then it scores low, like Metacritic, OpenCritic, whatever. And look, I'm not going to lie to you. I use that as a temperature check, right? Yeah.

[00:38:13] It's like people say, oh, don't pitch into review scores. Just play what you like. But the honest truth is you're going to waste a lot of money if you do that. It's like you have to have some kind of temperature gauge for if something is worth your time because you don't have unlimited time and you don't have unlimited money. So you have to have some sort of temperature gauge to figure out what you should spend your money on, which again, why do I pay for Game Pass?

[00:38:43] 20 bucks a month. That seems like a lot. But it gives me a huge buffet smorgasbord of different things where I can just dip in and try stuff. Then I get to make that. And that's one of the values that I'm paying for, right? It's like when you buy a Game Pass from a behavioral psychology standpoint, what are you actually buying? You're buying the ability to have a whole bunch of different games that you don't have to buy each one individually that you can dip in and out of and you can just try.

[00:39:13] So you're paying for that freedom. Yeah. The accessibility. That's what you're paying for. You're not really paying for like the super specific library, at least for me personally. You're not paying for this like super specific library of these exact games that come out in this order next year. And so I get Game Pass and it costs 20 bucks a month divided by 12. And these five games cost $70 each. And then I do the equation. It's like I don't think about it. It's literally just, oh, I have access to a huge games library.

[00:39:42] And I can dip in and I could try stuff and I just have the freedom to do that. So I'm basically paying for the freedom. But, you know. Yeah. I think what a lot of people don't think. I was going to say, yeah, people. What I liked about what you said, and this is kind of what I'm getting at. I think you phrased it better than I could. You might read all these reviews and listen to all these things, but you always pit it against. Oh, they didn't like this thing about that. Will that bother me? Right. As opposed to somebody just have a laundry list of all the flaws of a game and be like,

[00:40:11] okay, that game must suck. But it's like, wait a second. Think critically about the games that you have enjoyed. Do they have those problems? Have those things been problems for you when you're playing those games? And I think it's kind of like that level of value judgment that is more important in determining whether or not a game is valuable. I just think my kind of philosophy here is like, dude, value at the end of the day needs to be individual. Right. There are super critically acclaimed games that I have just not been able to enjoy or beat.

[00:40:41] And famously, maybe infamously for Cameron and I, that's the Outer Wilds. Like, dude, we've tried. I know we mentioned this all the time, but we have played that game. We have both attempted to play that game at least three times. And none of us, neither of us can get into that game. Super critically acclaimed game. It's been on Game Pass. You know, we've given it a freaking try, but it just simply did not jive. Therefore, is the game invaluable?

[00:41:09] Maybe not at large, but to me, and this is going to hurt all of my indie gamer friends listening right now. I don't find a lot of value in that game. And so I'm not going to give it more time or attention or money because it just simply didn't do it for me. Right. Right. That's okay. It's also okay to go against the grain. Conversely, it's also okay to play a game that critically really sucks. But if you enjoyed it, then does it matter? Not really.

[00:41:39] Moving on to talk about pricing models, because this is another place where psychology plays a big part, right? We consider free games free, but no game is really free. Freedom isn't free. Sorry. No game is really free. No game is really free because the game is going to make you pay in one way or another.

[00:42:06] And the game is going to make you pay by either time or addiction. Or it's going to build the mechanics around the game in such a way that it prompts you to spend money on it often. Yeah. So you're not paying once and then you get a thing. And if you're a kid, you don't really recognize that.

[00:42:34] But when you're an adult, you can kind of see, hopefully see like the forest from the trees, right? Where it's like, if all you play is free games, like, yeah, you're playing games, but you're missing out on like a whole bunch of other games that they're not free, quote unquote, but neither are the free games that you play. Right. The free games that you play are constantly have their mechanics are built around getting you to spend money on them. That's like why they like half the mechanics on the games exist like that. Fortnite, any of them.

[00:43:02] It's about like, how do I get you to spend more money on it? Yeah. Whereas like, you know, a normal game, you're just paying one price up front and you could just get the game. And so in that sense, some premium games are actually cost a lot less than the free games that you might get into because of that reason. And for that reason, I don't particularly love free to play games because I think free to

[00:43:29] play compromises how you have to design the mechanics so that you can make a return on your investment. And so I think that kind of that's how you kind of talk away those models. That being said, you know, can you still make a really fun video game that a lot of people love that's free? Yeah, absolutely. You can. But it's not going to be without microtransactions that you're trying to get people to buy in many, many, many different ways, which I don't know.

[00:44:00] It's just annoying, right? It's just annoying to be constantly bought like you're playing something. You're constantly getting bothered. I think it like wears away at you psychologically, like mentally when you play something that's constantly prompting you to buy something. Yeah. There's some kind of like psychological element that I find really distressing about, you know, when I play a game that that is constantly asking me to spend money. It's it's not it takes away enjoyment from the experience.

[00:44:30] But it puts a lot of money in corporations pockets, which is why a lot of companies like it. Yeah, because if you make the fun game fun enough and addictive enough. People are going to be much more willing to drop, you know, the extra 23571220 bucks on a skin or whatever it may be. But yeah, I don't think it's a controversial opinion to say that I'm not a super huge fan of free to play.

[00:44:59] Yeah, especially with the people that are going to listen to this podcast. Yeah, I honestly think free to play for me at this point in my life is an X. And I actually kind of wonder how universal this is. And I wonder, Cameron, if you have any insights or thoughts here. Is the biggest draw of a free to play game is that it's really easy to just buddy up with your pals and play it. Like, I think that's a huge, huge, huge factor.

[00:45:26] Like to me, that just seems like that's, I think zero barrier to entry. Right. Yeah. Right. Yeah. And especially now in this, you know, previously unthinkable world of cross play, something like Rocket League, something like Fortnite, Halo Infinite multiplayer. I'm just trying to think of the games that we've played with our friends, you know, that have been free to play. Right. I mean, honestly, they're typically for us at this point.

[00:45:56] It's like, great, let's get the let's get the pals together and let's play this game. Right. And then, yeah. And to me, I just have a totally different mindset when it comes to the type of game that I play with friends, like an online multiplayer. Then games that I'm sitting there, you know, scratching my chin about when I'm thinking about, oh, do I actually want to buy this game? It's different. Right. Like a multiplayer game. I don't really think about like artistic value of it.

[00:46:25] I think about is this fun? Are we going to be able to chat and kind of just talk about whatever while maybe scoring some wins or making some memories? Right. So to me, like the value coming back to that part of the conversation is way more social than it is like something artistic because it's kind of tough. I think this is what you're getting at, I think, as well, too. With free to play games, they kind of have to adhere to a specific type of design so they can be viable financially.

[00:46:56] And I think it's possible to have an artistically critical and interesting free to play game. But I think it's much less likely because that's not because they desperately need you to spend money on it, not just play it and have fun. It's because you have your hand tied behind your back as a developer and you don't have that. You don't have the freedom to create like the vision that you want to make because you're always working within the constraints of how do we make money on this? Yeah.

[00:47:26] How do we make money in the game as people are playing? Right. Which that being said, I'm not saying like free to play games are bad, especially for the reason that you said, Jake. I think that's the number one reason that gets me to play a free to play game because zero barrier to entry and you can get your butts together and no one has to buy anything. And no one has to feel bad that they bought something and you didn't play it, which we've done dozens of times with our friend group. Right.

[00:47:53] Because we're all in our 30s, mid to late 30s, and we're all trying to find cool stuff to play. You find something and it costs money if you finally convince everyone to pay for it. And then what happens eight times out of 10, you end up playing for three hours and you never touch it again. Yeah. And that's just the reality of life. Every once in a while, though, I will say this.

[00:48:14] If you can find that paid experience, especially, you know, thinking of like the survival crafting games that we've been able to sink lots of time into, one will hit and be super duper duper satisfying. Yeah. And we'll just really hit all the marks. Rarely do we have a free to play game where that's the and then again, that's just like our friend group. So obviously different for everybody. I think I think most people are jumping in war zone. They're jumping in Fortnite, zero barrier to entry.

[00:48:44] You get in there, you play your match, you get out. You know, you buy a couple skins a year. That's what you play. And that's it. Obviously, the people that we're talking to in this podcast, that's not you know, we're playing more games than just than just those. And there's nothing wrong with that. It's just yeah, I mean, that doesn't leave room if that's the only model that works and the only model that companies go to.

[00:49:12] That doesn't leave a lot of room for the type of artistic expression and games that I think me and Jake that brings passion to us like in this. Right. Yeah. And I agree. I also think free to play games outside of our age demographic kids, you know, kids don't have access to credit cards to buy games or cash usually. So Fortnite is a super easy way to link up with friends. I would say college age students, you're broke. You know, why not play a free to play game?

[00:49:41] But again, I think we're coming back to this social element for me. Like that's the primary driver. Yes, the game is fun. Yeah. War Warzone, Fortnite, they're fun games. But being able to do it with your friends is part of what makes it fun. And then just to kind of add some examples, I think I fair to speak for both of us when I say that like V Rising, Valheim, Abiotic Factor and Grounded were three like paid multiplayer experiences that absolutely were worth it.

[00:50:10] And they might be varying in terms of artistic value between those four games. And we could throw in En Shrouded as well, too. We put in quite a few hours in En Shrouded. But it's a different experience and it feels a little different to play something like that. Especially Cameron and I were also really big champions of the game Grounded. And that's usually the golden child example along out there with Ghost of Tsushima.

[00:50:36] But like that game, for example, like freaking incredible experience to play with friends. And honestly, I got way more enjoyment out of seeing Grounded all the way through from beginning to end than I do from Fortnite. That being said, Grounded is a good example of this middle ground where it was part of a subscription service. So the barrier to entry was lowered. That's true. Yeah. A little bit. Yep. Not as much as free to play, but it still did lower the barrier, which is interesting. Yeah.

[00:51:06] But I want to save that subscription service conversation for the extended edition of this episode. So if you want to keep, because I want to talk about another topic to close us out. But if you want to hear our conversation on subscription services and you got to be a member of the Patreon. Patreon.com slash PyrterCast. Just sign up at the deluxe edition or above and you'll get access. You can get access to the extended edition. If you're already on that one, just keep listening and we'll go right into it.

[00:51:36] Value. To end the show. Sorry. Value proposition. Please buy our products. Yes. I mean, look, we all got to make a living. Uh. Uh. We don't do this just for fun. No, we basically do. But it helps. It helps. You know what? It gives us the freedom to go out and buy the games that you guys want to hear us talk about. There you go. Value proposition. Yeah.

[00:52:02] Here's the part of the conversation I want to end on because we're already almost an hour in. Here's the question to prompt the final part of this conversation. Does it, is it Baron, is it Concerned Ape's obligation to raise the price of Stardew Valley to 30 bucks?

[00:52:29] And should he have done it five or six years ago? Dude, what a, oh my gosh. Poof. Now we're getting into like ethics, right? The part of the reason why Cameron brings this up is because we've talked to a few devs. I've talked to a few devs who, when you are pitching your game to a publisher, they almost always will ask you, how much do you think this game should be priced at?

[00:52:58] They will ask the developers this. And they will always give the example of Stardew Valley, a $15 game that has sold over 40 million copies and has easily hundreds of hours of content in it because it's basically a live service game at this point. Yeah. And it is, I think Concerned Ape pricing Stardew Valley at $15 was just trying to sell a game to make people happy when it happened.

[00:53:27] Yeah, this is not malicious intention. No, not at all. This wasn't like trying to manipulate the market at all. Yeah, yeah. This is such, indies I feel like are such wildly varied financial positions when it comes to selling a game. Concerned Ape now could probably price Haunted Chocolatier at $40. And it would still sell incredibly well. That thing is going to do 5 million copies launch day.

[00:53:57] I don't care what the price is. It'll never come out. But that's, you know. And it's just wild to me. He doesn't need to. Concerned Ape could drop Haunted Chocolatier at $5 at launch. Because when it comes to like financial viability, these unicorn indies are just simply in a completely different stratosphere that, you know, AAA CEO executives are drooling to reach.

[00:54:27] Like Bellatro. Like Local Thunks next game after Bellatro. I mean, dude's already set for life. It could be priced $3. It doesn't really matter. You can do whatever you want. So go through your list of indie unicorns here. And they simply could pick any price that they wanted. And it will be. It does not matter. I would say your cap for Concerned Ape's next game is probably $60.

[00:54:54] Just because now we're getting into just the price anchoring that people are used to. But these. I mean, it's not going to be $60. It'll be like $20. Max, I would say. Right? How long? Because, yeah. It'll probably be $15. Because you know Eric Barone is not. He's not. He's already a multi-mega bajillionaire. Oh, yeah. He's just doing this because he freaking loves it now. That's all he cares about. That being said, I think it's his moral.

[00:55:23] I'm going to argue that it is his moral obligation to charge a minimum $30 for Haunted Chocolatier. So this is a case you're arguing for like Rising Tide raises all ships. 100%. It is his obligation because it's not about him.

[00:55:41] It's about all the dozens, hundreds, thousands of indie developers who are trying to be successful in this industry who need to be able to charge $20 for their game instead of $10. And that would literally change their lives if they could do that. Because then they could. Because the price. And it's more complicated than this.

[00:56:05] But I think if you have a game that sells 40 million copies and it sets a standard of an indie game price. Right? If the standard is set at $15, that's going to make life real. There's not a lot of wiggle room for a lot of those guys out there. Right? Yeah. It's like $5, $10. Like, eh. Is that going to be enough? Like, yeah. Maybe if the volume is crazy high. But if I can sell sort of this artisanal product we call an indie game.

[00:56:35] Like maybe we think of it more like an artisanal specialized product versus like a AAA game that's this. Yeah. You know, also expensive. But it's, you know, there's indie games that are cheapo. Like you buy it in a flea market. But there's indie games that were like curated and crafted. And so for those artisanal products, you want to be able to charge $20, $25, $30 for those. Even if it's by a small team. Even if it's a two-hour thing or three-hour thing. Right? Yeah.

[00:57:07] But that can only happen if your anchor is priced high enough or else you don't have room. And so the market demand is, well, this game doesn't even compare to Stardew Valley. So it's got to be under $15. It's like, well, you can't make a living with that. The market. And since Stardew Valley comes out, the market has changed drastically. Yes. And so he is the guy who can shift that anchor point. And I don't really think there's anyone else out there that could.

[00:57:37] Except for maybe Supergiant. But even then, I think Supergiant has transcended and kind of gone double A. So I don't even know if they really can. They're basically even triple A. I'm going to argue Hades 2 is like a triple A game. Right? Pretty much. Right? Stardew Valley I still think of as an indie game. Because it really truly is like a one-man team. I mean, he has contractors and stuff.

[00:58:02] Yeah, but it's still very much an independent artistic and financial model. Concerned A. Has 100% control over Stardew Valley. Does not have any publisher contracts. Does not have any distribution contracts. Only has... Doesn't share any control over the game itself. Or the games that he is making. Right? But will do contracts, I'm sure, for localization. Which is entirely different.

[00:58:29] Because you don't give up any power or control over your product. Supergiant's more like a Larian. I think they used to be more... Like when Braid and all that stuff was coming out. But now, like these independent... I'm talking... I think we're talking in terms of like solo or less than five people. Right? That's something like that. Yeah. Oof. My head is just buzzing with all different things to say. I think it's... I think that...

[00:58:56] One point that you make here that I think is absolutely crucial when it comes to pricing and determining value in video games. Is that we are seven years out, I think, from the Stardew Valley launch. And in those seven years, indie games, that market, that landscape has changed so drastically. Instead of there being like a thousand indie games that come out a year on Steam, last year was, I think, 14 or 18,000. Right? Oh my gosh.

[00:59:25] We've also dealt with the quarantine... And it's just going to get worse now with AI. Yeah. Because it's going to expand access. More creatives will be able to make stuff and code and figure out how to finish their games. And non-creatives will be able to make slop. But... Yeah, exactly. Which... Great article. I highly recommend from Rebecca Valentine who investigated this. I don't know if you saw this about a bunch of AI slop games that are trying to impersonate

[00:59:55] indie games that were highly successful. So, like, for example, Unpacking, right? There was some game called Unpacking Deluxe Bundle. Like, that's the title of the game. And that's how they got away from copyright. They make it look enough like Unpacking to try to trick people into buying something that's just total crap. Oh, that's so gross. It is super gross. Anyway. But yeah, we've had quarantine in the pandemic in those last seven years. We've had economic issues since then.

[01:00:24] We've had all sorts of things that have happened in seven years. And I think you're right. I think that $15 sort of baseline doesn't exactly work or translate well into current market conditions for financially successful products. I have been seeing more indie games that are, let's say, like $20, $25. They're shorter games, but they're highly polished experiences.

[01:00:50] And so, for example, Nyad, which was gifted to me, just to be clear, right? Yeah. It's a $20 game. It's a really short game. I think I beat it in five hours or something. Beautiful, highly polished game. Super niche demographic. But $20 is pretty viable for that. I'm really interested to see how much Yes Your Grace Snowfall price is at.

[01:01:18] The first game, Yes Your Grace, incredible game. This is a huge update. And part of this, too, is if you have publishers in the conversation with what's happening here, that price will always be higher. I remember posting once, I want to say that it was the dev of the game Prison City. No, I can't remember. The dev of an indie game. I said something, dude, indies have got to be minimum priced $15. And this was several years ago. I was like, because these people deserve the money.

[01:01:47] And this guy was like, I get what you're saying. He was like, I appreciate your thoughts here. He's like, I want to price my game at $5 because more people are willing to take a risk at $5 than they are $15. Which is true. And I think of, dude, even today in my stream, I played a game that I bought for $3. But let me caveat that by saying the reason they're willing to take a risk is because their risk tolerance is set at $15. Yes, I agree.

[01:02:18] So you raise that up. Suddenly, the risk tolerance is $10. Yeah. And then we're having the same conversation, but you have 50% more margin. Yeah. No, and I think that's a really good point, right? Like, I think this is why indie pricing is such... But that's out of his control. He's making the right decision based on the market dynamics. That's out of his control. That's in the control of somebody like concerning. Ooh, dude, I love this conversation. Because I think... Yeah, I mean...

[01:02:47] What was the word you used? The risk tolerance, right? I would love to know. And I'm sure economists everywhere would love to have a simple formula of like, compared to your price anchor, what is the highest price for risk tolerance that people are willing to buy a game at? Right? And I'm sure that's up for debate, and that's going to shift a lot. But yeah, I don't know. It's just like... Indie pricing is such a massive hairball. There have been games... I'm trying to think of some that like...

[01:03:17] I don't know, man. The Eastward Octopia DLC expansion was $7 or $8. And it's a farming sim. Dude, and farming sims are designed in such a way that there's a lot of time that you can sink into them. To me, I was like, dude, this is an absolute steal, right? But what's also wild is you have a game that's in early access, Fields of Mystria, right?

[01:03:44] Which is, I think, $13, maybe $15 right now. But it's proving to be one of the most robust indie farming sims ever, right? So I think it's just such a massive hairball. And I kind of wonder to what degree indie devs are kind of just guessing. But I think you're right that like that $15 price anchor is pretty fixed at this point. I want to say Undertale also maybe retailed at $15.

[01:04:16] Yeah, I don't know. If you could raise that to $20, $25 and raise the risk tolerance to $10, $15, who knows? But at the same time, I can't think of how many indie games I bought for under $5 six months later when they went on sale or a year later or whatever. So I just asked ChatGPT deep research to determine what the risk tolerance for video game pricing is in the United States

[01:04:44] and to take everything it understands about the video game market and determine the absolute highest price companies could charge for video games until the market starts to fall out. And I'm going to have it look specifically at AAA games because I'm curious. Yeah. I wonder, can you make it factor in or out deluxe editions? Because we're already getting right $100 plus games if they're deluxe editions. Yeah. Yeah. I'm curious what it comes back with now.

[01:05:12] So for those of you listening, if you're interested in that, I'll take ChatGPT's response and I'll post it in the Patreon, maybe in the Discord chat. Yeah. So, yeah. Anyways, Jake, long conversation. I mean, we could probably talk about this topic forever, but any last thoughts on this kind of core segment of our episode here? I mean, this is an hour of us just like frantically yelling at our microphones.

[01:05:44] I think that this question is immensely more complicated than anybody wants to actually give time to. Yeah. Or anybody, what people want to believe. And again, I'm tired of the hour versus dollar sort of value formula. Yeah. Yeah. It's an old hat. It's an old hat. Yeah. But I understand why it will not die because it is extremely as reductive as it is. It is a simple way to try to answer this question.

[01:06:12] But again, I think it's a starting point into a conversation where you can find a lot more interesting details and nuance about what people actually want out of their video games that they're buying, right? And how that influences what they determine to be value and what a fair price for that value is. I do think that kind of looking at the future of games, when GTA 6 comes out at a super high, never before seen standard price.

[01:06:39] What I am kind of excited to see is that, dude, you're going to get games from AAA to indie that are launching at $5 to $100. And I think if you're really what I want to see is that people stop thinking about this old, you know, dollars to hours conversation. And instead, you take a good hard look at what the game actually is offering, right? And that you're okay with what it's offering.

[01:07:08] If a game is $25 and it's offering something that you are going to enjoy, that's probably fine. Same for $100. Yeah, so my final thought on this subject is we've talked about this before, but there's this thought in the industry at large and amongst analysts that GTA 6 is going to lift the ceiling of the games industry. I think it may actually do the opposite. Ooh!

[01:07:40] Unless GTA 6 is $100 at retail. Hmm. And the reason I think that, and I've explained it before, is because GTA 6 is going to be so big and so graphically impressive and so chock full of content, not to mention GTA 6 online. If you don't charge $100, you've then set the anchor that full price games are like GTA 6.

[01:08:06] And the Zoomers who don't really buy many games, if they go out and they buy another $70 game and it's not just like their baby GTA 6, disappointment, and then suddenly it's even harder to crack the market. So, I could absolutely see that happening. I could be completely wrong. I'm not an economist, nor do I really understand like economics or market dynamics. To be frank, I'm just making, you know, I'm just throwing stuff out there. Educate a guess. Yeah.

[01:08:38] Yeah. Well, ladies and gentlemen, this has been our conversation on the subjectivity of value in video games. This has been a one-off episode here while we get our act together when it comes to all the games that we're playing. If you want to continue the conversation, you can get the extended edition of this episode. We're going to continue our conversation talking about game subscription services, which we briefly mentioned. If you want that, go to patreon.com slash period of cast. Sign up, deluxe edition or above.

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[01:09:35] Thank you very much for listening and have a great night.