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Cyber Rat
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That's like refusing to pay full price for a steak dinner if you're asked if you'd like to add mac & cheese as a side. :P

 

No, it's not. Games are an untangible form of creative media with the purpose to entertain or engage you. A steak dinner is food.

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That's like refusing to pay full price for a steak dinner if you're asked if you'd like to add mac & cheese as a side. :P

 

No, it's not. Games are an untangible form of creative media with the purpose to entertain or engage you. A steak dinner is food.

 

Your face is an untangible form of creative media!

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That's like refusing to pay full price for a steak dinner if you're asked if you'd like to add mac & cheese as a side. :P

 

No, it's not. Games are an untangible form of creative media with the purpose to entertain or engage you. A steak dinner is food.

 

Your face is an untangible form of creative media!

 

Awww, you flatterer!

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Well to further elaborate on my position I look at a game as a complete package. I also have a certain price point that I'm willing to pay for a game. If a game is essentially half complete on purchase with additional zones and sections costing more I will be more apt to simply wait for the base game to go down in price to make up for the cost difference of the added DLC.

 

Some other DLC (such as say, Zen pinball tables) I look at as a completely separate game and don't really have a huge problem with. It really depends on how much I want to spend on a game.

 

DLC also looks to be a way to cut down on importers. Final Fantasy XIII-2 was down to ~$25 from a UK seller recently but held off from buying it as my wife would have been unable to play the DLC without finding a way to order from the UK PSN store.

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I guess I should expand upon the analogy. A few weeks back we decided we'd go to the Students Union instead of our normal pub haunt. Checked the menu, they did burgers, a a bit cheaper than the pub too. So we're ordering away; get asked mayo or tomato sauce, you want lettuce on, chips or curly fried, and then comes to paying and it's now pushed up to like £5. Turns out those weren't choices on the standard burger, but additions on top of the standard burger. For that much (Well a bit less) you'd get a Beer and a Burger at the pub. So yeah the "burger" was pretty much just that (and it was a SU burger too, not a pub burger :wacko:).

 

My burgers expand to my games; I'm fine with the option of a collectors edition beer on the side too. Or charging a bit extra to give me curly fries instead. But I damn well want my chips*, sauce n salad as standard if you're charging me standard. Not some dry disc of meat in a bap. Yeah it's filling, but it's not as tasty and every bite you take you know it's missing part of the meal.

 

*yeah cocked up there.

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Yeah, the problem is in figuring out whether you're paying extra for the curly fries on the side or for the ketchup on the burger. I think most people agree that they don't want to pay extra for the ketchup, just not on whether that's what's happening or not.

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I dont know if anyone's brought this up, but how does everyone feel about downloading soundtracks to games you have for free?

I own almost every single Final Fantasy game and ive downloaded all the soundtracks off torrent sites. I figure that its close enough to playing the game and leaving it on without playing it to hear the music, except without the hassle of doing all that.

 

On the other hand, a lot of game soundtracks are huge and expensive to produce. Not just FF, but the GTA games. If you downloaded the GTA3 soundtrack on iTunes im sure id be somewhere between 30-50 dollars. Its weird that thats something people never think about. GTA3 was rereleased on the iPhone for 10 bucks, but the music alone is worth 3 or 4 times that. Thats not a bad deal. Yet i think most of us wouldnt pay 30-50 dollars for the game nowadays. To be honest, the music is a fraction of the cost to make that game.

 

Which brings me to another point - I dont think everyone ever gives soundtracks a second thought when people bitch about the 60 dollar game. Im not saying games should cost more, but game soundtracks on their own cost more than the game half the time. I wonder how that works out.

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Which brings me to another point - I dont think everyone ever gives soundtracks a second thought when people bitch about the 60 dollar game. Im not saying games should cost more, but game soundtracks on their own cost more than the game half the time. I wonder how that works out.

 

Well, it's like voice acting, that shit costs money as well especially when you use first class actors (e. g. Patrick Stewart in Castlevania Lords of Shadow.)

 

I do like how a lot of games are releasing soundtracks as a bonus disc (mostly stuff like Cave Shooters and the like but some AAA titles have CEs containing the soundtracks.) but I wonder in this day and age why it's so hard to release an actual soundtrack at a fair price.

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I think soundtracks cost more because they're a fan product. And like all fan collectors items and such they know the fans will pay more, so they charge them more.

 

Do I pirate soundtracks? Well as I answered Mason last week: http://dl.dropbox.co...Stuff/maybe.PNG I don't even listen to half of it :P Pretty much the FFIX/FFX and Black Mages stuff (and a couple FFIV songs n some of the compilations). It's simply a case of easy to grab it all than source together from individual lists. Nobody ever uploads just one album, nope whole discography.

 

However it's worth noting that quite a few games throw in soundtracks too which is nice. Seriously, go digging in your PC game folders. I'll get you started:

Steamapps/common/dragonage(whatever edition)/bonus/soundtrack/BOOM.

Steamapps/common/rockofages/original soundtrack/BOOM

Steamapps/common/Witcher/soundtracks/BOOM

So yeah you don't really even need to pirate them, just copy them from the games files :P

 

Go digging, there's all sorts in games folders. Wallpapers too. I know it's something GOG are kinda being all "look what we do!" but they're only making it more obvious. I think other games treat it as a treasure hunt.

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I found out my CD copy of the Sonic Adventure 2 soundtrack sells for $85 on Amazon. I'm tempted to sell it but then I have to wonder who would pay that sort of price for a CD when that is so easy to pirate, ya know? You'd think piracy would keep things like that low. Still, maybe it's just those crazy Sonic collectors.

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Yeah, I love it when games include the sound track as a collector's edition bonus. That is definitely the kind of stuff that's truly bonus material, along with artbooks, character's notebooks, etc.

 

And something that makes me, the consumer, more likely to purchase the game early on to get such extras.

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Yeah, I love it when games include the sound track as a collector's edition bonus. That is definitely the kind of stuff that's truly bonus material, along with artbooks, character's notebooks, etc.

It's not really even a collectors bonus. None of the games I listed as "to get you started" are CE editions.

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I saw a Final Fantasy soundtrack for 80 dollars recently. I'm sorry but that is absolutely outrageous. I will pirate the shit out of those tracks and then give the finger as I walk away. You can argue the morality of piracy all you want, but 80 dollars for a soundtrack is ridiculous. Frankly, when you set a price like that, you deserve to get a big "fuck you" in the form of everyone torrenting the album.

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I saw a Final Fantasy soundtrack for 80 dollars recently. I'm sorry but that is absolutely outrageous. I will pirate the shit out of those tracks and then give the finger as I walk away. You can argue the morality of piracy all you want, but 80 dollars for a soundtrack is ridiculous. Frankly, when you set a price like that, you deserve to get a big "fuck you" in the form of everyone torrenting the album.

 

But was that retail or used market price?

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Yeah, I love it when games include the sound track as a collector's edition bonus. That is definitely the kind of stuff that's truly bonus material, along with artbooks, character's notebooks, etc.

 

It's not really even a collectors bonus. None of the games I listed as "to get you started" are CE editions.

 

I know, I was talking about when they include an actual CD of the game soundtrack, not just when the files are accessible on your computer.

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I saw a Final Fantasy soundtrack for 80 dollars recently. I'm sorry but that is absolutely outrageous. I will pirate the shit out of those tracks and then give the finger as I walk away. You can argue the morality of piracy all you want, but 80 dollars for a soundtrack is ridiculous. Frankly, when you set a price like that, you deserve to get a big "fuck you" in the form of everyone torrenting the album.

 

But was that retail or used market price?

 

Digital download

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