Since the launch of both next generation consoles, the PS4, and Xbox One, players have been treated with some beautiful looking games like The Order 1886 and Ryse: Son of Rome. But as many stunningly visual games there are, there is double the number of indie games.
Indie games kind of took both consoles by storm. You had your fair share of exclusive titles on each side like recently released FireWatch and the stunning Transistor on PS4 to the Metroidvania platformer Ori and the Blind Forest and the story-driven OxenFree for Xbox One. All the mentioned titles above are indie games that have gained great recognition but were also all priced at $20, keynote.
The recent surge of indie games did not only bring great, unique experiences to the players but apparently it brought us this notion that all indie games are/should be priced at/lower than $20. But what gamers are starting to understand is that not every indie game will be on the cheap, you will sometimes come around to one of the big indie titles like the recently rumored $60 No Man's Sky or Jonathan Blow's latest game The Witness which was priced at $40.
Both these games, No Man's Sky and The Witness, take this wonderful, unique ideas and turn them it into some of the biggest games of the year, despite the big AAA games like Remedy's upcoming game Quantum Break or Naughty Dog's epic finale, Uncharted 4: A Thief's End.
Do they deserve the same price as a full studio? Yes, they do.
Every development cycle is hard, the hours are long and the reward can sometimes equal to "so called fans" bashing you through twitter for your game not being [BLANK, BLANK, AND BLANK] enough. But however the dice rolls, each development cycle for devs aren't the same, this goes twice for indie games. While big AAA games usually have a big publisher like EA, Activision, or Ubisoft behind them to fund the game, while these indie developers sometimes won't even have enough to kickstart the campaign.
Unfortunate events will almost happen throughout everything you do in life, it depends on how you react to it. You might not have enough money to complete the game, or you might experience an
unfortunate flood which wipes out all your previous data not just once,
but twice. This actually happened to Hello Games. However, instead of calling quits, they reacted positively, kept pushing forward hoping that one day to deliver one of the best games ever.
People who were excited for No Man's Sky have already taken to the internet to express the frustration on a game that they have yet to even try. The labeling around indie game makes no sense, just because it isn't a well-known game developer, it doesn’t mean its any less of a game.
Take a look at this random comment that I found pretty funny:
(In Context: The question was, would you buy No Man's Sky if it's $60?)
- Honestly, no. Even though the game looks "interesting", it 100% won`t have enough content to back up 60$ price point.
The funny part of this is, people will automatically bash an indie game if it's priced higher than the $20 mark, but when EA releases
Star Wars Battlefront, an undoubtedly unfished game, which
most definitely didn't have enough content and a
$50 season pass plastered all over the main menu, no one bats an eye. (I would also like to mention that the above comment doesn't necessarily mean the user enjoys Star Wars Battlefront and its issues)
No Man's Sky is going to be huge, it's so big that there will be about 18 billion unique and explorable planets. So huge that if everyone on Earth were to discover 500 planets per minute in No Man's Sky, it would still take around 10 years to discover every planet. The chances of you meeting another player in this massive world are slim.
So I'm not sure how aforementioned comment says there will be a lack of content, the game is 'supposedly' going to last infinitely, and it will be the only game to ever do that.
I don't want to jump on the bandwagon too early, but the game looks impressive, especially for a four-man studio. This obviously doesn’t equal major success for the game, perhaps the game will flop in reviews and a lot of people will stay clear away from the game, but gamers shouldn't judge a game pre-release regardless AAA or indie, it is just a little nonsensical.
As the indie genre start to gain more and more recognition in the gaming community, the increased price won't seem to difficult to grasp, especially when they're bringing you grade-A content to the players.
Despite your currently feeling on No Man's Sky potential pricing rumors, remember that these guys are developers, they work years and years before releasing the game to the public, where they wish everyone could just play the game and enjoy it; so refrain from making hasty decisions because of its price, and the overall pricing of indie games overall going forward because some of these games could sometime offer you experiences that no other big AAA could.