Games for the masses: A real necessity

Today I was browsing through some new games that I am putting into the wish list. So far there are five games in my list and when I go to calculate how much I need to buy all these games, I feel discouraged. Getting all these 5 games will cost me over $300 in total. I could even buy a PS3 with this (yes I still don’t have PS3). I am wondering how the hell I am going to pay for all this. I still don’t have job and it’s going to take hell of a time to accumulate all these. I can ask my dad for it, but $300? It’s too much to ask, considering the fact there are other stuffs involved in my daily budget. As an international student, with lots of restrictions, it is too much to pay for all these so I am wondering, how some people, who are not that well-off, can play all these games. The steep price indeed makes games dearer for some people. So are these people left out because of this steep price?

 

People can reply my above question, by saying that people can buy used games, which I do agree. However think about those games which involve a lot of multiplayer features. It takes time for either the price to go down or wait for a used copy, which is still expensive. Of course people can trade-off these games with another. Gamestop stores allow these. Problem these there are some people who are not willing to give away their beloved game, or even kids who love these games dearly. Not to mention, if anyone buy a used game, he/she is left out with additional benefits that the game provides. In order to get these, they need to pay more. Another point is that if you buy games that have strong multiplayer features, it is necessary to buy the game new, since the peak time of any popular multiplayer game is when the game is new. I am sure that no one is playing Modern Warfare right now online, since most of them shifted to play Modern Warfare 2 or Black Ops. So what happens to those who wait for the price to go down? They are left out with empty battleground. So instead they tend to finish the campaign, which is abysmally short and keeps it somewhere safe or trade-off. The game becomes pointless for them to buy. This happened to me when I waited for the price of Virtua Fighter 5 and Dead or Alive 4 to go down. I hardly found opponents online. The replayability of these games goes down drastically. This is just US, it is even worse outside US.

 

In Australia, these games costs like $108.00 AED ($109.15 USD), which is overkill. In Bangladesh, the games are little bit lower with price ranging from BDT 4500 to 6000 ($63.34 to $84.45 USD). Thinking about Australia, how the hell people going to buy these games fresh and new with such an overkill price? In fact they would think, “Oh well, screw video games, I am going for something else.” There are some developers in Australia, like 2K Games Australia (makers of Bioshock), who are also bound to increase their prices just to compete with the US based games. Bangladesh is a developing country, where majority of the people cannot afford to buy brand new games. In fact most people in Asian countries have the difficulties of buying new games. That is why piracy is so imminent in these parts of the world. Due to recent actions taken by Sony and Microsoft of banning users from playing online using hackable systems, people are bound to buy original games (which is a good news) but the sale of these games gone down drastically (which is a bad news). To make matters worse, the companies do not offer additional services that people deserves. My friend, who lives in Dhaka, got his PS3 broken. Now he got into a deep problem, since Sony does not offer any services over there (which is ironic, since Sony sells PS3 in Bangladesh through an authorized distributor).

 

It is sad that the people, who have a hard time buying all these games, are left out for nothing. The kids are left without the beautiful entertainment, we call gaming. I can understand that cost of making these games can be huge, but if the bigger companies can plan out, these countries (or even better majority of people) can get access to these original games, with multiplayer services and other value added services. They need to find a low cost strategy to build games and even sell these games at low cost. It is a good thing that the big companies are setting up bases in different countries (particularly Asian countries) to attract gamers living in these countries. The cost of resources is quite cheap in these parts of the world. Ubisoft set up a base in India and China and if these bases can analyze what the local customers want and put their demands into action, the end result may be bright. Microsoft made an interesting move few years back by offering stripped down version of their popular software in India with very low cost. If Microsoft can implement a same strategy in games, it could be a blessing. The best example of a developing gaming sector is South Korea. The government has provided ample support and subsidies to set up gaming industries. Since piracy is so rampant, the developers thought why not they start making online games and MMOs. These games cannot be pirated because it’s online. Most of these MMOs are free and developers get revenues from ads or from premium services. South Korea witnessed a rapid growth in past few years and still becoming strong. In fact online gaming is the national sport in South Korea. Blizzard already set up a base their long time ago and providing support to the gamers. Other countries, especially Thailand and Vietnam, are taking the same approach. Since the introduction of the application system in Facebook, Mafia Wars and Farmville games became both a blessing and a curse. It will be hard to compete against these games (mind you, Korean games are thousand times better than these Mafia Wars and Farmville since these are actually played like games), however there are ample number of customers who are willing to play any new games.

 

There are numerous ways that developers and publishers can implement to attract low and middle income gamers. It is just the fact they need to find out the innovative ways. In fact if they can manage to grab these people, it will be hard to imagine how much the sale will rise and how much revenue the developers will get in return. The developers and publishers have to know that people who buy brand new games are still short in number. So imagine if 750000 Black Ops sold right now (which in fact is) and all the buyers are middle-high or high income groups, so what the sell number will be like when the lower and middle income groups come into play? Millions? Billions?