Game Inflation Makes Games Only Fun for Those Who Can Afford It

When I first got a Kindle Fire in 2013, one of the first games I loaded on it was Deer Hunter.  It was a hunting game where you shot deer, bear, wolves, and even African animals like lions, elephants, or antelope.  It was fun--for a while.  But it's one of those games where the prices keep getting higher and higher until they're ridiculous.

I mean when you first start you buy an ordinary shotgun for like 100 "hunter bucks," the currency used in-game.  But after you're up to level 50 or so, you have to buy guns for like 3 BILLION hunter bucks.  It's like, shit, I could buy an F-35 for that much and drop smart bombs on these freaking animals.  

I mean the choices at that point are either to be stuck on a level until you organically accumulate enough wealth, or pay real money to buy what you need.  Except the real money you need to pay keeps going up while the utility of the item keeps going down because the next level, guess what?  Yeah, you need another new gun because the one on the last level doesn't have enough power or range or some stupid made-up bullshit thing.  So eventually I stopped playing because it was just so ridiculously overpriced.

When I bought a new phone last year, I realized it came with this silly game called "Dice Dreams."  You roll dice to get the in-game currency to build whatever buildings are in the "set" for that level.  Like one has buildings from New York and another Paris and another is like Santa's village and so on.  But like the hunting game, the prices keep going up and up and up.  So again, you're either stuck or you pay real money.

I know why they do this:  so you'll have to pay real money to get stuff to keep playing the game.  But I usually don't because it's just a silly game and I don't want to invest a bunch of money in it.  But some people will.  It's another example of the junk mail philosophy:  we keep raising prices and sure some people will quit or not buy stuff, but some will and if enough do that, we'll be making money! It makes the game less fun because unless you're going to spend a lot of money, it'll take forever to move up to the next level.  And there's only so long I really want to be stuck on one level.  Either I pay or I quit--probably the latter since this wasn't even a game I wanted; it's just something pre-loaded on the phone.

Even games like Empires & Puzzles where you don't need a lot of money to play have stuff like this.  Like when they added the "Soul Exchange" where you can exchange 10, 15, or 20 extremely rare 5-star characters for one ultra-rare 5-star character.  When I complained that the cost is ridiculous (and to buy one 5-star was $20) someone pointed out stuff like that is strictly for the "whales" who spend a lot of money on the game and thus have a lot more extra 5-star characters.  Which is true.  In a game like that you don't need to spend a lot of money, but if you do spend a lot of money you'll have a much better team and be able to do a lot more.  For some people that's a big deal.  For me, it's far less.  I mean I have a pretty good team or two now so I don't feel like I need to spend hundreds of dollars a day to upgrade.  I'm sure games like World of Warcraft and such are the same where the top players are probably those who can afford all the upgrades and stuff.

Back in the old days of the 80s and 90s I guess it was better when you just paid upfront for the games for your Atari 2600, NES, Playstation, or PC.  It might cost you $60 or so, but once you paid, you were done with it forever.  No in-app purchases or rising costs for stuff that make it harder and harder to do anything.  At most you might spend $20 for a clue book or strategy manual or something like that.  Maybe call a tip line like they do in The Wizard.  Whereas these games today, you can literally spend thousands of dollars every single day!

And really, the problem with these games that operate like those I mentioned above is it makes the game into a bit of class warfare.  It makes it so only those with plenty of money to waste on stupid shit can actually advance and have the most fun.  Us poors are stuck on the lower levels, kind of like the immigrants stuck in steerage on the Titanic.  And like those immigrants we try to have fun in our own way, but it sucks we won't get to dine in the fancy restaurants or get the best views from the top decks. 

Sometimes books feel this way, especially those by popular authors so the publisher charges like $15 for an ebook.  Then only people who have money to burn can read those books until the price comes down--or they can get a copy from the library.  A recent example is author Elizabeth McCracken, whom I follow on Twitter, has a new book out.  I checked on Amazon and the Kindle is $14!  For 181 pages!  That's 8 cents per page!  Which is part of why people steal books, though not the only reason, because people even steal free books for some stupid reason.

And yes, I know publishers and authors and game designers need money.  But do they have to exploit us to such an extent that many of us can't fully enjoy the product? 

What do you think?