Game development cost and content?

I get you're angry but no need to come across as aggressive and put other players down for their buying choices. This was a question thrown out there. There is no way that a game pack from 10 years ago could provide the same content at the same price all these years later. It's not how cost of living works. Is EA greedy? Probably to the extent that basically all huge corporations are greedy. They will always try and squeeze out as little possible for as much money as long as people are willing to pay. That said there is a genuine difference in the cost to make stuff now vs. 10 years ago. So maybe, just maybe, the reason why at least a little bit of the packs are lacking in content is because they are trying to keep the price the same but still have similar budges based upon current costs. I think it's something we should at least consider. If you don't agree I get it, and that's fine. But don't rag on others if they think it is worth those prices.

"simslover1145;c-17598230" wrote:

"BatmanFanGirl;c-17598220" wrote:
Honestly sometimes I think the game packs are more interesting and well developed than the EP's. I would pay 50 for and EP if they actually did MORE with t they have in Sims 4.

But it wouldn’t make sense to me if EPs costed more than the base game (which currently has the same price as EPs).

Also, if the cost of game development really increases over time, as technology progresses, and TS5 does eventually come out -provided it would be a more advanced version of the sims- how much would we have to pay for an EP in this version in order to catch up with its predecessors, content-wise?

It really depends on what the sims 5 will turn out to be. One reason why game development costs have gone up is because games are becoming more advanced, so I would assume that the sims5 would be more advanced when it comes out.

This is why publishers are trying to sell special editions, offer preorders and microtransactions to cover the huge costs with making a video game. The sims5 could cost anything between $10 million to a $100 million to make depending on how long they are going to work on it.

AAA games cost $60 these days, I would expect the sims 5 to cost that much if they are going to put in as much effort into making it as other game developers are putting into making their games.

"Lustianicia;c-17598275" wrote:

"bellagoth_;c-17598236" wrote:
no, tf?? why u gotta pay more for a product that should've already met the expectations? so are we normalizing mediocrity now?

Unfortunately, The Sims fan base has gotten to the point where they'll literally pay for anything... I mean, don't forget people still bought 'My First Pet' (DLC for DLC) and paid $10 for a Murphy bed... lol

I've said it many times before... EA could release a "Sims 4: Garbage Stuff Pack" and players would be overly excited about it and buy it on day one... it's sad and disturbing...

so true. not only this, but watch those ppl defending ea no matter what. "they work hard on the packs" "they have limited budget" "stop being so negative and be thankful about what they give us" "nowadays videogames are too advanced so they have to be expensive" "i have fun paying 10 dollars for virtual laundry" "they will end the franchise if we don't buy every pack!" etc etc

"bellagoth_;c-17598314" wrote:

"Lustianicia;c-17598275" wrote:

"bellagoth_;c-17598236" wrote:
no, tf?? why u gotta pay more for a product that should've already met the expectations? so are we normalizing mediocrity now?

Unfortunately, The Sims fan base has gotten to the point where they'll literally pay for anything... I mean, don't forget people still bought 'My First Pet' (DLC for DLC) and paid $10 for a Murphy bed... lol

I've said it many times before... EA could release a "Sims 4: Garbage Stuff Pack" and players would be overly excited about it and buy it on day one... it's sad and disturbing...

so true. not only this, but watch those ppl defending ea no matter what. "they work hard on the packs" "they have limited budget" "stop being so negative and be thankful about what they give us" "nowadays videogames are too advanced so they have to be expensive" "i have fun paying 10 dollars for virtual laundry" "they will end the franchise if we don't buy every pack!" etc etc

Honestly, that last one though... lol With Paralives on its way, and that game looking so much better with every update we've gotten so far, I'm perfectly fine with The Sims ending, while Paralives takes over the life simulator market. It's about time The Sims gets some real competition!

"BatmanFanGirl;c-17598283" wrote:
There is no way that a game pack from 10 years ago could provide the same content at the same price all these years later.

This isn't true though. We're dealing mostly in digital goods, so what matters most is the number of units sold, not necessarily how much each one costs. If Sims 4 does a lot more sales than Sims 3, they'll be making substantially more money even if the Sims 4 games are half the price. The expense of selling additional units is almost nothing due to the lack of shipping/packaging/other costs, which is why there are frequent sales. We also don't know how much this game costs to develop. EA has outsourced a lot of quality control to China, Romania, and India... so it's possible that Sims 4 costs less than Sims 3. I'm sure EA has monitored customer habits extensively and through that have discovered that $10 stuff packs are easy money. Many people are willing to spend $10 on little content because a lot of people simply don't care much about $10. But for $20 they need a lot more (hence the creation of game packs) and for $40 or $50 well... it might not be worth it to EA to charge $50 for anything because they are likely to end up making less on it than they would on a $40 pack due to not enough people buying it initially. People already wait for the $40 packs to go on sale. There's really almost no way that they'll have extra money to reinvest due to selling an EP for $50.

The market is currently telling EA that $50 for an EP doesn't work. Maybe things will change in the future, but maybe not. We don't know if EPs have a better ROI than GPs or SPs and I really doubt that making EPs more expensive will encourage EA to invest more in the Sims. I don't even want EA to have the idea that they should charge more, because they already don't have too much incentive to reinvest.

I was very happy with expansions in every Sims game prior to 4. I would have paid more for them even back then. The content, when it’s there, is worth far more to me than another $10.

I’m not cheap, I just don’t like being ripped off. I’ve felt like that quite a bit during The Sims 4.

@haneul If that is all is true then maybe it's just the game engine is truly so limited that they can't add certain things we want. I don't know what to think. To me the most logical reason for EP's not being as good as the past is them wanting to keep the cost the same as before so they don't discourage people paying for them. It also makes sense to me that that if things are more expensive they would put less in packs to keep the price down.

I would be really interested in hearing from someone who works in gaming and coding who can tell me if the EPs being less in Sims 4 is down to cost, engine limitations, or greed. I dunno.

It might be greed but if that's the case then we have no one to blame but ourselves for buying the packs every time.

Although I haven't bought eco living because of all the bugs I hear about.

No chance, packs are already overpriced for the amount of corners they cut. In other games franchises $40 is a full blown game which took around 2 years of full time development. In the Sims $40 is a singular expansion which took less than a year to create and was made alongside many other packs. I wouldn't even pay full price at the moment with the current pricing so I always buy packs on sale.

It's not a matter of "they're not making enough money so they can't put as much in" it's a matter of EA being greedy and demanding quantity over quality so they can make as much money as possible.
(Also, to note it's not the sims team at fault. I'm sure they do the best for the game but EA controls how much time and resources they can dedicate to each pack. See Island Living for example, the devs clearly had a lot of ideas they wanted to do and not enough time to execute them.)

"BatmanFanGirl;c-17598436" wrote:
@haneul If that is all is true then maybe it's just the game engine is truly so limited that they can't add certain things we want. I don't know what to think. To me the most logical reason for EP's not being as good as the past is them wanting to keep the cost the same as before so they don't discourage people paying for them. It also makes sense to me that that if things are more expensive they would put less in packs to keep the price down.

I would be really interested in hearing from someone who works in gaming and coding who can tell me if the EPs being less in Sims 4 is down to cost, engine limitations, or greed. I dunno.

It might be greed but if that's the case then we have no one to blame but ourselves for buying the packs every time.

Although I haven't bought eco living because of all the bugs I hear about.

I would be interested to hear it too. It's difficult to know because Maxis keep everything so secret.

I do believe that if the game developers are doing their job, then the packs that we are getting are the amount of content that Maxis was able to produce given the time, money and the people they had available. If the packs would be larger, then some parts of that will be hurting, they will either go over budget, be forced to hire more people or delay their packs.

This is why I had hoped that EA could have invested more in the game engine, given Maxis money to make better tools so they can make packs more easier and let them hire more people.

If you look at some of simguruconors posts, they do seem to be using specialised tools for animation and asset creation, but they also seem to be outsourcing a lot like haneul mentioned and the game engine does not appear to have changed a lot, with the exception of it becoming 64-bit.

"bellagoth_;c-17598236" wrote:
no, tf?? why u gotta pay more for a product that should've already met the expectations? so are we normalizing mediocrity now?

Yes, that is the norm now.