Cloov a blog.

Modern Warfare Price Boasting

I was just having a read of this, 'Why Video Games Can't Be Ignored.' It's someone from the Telegraph ranting on about how Modern Warfare 2 is the proof that games are taking off (I think that proof probably came about 10 years ago, but many hoped to pretend it wasn't happening).

I couldn't help noticing though, AGAIN, the replies/comments are just a list of folks boasting about how little they paid for the game.

What is the problem with paying the average price for the game? It's a contender for the best game of all time, in some respects. Why is no-one happy even paying the standard price for the best game of all time, let alone £5 extra? And then everyone goes on about how the price of the game has been raised above the usual ceiling, and that they've somehow dodged that by purchasing in a supermarket. Oh, how they tricked Activision there. Well done; good detective work. I paid £45 in Gamestation (so that's the so-called top end, RRP high street prices) for the game, and I was paying 5, sometimes 10 pounds more than that for games twelve years ago, for Nintendo 64.

Supermarkets will always sell everything at a lower price, so apart from saving yourself money (which is a perfectly good idea), you're not performing a fucking special move, and it's not making you better at the game. That's what it's like, though. Check YouTube video comments, forums, whatever - it's about a 50-50 split of people saying how good the game is, and of people saying how little they managed to pay for it.

Forget how much other games cost, and how much cash X hours of single player campaign is actually worth. Everyone knows how much they're going to be playing this game. All of us that racked up hundreds of hours of CoD4 multiplayer laughter with friends will know that you far outweighed the price you paid for the game.

Then there are those who say they completed the game 5 hours after they bought it. What good is that? What's completion these days? Campaign mode is no longer the entire game; it's probably about 10% of the recipe, and when you play the game on Average or Easy difficulty, knowing you're going to rattle through it with no challenge whatsoever, you're really only fooling yourself.

When people support a football team, they'll happily pay £6 for a tiny tray of shite advent calendar-style chocolates once in a box with the team's colours on it, and might argue that they're supporting the team by doing so, or that it's a novelty. So, when you try and get Modern Warfare 2 for a tenner, think of it as sending Infinity Ward a message that says "your breakthrough title that will change the way gaming is perceived - it's worth about as much as a KFC bucket."