One of the things I enjoy doing is going from Wikipedia article to Wikipedia article, reading up on random things. Today, I was on the entry for Wolfenstein 3D, a game that pioneered first person shooters in the gaming world. It’s also from the bronze age by gaming industry standards, having been released back in 1992.
The article included a link to Id’s official site on the game. Id was the developer of the game, the guys who made it. They are an extremely successful company, most recently having licensed their impressive Doom 3 engine to the hotly anticipated video game, Quake Wars.
Wolfenstein, is as I indicated, an old game. An old, old, game. Since that time, game play and graphics have improved by leaps and bounds. Kids now make games like Wolfenstein from scratch as an afternoon computer class project. So it came to my surprise then to see that Id wanted to charge $15 to download the game.
Now for anyone that understands gaming dynamics, this seems completely… silly. On Valve’s STEAM service, you can buy Prey for about the same price. Or the original Call of Duty. Or X3. Or a whole sleuth of other games that are exponentially superior in every respect to this piece of history.
This literally has no sale value, other than it’s status as the grand daddy of shooters. To add insult to injury, this game is easily available on abandonware sites. Other publishers (ie. Rockstar) recognize the lack of sale value of their first releases, and thus give them away for free on their website. They use it as a promotional tool for their newer games. While I wouldn’t expect any other publisher to necessarily follow suit, $15 is incredibly overpriced. $2 works. $15? A complete waste. What the hell is Id thinking?