Sonic Superstars, the new 2D game Sega announced at Summer Game Fest last week, is set to retail for $59.99. Given that it’s a full triple-A game, that seems reasonable. But some gamers are balking at the price point, saying that the game looks ‘indie’, and should be priced accordingly.
Setting aside that this isn’t really true — games with polygonal graphics made by small teams rarely look as polished as Sonic Superstars does — the approach to gaming that this sentiment reveals is bizarre. It’s the same mindset we’re seeing in the reaction to Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown, resulting in its trailers getting thousands of dislikes on YouTube. Hardly a day goes by without gamers on the internet moaning about the state of games right now, complaining that there just isn't anything good to play. That isn't remotely true and, even if it were, if you're getting mad that a big publisher like Ubisoft is taking a risk by putting out a smaller game in a genre it rarely develops games in, or that Sega is returning to Sonic's 2D roots, you're arguing for a safer, more boring industry.
I like getting games for cheap as much as the next person. I'm an adult with plenty of other expenses, so if I can get Forspoken on sale for $20, you know I'm going to take that deal. I would certainly prefer to pay twenty bucks for Sonic and Prince of Persia, but there's no reason that removing a dimension should automatically remove $40 from the price tag.
One of the games I've spent the most time with this year is Afterimage. It's a 2D Metroidvania with a hand drawn aesthetic, and I spent more than 50 hours playing it during my review. I didn't love that game but, in terms of the amount of content it contained, it easily beats out 3D games I've played this year like Resident Evil 4 Remake and Dead Island 2. The same gamers who think that a game shouldn't cost $60 because it's 2D are likely the ones who think that bigger is better, and that the longer a game is the more worthwhile. So, what do we do with 2D games that are bigger and longer than triple-A 3D games? Do you really think we should pay more because we can wander through a bloated, empty map in one of them?
I don't know if Sonic Superstars will be good. Sonic Team has had mixed results when trying to recapture the fun of 2D Sonic in the past few decades. Sonic Generations is beloved, and Sonic the Hedgehog 4 is reviled. It's hard to know which of those two games Sonic Superstars will have more in common with. I do know that the quality of the game should matter an awful lot more when we talk about price than a genre/aesthetic difference like the choice to use 2D. All sorts of games ask players to spend $60: a new first-person shooter, a new open-world game, a new live-service game, a new Civilization or XCOM game, a new fighting game (which, come to think of it, is also 2D). If you judge that a game is worth less because of the perspective it chooses to use, you're cutting yourself off from a wealth of wonderful experiences that are way past cool.