Once, I was at a party in Germany. Some guy comes in and yells "imports!" in German. Everyone cheers and gets up and runs to him for some beer, as imported beer was apparently much better than their cheap German swill.

So I'm thinking, oh, he went and got some nice Belgian beer or Heineken or some Danish stuff, maybe even something Czech.

He is holding 4 boxes of canned Budweiser.

i was at a conference in canada once, and the "imports" were $7 (coors, bud light, etc). So i drank the domestics.

I guess I kinda gotta shrug at those people at this point then. Bungie has issued an apology, decoupled the special items from rebuying previous content, and effectively dropped the price to buy TTK + these special items by $20. If people want to complain about something I'd suggest they ponder why a Digital only Collectors Edition is the same price as a physical version that comes with books and maps and whatever else.

I think that's all valid. You can even shrug at them, but that doesn't mean they don't necessarily have validity to their point. The pricing all around is whack, including with your final example there. As for the apology, you get responses like this over on Reddit:

"I love that they have now added microtransactions under the guise of an apology and the entire destiny community is back in thumbs-up mode."

A lot of people have this feeling, too. At this point, Bungie can't really win beyond laughing all the way to the bank if people buy these items. There's still a lot of anger over the previous stuff and this new $20 price point, and it's not just on Reddit either (if you go reading around places, even places that usually give Bungie the benefit of the doubt). We'll have to wait and see where all of this goes. Either way, I understand why people are upset (from the price comparison point of view, the "entitlement" point of view that Mig was talking about in that one big DBO thread, and other points of view).

I also think that these can be really beneficial discussions to have.

The thing that you are perhaps not considering is that these items were originally going to be fairly exclusive thanks to them being part of a higher priced Collectors Edition. Even after splitting them off from that Collectors Edition, Bungie is keeping them priced high not because the price represents the amount of work that went into making three emotes, shaders, and class items, but because it represents a form of exclusivity via pricing. In that way the $20 price vs The Taken King's mere $40 can make at least a bit more sense.

For the most part, I think that was addressed here.

These threads here at DBO aren't unique to DBO (though they do appear more rational). We saw this blow up regarding content and price over Luke's interview and the collector's edition, and now there are threads blowing up over this new $20 price in relation to other price points. While you may be relatively correct regarding why it has the $20 price point (on top of how it fits in with the current pricing scheme mentioned in the other thread), it still appears completely outrageous to plenty of people (for the reasons I was pointing out when doing a price comparison).

I guess I kinda gotta shrug at those people at this point then. Bungie has issued an apology, decoupled the special items from rebuying previous content, and effectively dropped the price to buy TTK + these special items by $20. If people want to complain about something I'd suggest they ponder why a Digital only Collectors Edition is the same price as a physical version that comes with books and maps and whatever else.

The thing that you are perhaps not considering is that these items were originally going to be fairly exclusive thanks to them being part of a higher priced Collectors Edition. Even after splitting them off from that Collectors Edition, Bungie is keeping them priced high not because the price represents the amount of work that went into making three emotes, shaders, and class items, but because it represents a form of exclusivity via pricing. In that way the $20 price vs The Taken King's mere $40 can make at least a bit more sense.

For the most part, I think that was addressed here.

These threads here at DBO aren't unique to DBO (though they do appear more rational). We saw this blow up regarding content and price over Luke's interview and the collector's edition, and now there are threads blowing up over this new $20 price in relation to other price points. While you may be relatively correct regarding why it has the $20 price point (on top of how it fits in with the current pricing scheme mentioned in the other thread), it still appears completely outrageous to plenty of people (for the reasons I was pointing out when doing a price comparison).

I enjoyed the hell out of Halo CE's campaign, and I still do, but it was criticized early and often for having incredibly monotonous environments, reusing what was essentially the same room over and over and over, even running through an entire level in reverse. And even a casual run-through of the campaign would be hard-pressed to take more than 10 to 15 hours.

How can you simultaneously say it was too short, yet criticize that they reused stuff to stretch it out longer? Did you want to run levels in reverse for 5 additional hours?

I've played games that took about 6 hours to finish that were the best I've ever played.

He didn't say it was too short, anywhere. He was using the 10-15 hour number because that's what Kahzgul used in relation to Destiny.

Heh - for someone who's incredibly rude to people he thinks fail reading comprehension, you pretty much skipped over his entire point in your rush to criticize. :)

Video game addiction is real.

Kimberly Young's book is about internet addiction disorder. David Greenfield's book seems to be more of the same. The only actual study admits "there is no clear standard for how to measure pathological gaming or how to score symptom checklists of pathological gaming." It also admits "This study’s primary strength is that it is nationally representative within 3%. Nonetheless, it yields far more questions
than answers. We do not know who is most at risk for developing pathological patterns of play, what the time course of developing pathological patterns is, how long the problems persist, what percentage of pathological gamers need help, what types of help might be most effective, or even whether pathological videogame use is a distinct problem or part of a broader spectrum of disorders"

Technically, the source I gave is about video game addiction (it's a website specifically discussing it), but that website's sources include a book more broadly examining internet addiction as a whole. I haven't read the book, but if the government is going to claim it as a source, I think it's safe to say that it probably discusses games to at least an extent worthy of citation.

Also, the study does confirm that this is a real phenomenon, even though it may be part of a broader spectrum. I'd love to see it studied more in depth, but I hope that you can see that video game addiction is a scientifically observable phenomenon.

Once, I was at a party in Germany. Some guy comes in and yells "imports!" in German. Everyone cheers and gets up and runs to him for some beer, as imported beer was apparently much better than their cheap German swill.

So I'm thinking, oh, he went and got some nice Belgian beer or Heineken

I enjoyed the hell out of Halo CE's campaign, and I still do, but it was criticized early and often for having incredibly monotonous environments, reusing what was essentially the same room over and over and over, even running through an entire level in reverse. And even a casual run-through of the campaign would be hard-pressed to take more than 10 to 15 hours.

How can you simultaneously say it was too short, yet criticize that they reused stuff to stretch it out longer? Did you want to run levels in reverse for 5 additional hours?

I've played games that took about 6 hours to finish that were the best I've ever played.

Video game addiction is real.

Kimberly Young's book is about internet addiction disorder. David Greenfield's book seems to be more of the same. The only actual study admits "there is no clear standard for how to measure pathological gaming or how to score symptom checklists of pathological gaming." It also admits "This study’s primary strength is that it is nationally representative within 3%. Nonetheless, it yields far more questions
than answers. We do not know who is most at risk for developing pathological patterns of play, what the time course of developing pathological patterns is, how long the problems persist, what percentage of pathological gamers need help, what types of help might be most effective, or even whether pathological videogame use is a distinct problem or part of a broader spectrum of disorders"

I live in Oregon now, I haven't seen a white castle in 5 years.

I'll be honest, the only white castle I've ever had (or seen) came from the freezer section at Randall's.

I assume I'm missing out?