I see a lot of people online complaining about studios not paying their developers what they're worth, but how can they be expected to do that if these same people refuse to even consider buying a videogame for what it's worth? Where do they think the studios get their money? St. John riled a lot of feathers with this article, but I have to wonder just how much worse it would be if a major publisher suddenly announced that it would be charging $79.99 for all its new games (a price commonly seen in the early '90s for PC games, and reappearing today under the guise of season passes and special collector's editions).
What really set people off was this quote:
It contained the triggering word "art", and so people naturally reacted to it without thinking and assumed he meant that because you're making art, you don't have to be compensated for it. Which is ridiculous. To clarify, he ought to have said, "Making games is not a regular job -- it's a job making art." By regular job, I mean exactly what he describes next in his article, a job in which you do nothing all day at a computer, leaving promptly at 5PM, and are grossly overpaid for it.Alex St. John wrote:Making games is not a job — it’s an art.