There's a fundamental difference between gaming and movies/music/books that isn't mentioned here: star power.

Movies have super star actors. Music is driven by super star musicians. A lot of times, the name of an author is bigger than the title on a book.

While dedicated gamers may know well who is making their games, the majority of gamers do not, and don't need to. If you go to a movie or a concert, you can see the face of the actor or musician. An author's good name is extremely important in selling a book. At the same time, you can play through a game for 60 hours and never spend a second thinking about who made it.

This opens the door for game studios to treat the labor of game developers like a commodity, which allows them to sell their games like a commodity, which allows gamers to demand so much for their money.

Anecdotally, I went to college to learn how to make games. I did, and when I got out, there was heavy competition for $40k-$50k jobs working 70 hours a week building menus for games. Instead I became a mercenary coder for the highest bidder and made more than that working 20-25 hours a week.

I used the 40ish hours a week I saved to play video games.

The author's ratio of hours played to price is very different from mine, and surely from those of many players. There's no real basis for his argument that I can see. We live in a world where lots of gamers routinely drop $80-$100 for collectors editions of games months before they're released.

Racked up over 700 hours on Counter-Strike: Source (over 400 on CS Office alone). Probably paid around $10 for it on Steam. Fantastic value.