The most experienced and serious big game hunters want or already have the best and most expensive rifle scopes available on the market, but there are also a lot of people which are satisfied to put venison on the table once a year, and the vast majority of them are quite happy with the less expensive and complex scope.
Choosing a suitable rifle scope must be done in concordance with the type of hunting. For example, stalking a deer in thick and brushy areas like the ones in the Blue Ridge Mountains, does not require a scope at all other than open iron sights because in this case, distance is not an important and relevant factor. On the contrary, trying to take down a pronghorn antelope on the plains of northern Arizona imposes a much more complex and most likely, more expensive model.
An affordable (we avoid saying cheap) scope starts at a price of approximately 30$. The vast majorities of these models are advertised for beginners and offers simple cross hairs in the viewfinder, and many of them have a fixed magnification. There are a couple of affordable models that offer a variable magnification, like 3 x 9, which means that the object viewed can be dialed up from low magnification to the power of nine. For a large number of hunters, these features are enough and they consider that additional features are a waste of money.