PA comic: Weds. August 31, 2011

incubusjax

AlphaLackey wrote:

Rorus Raz wrote:

AlphaLackey wrote:

I'm glad that the parallels of glowering scrutiny to DRM were touched upon, but the parallels of anti-scalping laws to anti-second hand game sales measures? Completely missed. For shame.

Scalping is taking a limited product and abusing the fuck out of supply and demand. Second-hand sales are, generally, taking a product and selling it for less. The only parallel is when you have older games that have stopped being produced a good decade ago.

Yes, you sell it for less, but you sell it repeated times. Buying a ticket for $20 and selling it for $400 versus buying a game for $20 and selling the exact same game for $40 ten times seems to be equally abusive, except in the latter case it's abusing the fact that video games (up until recently) had very little degradation from one owner to the next.

Both cases are regulating a free market, though.

Incidentally, my biggest beef with anti-scalping laws is that they do not apply to Ticketmaster or "official" ticket resale outlets. If I can't sell my unneeded hockey tickets to make a profit, why should a third party be able to do it? Because they're clever enough to invent names for 20 different fees for their profit margin? I guess I need to get my name legally changed to Ticket M. Astor before I tell the judge that I'm selling my hockey tickets at cost but with a $2,000 convenience fee. Hey, what can I say, I hate being inconvenienced!

Yeah... I hate ticketmaster. More like ticket-master-bator. Scalping certainly takes advantage of Supply and Demand, but if people are willing to pay... remember Tickle-Me-Elmo?

I mean, if you have a hockey ticket and I want one and I am willing to pay you extra for it... that's my choice. But that's assuming you're being truthful and honest with your ticket sales ad. You're not telling me it's a front row seat when it's really nose-bleed; or a fake. I think that's the real issue. I don't think anyone minds someone selling their PAX badge for face value. I think the problem arises when those badges are completely fake. I also believe that Penny Arcade is trying to avoid a situation where all badges sell out within 15 seconds of going on sale because the scammers are buying them up to create an artificial scarcity situation, just to exploit legitimate fans of the Expo.

It seems to me that this is the main reason behind Pax East - not to do two monster shows, not to make money (I'm not naive I'm sure they're happy to be making money, I just can't imagine Jerry and Mike saying "fuck yeah, exploit those bitches" as a primary focus. Jerry is actually one of the nicest people I've ever met; but I digress) but to make sure *everyone* has a chance of going.

Of course, I'm probably wrong, but that's what my feeble brain came up with. =)

jwalk

I don't see any connection to selling used games. You can "use" a game and pass it on, the new owner gets full use of it. Selling a "used" pass to a PAX that's over.... no.

Face it Walter there's no fucking connection at all!

jwalk

incubusjax wrote:

I also believe that Penny Arcade is trying to avoid a situation where all badges sell out within 15 seconds of going on sale because the scammers are buying them up to create an artificial scarcity situation, just to exploit legitimate fans of the Expo.

Yes, that's what scalpers do. There's no way to avoid that completely.. you can limit ticket sales to 2 per person, but the scalpers just find/hire/grab crack whores off the street to stand in line and buy tickets for them. Other draconian methods have been tried, but mostly they are just a pain the the ass to the legit buyers, like lotteries and crap.

ArcSyn

The only way I can immediately think of to avoid scalpers of tickets (to any event), is to link those tickets to an ID, so you can only use the ticket if you are the one who bought them. Then provide a way to return tickets for 85% of face value like when you return electronics to a store and they charge a restocking fee.

Requiring the ID to match the one that bought the ticket keeps scalpers from buying and selling, and the "restocking fee" keeps scalpers from buying and selling and getting them in with their ID, because if they don't sell them all they lose money.

Even that plan has flaws.

Monkey Ball Warrior

DoctorArch wrote:

RoyceSraphim wrote:

Panel 4

Send them to Tacoma

<snicker>

Now that's just inhumane.

Spoiler:

Can I please move back to Seattle now please? Tacoma smells funny.

I think the issue in the end is that because the WSTCS is of finite area, the market price has had to scale with demand the past two years or so, to the point where selling the tickets at actual market price would be prohibative. In the end I'd much rather the condition for going be "Capable of paying enough attention to purchase the tickets within the first week or so of availability", instead of "Having more money than everyone else".

chrishallett83

I've got $5 on the passes next year being the same as a credit card - with those "paywave" RFID chips in them.

Opty

Any sort of validation system won't work because they'd have to arm 20+ people with said validator and lines would form at the checkpoints. The best they can do is not mail out badges so fakes don't have a template and to return to putting some form of hologram on the badge so fakes are more easily noticable.

Shen

Contactless smart cards with temporary turnstiles/gates like on London's public transport, though I dunno anything about the cost of the tech.

Rorus Raz

AlphaLackey wrote:

Rorus Raz wrote:

AlphaLackey wrote:

I'm glad that the parallels of glowering scrutiny to DRM were touched upon, but the parallels of anti-scalping laws to anti-second hand game sales measures? Completely missed. For shame.

Scalping is taking a limited product and abusing the fuck out of supply and demand. Second-hand sales are, generally, taking a product and selling it for less. The only parallel is when you have older games that have stopped being produced a good decade ago.

Yes, you sell it for less, but you sell it repeated times. Buying a ticket for $20 and selling it for $400 versus buying a game for $20 and selling the exact same game for $40 ten times seems to be equally abusive, except in the latter case it's abusing the fact that video games (up until recently) had very little degradation from one owner to the next.

Both cases are regulating a free market, though.

You are not buying a game for more and selling it for less unless you lucked out and got Final Fantasy Tactics for the PS1 or something. Generally, you are buying at full price and selling at a reduced price. That is the GENERAL thing that happens with used games. It is pretty much the opposite of scalping, where you buy low and sell high.

You are not selling it multiple times. You are selling it once. It only works if you are some sort of games prospector buying up titles in the hopes of hitting it rich a decade later. And digital downloads is making that a less-than-fruitful endeavor.

There's really not a strong parallel here. You have people preying on limited quantities to make money. Then you have people trying to recoup a portion of their purchase while the buyer is trying to get a product for less.

faits

Rorus Raz wrote:

AlphaLackey wrote:

Rorus Raz wrote:

AlphaLackey wrote:

I'm glad that the parallels of glowering scrutiny to DRM were touched upon, but the parallels of anti-scalping laws to anti-second hand game sales measures? Completely missed. For shame.

Scalping is taking a limited product and abusing the fuck out of supply and demand. Second-hand sales are, generally, taking a product and selling it for less. The only parallel is when you have older games that have stopped being produced a good decade ago.

Yes, you sell it for less, but you sell it repeated times. Buying a ticket for $20 and selling it for $400 versus buying a game for $20 and selling the exact same game for $40 ten times seems to be equally abusive, except in the latter case it's abusing the fact that video games (up until recently) had very little degradation from one owner to the next.

Both cases are regulating a free market, though.

You are not buying a game for more and selling it for less unless you lucked out and got Final Fantasy Tactics for the PS1 or something. Generally, you are buying at full price and selling at a reduced price. That is the GENERAL thing that happens with used games. It is pretty much the opposite of scalping, where you buy low and sell high.

You are not selling it multiple times. You are selling it once. It only works if you are some sort of games prospector buying up titles in the hopes of hitting it rich a decade later. And digital downloads is making that a less-than-fruitful endeavor.

There's really not a strong parallel here. You have people preying on limited quantities to make money. Then you have people trying to recoup a portion of their purchase while the buyer is trying to get a product for less.

You're not selling it multiple times. Gamestop is. In theory they buy a game and sell it to customer one who sells it back to them for like a dollar, at which point they sell it to customer two, and so on.

not every person sells their games back to perpetuate that chain but some people do!

I'm not saying that the used games market = the ticket scalping market, but in both cases you've got a third party taking profits for providing an intermediary service of questionable worth.

faits

Also I don't know what the specific law is in washington, but I've been in line for shows before and seen staff chase scalpers away (only to see said scalpers just start hocking their wares across the street a few minutes later)

Ivar

faits wrote:

Rorus Raz wrote:

AlphaLackey wrote:

Rorus Raz wrote:

AlphaLackey wrote:

I'm glad that the parallels of glowering scrutiny to DRM were touched upon, but the parallels of anti-scalping laws to anti-second hand game sales measures? Completely missed. For shame.

Scalping is taking a limited product and abusing the fuck out of supply and demand. Second-hand sales are, generally, taking a product and selling it for less. The only parallel is when you have older games that have stopped being produced a good decade ago.

Yes, you sell it for less, but you sell it repeated times. Buying a ticket for $20 and selling it for $400 versus buying a game for $20 and selling the exact same game for $40 ten times seems to be equally abusive, except in the latter case it's abusing the fact that video games (up until recently) had very little degradation from one owner to the next.

Both cases are regulating a free market, though.

You are not buying a game for more and selling it for less unless you lucked out and got Final Fantasy Tactics for the PS1 or something. Generally, you are buying at full price and selling at a reduced price. That is the GENERAL thing that happens with used games. It is pretty much the opposite of scalping, where you buy low and sell high.

You are not selling it multiple times. You are selling it once. It only works if you are some sort of games prospector buying up titles in the hopes of hitting it rich a decade later. And digital downloads is making that a less-than-fruitful endeavor.

There's really not a strong parallel here. You have people preying on limited quantities to make money. Then you have people trying to recoup a portion of their purchase while the buyer is trying to get a product for less.

You're not selling it multiple times. Gamestop is. In theory they buy a game and sell it to customer one who sells it back to them for like a dollar, at which point they sell it to customer two, and so on.

not every person sells their games back to perpetuate that chain but some people do!

I'm not saying that the used games market = the ticket scalping market, but in both cases you've got a third party taking profits for providing an intermediary service of questionable worth.

Each of those sales are separate transactions, though. What's the connection from sale 1 to sale 2?

Wisdo

Public Crucifixions eh?

Does'nt that imply that there are private ones also?

And if someone is having private crucifixions, why havent I been invited to any?

ArcSyn

Wisdo wrote:

Public Crucifixions eh?

Does'nt that imply that there are private ones also?

And if someone is having private crucifixions, why havent I been invited to any?

Because they are private.

smof

Could they do what some music festivals do, where when buying tickets you have to give a name and address for every attendee you are buying for. Everyone turns up with photo ID and you get a wristband on arrival. No tickets and not sending anything out in advance should mean no counterfeits.

Opty

They already have a system in place where you're required to have the ID of the purchaser to pick up tickets at the show. It's only really used by international orders right now since the tickets sell out so fast it's no longer possible to buy them online after the tickets are mailed out.

One way to help combat people buying from a 3rd party is to set it up so if people stop needing their tickets they can get a refund from PA (or sell them back for 95% of the ticket price or something) and then PA can resell the tickets from an official "second chance" webpage. Then people head there to find tickets instead of from CraigsList, Ebay, or scalpers since they're guaranteed to be legit and won't cost more than face value. Of course this would require a massive amount of infrastructure for relatively little gain so there's no way it would happen realistically.

bitfawks

LTM wrote:

Next year's PAX Prime to require constant internet connection for pass validation.

Lulz.

But it was seriously a problem. Any line I stood in, they used a "Flashlight" test which I think was more for show than anything.

It's ridiculous, but the guy was there several times just selling the stuff. It was a bit surreal. I didn't think people cared enough about gaming cons.


Seconded on the barcode, though.

Somestickguy

Couscous wrote:

That middle panel makes me kind of queasy.

Wait

Don't you post horrific images all the time?

Rhesus Positive

That second image will be the most popular cosplay for next year's PAX.

AlphaLackey

faits wrote:

Also I don't know what the specific law is in washington, but I've been in line for shows before and seen staff chase scalpers away (only to see said scalpers just start hocking their wares across the street a few minutes later)

Ivar wrote:

faits wrote:

Rorus Raz wrote:

AlphaLackey wrote:

Rorus Raz wrote:

AlphaLackey wrote:

I'm glad that the parallels of glowering scrutiny to DRM were touched upon, but the parallels of anti-scalping laws to anti-second hand game sales measures? Completely missed. For shame.

Scalping is taking a limited product and abusing the fuck out of supply and demand. Second-hand sales are, generally, taking a product and selling it for less. The only parallel is when you have older games that have stopped being produced a good decade ago.

Yes, you sell it for less, but you sell it repeated times. Buying a ticket for $20 and selling it for $400 versus buying a game for $20 and selling the exact same game for $40 ten times seems to be equally abusive, except in the latter case it's abusing the fact that video games (up until recently) had very little degradation from one owner to the next.

Both cases are regulating a free market, though.

You are not buying a game for more and selling it for less unless you lucked out and got Final Fantasy Tactics for the PS1 or something. Generally, you are buying at full price and selling at a reduced price. That is the GENERAL thing that happens with used games. It is pretty much the opposite of scalping, where you buy low and sell high.

You are not selling it multiple times. You are selling it once. It only works if you are some sort of games prospector buying up titles in the hopes of hitting it rich a decade later. And digital downloads is making that a less-than-fruitful endeavor.

There's really not a strong parallel here. You have people preying on limited quantities to make money. Then you have people trying to recoup a portion of their purchase while the buyer is trying to get a product for less.

You're not selling it multiple times. Gamestop is. In theory they buy a game and sell it to customer one who sells it back to them for like a dollar, at which point they sell it to customer two, and so on.

not every person sells their games back to perpetuate that chain but some people do!

I'm not saying that the used games market = the ticket scalping market, but in both cases you've got a third party taking profits for providing an intermediary service of questionable worth.

Each of those sales are separate transactions, though. What's the connection from sale 1 to sale 2?

The fact that Sale 1 and Sale 2 are done by the same company, who do sales 3, 4, ... etc., who use the exact same raw material unit and sell it multiple times to multiple people. Collectively, "The Customer" winds up paying several times the original sale price of the game.

I guess the big parallel I was trying to draw on was that both are honest free-market transactions that have detrimental effects on their respective economies, yet we strictly regulate the former and not the latter. And on what grounds? Because we have the same "people with too much time on their hands are more noble than people with too much money on their hands" mentality that dominates thinking about RMTs in MMOs?