@Gungan
You're wrong. Voice acting isn't what made SWTOR so expensive; did it cost money? Certainly. But according to the SWTOR people, voice acting isn't a major financial concern compared to other things, which really isn't terribly surprising - once you've got the logistics set up, the expense is primarily just hiring the people to do the acting, which doesn't take a prohibitive amount of time - and therefore doesn't take a prohibitive amount of money.
SWTOR had high production values all across the board, and it was a huge MMO. It cost $200 million because of that.
Guild Wars 2 was far, far worse than The Secret World. It has a number of rather large flaws:
1) It has no story. There's really no meat to it; it is 100% grinding. You never feel like you really have much purpose in what you're doing. The reason games have story is to make you feel like you're doing something useful, but in Guild Wars 2, it feels like you're wandering around for no real reason. Feeling purposeless in your activities is very bad. In The Secret World, you were doing things for NPCs who you spoke to, who had personalities and reasons for making you do what they were asking you to do. You had bosses who had personalities and who interacted with you regularly via email. You had quests that had stories to them, and there was a world around you. In Guild Wars 2, there is no real world around you, no involvement in what you're doing, and thus it all feels pointless. And if the game feels pointless, then it is no fun.
2) The gameplay is actually quite bad. There are no more enemies in GW2 than there are in TSW, and there are possibly fewer types of enemies. Moreover, the enemies in GW2 are highly repetitive, and are used across huge numbers of zones. In TSW, you fight different enemies as you go through the game, but in GW2, very frequently, you are fighting higher level palette swaps, if even that.
3) The team aspect to gameplay in GW2 is lacking. I never felt like I was really part of a team, even when I was part of a team. It was difficult to tell what was going on in GW2 at any given moment and there was little real strategy to it most of the time. In TSW, at least, when I was on a team we had actual roles and really felt like we were doing something; in GW2, it was just running around and fighting with other people around.
4) The skill wheel in TSW was very clever as it allowed a single character to do everything, meaning that there was never any reason to make multiple characters, and you could switch your character over to doing any role - and it wasn't terribly difficult to get the equipment necessary to do so.
5) GW2 is grindtastic. There is so much grinding in GW2. In TSW, there is much less in the way of grinding, far fewer quests which are kill 20 boars or what have you. Even the quests which are somewhat interesting in GW2 tend to involve repetition.
6) The ambience of the world. GW2 felt terribly generic, and even though it tried to make for interesting environments, I really never felt like I was in a real world, and I never really got much of a feel for it. TSW had very distinctive environments.
GW2 is massively inferior to TSW.
Rare vaccines are loss leaders.
Wrong. Wrong wrong wrong.
There's no such thing as a loss leader in pharma. The entire concept is irrelevant. There's just no reason to make a rare treatment if you cannot sell it for an exorbinant amount. If 10,000 people would buy the medication, and it would cost $100,000,000 to develop and produce, that means each of those people needs to pay about $20,000 (due to the likelihood of failed research projects) for it to be worth making. If they can't, then there's no reason to ever develop it.
That being said, it isn't a bad thing. It is better to make products which can help more people. Tis the way capitalism works.
Also, prices are fine. $60 for video games is cheaper than they were in the 1990s, when they were $60-70 at launch, but prior to the inflation of the last 15 years.
@StudioZEL
Why would you ever buy a console in the first place if it being a closed platform is a problem to you? You would be a fool to do so. They already are closed platforms.
Steams DRM is a JOKE sorry, many of the games that I bought on steam (primarily the ones with no or forgetable multiplayer) I crack just for the sake of convenience.
If you think GW2 had no story, you clearly don't know who the Vigil, the Whisper or the Priory are. You probably don't know who Zhaitan is either. The story in TSW was uninteresting, unmemorable, and full of cliché.
If you think the team aspect of GW2 is lacking, you're doing it wrong. Dungeons, WvWvW, and Battlegrounds all require good teamwork.
The responsiveness of the controls during gameplay in TSW were absolutely the worst I've seen since Warhammer Online. Wishy washy combat animations, and low production stuttering animations when speaking to NPCs. Guild Wars 2 does exactly what you want when you want it to, with just enough flash in its detailed and visceral animations.
TSW is the definition of derivative. It was also a low production buggy mess. It spread itself way too thin.
TSW is also now going Free to Play. Both SWTOR and TSW showed that you cannot sacrifice actual multiplayer gameplay in favor of story in this genre.
Guild Wars 2:
Metacritic - 90
G4 - 100
PC Gamer - 94
Ten Ton Hammer - 94
MMORPG.com - 93
Polygon - 85
The Escapist - 90
GameTrailers - 90
GameSpot - 90
The Secret World
Metacritic - 73
G4 - 50
PC Gamer - 69
Ten Ton Hammer - 65
MMORPG.com - 85
Polygon - 65
The Escapist - 80
GameTrailers - 73
GameSpot - 75
If you think GW2 had no story, you clearly don't know who the Vigil, the Whisper or the Priory are. You probably don't know who Zhaitan is either. The story in TSW was uninteresting, unmemorable, and full of cliché.
Of course, some of us played fully through GW1 (which was grindy crap, to be fair), know who all those groups are, and still think the story in the sequel was generic MMO Metzen claptrap.
But this is getting way off topic.
PMAvers on
COME FORTH, AMATERASU! - Switch Friend Code SW-5465-2458-5696 - Twitch
StudioZEL
Why would you ever buy a console in the first place if it being a closed platform is a problem to you? You would be a fool to do so. They already are closed platforms.
The point was that Steam/itunes are able to use digital distribution without complaints because they have to be a competitive service with tons of other smaller distribution platforms. In the current console generation used games and/or retailers lowering prices on games to sell them off a few months down the line is functionally competition for consoles digital games.
In a no used game console or one that was purely digital that competition is not there and as a result it becomes significantly more of a worry about how the given console producer manages its storefront. Heck go look at how often XBL or PSN have had sales and then go compare it to similar titles on Steam, not even close by a country mile.
Calling people fools is a goosey thing to do. Especially over opinions in what is a very, very awkward and grey topic.
Also off topic though it may be, TSW>GW2, mostly because TSW's dungeons were actually fun.
What I don't get is why are PUBLISHERS so possessive of their used games? Ikea won't get their Scandinavian panties in a bunch if I sell a shelf unit I bought from them. Office Depot didn't make even the tiniest fuss when I bought a media shelf off craigslist that matched a desk I bought in-store. Sony won't care if I sell one of my cameras on eBay. Even if these companies were struggling and needed the money, I really don't think they'd come down -on their own customers- like that.
So why do game publishers feel they're entitled to money from something I purchased from them the same way I bought my shelf, desk, or camera?
Overall, there seems to be an entirely different mindset when something in digital. Because it's not physical, you can't touch it, keep it on a shelf, hand it to a friend, it must have different rights? There's still the whole idea that "buying digital items is a waste of money" mainly for the reason that you don't get to take that thing with you when you leave the game/world you bought it. But you don't get to take a movie with you when you leave a theater, do you? You don't take the roller coasters with you when you leave the amusement park, right? So it's not even things that are intangible, it's things that are -digital- that seem to be treated differently. And we really, in the next few years, need to have some more consistency on this; otherwise, we're going to have every company who owns any digital property making the rules. It's going to be something that we, as the digital community, are going to have to fight for, to make sure it -isn't- all decided by names like Microsoft or Sony. It's almost like the internet needs its own government. Or the government needs to -fairly- catch up to the internet.
A lot of these issues are just based on user expectation: the Xbox One fiasco didn't happen because microsoft proposed something unreasonable on its face, it happened because what they proposed conflicted wildly with users' expectations about the use and purpose of consoles.
People aren't (for the most part) in a tizzy about not being able to resell steam games because for all intents and purposes there's never been a resale market for PC games. Getting a convenient digital version at a discount seems like a great deal because practically speaking physical media doesn't provide many advantages.
hold your head high soldier, it ain't over yet
that's why we call it the struggle, you're supposed to sweat
A lot of these issues are just based on user expectation: the Xbox One fiasco didn't happen because microsoft proposed something unreasonable on its face, it happened because what they proposed conflicted wildly with users' expectations about the use and purpose of consoles.
People aren't (for the most part) in a tizzy about not being able to resell steam games because for all intents and purposes there's never been a resale market for PC games. Getting a convenient digital version at a discount seems like a great deal because practically speaking physical media doesn't provide many advantages.
There was definitely a re-sale market for PC games.
Heck I could get a train into town right now and pick up some trashy 90's PC game if I wanted for a pound.
What I don't get is why are PUBLISHERS so possessive of their used games? Ikea won't get their Scandinavian panties in a bunch if I sell a shelf unit I bought from them. Office Depot didn't make even the tiniest fuss when I bought a media shelf off craigslist that matched a desk I bought in-store. Sony won't care if I sell one of my cameras on eBay. Even if these companies were struggling and needed the money, I really don't think they'd come down -on their own customers- like that.
So why do game publishers feel they're entitled to money from something I purchased from them the same way I bought my shelf, desk, or camera?
Presumably because other industries don't have their main retailers pushing a cheaper, identical version of their product in the same shelf space that they get no money from. Shockingly different industries face different problems.
@SomeNorCalGuy: I don't think that the used game industry is going to "kill" the video game industry. However, I do feel that people have what might be termed an "insane sense of self entitlement", and that the used video game industry does HURT the video game industry.
Consumer rights are not an unjust entitlement. The U.S. legal system is not subject to the inane and ridiculous tenets of the RPG-GM-Player power-struggle discussion.
Indeed, it is without question that the used video game industry hurts the video game industry, because we have seen it hurt the video game industry.
Alright, that's a fallacy. I mean a literal fallacy.
Everyone, look at that quoted sentence. That's what we call "begging the question." It is where one assumes what one sets out to prove. Note that the assertion that "used games hurt the video game industry" is subject to debate -- mostly because it is stupid, inane, wrong, and a confusing lie. If one were to seek to prove it true, one would have to do something other than repeat the proposition that it is true.
And that, folks, is pretty much the full scope of the position of the used-game-haters we've been hearing about.
In addition, note that we're now in fuzzy-language-land. What does "hurt the industry" mean? Does the industry feel awful? Does it have a stomachache? This is a rather important point because it's true that a) video game budgets going up have been a complaint and concern for consumers and b) video game producers have become concerned about profitability due to budgets going up -- but the publishers have not addressed that rise. EC didn't even acknowledge it! See folks, that's a serious disconnect. Now, last time I checked, an industry includes both, at a bare minimum, the consumers and the producers of a product. . . but those parties, among possible others, aren't on the same page. So when we say the industry is "hurt," we are not only subject to being mistaken for a petulant 12-year-old, we actually confuse the issue because it isn't clear who's really "hurt" at all. But if your rhetorical position lacks a factual basis, that's a good thing. You want confusion, emotion, and distraction lest someone demand evidence.
The video game industry takes steps - deliberate steps - to make reselling games much less favorable.
This is irrelevant. In particular, it is not proof that used games "hurt the industry." A party can take steps to undermine a practice even if that practice does not harm said party.
You are making it so some games cannot exist because they are unprofitable.
Unprofitable games should not exist in the consumer marketplace! That's how capitalism works!
I can't believe I have to ask this, but here we are: are you a communist? Is this seriously a communist plot?
One of the twisted things about right-wing authoritarianism is that it really, really hates consumers because it hates, well, the common person -- who is a consumer. So it actually ends up on the same page as the worst excesses of communism. That's what's happening here. Capitalistic doctrine would have the market punish failed game producers. Authoritarians/communists roll up and simply blame the consumer -- not the bad actor who sold an inferior product, but the consumer -- for the failure of the product, then steal resources from the consumer to make up the loss.
Folks, this anti-consumer rhetoric is the kind of talk that makes libertarians look good, and that's just plain wrong.
@Fun With Sociology: Here's where you don't understand English law.
Stop right the hell there.
This is a classic example of the obnoxious internet post. Folks, look at it. The quoted poster:
• Assumes that the person is quoting is not formally trained in the field being discussed. (Not true -- and I have the titanic personal debt to prove it!)
• Misdescribes the actual topic at hand: English Common Law is not the same thing as "English law," in the same way that (as Twain would put it), "lightning" and a "lightning bug" are separate entities.
First sale doesn't actually work - at all - with digital goods. The reason for this is bloody simple and bloody obvious: you have no right to copy stuff.
There isn't a law school in the U.S. that could even parse that sentence, even less conclude that it is a rational legal argument. The inability to produce copies of a purchased product is completely agnostic as to the Doctrine of First Sale. Again, these two things have nothing to do with another. If you could legally "copy that floppy" (as they'd say Back Inna Day), that would not change the fact that you still had the ability to alienate the original floppy.
This penchant for the irrelevant seems to be a trend, so let's roll out a definition: an irrelevant issue serves to neither prove nor disprove a matter at issue. Flip the irrelevant issue to "no" and it's meaningless to the issue; toggle it to "yes" and it's still meaningless. Let's keep that in mind.
The first sale doctrine gives you the right to resell something you purchased. But it does NOT give you the right to make copies of something you purchased.
See how the notion of relevancy saves us from having to squeeze meaning from these phrases? One's ability to copy a piece of software is a different legal issue than one's ability to alienate said software. Thus, if Microsoft says it's totally cool for me to make three copies of MS Word, it isn't commenting on my ability to sell my entire MS Word suite to my friend. So long as I keep no copies of the original and turn the original over to her, Microsoft's lawyers are happy. Incidentally, I know that personally for one or two of them, but that is neither here nor there.
The idea that first sale would apply to making copies of something is just insane and goes against everything that first sale doctrine is about.
The only person who said that the Doctrine of First Sale has some special relationship with the practice of copying software is the quoted poster -- who has now said that it most certainly does not have such a relationship. Is everyone keeping up?
Well, I think it's fair to say that the secondary market probably cuts into publishers' profits. Used games are an obvious substitute good and to whatever extent publishers can monetize them, they can do so less effectively than they can with new titles.
The relevant question is whether this is actually something we should care about. I don't really see why I should be sympathetic to publishers' efforts to squeeze every possible dollar from the consumer.
hold your head high soldier, it ain't over yet
that's why we call it the struggle, you're supposed to sweat
the argument typically goes that retail prices would go down in the absence of used sales, since the possibility of a future used sale is value that the publisher can charge for. I tend to think that this is bullshit, mostly because I don't think most consumers consider their game-purchase-budget over the course of years or however long it would take the value of resale to become significant and the price point of a new console game by now is more or less set.
the degree to which used sales actually cut into new sales is notoriously difficult to pin down (somebody who spends fifty bucks on three used games might not be willing to spend the same cash on one new game, etc.), but the degree to which a lot of consumers care about maintaining first sale right seems to suggest that it has significant impact. Why would people be in such an uproar over potential lack of resale if they didn't view resale as an economic benefit? Certainly it cuts into the amount of money that I give to publishers.
hold your head high soldier, it ain't over yet
that's why we call it the struggle, you're supposed to sweat
It definitely gives people more cash to spend on new games. It also gives them more cash to just spend on other used games, though that eventually bottoms out because you'll keep getting less and less for each used game.
Again it's a pricing thing in that case, if people are willing to budget X towards games each month and a new game is X+1 maybe it'd help the industry to not look at those used sales figures as people who are avoiding spending money with them and to look at them as a target audience for sales and aggressive price decreases. As much as I'll happily say the consumers part of the problem it is absolutely not the consumers job to 'fix' any issue used games create, it's something publishers should be looking at instead (I would say gamestop should look at it but I think unless they were offered a stupid good deal there would be no reason for them to cease dealing in used games).
At first, when you asked why there wasn't an outrage over not being able to re-sell digital games while there was an outrage over the practices the next gen consoles might implement, I thought the answer was pretty simple; people are so angry over the prospect of paying for a used console game because they feel like they'd be paying for a game twice, once at the store and then once again to actually use it. I also think there was some frustration because the way such processes were talked about, it sounded like used games weren't going to be a viable approach anymore, so if, say, someone who was only kind of interested in a game but not interested enough to drop fifty or sixty dollars on it wanted to just buy a used copy, the fees they'd have to pay to play a used game would make it so that they would more or less still be paying full retail price on the game.
But then I really thought about the idea that, if you buy a game digitally and don't like it, you can't return it for any money. And you DO raise a good point. Why is it that there isn't a system in place to handle refunds? If digital games have the kinds of safeguards as you say they do, then why are there such restrictions? I think part of it lies in the same mode of thought as the old "within seven days" return policy in that a customer might buy the game, marathon it, finish it and then return it and effectively have gotten to play the thing for free. But since this isn't a concern in retail stores, it probably isn't as big of an issue as previously thought.
Yes, I've bought plenty of games that I'd like to return. I buy games to entertain me. Usually if a product doesn't work properly, I can return it. Yes, it's true that it's easier with a game to play through, have some fun, and return it when you're done, but there's similar risks with a lot of other products, and yet AFAIK they get abused only infrequently.
If I need a tool for something, I could buy it, use it, and bring it back to the store and say that it doesn't work properly, and they'll give me my money back. In that case, they now have a tool that needs to be reconditioned and sold at a discount. (it actually costs them money!)
They have not only the risk of a "lost sale" but also have a product which is now worth less than when it was first sold, and yet they give the consumer the benefit of the doubt.
With online game purchases, it should be trivial to deal with this. If you return an abnormally high number of games, your account gets flagged and they can manually look at your future returns to make sure they're justified. If you have a pile of achievements and clearly did a speed-run of the last 5 games you returned, they've got a pretty good argument that you're abusing the system, and might want to deny your next return. If most of your returns have only a couple hours of gameplay, I guess the games aren't doing what they're supposed to do (entertaining), and a refund is reasonable.
The thing that confuses me the most with the entire used games discussion is the mindset of the people who claim that those who buy used are evil, destroying the industry, etc. Stating something like that simply doesn't make any logical sense to me.
If you're not some sort of direct or indirect employee of some sector of the video game development or publishing industries which would entitle you to brand new games at an extremely steep discount, where are you getting your millions and where can I get some? I am a self-sufficient 20-something single educator with an average/manageable amount of student loan debt, and I can barely budget for three or four first-day titles a year. It's not the fault of failing money-management abilities; it's not the fault of a blase attitude toward gaming; it's not due to some hidden hatred of massive corporations. It's the ridiculous price tag, plain and simple.
For me, the reason that I don't complain about the fact that I can't return my digital content is first, because it's digital. As in, not a "real" something that I own by the letter of the definition. Yes, I have a right to cancel my lease and uninstall the game, but just like in real life, when I break a lease, I'm not entitled to my many months of rent back.
Second, games on Steam and music on iTunes are not only convenient, but also CHEAP! As explained above, I can't afford more than a few newly launched titles a year, and I know I'm not alone in that boat. Seasonal Steam sales and the ability to purchase a single song for a stinking dollar allow me to play those hot games and put those songs that I love on infinite repeat. Also, Steam and iTunes give me the option - in many cases - to preview or demo the item I'm considering purchasing. A demo brought me into the Bioshock fandom, and others led me to game genres that I had no idea I would adore.
On a final note, why is no one holding rental services accountable in the used games discussion? If you want me to buy new, making it much easier for me to know whether or not I will get a full $60 of playtime/enjoyment/replayability out of a game would be a really simple solution to that lack-of-motivation-to-buy-new problem. Redbox and the like only offer a tiny selection of new, mainstream games, and they do this single-audience-appealing, nitpicked, pandering at an increased price rate.
Is the higher price because they assume that I will spend more time playing the game than I will viewing a movie? If I start playing and am instantly addicted to the game, then yeah, maybe. But when that return deadline becomes my enemy, I have in the past actually been driven like a crazy person to make a beeline for the nearest game store in order to pick up a copy of what I was just playing. And the need to keep playing this game will usually drive me to purchase the game at ANY price.
On the other hand, if I turn the game off after just thirty minutes, I always feel shafted having just shelled out two-fifty plus another five bucks in gas to and from the drop box. And don't even get me started on the FOUR DOLLAR STARTING RATE on games at a rental chain store! (I can't speak to Gamefly's practices, as I have never been a customer of that service.) If the Redbox used something like a sliding scale, charging a little bit more for each additional day you decide to keep the game, I wouldn't have a problem with that. Right now, they seem to be overcharging me for some sort of experience that they are expecting I'll have, which neither the rental company nor the game company can guarantee me; this is, of course, why we all feel so bad when we shell out a bunch of money for a pathetic or failed experience.
But then again, I get my money back at the movie theater when I hate myself after wasting two hours seeing a piece of trash film... Why shouldn't I EXPECT my money back when a video game, being a medium specifically designed to offer more experience for my dollar, fails me spectacularly in offering anything worth a glance much less my total immersion to play?
Sorry for the ridiculously long post. I don't hold a whole lot of strong opinions when it comes to video game politics, but this it the one issue to which I sit pretty close. Thanks for reading.
I usually watch this video series with much trepidation. You folks are very perceptive, knowledgeable, and very clear and concise in your analyses. You are also very often a touch too positively minded (in my opinion) which can occasionally make your efforts come off a bit one sided on many of these videos. In this video; unlike in many of your videos, you acknowledged that there is more to the story than the tired old 'They took our Used Games!' argument. I applaud you for speaking about this issue in a unusually nuanced and multifaceted manner.
As to the topic at hand, let me offer my position. I am a staunch proponent of any used game resale policy that pays out (whether in cash or other direct benefit) to the publisher, the developer, and the purchaser of any given game. Win-Win is the ideal, and I think the Used Game discussion in the Age of Digital Distribution must avoid Win-Loss mentalities and punitive reaction steps taken against any party.
I feel that a peace offering by Gamers today would be an ideal next step in this discussion. We need to put down the rusty pitchforks we bought in this economic recession and extend our hands to publishers and developers. We need to find a Digital Compromise instead of raging against the change that we fear. If we take the first step toward a compromise then we offer publishers and developers a chance to build a new model with us instead of against us. We need a hybrid model that gives something to everyone but not everything to anyone in my opinion.
Personally I don't understand why the publishers and developers feel entitled to a portion of used game sales since NO OTHER MARKET expects this. When someone buys a brand new ford or chevy, and then sells it several years later does for or chevy expect or feel entitled to a cut of that sale? NO THEY DON'T. Personally I think we should be allowed to resale ANY AND ALL of our property not just physical copies.
@RaginRedneck What I don't understand is the constant need to compare virtual entertainment that has no real loss of quality over time, to commodity goods with limited life spans and clear practical use. You're comparing a form of transportation to a one off piece of entertainment. Not to mention the obvious: car dealerships get a lot of money from spare parts / repairs / maintenance, not just from selling cars.
The only somewhat comparable format is probably television, and it's in much the same boat, except that for that market there's still licensing fees for networks to broadcast their shows that gives an influx of money after the fact.
Reselling virtual games is more akin to reselling a ticket to a show. You're trading in a one-off entertainment opportunity after you already got the experience you payed for.
-- This is all kind of disregarding the aspect of multiplayer, but seeing as how most multiplayer oriented games require accounts to play online, I don't really consider it relevant.
I feel that while the developers and publishers having more money to make better games is a good thing, they should not have the right to get money from the used games sales. It'd be like if you bought a car from ford, and wanted to sell it on craigslist and then having X% of the sale back to them because they made it in the first place.
Once a company sells a product for the first time they no longer own it, and shouldn't get any more money out of it.
I created an account on this website just to be able to post a response to this video. I have been watching your series since it first aired on the Escapist, and have E-mailed in the past thanking you for what you do for the gaming community. But this video makes me feel like I have to chime in.This issue and your thoughts on out reach out to every person that ever ran home after school to play games because the other children were too cruel, and every person that ever decided that a console or a PC was more appealing than a nightclub or bar.
I know this response is likely to be lost in the shuffle of the hundreds of others, but when or if whoever reads all of these reaches this post, I just want you to know that one of those kids that went home to an old console to save the world again because he felt like no one else cared he was alive appreciates the work you do, and videos like this that reach out to all of us.
I keep hearing (almost exclusively from extra credits and the companies themselves admittedly) that companies getting money past the initial sale of a game is a good thing. I say it isn't. Beyond the fact that it feeds this sense of entitlement that these companies have over other companies that have secondary sales... a topic which has been thoroughly pounced on. It teaches them to make poor business decisions. And game companies make a LOT of poor business decisions. They sell millions of copies of a game and claim the income is not enough if they are later sold used... to people who probably would never buy the game new anyway. (If I could afford new over used I would probably buy some new games but I can't.) These companies are poorly organised, overspend constantly, produce under-quality and carbon copy products in a constant attempt to get even wider markets, alienating their initial followers in the process. And they have the nerve to say that they aren't making enough money so they deserve a cut of secondary sales. If we give into that then we are helping make these companies financial situation, and the gaming industry at large, worse, not better.
I love extra credits and i almost always agree with what they are saying. But this week... (Well this episode) I think they are WAY off base and are failing to see the bigger picture.
Just want to reiterate that the "wouldn't have bought it new" argument is the same exact argument made by pirates. Bottom line, you're buying nothing but the use of the IP, there is no physical object, so you are paying another individual money for absolutely nothing that they own or produced by their own effort. It doesn't square with the concept of buying a used car, but then a used car is an actual thing, whereas a game isn't. If you're paying for the value of the disk then used games should be one cent, but you aren't, you're paying for the ideas on that disk without helping to compensate the people that made those ideas happen and without investing in future enterprises to fill disks with great ideas.
Why should a publisher make extra money on a used game transaction? A furniture maker or designer gets no money when you resell your used couch either.
I don't agree with iTunes and Steam keeping the rights to my games either. I won't use them, except when forced to because I can't find the stuff anywhere else or my friends are there.
Don't be so greedy. Bringing your price point down can only help more people enjoy and want to buy your products. If you want to wring more money out of the wealthy, sell extras, exclusives, specials, but keep the basic price of games low. The arts have always been supported by people who are fans, people who are willing to give you money so you can do what you do, people who have the ability to pay and want their stuff right now. If you try to force people to spend money on things that are basically a luxury, you will just see them cut back or go to piracy.
I just wanted to add one more comment, to reply to the problem that a car has intrisic value, whereas a disc's value is all in the idea and not much in the disc... People feel like games are so different from every other piece of property in the world, but really they aren't.
1) The car's value is much lower if you look at it as the raw materials. Most of what you are paying for is transport, engineering, design, production, marketing, taxes, administrators, accountants, lawyers... so it's not that different than a game, as a product. None of that whole line of production gets any extra money when you sell a used car either. If your raw materials were really only 1 penny per disc, then you're getting a 200,000% markup on a $20 disc... then how can you claim that you're not making enough money? Maybe something else is too expensive in getting your ideas to market. Why bother having a publisher then or marketing or transport or retailers or anything else then? Cut them out and save that money for the developers and the consumers!
2) A used car deteriorates, and so do discs. What about an electronic copy? Those may last longer, but electronic copies also can be corrupted. They can lose their value through other natural means like changing operating systems, changing console systems, and just being old and uninteresting to people, etc. How many times have people purchased the same music or same film on different media just so they can listen to it watch it on the latest machine?
3) You can't reproduce copies of the car as easily as you can make copies of a game -- so what? They have DRMs for games on Steam and other outlets now that only sell electronic copies, but they still use this as an excuse for treating these copies differently than other forms of property. Learn to package your products in a way that makes them more appealing when you buy them new in a legitimate store, and people will find a way to pay you. You've seen the growth of crowd sourcing. How would that be working if people were generally piratical and refuse to pay for games?? It's simply not true that people won't pay for things unless forced to by law. People are basically decent and understand very well the social contract.
A third and last comment -- To me, a legitimate way for publishers to wring more money out of their products, taking advantage of a used electronics or even pirated games market, is to simply provide additional value to those secondary market players. You can think of a huge list of those possibilities, some of which they already do, and some of which they could certainly put more of their minds and energy to, instead of spending all their time trying to "control" their products after they have left their hands.
1) They make sequels on a franchised, recognizable title/characters/game.
2) They can provide manuals, upgrades, bug fixes, additional episodes or other bonus content, continued support in porting to new operating systems only to people who purchase such services.
3) They can make merchandising agreements and sell all kinds of branded promotional items. My 7-11 in Taiwan is doing a huge Angry Birds thing right now, giving out Angry Bird cups for reward points and selling Angry Bird suitcases.
4) They can provide gaming community services, like Steam, where they help match you up with other players who play the game, and all the other community style services like achievements, avatars, making friends, chat, whatever.
5) They can run live events for players, like Nintendo runs pokemon tournaments.
6) They run servers or subscription time for certain kinds of titles where that fits. But they can also do it for non-online games, basically by providing backup service, so that if your local copy is lost or corrupted or you want to switch to another laptop or operating system, you can do so and re-download in a new format.
Interesting topic, I have thought about this ever since (many moons ago) about music artist getting bent out of shape over used tape/record/cd sales.
I think of it as, company makes product, sells product to customer, who now owns product, and is now free to re-sell said product.
Look at cars, I buy a car, use it as I see fit, I’m done I sell it or trade it in. Does the car maker, who spent a good deal of time designing the car and bringing it to market, and the line workers who built it, do they deserve a cut of my sell or is the dealer required to give them a cut of the resale? No, and it is not expected why should game products be any different?
The only reason this appears different is that games (and music) are digital and can be digitally restricted in ways car-makers only wish they could. I know some of this dovetails into piracy (which is not “theft”, but still wrong IMHO). So let me continue/digress a bit with the car analogy; say in the distant future we have star-trek replicators, I see a sweet car parked on road, and i use my tricorder to scan said car, and go home and replicate it. I have “stolen” that car from anyone? Have I deprived the owner the use of his car? Think to today, we have means to duplicate copyrighted digital works with ease, and it is an infringement on the rights of the IP owner to say how it can be reproduced (same with the car replicator). I think we will see the next battle of this “theft/copyright” discussion when 3d scanning and printing become more affordable and easy. But I digressed too far…. back to used games.
I use Steam, and I liked the idea of the X-Box one digital distribution. I almost always wait for a steam sale on a game, rarely do I go for “new and shiny” -- I have been burned too many times with shitty games that had great paid for reviews. Where I think the point of compromise is what (back to the car example) that of the car lease; by default game makers are trying to force the conditions of a car lease, but forcing the cost of buying the car new.
Back to Steam, I think why Steam works is the Steam sales, if i pick up a great game on sale for a fraction of the cost of full retail I don't feel deprived of control about the DRM restrictions. Without the cost of printed manuals, reproduced media, packaging, or shipping why is that new digital copy 60 bucks as well as the physical copy? If the digital versions were sold cheaper I think we would be more accepting of the restrictions, no? Back to the car/lease example: the technology exists, would you pay full price for a car that had GPS restrictions on where you could drive or how many miles you could drive in a day? No of course not. Would you pay a smaller amount for a mileage/GPS locked car? Yes especially if all I used it for was going to and from work.
With games, if we are being forbid from actual ownership then don’t charge ownership prices.
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You're wrong. Voice acting isn't what made SWTOR so expensive; did it cost money? Certainly. But according to the SWTOR people, voice acting isn't a major financial concern compared to other things, which really isn't terribly surprising - once you've got the logistics set up, the expense is primarily just hiring the people to do the acting, which doesn't take a prohibitive amount of time - and therefore doesn't take a prohibitive amount of money.
SWTOR had high production values all across the board, and it was a huge MMO. It cost $200 million because of that.
Guild Wars 2 was far, far worse than The Secret World. It has a number of rather large flaws:
1) It has no story. There's really no meat to it; it is 100% grinding. You never feel like you really have much purpose in what you're doing. The reason games have story is to make you feel like you're doing something useful, but in Guild Wars 2, it feels like you're wandering around for no real reason. Feeling purposeless in your activities is very bad. In The Secret World, you were doing things for NPCs who you spoke to, who had personalities and reasons for making you do what they were asking you to do. You had bosses who had personalities and who interacted with you regularly via email. You had quests that had stories to them, and there was a world around you. In Guild Wars 2, there is no real world around you, no involvement in what you're doing, and thus it all feels pointless. And if the game feels pointless, then it is no fun.
2) The gameplay is actually quite bad. There are no more enemies in GW2 than there are in TSW, and there are possibly fewer types of enemies. Moreover, the enemies in GW2 are highly repetitive, and are used across huge numbers of zones. In TSW, you fight different enemies as you go through the game, but in GW2, very frequently, you are fighting higher level palette swaps, if even that.
3) The team aspect to gameplay in GW2 is lacking. I never felt like I was really part of a team, even when I was part of a team. It was difficult to tell what was going on in GW2 at any given moment and there was little real strategy to it most of the time. In TSW, at least, when I was on a team we had actual roles and really felt like we were doing something; in GW2, it was just running around and fighting with other people around.
4) The skill wheel in TSW was very clever as it allowed a single character to do everything, meaning that there was never any reason to make multiple characters, and you could switch your character over to doing any role - and it wasn't terribly difficult to get the equipment necessary to do so.
5) GW2 is grindtastic. There is so much grinding in GW2. In TSW, there is much less in the way of grinding, far fewer quests which are kill 20 boars or what have you. Even the quests which are somewhat interesting in GW2 tend to involve repetition.
6) The ambience of the world. GW2 felt terribly generic, and even though it tried to make for interesting environments, I really never felt like I was in a real world, and I never really got much of a feel for it. TSW had very distinctive environments.
GW2 is massively inferior to TSW.
Wrong. Wrong wrong wrong.
There's no such thing as a loss leader in pharma. The entire concept is irrelevant. There's just no reason to make a rare treatment if you cannot sell it for an exorbinant amount. If 10,000 people would buy the medication, and it would cost $100,000,000 to develop and produce, that means each of those people needs to pay about $20,000 (due to the likelihood of failed research projects) for it to be worth making. If they can't, then there's no reason to ever develop it.
That being said, it isn't a bad thing. It is better to make products which can help more people. Tis the way capitalism works.
Also, prices are fine. $60 for video games is cheaper than they were in the 1990s, when they were $60-70 at launch, but prior to the inflation of the last 15 years.
@StudioZEL
Why would you ever buy a console in the first place if it being a closed platform is a problem to you? You would be a fool to do so. They already are closed platforms.
Great job, EC! Looks like your goal to get us thinking about this stuff worked!
To Seek,
To Learn,
To Do.
-QFG2
If the speed of light is faster then the speed of sound, is that why people always appear bright until they speak? o_O
If you think GW2 had no story, you clearly don't know who the Vigil, the Whisper or the Priory are. You probably don't know who Zhaitan is either. The story in TSW was uninteresting, unmemorable, and full of cliché.
If you think the team aspect of GW2 is lacking, you're doing it wrong. Dungeons, WvWvW, and Battlegrounds all require good teamwork.
The responsiveness of the controls during gameplay in TSW were absolutely the worst I've seen since Warhammer Online. Wishy washy combat animations, and low production stuttering animations when speaking to NPCs. Guild Wars 2 does exactly what you want when you want it to, with just enough flash in its detailed and visceral animations.
TSW is the definition of derivative. It was also a low production buggy mess. It spread itself way too thin.
TSW is also now going Free to Play. Both SWTOR and TSW showed that you cannot sacrifice actual multiplayer gameplay in favor of story in this genre.
Guild Wars 2:
Metacritic - 90
G4 - 100
PC Gamer - 94
Ten Ton Hammer - 94
MMORPG.com - 93
Polygon - 85
The Escapist - 90
GameTrailers - 90
GameSpot - 90
The Secret World
Metacritic - 73
G4 - 50
PC Gamer - 69
Ten Ton Hammer - 65
MMORPG.com - 85
Polygon - 65
The Escapist - 80
GameTrailers - 73
GameSpot - 75
Of course, some of us played fully through GW1 (which was grindy crap, to be fair), know who all those groups are, and still think the story in the sequel was generic MMO Metzen claptrap.
But this is getting way off topic.
COME FORTH, AMATERASU! - Switch Friend Code SW-5465-2458-5696 - Twitch
The point was that Steam/itunes are able to use digital distribution without complaints because they have to be a competitive service with tons of other smaller distribution platforms. In the current console generation used games and/or retailers lowering prices on games to sell them off a few months down the line is functionally competition for consoles digital games.
In a no used game console or one that was purely digital that competition is not there and as a result it becomes significantly more of a worry about how the given console producer manages its storefront. Heck go look at how often XBL or PSN have had sales and then go compare it to similar titles on Steam, not even close by a country mile.
Calling people fools is a goosey thing to do. Especially over opinions in what is a very, very awkward and grey topic.
Also off topic though it may be, TSW>GW2, mostly because TSW's dungeons were actually fun.
So why do game publishers feel they're entitled to money from something I purchased from them the same way I bought my shelf, desk, or camera?
Overall, there seems to be an entirely different mindset when something in digital. Because it's not physical, you can't touch it, keep it on a shelf, hand it to a friend, it must have different rights? There's still the whole idea that "buying digital items is a waste of money" mainly for the reason that you don't get to take that thing with you when you leave the game/world you bought it. But you don't get to take a movie with you when you leave a theater, do you? You don't take the roller coasters with you when you leave the amusement park, right? So it's not even things that are intangible, it's things that are -digital- that seem to be treated differently. And we really, in the next few years, need to have some more consistency on this; otherwise, we're going to have every company who owns any digital property making the rules. It's going to be something that we, as the digital community, are going to have to fight for, to make sure it -isn't- all decided by names like Microsoft or Sony. It's almost like the internet needs its own government. Or the government needs to -fairly- catch up to the internet.
A lot of these issues are just based on user expectation: the Xbox One fiasco didn't happen because microsoft proposed something unreasonable on its face, it happened because what they proposed conflicted wildly with users' expectations about the use and purpose of consoles.
People aren't (for the most part) in a tizzy about not being able to resell steam games because for all intents and purposes there's never been a resale market for PC games. Getting a convenient digital version at a discount seems like a great deal because practically speaking physical media doesn't provide many advantages.
that's why we call it the struggle, you're supposed to sweat
There was definitely a re-sale market for PC games.
Heck I could get a train into town right now and pick up some trashy 90's PC game if I wanted for a pound.
Presumably because other industries don't have their main retailers pushing a cheaper, identical version of their product in the same shelf space that they get no money from. Shockingly different industries face different problems.
Consumer rights are not an unjust entitlement. The U.S. legal system is not subject to the inane and ridiculous tenets of the RPG-GM-Player power-struggle discussion.
Alright, that's a fallacy. I mean a literal fallacy.
Everyone, look at that quoted sentence. That's what we call "begging the question." It is where one assumes what one sets out to prove. Note that the assertion that "used games hurt the video game industry" is subject to debate -- mostly because it is stupid, inane, wrong, and a confusing lie. If one were to seek to prove it true, one would have to do something other than repeat the proposition that it is true.
And that, folks, is pretty much the full scope of the position of the used-game-haters we've been hearing about.
In addition, note that we're now in fuzzy-language-land. What does "hurt the industry" mean? Does the industry feel awful? Does it have a stomachache? This is a rather important point because it's true that a) video game budgets going up have been a complaint and concern for consumers and b) video game producers have become concerned about profitability due to budgets going up -- but the publishers have not addressed that rise. EC didn't even acknowledge it! See folks, that's a serious disconnect. Now, last time I checked, an industry includes both, at a bare minimum, the consumers and the producers of a product. . . but those parties, among possible others, aren't on the same page. So when we say the industry is "hurt," we are not only subject to being mistaken for a petulant 12-year-old, we actually confuse the issue because it isn't clear who's really "hurt" at all. But if your rhetorical position lacks a factual basis, that's a good thing. You want confusion, emotion, and distraction lest someone demand evidence.
This is irrelevant. In particular, it is not proof that used games "hurt the industry." A party can take steps to undermine a practice even if that practice does not harm said party.
Unprofitable games should not exist in the consumer marketplace! That's how capitalism works!
I can't believe I have to ask this, but here we are: are you a communist? Is this seriously a communist plot?
One of the twisted things about right-wing authoritarianism is that it really, really hates consumers because it hates, well, the common person -- who is a consumer. So it actually ends up on the same page as the worst excesses of communism. That's what's happening here. Capitalistic doctrine would have the market punish failed game producers. Authoritarians/communists roll up and simply blame the consumer -- not the bad actor who sold an inferior product, but the consumer -- for the failure of the product, then steal resources from the consumer to make up the loss.
Folks, this anti-consumer rhetoric is the kind of talk that makes libertarians look good, and that's just plain wrong.
Stop right the hell there.
This is a classic example of the obnoxious internet post. Folks, look at it. The quoted poster:
• Assumes that the person is quoting is not formally trained in the field being discussed. (Not true -- and I have the titanic personal debt to prove it!)
• Misdescribes the actual topic at hand: English Common Law is not the same thing as "English law," in the same way that (as Twain would put it), "lightning" and a "lightning bug" are separate entities.
There isn't a law school in the U.S. that could even parse that sentence, even less conclude that it is a rational legal argument. The inability to produce copies of a purchased product is completely agnostic as to the Doctrine of First Sale. Again, these two things have nothing to do with another. If you could legally "copy that floppy" (as they'd say Back Inna Day), that would not change the fact that you still had the ability to alienate the original floppy.
This penchant for the irrelevant seems to be a trend, so let's roll out a definition: an irrelevant issue serves to neither prove nor disprove a matter at issue. Flip the irrelevant issue to "no" and it's meaningless to the issue; toggle it to "yes" and it's still meaningless. Let's keep that in mind.
See how the notion of relevancy saves us from having to squeeze meaning from these phrases? One's ability to copy a piece of software is a different legal issue than one's ability to alienate said software. Thus, if Microsoft says it's totally cool for me to make three copies of MS Word, it isn't commenting on my ability to sell my entire MS Word suite to my friend. So long as I keep no copies of the original and turn the original over to her, Microsoft's lawyers are happy. Incidentally, I know that personally for one or two of them, but that is neither here nor there.
The only person who said that the Doctrine of First Sale has some special relationship with the practice of copying software is the quoted poster -- who has now said that it most certainly does not have such a relationship. Is everyone keeping up?
The relevant question is whether this is actually something we should care about. I don't really see why I should be sympathetic to publishers' efforts to squeeze every possible dollar from the consumer.
that's why we call it the struggle, you're supposed to sweat
You know, by selling their old ones.
It's not a given that the used market is a net negative on sales.
the degree to which used sales actually cut into new sales is notoriously difficult to pin down (somebody who spends fifty bucks on three used games might not be willing to spend the same cash on one new game, etc.), but the degree to which a lot of consumers care about maintaining first sale right seems to suggest that it has significant impact. Why would people be in such an uproar over potential lack of resale if they didn't view resale as an economic benefit? Certainly it cuts into the amount of money that I give to publishers.
that's why we call it the struggle, you're supposed to sweat
Again it's a pricing thing in that case, if people are willing to budget X towards games each month and a new game is X+1 maybe it'd help the industry to not look at those used sales figures as people who are avoiding spending money with them and to look at them as a target audience for sales and aggressive price decreases. As much as I'll happily say the consumers part of the problem it is absolutely not the consumers job to 'fix' any issue used games create, it's something publishers should be looking at instead (I would say gamestop should look at it but I think unless they were offered a stupid good deal there would be no reason for them to cease dealing in used games).
If I sell my used game at a gamestop or for that matter at the same pawnshop, the developers/publishing company have NO RIGHT to a cut of that money.
Anything else is just greed so... fuck 'em.
But then I really thought about the idea that, if you buy a game digitally and don't like it, you can't return it for any money. And you DO raise a good point. Why is it that there isn't a system in place to handle refunds? If digital games have the kinds of safeguards as you say they do, then why are there such restrictions? I think part of it lies in the same mode of thought as the old "within seven days" return policy in that a customer might buy the game, marathon it, finish it and then return it and effectively have gotten to play the thing for free. But since this isn't a concern in retail stores, it probably isn't as big of an issue as previously thought.
If I need a tool for something, I could buy it, use it, and bring it back to the store and say that it doesn't work properly, and they'll give me my money back. In that case, they now have a tool that needs to be reconditioned and sold at a discount. (it actually costs them money!)
They have not only the risk of a "lost sale" but also have a product which is now worth less than when it was first sold, and yet they give the consumer the benefit of the doubt.
With online game purchases, it should be trivial to deal with this. If you return an abnormally high number of games, your account gets flagged and they can manually look at your future returns to make sure they're justified. If you have a pile of achievements and clearly did a speed-run of the last 5 games you returned, they've got a pretty good argument that you're abusing the system, and might want to deny your next return. If most of your returns have only a couple hours of gameplay, I guess the games aren't doing what they're supposed to do (entertaining), and a refund is reasonable.
If you're not some sort of direct or indirect employee of some sector of the video game development or publishing industries which would entitle you to brand new games at an extremely steep discount, where are you getting your millions and where can I get some? I am a self-sufficient 20-something single educator with an average/manageable amount of student loan debt, and I can barely budget for three or four first-day titles a year. It's not the fault of failing money-management abilities; it's not the fault of a blase attitude toward gaming; it's not due to some hidden hatred of massive corporations. It's the ridiculous price tag, plain and simple.
For me, the reason that I don't complain about the fact that I can't return my digital content is first, because it's digital. As in, not a "real" something that I own by the letter of the definition. Yes, I have a right to cancel my lease and uninstall the game, but just like in real life, when I break a lease, I'm not entitled to my many months of rent back.
Second, games on Steam and music on iTunes are not only convenient, but also CHEAP! As explained above, I can't afford more than a few newly launched titles a year, and I know I'm not alone in that boat. Seasonal Steam sales and the ability to purchase a single song for a stinking dollar allow me to play those hot games and put those songs that I love on infinite repeat. Also, Steam and iTunes give me the option - in many cases - to preview or demo the item I'm considering purchasing. A demo brought me into the Bioshock fandom, and others led me to game genres that I had no idea I would adore.
On a final note, why is no one holding rental services accountable in the used games discussion? If you want me to buy new, making it much easier for me to know whether or not I will get a full $60 of playtime/enjoyment/replayability out of a game would be a really simple solution to that lack-of-motivation-to-buy-new problem. Redbox and the like only offer a tiny selection of new, mainstream games, and they do this single-audience-appealing, nitpicked, pandering at an increased price rate.
Is the higher price because they assume that I will spend more time playing the game than I will viewing a movie? If I start playing and am instantly addicted to the game, then yeah, maybe. But when that return deadline becomes my enemy, I have in the past actually been driven like a crazy person to make a beeline for the nearest game store in order to pick up a copy of what I was just playing. And the need to keep playing this game will usually drive me to purchase the game at ANY price.
On the other hand, if I turn the game off after just thirty minutes, I always feel shafted having just shelled out two-fifty plus another five bucks in gas to and from the drop box. And don't even get me started on the FOUR DOLLAR STARTING RATE on games at a rental chain store! (I can't speak to Gamefly's practices, as I have never been a customer of that service.) If the Redbox used something like a sliding scale, charging a little bit more for each additional day you decide to keep the game, I wouldn't have a problem with that. Right now, they seem to be overcharging me for some sort of experience that they are expecting I'll have, which neither the rental company nor the game company can guarantee me; this is, of course, why we all feel so bad when we shell out a bunch of money for a pathetic or failed experience.
But then again, I get my money back at the movie theater when I hate myself after wasting two hours seeing a piece of trash film... Why shouldn't I EXPECT my money back when a video game, being a medium specifically designed to offer more experience for my dollar, fails me spectacularly in offering anything worth a glance much less my total immersion to play?
Sorry for the ridiculously long post. I don't hold a whole lot of strong opinions when it comes to video game politics, but this it the one issue to which I sit pretty close. Thanks for reading.
As to the topic at hand, let me offer my position. I am a staunch proponent of any used game resale policy that pays out (whether in cash or other direct benefit) to the publisher, the developer, and the purchaser of any given game. Win-Win is the ideal, and I think the Used Game discussion in the Age of Digital Distribution must avoid Win-Loss mentalities and punitive reaction steps taken against any party.
I feel that a peace offering by Gamers today would be an ideal next step in this discussion. We need to put down the rusty pitchforks we bought in this economic recession and extend our hands to publishers and developers. We need to find a Digital Compromise instead of raging against the change that we fear. If we take the first step toward a compromise then we offer publishers and developers a chance to build a new model with us instead of against us. We need a hybrid model that gives something to everyone but not everything to anyone in my opinion.
The only somewhat comparable format is probably television, and it's in much the same boat, except that for that market there's still licensing fees for networks to broadcast their shows that gives an influx of money after the fact.
Reselling virtual games is more akin to reselling a ticket to a show. You're trading in a one-off entertainment opportunity after you already got the experience you payed for.
-- This is all kind of disregarding the aspect of multiplayer, but seeing as how most multiplayer oriented games require accounts to play online, I don't really consider it relevant.
Once a company sells a product for the first time they no longer own it, and shouldn't get any more money out of it.
I know this response is likely to be lost in the shuffle of the hundreds of others, but when or if whoever reads all of these reaches this post, I just want you to know that one of those kids that went home to an old console to save the world again because he felt like no one else cared he was alive appreciates the work you do, and videos like this that reach out to all of us.
I love extra credits and i almost always agree with what they are saying. But this week... (Well this episode) I think they are WAY off base and are failing to see the bigger picture.
I don't agree with iTunes and Steam keeping the rights to my games either. I won't use them, except when forced to because I can't find the stuff anywhere else or my friends are there.
Don't be so greedy. Bringing your price point down can only help more people enjoy and want to buy your products. If you want to wring more money out of the wealthy, sell extras, exclusives, specials, but keep the basic price of games low. The arts have always been supported by people who are fans, people who are willing to give you money so you can do what you do, people who have the ability to pay and want their stuff right now. If you try to force people to spend money on things that are basically a luxury, you will just see them cut back or go to piracy.
1) The car's value is much lower if you look at it as the raw materials. Most of what you are paying for is transport, engineering, design, production, marketing, taxes, administrators, accountants, lawyers... so it's not that different than a game, as a product. None of that whole line of production gets any extra money when you sell a used car either. If your raw materials were really only 1 penny per disc, then you're getting a 200,000% markup on a $20 disc... then how can you claim that you're not making enough money? Maybe something else is too expensive in getting your ideas to market. Why bother having a publisher then or marketing or transport or retailers or anything else then? Cut them out and save that money for the developers and the consumers!
2) A used car deteriorates, and so do discs. What about an electronic copy? Those may last longer, but electronic copies also can be corrupted. They can lose their value through other natural means like changing operating systems, changing console systems, and just being old and uninteresting to people, etc. How many times have people purchased the same music or same film on different media just so they can listen to it watch it on the latest machine?
3) You can't reproduce copies of the car as easily as you can make copies of a game -- so what? They have DRMs for games on Steam and other outlets now that only sell electronic copies, but they still use this as an excuse for treating these copies differently than other forms of property. Learn to package your products in a way that makes them more appealing when you buy them new in a legitimate store, and people will find a way to pay you. You've seen the growth of crowd sourcing. How would that be working if people were generally piratical and refuse to pay for games?? It's simply not true that people won't pay for things unless forced to by law. People are basically decent and understand very well the social contract.
1) They make sequels on a franchised, recognizable title/characters/game.
2) They can provide manuals, upgrades, bug fixes, additional episodes or other bonus content, continued support in porting to new operating systems only to people who purchase such services.
3) They can make merchandising agreements and sell all kinds of branded promotional items. My 7-11 in Taiwan is doing a huge Angry Birds thing right now, giving out Angry Bird cups for reward points and selling Angry Bird suitcases.
4) They can provide gaming community services, like Steam, where they help match you up with other players who play the game, and all the other community style services like achievements, avatars, making friends, chat, whatever.
5) They can run live events for players, like Nintendo runs pokemon tournaments.
6) They run servers or subscription time for certain kinds of titles where that fits. But they can also do it for non-online games, basically by providing backup service, so that if your local copy is lost or corrupted or you want to switch to another laptop or operating system, you can do so and re-download in a new format.
I think of it as, company makes product, sells product to customer, who now owns product, and is now free to re-sell said product.
Look at cars, I buy a car, use it as I see fit, I’m done I sell it or trade it in. Does the car maker, who spent a good deal of time designing the car and bringing it to market, and the line workers who built it, do they deserve a cut of my sell or is the dealer required to give them a cut of the resale? No, and it is not expected why should game products be any different?
The only reason this appears different is that games (and music) are digital and can be digitally restricted in ways car-makers only wish they could. I know some of this dovetails into piracy (which is not “theft”, but still wrong IMHO). So let me continue/digress a bit with the car analogy; say in the distant future we have star-trek replicators, I see a sweet car parked on road, and i use my tricorder to scan said car, and go home and replicate it. I have “stolen” that car from anyone? Have I deprived the owner the use of his car? Think to today, we have means to duplicate copyrighted digital works with ease, and it is an infringement on the rights of the IP owner to say how it can be reproduced (same with the car replicator). I think we will see the next battle of this “theft/copyright” discussion when 3d scanning and printing become more affordable and easy. But I digressed too far…. back to used games.
I use Steam, and I liked the idea of the X-Box one digital distribution. I almost always wait for a steam sale on a game, rarely do I go for “new and shiny” -- I have been burned too many times with shitty games that had great paid for reviews. Where I think the point of compromise is what (back to the car example) that of the car lease; by default game makers are trying to force the conditions of a car lease, but forcing the cost of buying the car new.
Back to Steam, I think why Steam works is the Steam sales, if i pick up a great game on sale for a fraction of the cost of full retail I don't feel deprived of control about the DRM restrictions. Without the cost of printed manuals, reproduced media, packaging, or shipping why is that new digital copy 60 bucks as well as the physical copy? If the digital versions were sold cheaper I think we would be more accepting of the restrictions, no? Back to the car/lease example: the technology exists, would you pay full price for a car that had GPS restrictions on where you could drive or how many miles you could drive in a day? No of course not. Would you pay a smaller amount for a mileage/GPS locked car? Yes especially if all I used it for was going to and from work.
With games, if we are being forbid from actual ownership then don’t charge ownership prices.