Slashdot Mirror
Industry Asks Gamers To Pay More
Last week we mentioned a Guardian post about secondhand games, with some industry commentary that the secondhand market was lowering the innovation expectations of developers. Today, the Gamers With Jobs: Press Pass reacts to the whining of the poor underpaid developers: "The always candid David Jaffe wrote: 'You know what? Why the **** should we even try anymore?' while Epic's CliffyB noted: 'What other entertainment medium that's mass market is at $60 a pop?' Cliffy would seem to have the right of it. The used market for DVDs, or CDs is relatively small. Why? Presumably because getting a five dollar discount on a fifteen dollar DVD is not as enticing as thirty dollars off of a sixty dollar game; when it's only five bucks, the natural desire to buy something perfect and new will, in most cases, outweigh thriftiness. While I certainly sympathize with Mr. Jaffe's frustration on this matter, his concerns are a result of working for an industry which refuses to intelligently adapt to a changing marketplace."
Motion picture developers though [and to a lesser degree musicians] don't use media sales as their primary income source. They've likely recouped costs from the theatre before a single DVD is ever made.
Game developers only get money from media sales. They also suffer under a publishing oligarchy comperable to the RIAA, who takes up to $25 per product. Going from $25-35 to $5 after discount is by far more damaging than any DVD or CD discount could ever be.
First thing's first. Second hand market does so well because, well, $60 for a game that you beat in 2 days.....I can understand that. I pay less than that for my television service and it lasts and entire month. I sat down with American McGee's Alice after paying $55 for it at a local store on a Friday evening. Saturday night I had it beaten already. I bought Diablo 2 the day it came out for $65. I came home, spent 4 hours working on it to make it even work on a standard system. When I say standard it was an asus board, intel chip, nvidia video. NOTHING worked beyond the ingame vids. After that 4 hours of mucking around with it, I got it to run. I then played it an astounding 2 hours. Since then it has sat on my shelf. So not only did it waste $200 worth of my time ($50/hr instore labor, not gonna use onsite labor even thought I should) and I'm out the money for the game, but I didn't even get as much play time as I did repair time with it because the game sucked so badly. Tribes 2, again, the day it came out. Nothing but system lockups and other anomolies. The only game producer I know of that actually consistantly puts out games that don't crash constantly (not to say they don't have issues, but atleast they do RUN out of the box) is Id Software.
Let's not forget about companies like Valve. I bought HL way back when and though I wasn't happy with it's netcode the single player was worth playing....for awhile. Until you go to the alien planet, but that's another story. So I start playing CS online with it and get used to the game play. Valve all of a sudden releases their new netcode. I have to say "thanks for trying to fix your mistakes" but they took it too far. The new netcode was horrible and nothing ticks someone off more than getting killed by someone when you're halfway across the map from where they shot. Basically, their new updates made THAT game worthless to me and has since sat on a shelf.
Everything said up until now has just been examples. I could fill an entire office full of paper with the various issues I've had over the year.
I used to spend anywhere from $2-5k on games a year. Not hardware, just the game titles themselves. However over the years, the games take longer to be released (understandable since there's more to do....in some ways), they are lower quality, and quite frankly rushed to market. Imagine if Ford put a vehicle out there with bad tires on it.....oh wait..... Point being, products are being put out before they are ready. This frustrates and angers the person who paid for the product.
Why on EARTH should we pay $50-80 for a game that we'll have to spend days, weeks, or even months helping fix flaws in the game before we can even use it for what we intended...stress/frustration relief. That's like selling someone a car that backfires any time you give it gas, the windows will only roll halfway down, and every so often it evacuates the cooling system on it's own. "Oh, well, you can bring it into the shop and we'll fix that for you. We found that problem". Of course that problem causes another problem so you have to wait to get that one fixed. Or better still, you buy a car that won't move. The engine will run, all electronics work, but it just sits there in your driveway. 3 months later, the automanufacturer delivers the transmission to your house but you have to install it yourself.
Don't get me wrong, I understand software flaws and they can happen. But if the flaws are there from the day it was published as ready...that's just wrong. And going back to one of my earlier statements, I once spent $2-5k/yr on games. Last year I spent a whole $150 buying games. Why? Because I refuse to pay for something that is suppose to be for entertainment but I have to work (unpaid mind you) to be able to properly use it.
If the game producing industry doesn't get their heads out of their ***** then they're going to soon find themselves in the same boat as the Recording and Movie industry. People don't mind paying top dol