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."

Comments

They need to charge less, not more.

[DocSavage64109]

Right now i do a mix of buying games and pirating them. If games cost less, I would buy all that I use. Alternatively, if they had less stringent copy protection, I could give games to family members so two of us could enjoy a game and I wouldn't feel quite so ripped off.

PS. not all of us make $50,000/yr or even $30,000/yr. Working for a non-profit does not pay very well.

Re:They need to charge less, not more.

[Irish_Samurai]

Ok, so it's copyright infringement. It's still illegal. It also causes the developer to take upon himself the cost of your financial situation. The difference between never going to purchase the software and taking it without paying for it is significant.

The first one has the end result of the developer making no profit from their labor. They don't get the funds because they didn't make a product you wanted to purchase. Ok.

The second means that the developer created a piece of software that you did want, but couldn't afford to trade currency in exchange for the end result of their labor. You then take the end result of their labor without trading back the requested amount of currency, leaving them on the deficient end of the transaction. The net result is not the same.

You can argue that it's not stealing because there is no limited supply of the program, that may be true. Yet, the resources used to develop this program are most certainly functioning under the rules of supply and demand.

The skills to program a good piece of software are not ubiquitous, nor are the environments needed to create these pieces of software. The systems used to program them weren't free, and neither was the original transport vehicle for the executable. Someone paid for all of the CD's or bandwith that the program was originally obtained from. What about time? That is a very precious, non renewable resource in the context of software development. The time of the developer was invested in the program that you just took with the hopes that people would like it enough to purchase it.

You're stealing, flat out. You wanna play little kid games with scemantics over economic concepts that you know jack shit about, fine. But please don't expect anyone to buy your "It's not stealing" bullshit.

Reply

[Dr. Eggman]

No.


Work smarter not harder.

Price discrimination

[FooAtWFU]

If the game-makers don't want people to sell used games at $30 off, they should start cutting their prices sooner so people can get the game new for $30. I used to see PC games doing this effectively- the game would be $50 new, then in a month or two it'd be down to $40 or $30, and it'd eventually migrate down to the $5 bin somewhere - so that everyone who wanted it could get it new for the price they wanted, just not necessarily immediately.

But they don't seem to fall as quickly as they used to, and I haven't seen this nearly as much for the console games.

Re:Price discrimination

[LehiNephi]

I fall into the "tightwad" category. And it's a wonderful place to be. It means I buy games about a year after they are released, and get to play them with maximum graphical detail with my mainstream graphics card. By the time I buy the game, I have (1) saved money on the game by getting it at a lower cost, (2) saved money by only buying good games, (3) saved money by getting older hardware that doesn't require a leaf blower to cool, and (4) saved time by not playing a game that turns out to be dull.

People may say "you miss all the fun of multiplayer games because by that time, everyone has moved on". Rubbish. There are still plenty of people playing the game online, and by this time, most of the morons have given up and moved on.

I agree that $50 or $60 is way overpriced, particularly when you're buying the latest model year of a sports game. The problem is this: price is determined by the market. Games cost $50 or $60 simply because there are tons of people who are willing to buy them at that price. While we may moan and complain and threaten to boycott, there are millions of suckers out there who think that it's an acceptable price.

Prices are pretty fair.

[gasmonso]

When you look at the value you're getting, $50 or so for a game is reasonable. Many games will give you months of entertainment. The cost per hour is extremely low when compared to renting a movie or going to the theater. Just my two cents.

http://religiousfreaks.com/

Habits of casual gamers

[Can]

I'm not a hard-core gamer. Nor is my brother or girlfiend. We all own PS2's. We've never paid more than $30 for a game, and that's for something we're really convinced is going to be worthwhile. Most of the time we wait for it to hit $20. Still, we probably spend as much or more money on games than on movies or CD's.

I know of at least 4 more people off the top of my head who own PS1's or PS2's who only have a handful of games because they're just too expensive. Are all my friends and coworkers cheapskates, or could it be that the industry has been so blinded by the "hardcore" gamers that they've alienated the much larger market of casual gamers due to difficulty levels and prices that are beyond the reach of the casual gamer?

To Jaffe

[lbmouse]

To David Jaffe from game consumers: "With the polished turds your industry has been throwing against the wall lately... You know what? Why the **** should we even buy anymore?"

If you created decent games, we wouldn't mind paying full price and guess what? We'd actually keep them rather than sell them as second hand. Wow! What a novel solution.

The Death of Innovation

[Fried-Psitalon]

"We'd pay your prices if XX didn't suck." Sadly, that's not really a new statement, and it's by no means restricted to the gaming world. Movies/movie theatres are facing this phenomenon as well, and books/music to a lesser degree. As a general rule, innovation for the last few years has been facing a distinct downtrend. Rather than huge leaps, we've been making small nudges forward at refining what we have. Part of the reason for this is that sequels are safe, and new material isn't. Yet another version of Battlefield:Earth? Quake 99? NFL Madden 3,000,192? Those are safe, predictable sources of income. The only sequel that truly tanked in the last year or two was Tribes, may it rise again. New titles are risks, and companies don't like those. Ever heard of Savage: The Battle for NewErth? It's a beautiful cross of RTS and FPS... but that game only did "okay" because no one knew about it - no publicity, no risk. Part of this is on the consumer; how many of us buy games we know nothing about except the back of the box? Innovation is dying; partially because companies aren't taking the risk... and partially because the consumers aren't, either.

Re:The Death of Innovation

[AeroIllini]

Part of this is on the consumer; how many of us buy games we know nothing about except the back of the box? Innovation is dying; partially because companies aren't taking the risk... and partially because the consumers aren't, either.

Obligatory:

"I'd be more willing to buy a game I knew nothing about if I didn't have to shell out $60 to do it."

By pricing their games so high, the game industry has basically guaranteed that there is no such thing as an impulse game purchase. Therefore, every game must be heavily marketed, and therefore must not be as much of a risk for the game company, since they're spending $X million on marketing on top of the money they spent developing the game. It's kind of a downward spiral.

The consumer risk you talk about is simply too large. The majority of the market is not going to toss down $60 on a product they've never even heard of, just as an impulse buy.

Not the best way to get the buyers on your side...

[Rob T Firefly]

It takes me back the the early 1990s when used music CDs were a controversy, with Garth Brooks giving interviews on how it was killing his industry. A local indy music shop began using that to market its used CD section.. "Come on down and piss off Garth Brooks!" It was a smashing success, and I think they may still have the sign up somewhere.

Look at Movie Revenue

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Games cost a lot of money compared to a Movie, and partly this is because they do not effectively pursue multiple tiers of revenue. At $60 a lot of people simply will never buy your game. At $10 a lot of people will never pay to see a single showing of a movie. For movies, they first release in theaters at an exorbitant price for a single showing. Next it goes to second run theaters that charge less, but still a fair bit for a single showing. Then they on release on DVD, often getting people who paid the first time to buy another version, this time at a more reasonable price. DVD prices generally drop over time to help incentivise those who would not buy at the original price, but will buy a bargain. Then they play the movie on TV for "free" generating ad revenue. Movie studios collect money all along the way and thus each stage can actually be cheaper.

Here's my new model for gaming revenue. First, make new games only playable at gaming "arcades" like gaming cafes and the like. These venues may have to be invented by the game company to start, but once the profit model is shown they will become more common. Next, release the game on DVD or CD and slowly lower the sale price over time. Finally, release free, ad supported versions of the game and make money from ad revenue.

Is this practical? Who knows. The thing is, games are often very poorly offered at only one price point and, like movies are not something everyone wants to keep. It is that or I'll just keep buying four year old games from the bargain bin.

Ha!

[nEoN nOoDlE]

'You know what? Why the **** should we even try anymore?'

When do they even try anymore? There hasn't been any innovation in the industry in years.

Re:Stop bitching about the price of games...

[ProppaT]

Yeah well, as far as I'm concerned they can go back to making 2d games with SNES level graphics and sell them for less, seeing that the technology has been perfected.

Oh wait, that's right. That's my GBA.

The thing is, not everyone wants a game for super amazing graphics, cutscenes, etc (the things that are MAKING games cost so much more to produce). Some people are happy with simpler games and non-cutting edge graphics. It's because of the super produced games that are generally flashy but otherwise lackluster that we're forced to pay even more money on games. They augment the cost of the blockbuster titles with the much smaller cost of easier to make titles. We're also seeing a lot of repitition because of the super blockbuster titles. Engines are being reused, companies give games a face lift and resell them with a different title. It's really getting quite bad.

I'm just glad that games that come out of nowhere, like Katamari Damacy, are able to show that great games don't have to cost a fortune to make while being affordable for the consumer as well. Eventually the industry will start to curve more toward the creative games. I'm counting on the Revolution to push this segment...because we know that non-blockbuster games aren't in MS's vision of the industry...and Sony has enough blockbuster titles to push it through without having to really change anything.

Greedy jerks

[Phantasmo]

I honestly have no problem buying new games, even if it costs a bit more, because I like to support companies that do a good job. I only have three used games and that's because I couldn't find them new at any store.
However, I'd like to make this perfectly clear: any company that takes steps to prevent me from lending games to friends or buying used games will never, ever receive another dollar of my money.
I don't see what CliffyB has to complain about. Their recent games are Unreal, UT, UT2003/2004, and the upcoming UT2007. That's one evolutionary (not revolutionary) game every 2-3 years. The other 3/4 of their releases are "Game of the Year Special Edition" deals, basically DVDs with a few nice (free) maps and mods dumped in. Even so, they're making money hand over fist.
The issue isn't that they're losing money, or even that they're just breaking even. They're upset because they're not making insane profits. These are the same complaints that we're hearing from the RIAA/MPAA. So, to the game industry: we (consumers) are good allies. We don't hate you (yet). Stop being greedy, get off the soapbox and get back to work. We'll be happy to buy any good games that you release.