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."
Well, there's certainly lots of MMO's out there that charge per month. And of course the indy games that are free, or some that are cheap, like 10-30. I think the game industry is facing a big change, one way or another.
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.
No.
Work smarter not harder.
Demented But Determined.
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.
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
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/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 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.
Gamers tell industry to expect more piracy.
Technoli
"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.
The ability to communicate well does not directly correspond to the ability to communicate intelligently.
Gamers ask industry to make less shitty recycled games.
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.
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
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.
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.
'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.
Don't trust a bull's horn, a doberman's tooth, a runaway horse or me.
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
I know a lot of people in the development community. UO and UO2 programmers, a designer for Galaxies, people from Digital Anvil, EA, Microsoft. Most of them make enough in 8 months to take 4 months off a year collecting unemployment. One is about to head back to work because he's blown through the $30,000 he had in his savings account after his last contract was up (was a gig with Microsoft). His new job is level design and mission scripting for a PS3 game. The pay is $50 hour plus double pay for overtime. So he'll work for 6 months then take the rest of the year off to play Warcraft. I have no sympathy.
"I have never won a debate with an ignorant person." -Ali ibn Abi Talib
I fall into the category of "casual gamer." Which means I've got a day job that lets me *afford* games, I don't have the time to cope with anything that's going to eat my life learning how to play. But that's not the major reason I've pretty much quit buying games.
The major reason is the nasty, intrusive and ugly copy protection, and yes, I mean *YOU*, Half-Life 2. The dozen or so times I tried to play the game, EVERY STINKING TIME I STARTED IT UP the program would run out to Steam's servers and ask "mother may I," making it VERY plain that Valve regards everybody who buys its game as a thief or thief wannabe. It also extended what should have been a less than thirty second startup time into five to ten minutes.
I got tired of being bitch-slapped by Valve's nastiness. Also, consider this: I can't sell the game to the used market because, once registered, you're pretty much stuck with the thing.
Feh!
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.
Wise men say, "Forgiveness is divine, but never pay full price for late pizza."
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.
The US Army: promoting democracy through unquestioned obedience
I'm really fed up with these gaming shops that open up EVERY copy of almost EVERY game in the store.
They keep them all locked up in a showcase, and put empty boxes on the floor.
WHY should I buy the brand new version, when they've already opened it up and rifled through it? They've probably even played it. That's not new product. Aren't there laws about selling used materials as new, any way?
-Patrick
"They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we."