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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."
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
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.
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"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.
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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!
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."