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Do Games Industry Folks Buy Games New or Used?
Gamasutra has another of its usually-interesting Question of the Week features up, and this one deals with the issue of used games. The question : Do Games Industry Professionals Buy Their Games New or Used? A lot of anonymouse answers this week. From one mouse: "I buy both used and new games, depending upon what the price differential is, and availability (old games are hard to find 'new'). I think the used games market is good for the industry for two reason: * it increases the value of game--people buy games knowing that they can get money when they sell it back, and * the game gets greater exposure--the purchaser of the used game might not otherwise have played it. This does not mean that people have the right to steal our products by copying them, reselling the originals, and playing the copy. But we made a product and sold it to them. It is theirs. They are free to resell it, the same way you're free to resell your car, house, or furniture. - Anonymous, Microsoft"
I thought I purchased a license, not a product.
First off I work at ONE game development company, we get treated well, but this is not a standard for the industry.
There's the same split in society. People who buy it immediatly, people who wait for reviews, and people who wait for price drops, there's no rule for the industry or for the game. And btw we go "ooh" and "ahhh" to tech demos. We have guys who buy every EA sports game, we have guys who buy none. We have guys who play Smash brothers every day at lunch. We have guys who haven't owned a video game system in years, but plays board games weekly. We have magic fans, we have Warhammer 40000 fans.
However the best thing about my company is we get all that here. We can ask each other what's good or not. If we get sick of a game we sell it to someone else at the company, and there's a whole gamer culture here.
But the simple answer is we do the same in the industry as outside the industry. The only bonus is you work with gamers so instead of having to go to ebay, you can trade internally, get similar prices and get it from reputable sources rather then some guy on ebay, but in the end it's not different then regular society except everyone here is likely a gamer in some way.
Buy games? I never buy games. It's much easier to hide in the shadows and wait for a passing gamer. Then I sneak up behind him, slit his throat, and shake his lifeless corpse until games and food fall out of his pockets. Afterwards, I sometimes eat the corpse.
Hideo Kojima
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the percentage of new vs total games is always decreasing, because of the immense amount of games for non-supported consoles, etc. So over time, you have to buy more used games vs. new, assuming any fixed set of consoles.
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There is a lot of very reasonable commentary there. And a few whiners. The whiners are more fun.
From Anonymous at the University of Texas, "Perhaps a moratorium on the sale of used copies of a title within the first month of its release." If you have a serious problem with used sales in the first month of release, your game is probably either too short, or just plain sucks. My friends with tigher budgets note that they typically have to what two or three months before the find used copies of game they want available.
I'm also fond of Pierre-Luc Lachance at Ubisoft's response, "We can only try to sensitize people to the ethical integrity and fairness of buying new, first hand games." Ethical integrity? I'm curious about Pierre-Luc's view of the ethical integrity of purchasing a used car or a used book. Idiot.
This anonymous comment takes the cake:
Again, I'm curious if anonymous has ever bought or sold a used car, CD, or book. Have the car, book, and music industries been forced to online distribution by resales? ("Now downloading Subaru Impreza 2006. 3% complete. Downloading at 6.02 zeptoatoms/second.") Also, exactly what "hard handed" tactics have used game stores engaged in? How do they force me to buy and sell used games? I've never been "forced" to sell them a game. When I buy a new game, they do sometimes offer me a used game ("You can save five bucks on a used copy"), but that's hardly a hard sell. They've never refused to sell me a new copy when one was available (which I usually do, as it's worth $5 to me to get a shiny new copy).
There is a subset of the video game industry who are giant whiners. This isn't some conspiracy against video games; it's the free market. Resale of copyright protected works existed for hundreds of years before your industry even existed. Expecting to get some special protection makes you piss-poor capitalists.
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What's odd to me is that they all talk like buying used games only happens at GameStop. Places like that are a huge ripoff. Almost all the games I buy are used and there are only two places that I really look:
1) eBay gives you essentially the "real" value of the game.
2) Amazon used&new will (rarely) give you a better deal than eBay and (usually) give you a higher confidence in not getting screwed over.
I've found that eBay and Amazon used&new will typically have used stuff at similar prices. And always* significantly lower than going to a physical store.
*Unless the game JUST came out.
I'm a game programmer and I always buy games new, unless it's an older game and I can only find it used. The money difference just isn't worth it for me to justify when it means not only getting a used product but also that I'm sending my money towards Gamestop/EB instead of a fellow developer.
I am often surprised at how many of my co-workers buy games used.
I work for a small game dev studio. I almost always by used, partly because I browse the used rack and go 'oh! I remember that game I never played! 10 bucks, sure, I'll give it a try'. If I am really interseted in a game I'll buy it new but that is pretty rare (GalCiv 2 would be such an example). I never sell my old games though.
I buy used specifically because I never get around to playing them. There's plenty of old used games that I haven't tried yet. Why would I spend $60 on a new game when I know that there's plenty of games that I haven't played, and want to play just as much for $15? There are a couple that I've bought new, but the vast majority of my games are bought used. And most of them remain unbeaten because I don't have the time to play all the way through.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Just like most other people here, I buy games both new and used. When I was younger and on a budget I would often sell games in order to get new games- now that I have a job I tend to hang on to my older games (especially since I realized how much I've spent re-buying games for the sake of nostalgia).
I generally don't buy games when the first come out- simply because I already have a backlog of games that I need to get through as it is- so when I do go to buy a game there are generally used copies available. Most of the time though, if there is a new copy I'll buy it.
I think that there is some psychological value of having a new game- from peeling off the cellophane and cursing for hours as you try to get those stickers off the edge so you can actually open the case to the smell of freshly stamped pastic and toner from the instruction manual.
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There is no such thing as a "used" game on Steam or other license/DRM management content systems. If someone sells you a "used" original CD of a game that's already been registered on Steam (for example), it's a fair bet that the CD key was already tied to a Steam account and it won't work for you.
I always buy new. Not because I like the publishers, but because I fucking hate EB Games.
Even Jesus hates listening to Creed.
Well...I pretty much have all of those "old" games because I bought them all when they were new... I usually pre-order every game and go get them on the release date. If they have a collectors,limited,or in any other way "special" edition, I get that. Sometimes I even play them within a week of release, but most often I get around to playing them about a year later, if at all. Usually it's when somebody says "hey, you have to try x" that I go home and dig it out and play it.
It's probably some mild form of insanity, but despite the fact that I could just wait until I'm actually going to play a game and then buy it (most likely for a far reduced price) I can't stop myself from going through that pre-order rack and pre-ordering any game (or console) on it, sometimes multiple times (unintentionally, those are the games I'm actually specifically interested in). I also never sell or trade in anything, I still have every game and console I've ever bought.
The only exception I have to this is sports games. I have less than no interest in them. The newest sports game I have is Blades of Steel for the NES. (Although, maybe the Wii will renew my interest in sports games somewhat).
Frag 'em all...
Incidentally, I've been part of a debate on 4chan (ZOMG) over the past day or two about the comparison between piracy and used games. Someone mentioned that they would be more interested in buying games new if they could get a demo for the game.
Frankly, I agree. These days, especially as a college student, I'm hard pressed to shell out for a $50 that got so-so reviews, only to be able to get 60% (if that) of my initial purchase by selling it used if I think it sucks. A lot of the people I know who pirate games say they do so to give it a "test drive". While they certainly could be trying to clear their conscience, I think this makes sense. The problem is that for those who do it, they usually finish the base game and have no real reason to go out and pick up the real copy at that point.
What game companies (and I mean ALL game companies) need to do is put out more demo discs. Yes, they cost money, but that would likely be offset by more new sales.
Hell, they might not even have to take a loss on it. I would gladly pay a small monthly fee (~$5) to receive a demo disc each month for games coming out in the next month or three. A level here, a video collage there, and it would really help with my decisions and picking where to spend my money. Not a small picking, either; even if all I get is a movie, I want at least 10 previews on each disc. Even a full battle from an RPG would work, as I could gauge the battle system.
The Big Three already do this, but the discs are only available for retailers and generally are only updated four times a year (if that!). A few PC Game Magazines also have this, but I've seen none for the XBox or PS2 (and I don't actively look, so I could have missed them).
With all three consoles coming online, hopefully demos will increase. I believe XBox Live already has free downloadable demos, while Nintendo (and possibly Sony) have hinted at a similar thing, which will also work with their handhelds.
People buy used because they're worried about the financial hit. As the prices of games increase (might we see $80 for MGS4?), the demand for used games will only increase.