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Game Designer Makes Case For Used Games
We've recently had a couple of discussions about the plans of various game developers to fight used game sales — in particular, the idea of a free, one-time download that may be bonus content or may be a vital part of the game. Now, Soren Johnson, a game designer who has worked on Civilization 3, Civilization 4 and Spore, has written an article defending certain aspects of the used game market. Quoting:
"By opening up retail sales to a larger segment of the market, used game sales mean that more people are playing our games than would be in a world without them. Beyond the obvious advantages of bigger community sizes and word-of-mouth sales, a larger player base can benefit game developers who are ready to earn secondary income from their games. In-game ads are one source of this additional revenue, but the best scenario is downloadable content. A used copy of Rock Band may go through several owners, but each one of them may give Harmonix money for their own personal rights to 'Baba O'Riley' or 'I Fought the Law.'"
As gamers age, they begin to seek out copies of games they played as kids. I know I have and I promise I'm not alone.
If you want to make more money, fighting the used game market isn't the way to go. Release a system for $100, make the games $10, and then we'll talk.
Maybe paying $50-$100 for a single game tends to turn some people off.
Anyway, why is the used market so good? For people who don't have any money, the used market allows them to get good games cheaply. (I've never had much money either for that matter, but the main reason I don't buy games now is that I don't run MS Windows.)
Used games are not only good for people who don't have money, but also for the ones who buy a lot of games (usually on the release date), play through them, and then never touch them again. This is of course highly dependent on the game. Some games just lose their appeal once you've defeated the final stage (or whatever). It happens to me a lot, so I decided to sell them again, preferring a couple of bucks in my hand (to buy beer, for instance) instead of a gazillion of games gathering dust somewhere in a drawer.
That's the question that comes to me ... I mean, they sell me a copy of the game, right? Since when do they have a legal right to prohibit me from reselling it? I can't think of another type of product where this can be done legally ...
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"The chances of a demonic possession spreading are remote -- relax."
I would say this whole anti-secondary sale issue is another example of the blind greed that is currently taring down the banks.
The gaming industry is starting to eat itself.
It's something else to watch these gigantic corporate entities try to turn sharing, borrowing, and reselling into the next big evil. You'd think they'd stand no chance of getting the popular vote on this, but everywhere now you start to see ordinary regular people asking the question: What can be done about the second hand market?
The more pertinent question is: What the fuck? followed by You are kidding, right?
No other industry enjoys this priviledge. Not even the RIAA is seriously trying to argue that you can't sell a used CD, and they've argued that ripping to MP3s is stealing, and that you need to buy a new copy every time you listen on a new device.
The part I find the most ignorant and self-serving is the part where people talk about the damage it is doing to the industry. The industry is not an end in itself. It adapts to market pressures, or it doesn't. As an ordinary, rational consumer there's nothing that I need or want to do for the industry. They produce games at affordable prices, and just suck up the fact that I am not going to buy all of them as first sales, or they don't.
Something everybody seems to forget in the talk about the evil of second hand sales, is that every one of them, no matter how dilute from reselling, must have been a first sale at some point.
And for crying out loud - what happened to just being thrilled that someone wanted to play your shitty game at all?
Someone needs to kill these stupid fuckers like *right now*. I'm Serious.
Advertising ruins everything. I don't want to immerse myself in a game and have to put up with some bullshit about what drink is better, and that I need to buy this widget cuz the cool kids got it.
There is a cold war going on right now with advertisers and consumers and advertisers love using stupid bullshit arguments with ignorant judges like, "Not watching commercials is just like stealing content". That's why TIVO is going to cave soon under enormous pressure to thwart people from bypassing advertising and why the old company that made that DVR with the automatic commercial skip got sued into oblivion. They resurrected themselves as ReplayTV, but sans commercial skip.
We fight it everywhere in our lives right now. From blocking pop-ups, pixels, Ad Block Plus, the 30-second skip button on the DVR, etc.
How the fuck can you advertise a contemporary product for today's culture in a game like NeverWinter nights anyways? I would love to go down the local tavern to find my +5 Broadsword only to be faced with a "Do the Dew" logo on the front of it. Sheesh.
We all have to put our foot down now and REFUSE to participate in this else the games will be ruined. If you think I'm going overboard here, then present me a situation in which an advertisement actually adds real entertainment value?
It's definitely absurd, it's absurd that they don't feel absolutely disgusted with themselves for trying to fight people's right to re-sell content.
And FUCK YOU with your downloadable content. If I've bought that then I should have the right to sell it alongside the game, no?
Downloadable content and in box "bonuses" are a horrible way to squeeze customers ever more. The bonus should just be part of the game, not a one-time thing. And so should most downloadable content. A hell of a lot of it is just a trasnparent attempt to part people from even more cash to get the game they wanted.
As for in-game advertising being a continuing source of revenue from the used game market.... so... angry... hard... to... speak... must... kill...
It's my RIGHT to buy and sell used games. It's not your right to continue to make a profit for a single copy of a game, or a single license or whatever the hell it is after you've already sold it to me.
Die in a fire.
The game industry should definitely take a look at the music industry. The music industry pimps music videos, radio spots, live performances and other loss leaders, just to push more CDs. Does the game industry bother? I mean, they hardly release demos, because people might steal some fun, or something.
In the old days, many games had replayability because that was all they had space for. Early Atari, NES titles were almost universally replayable because they were designed that way.
These days, game companies seem to think that "replayability" is a buzzword, just like they think that padding "Hours of gameplay" with pointless and boring stuff (think the stupid "sail the world and haul shit up from the ocean for 100 hours" bit before you get to the end of Celda:The Wind Breaker, thank god nintendo finally learned their lesson for Twilight Princess). Or, they make a game that's short, and only kind of fun, but with a number of "unlockable" characters to play through each of which has more absurd unlock requirements tied to the previous (Viewtiful Joe, Devil May Cry, I'm looking at you).
After finishing these games once, I'm done. I see no reason to "replay" them, and so I sell them off and get new games. If they had been made to be more fun and less aggravating, that wouldn't be the case.
Here's a hint: if you feel the need to pad your "gameplay hours" or stick extra nonsense-characters in for "replayability", you're doing something wrong and need to fix your game instead.