Cliff Bleszinski: Vote With Your Dollars

silentbrad writes "Cliff Bleszinski, formerly of Epic Games, posted a blog entry titled 'Nickels, dimes, and quarters' yesterday, advocating that gamers dissatisfied with the current trend toward DLC and microtransactions should vote with their wallets. Quoting: 'The video game industry is just that. An industry. Which means that it exists in a capitalistic world. You know, a free market. A place where you're welcome to spend your money on whatever you please or to refrain from spending that money. ... Adjusted for inflation, your average video game is actually cheaper than it ever has been. Never mind the ratio of the hours of joy you get from a game per dollar compared to film. To produce a high quality game it takes tens of millions of dollars, and when you add in marketing that can get up to 100+ million. ... I've seen a lot of comments online about microtransactions. They're a dirty word lately, it seems. Gamers are upset that publishers/developers are "nickel and diming them." They're raging at "big and evil corporations who are clueless and trying to steal their money." I'm going to come right out and say it. I'm tired of EA being seen as "the bad guy." I think it's bulls*** that EA has the 'scumbag EA' memes on Reddit and that Good Guy Valve can Do No Wrong. ... If you don't like EA, don't buy their games. If you don't like their microtransactions, don't spend money on them. It's that simple. ... The market as I have previously stated is in such a sense of turmoil that the old business model is either evolving, growing, or dying. No one really knows. "Free to play" aka "Free to spend 4 grand on it" is here to stay, like it or not. ... People like to act like we should go back to "the good ol' days" before microtransactions but they forget that arcades were the original change munchers. Those games were designed to make you lose so that you had to keep spending money on them. Ask any of the old Midway vets about their design techniques. The second to last boss in Mortal Kombat 2 was harder than the last boss, because when you see the last boss that's sometimes enough for a gamer. ... If you don't like the games, or the sales techniques, don't spend your money on them. You vote with your dollars.'"

Comments

Doesn't work

[GameboyRMH]

I've been boycotting all the games with DRM and DLC for over a decade and it hasn't done shit.

Also it's really too bad that there was nothing between the DLC Hell of the early 2010s and the Change-Muncher Hell of the 1980s...

Re:Doesn't work

[SerpentMage]

Of course it works. It just takes time. Here is what happens when you and people boycott:

1) Company writes you off as a loon
2) Company keeps creating crap that people keep consuming
3) You get angry because you feel like you are the only one who is wrong
4) Sales slow down by company and they blame it on [fill in the blank]
5) Company grows sales by acquiring the upcoming company who has "solved" the [fill in the blank] problem
6) Company still can't grow like they used to, and they now blame it on [fill in the blank with reason 2]
7) People begin to look at the hot new thing
8) Company tries to get a foothold in new thing and comes out with revolutionary crap that nobody wants
9) Company goes downhill!

Case in point Microsoft and Linux. In the mobile game, the cloud game, and HTML game Microsoft has become IRRELEVANT! Yes people still use their devices due to legacy, but Windows 8 sucks, Windows mobile is a statistical error in market share and Microsoft keeps jacking up the costs and changes plans more often than I change my underwear.

I manage a portfolio of stocks and follow the tech industry closely. Microsoft is not in the game whatsoever. They think the problem is mobile. HA that is the least of their problems. The real problem is big data (a'la IBM and Watson), it is micro devices (a'la Raspberry Pie) and a couple of other smaller niches (eg 3d printing, M2M, etc). In all of these niches Microsoft has ZERO, and I mean ZERO footprint! What does have footprint? Oh yeah Linux! Companies are now asking for Linux admins, and Linux developers.

The same will happen with the games folks. The problem is our society demands immediate change, but change takes time...

Re:Doesn't work

[durrr]

The problem with DLC can be traced back to one statement
"Adjusted for inflation, your average video game is actually cheaper than it ever has been."
And adjusted for inflation, oh wait, we don't adjust low wage incomes for inflation. Which means that if you aren't Cliff Belzebub, a lawyer, poltician, or rich in some other way, your wages have become cheaper at the same rate as games, and then DLC was added, and the whole game experience became twice as expensive.

Vote with your dollars, complain with your mouth

[dehole]

Sure, we can vote with our dollars, and we do. At the same time, we can freely complain about EA adding micro transactions, or any/all forms of DRM.

If you have noticed, if enough customers complain about something, sometimes, things change. So asking us to just vote with our dollars is asking us to reduce our potential power. So if you don't like EA's microtransactions, or any form of always on DRM, then boycott them, AND complain about it verbosely everywhere you want to.

Re:It is not that simple!

[spazdor]

And, if you don't like Scumbag EA memes and blog posts which lambaste microtransactions as a shitty business model, don't click them. Blogging exists as an open, participatory model - a "free market", if you will. And you're welcome to spend your time reading opinions from any niche you like, or refrain from spending that time.

The meme I would use to describe Cliff Blezinski right now: old man yells at cloud

So?

[aardvarkjoe]

Gamers have just as much right to whine about a company's pricing policy as the industry insiders have a right to whine about their customers' dislike of their policy. So the industry's getting sick of the complaining? Presumably, they're worried that if there's too much publicity of the issue, customers actually will start voting with their dollars.

He's right, it's a business. A business that ignores its customers doesn't usually last too long.

Re:So?

[nametaken]

I get a little aggravated with the, "games cost $100 million dollars to make and you pay too little" bullshit too.

We see good games made and sold that turn massive profit on small budgets, all the time. Yes, it's hard work. No, you can't do that every three months.

So they spend $90million of the budget on marketing... and then bitch that they're only getting $60 per title plus $50 annual subscriptions plus DLC revenues.

Make good shit. Make fewer games, with fewer people. If it's good you won't have to spend 90% of your budget on advertising. If you want to go the, "pump out another shitty madden title" route with 10 titles, all year long, then don't be surprised that you have to spend $90 million on advertising. And don't then bitch that you're not getting enough money. And don't try to remedy that with bullshit like always-on DRM and microtransactions.

Explanation

[0xdeadbeef]

When someone tells you to stop complaining about a product, but to simply not buy the thing you're complaining about, what he really means is:

Shut up! I can't make you buy my crap, but your complaining is getting other people not to buy it also! Now I won't make the money I'm entitled to!

Re:It is not that simple!

[h4rr4r]

The point is EA are scumbags. I guess speaking truth to power now really is a revolutionary act.

Just this week they release an android racing game that if you want to fix your car you either wait X hours or pay some fee. That is how a scumbag acts. They are charging for something that is part of the damn core game. Sure they give the game away for free, but they make it impossible to play that way. Just sell it for a fixed price like an honest person, not some hidden ever rising cost to play.

Since when are valve games built on the practice of charging to play instead of sold like an honest person? I bought one copy of Portal 2, since it was the PS3 one I also got the PC game via steam. I don't have to wait X hours to make the blue portal or pay a $1 to do it now. I don't have to pay $1 to replace GladOs's potato.

Valve != good guys

[argStyopa]

Personally I just see in EA a sort of banal, brainless corporate "squeeze it until it bleeds dry" greed.

Steam (ie Valve's greatest product) is a giant sucking parasite perched on the carotid of modern gaming. It is the worst thing to happen to gaming, ever, and consumers are too stupid to see it.

Steam offered a brave new world of content delivery, and it was great. Except for the worm in the apple: the fact that they are NOT just a delivery organ, they are a license-management organ. No resale. No gifting of products (once they've been played). No transfers of licenses in any circumstance.*

Further, the system is stupid: if I'm logged in to Steam because I want to edit a Civ5 scenario (a game I legally own) on one computer, and want to play a quick game of Magicka (another game I legally own) with friends on my laptop, I can't, because Steam doesn't allow simultaneous logins FOR ANY REASON. So essentially, my game library is now locked behind a vault wall, with an asshole running the show who will only "let" me play one title at a time. BRILLIANT!

*Truth in advertising, I'll explain my particular beef with them, and let you decide: I have 2 sons, who until recently were minors. To manage their exposure to the world of multiplayer games, whenever they got games that were Steam-required, we attached them to MY steam-account. Now they're 16, and there's no need for me to manage their access anymore, but Steam offers no provision for me to one-time-transfer) licenses (we don't give a crap about achievements, etc) to their own Steam accounts. So now when one son wants to play 'his' copy of TF2, the other one can't play Xcom.

I even tried to actually talk to someone in Steam, I've offered to do ANYTHING to prove that I'm their father, this is a one-time deal, anything; the response I got was a flat refusal to give me a contact name, and the assertion that "we're a flat organization, we don't have managers". Right, so Gabe Newell's right there, answering tech support calls I bet?

I disliked Steam, but every time I see a title on the shelves that says "Steam Required" I hate them that little bit more.

Re:Exactly

[Anonymous Coward]

First party games can be ported. If they were properly designed that should not be hard.

Moving to another arcitecure is not hard? Do you have any coding experience?

The disk can be used for purchase verification.

What does this have to do with your point? You're just throwing arguments up as a smokescreen now.