"My personal boycott is because they open my god-damn games. You can't go into Gamestop to buy anything without them having taken off the plastic wrap (or for PC games, cut or torn off the seal), opened the game up, and sloppily thrown the game disc(s) into crappy paper sleeves to store in a cabinet."
You have thieves to thank for that, and it's not just a problem for game stores either. They'll come in and while no one's looking, cut the box open and take the disc, and leave everything else. I'll guess some slashdotter will now blame the store for "punishing" the customer. I, personally, wish that all game stores did the lock-up-the-actual-merch thing. I got totally burned when, for one Valentine's day, I bought my friend a WoW Subscription Card. Well, actually, I bought him the box. We were on a Valentine's date when he opened my present.
Him (looking in the box quizzically):"Cool. A Blizzard catalog." Me: "Keep looking." Him (emptying out the box onto the table): "...There's nothing else in here." Me: "What?!?!" Him: "Well...that's alright. Blizzard catalogs are cool."
So, due to thievery, I got my date an empty box for Valentines day. A fracking empty box. A fracking empty box with a Night Elf on it, but still, not cool. At least the store let me return it.
Still. It would have been much more awesome if they'd just sold the cards at the register, and had you pick up the legitimately-empty box while browsing. I mean, would it be that hard?
trogdor makes an excellent point. These CDs aren't for people that are familiar with buying music from iTunes--They're meant for people who may not even be familiar with downloading music at all.
It seems that the target audience for this is the people that (a) like CDs, and (b) like to pay less money, and (c) like less bloat in their music collections than a full album would cause.
Honestly, depending on how this pans out, I might even go out and buy the CDs. And that's saying a lot for me, since I haven't gone out and bought a random CD since god knows when. I also don't use ringtones. I think that the convenience of the music alone, non-DRMed, in CD format, just might make it worth my while.
Well, it seems odd to me that someone needed to prove that videogames follow the trend that that many other subjects fall into for younger people, but more power to them. Still, at least to me, it seems a rather obvious conclusion.
Why do you think the main readers of "Seventeen Magazine" are considerably below 17 years of age? Why is the average patron at the clothing shop "Forever 21" is in high school? Why do you think little girls dress up baby dolls and play house?
Kids like things that are for "grownups". It's just the way things work, across the board. They think "I'm too grown up for the little kid stuff, give me the big kid stuff!" It's human nature.
Also, adolescents, in my experience, tend to put a great deal of stock in their maturity (in some cases). Most tend to think that they're mature enough to handle anything. Labelling a game "Mature" doesn't exactly deter those trying to prove their maturity.
I hope this report doesn't spur on a backlash of some sort. I'd hope most people are smart enough to realize that this is just another example the compulsion younger people have to identify with things they percieve as for "older" kids. But I'm an optimist.
I wish I had mod points, so I could mod this up. It's good to see a rational, respectful, and insightful response, even in the midst of the juvenile and disgusting reactions thus far.
My faith in humanity is restored, a bit. It'll doubtless be ruined as soon as I continue reading.
I'm wondering why so few slashdotters have a sense of decency and respect for human life.
Slashdot Mirror
You know, Nixon tried that "tape-record every moment of your life" thing. Didn't work out to well for him, if memory serves.
You mean, like the AnywhereCD article that was on Slashdot a few days ago? http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/09/25/1645217
You have thieves to thank for that, and it's not just a problem for game stores either. They'll come in and while no one's looking, cut the box open and take the disc, and leave everything else. I'll guess some slashdotter will now blame the store for "punishing" the customer.
I, personally, wish that all game stores did the lock-up-the-actual-merch thing. I got totally burned when, for one Valentine's day, I bought my friend a WoW Subscription Card. Well, actually, I bought him the box. We were on a Valentine's date when he opened my present.
Him (looking in the box quizzically):"Cool. A Blizzard catalog."
Me: "Keep looking."
Him (emptying out the box onto the table): "...There's nothing else in here."
Me: "What?!?!"
Him: "Well...that's alright. Blizzard catalogs are cool."
So, due to thievery, I got my date an empty box for Valentines day. A fracking empty box. A fracking empty box with a Night Elf on it, but still, not cool. At least the store let me return it.
Still. It would have been much more awesome if they'd just sold the cards at the register, and had you pick up the legitimately-empty box while browsing. I mean, would it be that hard?
trogdor makes an excellent point. These CDs aren't for people that are familiar with buying music from iTunes--They're meant for people who may not even be familiar with downloading music at all.
It seems that the target audience for this is the people that (a) like CDs, and (b) like to pay less money, and (c) like less bloat in their music collections than a full album would cause.
Honestly, depending on how this pans out, I might even go out and buy the CDs. And that's saying a lot for me, since I haven't gone out and bought a random CD since god knows when. I also don't use ringtones. I think that the convenience of the music alone, non-DRMed, in CD format, just might make it worth my while.
Well, it seems odd to me that someone needed to prove that videogames follow the trend that that many other subjects fall into for younger people, but more power to them. Still, at least to me, it seems a rather obvious conclusion.
Why do you think the main readers of "Seventeen Magazine" are considerably below 17 years of age? Why is the average patron at the clothing shop "Forever 21" is in high school? Why do you think little girls dress up baby dolls and play house?
Kids like things that are for "grownups". It's just the way things work, across the board. They think "I'm too grown up for the little kid stuff, give me the big kid stuff!" It's human nature.
Also, adolescents, in my experience, tend to put a great deal of stock in their maturity (in some cases). Most tend to think that they're mature enough to handle anything. Labelling a game "Mature" doesn't exactly deter those trying to prove their maturity.
I hope this report doesn't spur on a backlash of some sort. I'd hope most people are smart enough to realize that this is just another example the compulsion younger people have to identify with things they percieve as for "older" kids. But I'm an optimist.
Hope that made sense.
/captain obvious, signing off
I wish I had mod points, so I could mod this up. It's good to see a rational, respectful, and insightful response, even in the midst of the juvenile and disgusting reactions thus far. My faith in humanity is restored, a bit. It'll doubtless be ruined as soon as I continue reading. I'm wondering why so few slashdotters have a sense of decency and respect for human life.