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Comment by georgeecollins | Hacker News Reader

Most people don't realize this but GameStop was actually very bad for console game developers. Games were often resold, with each time no revenue going to the developer. I worked on a popular Xbox / PS3 game that was resold like 7-9 times on average. Our marketing people figured that GameStop made a lot more money on the game than the developer.

Why is that bad? Big console games started to need to be really long, because if you could finish them in a week you would lose a ton of sales to retail. That's why you started to see games where you had to wander around, grind, play through a level backwards, chase achievements. It also caused an emphasis on in game purchases (in console games) and online play. It just got a lot harder to make a short single player game on console.

A lot of those problems go away as console games are sold in a digital store.

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> Most people don't realize this but GameStop was actually very bad for console game developers.

And I feel 0 empathy for you. With the digital platform you are stripping away ownership rights from the purchaser. From your statement I feel that you're whining about missing sales that you never could have actually had. Do the 7-9 extra sales translate to 7-9x more sales on digital platforms? No.

I don't read parent as looking for empathy, but rather explaining why "you like grinding? We hope so, because you're going to grind for that next $PIECE_OF_CHEESE lest you finish the game quickly, turn around and resell it."

I don't know, I personally do feel empathy.

If Company A makes a product people are willing to pay for; and company B makes multiple sales/profit off of it, it does trigger some kind of empathy/moral/something spidey-sense in me.

We are not talking about piracy where we use argument "that 12 years old wouldn't have paid for your game anyway". These customers DID pay for the game! Just not to the developer; that money did not support development of new fun content.

Not to say I disagree with the notion of digital platform stripping away ownership; but I think that specific wrong doesn't make the other situation right :-/

Every video game I have ever bought has been used. Then again I buy all sorts of things used—probably 10x more than I buy new. I don’t see why a good’s manufacturer should expect to skim profit every time one of their goods changes hands, and I resent the lengths (DRM) some of them go through to try to do so. I should be able to buy used and to sell to someone else when I’m done with it.

There's a distinction between physical goods and digital goods. Other than video games, how many other digital goods do you buy and then resell?

None, because digital storefronts are constructed in such a way as to deny the right of first sale. There's no reason this has to be the case; Steam for instance could just revoke your license, turn the game into a giftable copy like any other, and let it be listed on the marketplace.

You must hate used bookstores too

No; and I don't hate used game stores either.

My statement was specific - I feel empathy for the developer. One can feel empathy toward multiple parties, even in situations of conflict or disagreement (I'm kind of with Ender on this one :-). This was in particular a response to the commenter that "felt 0 empathy toward developer" - which I found curious and perhaps unfortunate.

Do you feel these customers own the game?

> new fun content

I would only say that's neccessary if they No man skyed it. (Screwed up the release)

I think the problem isn't being able to resell games. It's the fact that it became "industrialized" reselling. Gamestop grew so big, and incentivized used sales so much (so much that on release day, unopened new copies of the game were opened by employees to sell as used for $5 less), that the sheer volume caught every game publisher off-guard.

Used games stores have been a thing much before it became a problem (I remember selling games at EB Games). But because of Gamestop's growth and their aggressive pursuit of making sure their customers only dabble in the used games section, it became a serious issue.

The 7-9 resales by Gamestop might not translate to 7-9x extra sales, but I would bet it is at least 2x. I know a lot of people that stopped buying their games new, but wouldn't buy them used unless they were from Gamestop (so basically no grey market, e.g. ebay or craigslist), because it was more convenient. In some cities, Gamestop had some many stores, that they had to compete between themselves.

I think it makes sense that video games shouldn't be resold. Do you think you should be able to resell a movie ticket? I don't because I see the purchase of a movie ticket as the right to see a movie once. In the same way I think purchasing a game should give you a right to download a game from your account.

The argument to allow second user sales of computer games is that it drives first user sales.

When a game costs $50 and I can't get any of that money back when I've finished playing the game I need to think really carefully before buying it. If I know I can get some money back by selling the game it makes it easier for me to buy it.

> I don't because I see the purchase of a movie ticket as the right to see a movie once.

So, Netflix should only allow one person to watch the screen at a time, and everyone in the room watching the tv show needs to purchase an account, or maybe a pay-per-view watch?

> The argument to allow second user sales of computer games is that it drives first user sales.

Digital games have their own benefits — sales. If games can be resold, one person may buy a game and then sell it to another person. With non resealable games, both of the people in the above example would buy the game later in a sale. Sales are one of the best uses of price discrimination; practically everyone gets to play a game eventually if they want to, but those who especially want to can pay more.

> So, Netflix should only allow one person to watch the screen at a time, and everyone in the room watching the tv show needs to purchase an account, or maybe a pay-per-view watch?

I don’t see how my statement implies this. Single use tickets and subscriptions services are different things.

I think there are many more counter examples than supportive to your argument here:

- should you be able to resell a book?

- resell a CD?

- board game

- lego

- badminton racket

_ad nauseum_. the idea of a movie ticket, is that it provides a closed-in-time temporal experience. The movie screens at those given times in a theatre and then never there again (be it months or whatever post-release). A video game is an experience made whenever wherever a person wants.

Think of it like buying a movie, like it actually is. Of course you should be able to sell on used copies.

The pricing of games doesn't really work for a transferrable license. In theory you could sell a $60 copy of Grand Theft Auto and then just pass that around to every person in the world. In this scenario Rockstar makes less than <$60 and Gamestop would take a constant % cut of every license exchange. This obviously is an extreme example but my point is to point out the disproportional economics.

> The pricing of games doesn't really work for a transferrable license.

I counter this with the reality that it is working and has worked for decades. As measured by numerous thriving game developers and publishers.

I don’t even think it’s revenue maximizing for game devs to not allow transfers as I suspect that being able to transfer games to friends increases overall sales due to word of mouth, press, etc. Like how shareware increased net sales.

At least for PC games the model has switched to licensing per player. Steam doesn’t allow you to resell games and this has created an explosion of indie games and developers. Especially for small developers imagine how hard it would be if the handful of players just passed around a few copies. It essentially forces everyone to make online multiplayer games.

you could make the same arguments for books or movies on a physical medium.

Yep and that industry has also shifted to a license per viewer/screen model as seen with Netflix et al.

And 35 years ago this argument was made with video rental stores, who also rented video games. As in the same physical copy was played by (gasp!) hundreds of people.

You feel zero empathy? Good, because developers will also feel zero empathy when they strip away your ownership rights.

They're already doing it by pushing digital only consoles. Which I'm not buying. There is no evidence that they intend on protecting the interest of the customer.

Do you want to play games or own them?

Given the growing backlog of unplayed games people have on Steam these days I’m not sure which one is the answer.

Which should be illegal.

This argument is misleading because even if it’s not the full 7-9, it is certainly greater than 0. We can argue what the exact percentage is, but saying there was 0 lost sales is just as wrong as saying 7-9 lost sales.

It is slightly more, yes. However, you're going to have a hard time convincing me that it's as significant as they claim. The people buying used games don't feel that the game is worth risking the new game price. Also, it gives them more freedom to sell if they didn't like it.

The digital platform is about locking the user in no matter what. No chargebacks, no ownership, etc. Do a charge back Sony bans your console and locks you out of the games you "purchased". End of.

The middlemen are just as bad, they'll buy a game for a dollar and turn around and sell it for 20, so I dont really care either way - steam sales are saving me me much more than resales ever paid me back.

Except you can get a refund for a game from GameStop without being banned. You can sell it back for some, non-zero amount of money. If you don't like their price, you can try selling it yourself. That's a huge swath of ownership rights given up for a 15% discount.

I think it’s larger than you claim. If someone is willing to pay for new, but offered a lower price for used, they will likely pick the used copy.

And yea chargebacks aren’t a mechanism for getting a refund. They are essentially a fraud accusation. Try doing a chargeback with amazon on a large purchase and see how long your account stays in good standing.

> Try doing a chargeback with amazon on a large purchase and see how long your account stays in good standing.

That's the problem; when there's a legitimate cause for chargeback you still can't do one, because the big platform is going to retaliate.

Why would a company keep doing business with someone that went to their bank and accused that company of fraud? Making a chargeback is a serious claim of malfeasance by the company that has to then be arbitrated by the third party bank. It’s not a mechanism for getting a refund; it’s an accusation of fraud who’s remedy may include a refund.

The problem is company you bought from through the big platform did fraud, and the platform was too lazy to care.

It's fine being blacklisted from that tiny fraudulent company. It's anti-consumer when a legitimate chargeback can't be filed because some giant company processed the credit card and will bring their wrath upon you.

When you are sold a game that does not work and not refund, there is fraud. (I.e. Cyberpunk PS4) Or how there are only only games that have a really poor effort to make a non-online portion. (Those are dependent upon the PSN subscription).

The only time Sony gives money back is when their reputation is majorly hurt. Amazon from my experience doesn't tend to let it get this far. (Although they are terrible in their own right)

And console game prices already reflect this, it is priced in by design. Everyone in this business collectively chose this model together.

Well, if we put things in perspective, there's a paradox here.

If we take the case of a game that is resold a few times on average (not even 7+ times), users are waiving ownership on their own will - they're effectively renting.

In these specific conditions, a hypothetical (digital) game rental would actually serve best both the producer and the consumers.

Note that I don't make a general statement, but I'm referring to this specific case. I'm also not familiar with game rental, but at least until a few years ago, I've seen a physical shop offering it.

Buying an item, and then selling it later, is not effectively renting. It's buying an item and then selling it later. The fact that they had the option not to sell and could choose to exercise it doesn't disappear when they do choose to sell it.

In this specific case I think it's completely wrong to say that people who sell back physical copies are effectively renters.

As a kid, buying and selling games was the only way I could play most games.

Used to make good money on Prodigy. Then my dad switched us to AOL. It was too competitive for me; I went back to waiting for birthdays and Christmas.

Do you want free-to-play with micro transaction bullshit? Because this attitude is how you get f2p with mtx bullshit.

Software has a marginal cost of zero. In a supply and demand world we add arbitrary restrictions (copyright) to constrain supply to incentivize the creation of new supply.

Be careful what you wish for. You just might get it.

Also, GameStop would sell a used disc for $55 while a new disc was $60. Because they get 100% of $55. Then their associates HEAVILY pushed used on gamers who don’t give a shit and just want to save 5 bucks.

Sony has been making big story heavy games. There’s nothing wrong with a $60 narrative experience that lasts 20 to 30 hours. The Last of Us 2 is exactly that. Some gamers will buy that game on Tuesday and finish by Friday. Should GameStop sell that disc for $55 and collect all the proceeds when the game hasn’t been out for a week? Avoiding the used sale is why devs tack-on all kinds of bullshit the game doesn’t really need.

Fuck GameStop. Garbage company that has caused more harm to gamers than people will ever know.

I don't think you understand my stance. I'm all for used video game retailers. GME happens to be a pretty crappy one. But they are one that has availability of used games when a console isn't fashionable anymore. Got max payne for $4 and vanquish for under 8 a few months ago. (PS3) Sony is stopping their online store for the PS3. (Go figure)

> Also, GameStop would sell a used disc for $55 while a new disc was $60. Because they get 100% of $55. Then their associates HEAVILY pushed used on gamers who don’t give a shit and just want to save 5 bucks.

Where's the harm? Their ability to sell it for $55 is capped at the total stock they have. Dev companies can print near unlimited amounts of copies for a low price.

> Where's the harm? Their ability to sell it for $55 is capped at the total stock they have. Dev companies can print near unlimited amounts of copies for a low price.

If Sony prints and distributed TLOU2 for $5 and sells it at GameStop for $60 they make like $40 give or take. If someone plays that 30 hour masterpiece in two days they can sell it back to GameStop for like $20. GameStop can resell it for $55 and pocket every penny. GameStop has now made more money in launch week than the developer. GameStop is incentivized with every fiber of their existence to be a middleman than squeezes every dollar of profit. Game developers respond with digital, micro transactions, tack-on half-assed multiplayer, etc.

GameStop is a middle-man that seeks to prevent as many dollars as possible from going to the actual content creators.

Sony can print an infinite number of TLOU2 copies for almost nothing. They could let you download the game for less than a nickel. Obviously you can not make a game like TLOU2 if you only charge a nickel to play it.

I would have zero issues with GameStop if they limited sales of used games to games that are 1 year old. Hell I might even be fine with six months! But selling used discs less than a week from launch is despicable and I wish them nothing but pain and suffering.

GameStops entire business is predicated on being a middle man that adds zero value but extracts value for “used” sales of relatively new games. Fuck em.

I used to make games so I am extremely biased. But IMHO I am not wrong!

> If Sony prints and distributed TLOU2 for $5 and sells it at GameStop for $60 they make like $40 give or take.

Game dev company makes a sale.

> GameStop for like $20. GameStop can resell it for $55 and pocket every penny.

Gamestop and previous customer engage in a private transaction. Gamestop accepts that the game may not sell at $55

Gamestop now lists it in their supply in _used_ condition and certifies it's playablity.

> Game developers respond with digital, micro transactions, tack-on half-assed multiplayer, etc.

That has nothing to do with the Gamestop's business decisions after they sold the new copy. The studio is trying to milk it for more money post sale. (Also don't forget season passes/online fees etc)

> GameStop is a middle-man that seeks to prevent as many dollars as possible from going to the actual content creators.

They performed that original sell. I'm not sure how this is preventing content creators from making money.

> Sony can print an infinite number of TLOU2 copies for almost nothing. They could let you download the game for less than a nickel. Obviously you can not make a game like TLOU2 if you only charge a nickel to play it.

But they don't. They'll still charge you $60 (same as in store pricing) for the online download. (Even though it's less valuable and more risky about how they feel about you that day)

I still don't understand your point here. Once the content producer/retailer makes a sale.. _you_ _do_ _not_ _own_ _that_ _copy_ _any_ _more_. That's the entire sales transaction. You can't dictate a private transaction after the fact.

_clap_ _emoji_ _doesn’t_ _improve_ _your_ _argument_

Here’s a slightly amended story:

* Player A pre-orders TLOU2 for $60 from Amazon * Player A beats game, sells to GameStop for $20. * Player B buys “used” disc for $55 * $95 net player dollars have now been split $40 dev / $20 Amazon / $35 GameStop * Bonus! Player B sells game back to GameStop for $20. Who sells it to player C for $55. Repeat a few more times if you like.

You are probably happy with the story. I am not. I want content creators to be rewarded. You want middle men to extract value.

I know what first sale doctrine is and how it works. Thanks for the claps.

> That has nothing to do with the Gamestop's business decisions after they sold the new copy. The studio is trying to milk it for more money post sale.

If you would like to argue that game developers do not alter their business model in the face of used sales go ahead. Anyone who sat in meeting centered on “how can we prevent gamers from selling the disc back to GameStop in the first six months” will laugh at how wrong you are.

The good news for you is that the rise of digital distribution made the debate around used sales moot. Used sales don’t matter and GameStop’s old business model is dead. I hope they fail to pivot and their whole business goes with it.

Would you complain if each user sold directly to the next with near-zero markup?

You mean if every gamer just gave the disc to a friend to play? People do that all the time. It’s fine because it doesn’t scale as large as GameStop.

Let’s consider digital sales. Many people would like “used” sales of digital goods. (Is it really used if you make a new copy from the same, or possibly different, source bits?)

Imagine if digital licenses could be transferred instantly, for free, and infinitely. In such a world there would be a new middleman. Let’s call it WoodStop.

In this world WoodStop would offer a launcher. When you want to play a game it would acquire a license and launch the game. When you stop playing it releases the license. In this world the total number of licenses that EVER need to be sold is the peak concurrent user number. After launch week no new copies of the game ever need to be sold! In fact most games could probably sell 10% of their launch week sales and no player would ever have to wait to launch their game.

This system obviously does not work. Not with the initial licenses being sold for $60 at least.

Digital goods are _weird_. They cost upwards of $100,000,000 to create but cost less than a penny to download. And yet everyone on this HackerNews website earns a very good living producing work that can be infinitely reproduced for effectively free.

Not giving, but selling for maybe $20 average. Which scales just fine, ebay is full of games.

> Imagine if digital licenses could be transferred instantly, for free, and infinitely.

Sure, instant rental would break some things. But this isn't very far from the Netflix (DVD) or library model. If libraries stocked up on video game discs, would you be upset by that? Is everything fine if you have to wait two days between transfers of a copy?

There aren’t many physical releases for short games anymore. Any game in the 2 to 8 range probably costs $15 to $30 and is digital only. Physical releases are largely reserved for full priced titles where the overheard of manufacturing, distribution, and middle-man cut make it still worth while.

eBay has plenty of games if you want them. But as a percentage of the industry it’s not a big deal. GameStop is unique in that it was one of the top sellers of games AND their business was predicated on selling recent games as used. The incentives are perverse.

Honestly I think digital solves pricing relatively well. Everyone knows a brand new $60 game will be $30 in a few months and $20 in a year. Anyone can buy in at the price they deem appropriate. For PC if there’s a DRM-free version either at launch or after a year there’s no major concern about a game disappearing from the world.

There’s a lot of ways you can drawn the line. But they’re all arbitrary and based on what you want to min/max rather than natural or obvious laws.

Digital is weird because we make copies every time we install! Even game discs make a full copy on HDD. Afterwards the only thing a disc does is provide DRM. The game is fully installed and played from a copy on the HDD! (Because reading data from a DVD is slow as shit). And modern games have so many patches the content on a disc is worthless. The disc literally provides no value except DRM.

FWIW I would also change copyright law such that it doesn’t last 50+ years. More content should become public domain far faster. You can dig into my comment history for some recent discussion about that.

I’d like to think I’m pro-consumer and pro-creator. There is a tension there. Tricky balance. But I’m anti-middle men. Especially those who have a moat and use it to extract value while providing little to nothing in return.

They add demonstrable value to the first buyer - he got $20 back, after having gotten all the enjoyment he received from the game! And to the second buyer, who would likely get $10 back. They're more efficient than Craigslist or Kijiji, so they're able to siphon off more value to themselves, but they're popular because they provide lots of value to individual purchasers.

You say this as if people shouldn’t be able to resell information, as packaged in a disc. Does this extend to other things, would you want to prohibit used book sales for example, or cars from being resold?

The ability to resell books didn’t lead to only works the size of war and peace being sold...

This is a bad-faith reading. The GP was just pointing out one non-obvious negative side-effect of having things play out the way they used to.

The existence of a second-hand market meaning a few less sales for fresh/new/retail product seems very self evident though.

The way it shaped game design is far from obvious, and honestly fascinating

That assumes that people who buy the game used for $20 would have otherwise bought it new for $60. People who are waiting a couple months to save money are not going to buy new games.

It only assumes that a few of them would. Which seems obviously true to me. Ignoring marketing factors, which I think is fair here, the ability to resell will always decrease primary sales.

If the game was good it wouldn't be resold in first place

Not necessarily. A game can be good on the first playthrough but not have much replay value. An example of this would be the Pheonix Wright games. Once you've solved the mysteries they aren't really that fun to play again.

I am not saying anyone should of shouldn't be able to sell information. I am just saying it affected the business.

Oh btw, the next time you read a non-fiction book with a thesis that grabs your attention, but that could probably fit into a long essay.. there is probably a book editor that said it had to be X number of pages because there isn't a business in selling pamphlets.

This phenomenon affects almost all business books, which, even for some very good ones, are typically only a few pages long. In an extreme: Crossing the Chasm, which explains a powerful insght, is basically one diagram.

That is not a charitable reading. OP wasn't discussing should or ought, merely real effects. Your book analogy is flawed, considering that, for the most part, books aren't obsoleted when the new console comes out every three years.

Not really comparable. For example, the cost to produce a major book release does not scale nearly as quickly as the cost of producing a modern AAA video game.

There is a massive secondary market for cars, and those costs scale much higher than producing a AAA video game, but you don't see car manufacturers blaming used car lots?

Perhaps the game's price should reflect the cost of production, or they should limit the cost of production to what's sustainable by sales.

Also an entirely different industry, with entirely different costs, constraints, and production practices. Can we stop using oranges as we talk about apples?

While we're here though, actually, yes, car manufacturers would love it if people would stop buying used cars. In fact, there were whole lawsuits in the past about planned obsolescence, and dealers today often run promotions to get you to turn in your used "clunker" and buy a new ride.

And also, what do you think warranties, dealer repair shops , and certified pre-owned cares are about? They are trying to take a cut of that business? If we could sell our games as a "certified pre-owned" DVD then it would have made a lot more sense to make a short, tight little single player game.

You always need a car and it depreciates in quality with time. You need the game just until you finish it and every replat is of same quality. Of all the possible analogies, you could have made a better choice

What's a better analogy?

> Most people don't realize this but GameStop was actually very bad for console game developers. Games were often resold, with each time no revenue going to the developer. I worked on a popular Xbox / PS3 game that was resold like 7-9 times on average. Our marketing people figured that GameStop made a lot more money on the game than the developer.

I'm more willing to pay $X for a game if I know I can probably sell it for $Y when I don't want it anymore. Digital store games don't have the same value for me, I can't sell the games later, and depending on the system, might have a big hassle transferring them to a different system if/when the one I have goes south.

Book publishers (and authors) don't get anything when I buy from a used bookstore, or borrow a book from a friend either. Neither does a cookware manufacturer get anything if I buy used pots and pans from a thrift shop.

Right, but in that model you got a couple dollars, game stop gets like 5x and the developer loses a sale that would be 10-20x.

Books cost tens of thousands of dollars to make and games cost tens of millions. There would be no video game business like the one we know if they were sold the same way as books. Think about it a second-- your PlayStation game is sold on a piece of media that is proprietary. Are your books sold on proprietary paper made specially difficult to copy?

Gamestop certainly wouldn't pay enough for me to sell to them; I'd rather sell or give to a friend, or sell on a marketplace for somewhere between Gamestop's buy and sell prices. Most of the independent used game shops have tighter spreads as well.

This past year, I bought Animal Crossing for the Switch; even though I was pretty sure I wouldn't like it. As expected, I didn't like it, but I had a friend who wanted it, and I could mail it to them. That's a "lost sale" in video game accounting; but if it was tied to my switch, I would have never bought it, and my friend wasn't planning to buy it, but is thrilled to have it.

A book doesn't need to be intentionally made difficult to copy, because in its natural form, it's a lot of effort to copy. There's not enough money to be saved by copying a book to make it worthwhile, except for maybe textbooks.

Arcade manufacturers don't get a cut of the quarters put into a machine either (well, maybe they do for some of the games that now need an online connection to run).

It is not true that GameStop is bad for developers. The ability for gamers to sell games enables gamers to stretch their dollar further and to buy more games.

In an environment where selling is not possible gamers lock their available dollars up with the top tier of expensive AAA games and there's less sales opportunity for the rest of the market.

Aren't we lucky the industry "solved" the problem of consumer ownership rights by removing them completely. I'm glad "developers" (i.e. large corporate entities that are mostly profiting from these sales) are benefiting from this arrangement rather than the majority of the gaming community (consumers).

What does that have to do with gamestop? Anyone is free to sell a physical game they no longer want, at gamestop, ebay, craigslist, directly to a friend, etc. Same thing with books.

In fact, this was exceeding common before gamestop even existed! Gamestop did not invent used game sales!!

We didn't have gamespot in the SNES or NES era when I was a kid. My parents didn't have much extra money, nor did any of my friends parents and new games were absurdly expensive. In the life of my SNES my parents only purchase three games new, all JRPGs. Of my friends, most probably purchased less than that new. However, we'd be at one of the local second hand stores, swap meets, or pawn shops all the time to buy or sell games. We'd borrow and trade for each other's games. We played so many games without buying anything new.

If anything I think gamestop actually decreased used game sales because they made used games more expensive, and new games are cheaper today (adjusted for inflation) and games in general are much higher quality and easier to vet if you'd like them before playing.

Seems like the goal should be to make games people want to replay for years instead if resell. I’m not a hardcore gamer, but I have dabbled on most platforms and all I still own are my NES, SNES, and N64... and all the games I ever bought for them, because from Metroid to Wave Runner to Ken Griffey Jr Baseball to any Zelda game they are a blast to replay solo or with friends. Nintendo seems to be able to develop games that resonate with people as opposed to being flashes in the pan.

Most people don't realize this, but libraries are actually very bad for writers. Books are often lent out dozens of times, with no new revenue for the writers.

Why is that bad? Writers need to make money on every single sale. If they can't, books will have to get longer and longer, to make it harder to finish reading them during a library checkout interval.

A lot of those problems go away if you just buy everything you're going to read directly from the kindle store.

Perfect analogue here.

I suspect the people who bought the used copies before haven't become full priced customers. There are a lot of other free or cheap gaming options.

Instead it's probably closer to a price bump for the people who did sell their games, as they can no longer do so.

Isn't this like arguing libraries are terrible for authors?

used game sales (as well as used sales of all other media) have always existed. this was not a cause of any problem for console game developers until around 2005 or so. the mid 2000s switch to the "next gen" platforms caused a lot of shittiness for gaming. mostly from publisher greed due to the potential for mass profits, and the increased cost of developing at higher fidelity. games were originally for a more niche audience, used to focus more on difficulty over "content" in order to get replay value and lifespan. but if you lower the difficulty you can hopefully get more players experiencing all of your "content", and hopefully you can get them to buy some more after they complete the main part of your game.

Same problem with libraries in my opinion.

I am not making a moral judgement, I am saying that the shape of the business affects the quality and the style of the art.

Movie theaters are dying and it seems like they may be replaced by streaming services like Netflix. The truth is, for all streamers pay they probably won't end up paying as much as theaters. And it is not clear any of them currently make money. What if the model that really makes money is YouTube, and a lot of classic expensive movies are going to be replaced with mediocre user generated content that is extremely profitable to stream? That may sound crazy, but think what happened to radio?

I am not seriously arguing that I know what will happen, but you just have to understand that when there is a good buisiness for high quality, you tend to get quality.

> The truth is, for all streamers pay they probably won't end up paying as much as theaters.

I feel like your average $200M movie could be made for $100M and not be harmed all that much.

> What if the model that really makes money is YouTube, and a lot of classic expensive movies are going to be replaced with mediocre user generated content that is extremely profitable to stream?

Then tons of money will flow into creating youtube content, and competition will provide a bounty of high quality content.

> That may sound crazy, but think what happened to radio?

This is a good example of how things shouldn't be mediocre. TV shows aren't lower quality than radio shows, once they got some momentum going.

I mean, yeah? That's how the first sale doctrine works?

If you don't want people to resell your game, then make a shittier game. Or something. I'm not really sure what it is you're actually complaining about.

Is that why games have gotten shorter? I'm from the NES - PS1 era of gaming where games would regularly take 60+ hours to play through.

FFVII is still one of my all time favorites and is a good example of that. I think the first real fast game I played through was Metal Gear Solid. I'd rent, then buy if I liked it back then, and I played through all of Metal Gear Solid in something like 2 or 3 days. It was the first game I enjoyed that I did not buy, because I beat it while renting it.

It seems to me that you're mostly talking about RPGs. I can't think of any NES-PS1 platforming/shooter/action games that had 60 hours worth of content.

If you look at today's RPGs, they're still _really long_. It is expected that most players who play Persona 5 Royal will take over 100 hours to complete it, which is pretty wild considering it's not a 'grinding game'--players aren't taking that long because they're fighting the same enemies repeatedly hoping for a rare item to appear. There really is 100 hours' worth of contents.

FFVII was used as an example because the re-release is 3 games, and each game is considered long for today's standards.

They're adding a ton of content, though.

I think there's a bit of bias in the games you played. There have been externalities affecting game design since the NES.

Early NES games were modeled (or ported) after arcades, which incentivized you to put in a quarter, play a handful of minutes, then put in a quarter to continue. This didn't translated well at home. So game designs moved away from that format.

When movie rental places started offering games (late NES early SNES days) they started making games take longer than a rental period to beat (2-3 days). One well known example is the monkey puzzle in the Lion King game [1]. I distinctly remember renting NES games and beating them in a few days before returning them. Specifically, one of the later Mega Man games. Granted, I owned other Mega Man games so I was familiar with the format. I still would have loved to play that game over and over, but I only rarely was able to buy games.

[1] https://www.thegamer.com/lion-king-remaster-monkey-level-con...

When console games started selling for $59.99 (or more), I found it difficult to justify purchasing most single player games unless they really were jaw-droppingly amazing because the hours to dollars ratio started becoming very low.

Meanwhile a multiplayer game - whether it be a MMORPG or a FPS, would net you countless hours of entertainment.

> When console games started selling for $59.99 (or more)

So last century? Big single player 16 bit games were $80usd (e.g. Phantasy Star II) and $59.99 was not unusual for run of the mill licensed or sports games.

https://i.redd.it/ikerxbqipf821.jpg

It's amazing that 59.99 survived as a standard price for games as long as it did.

People look at me like I'm crazy when I tell them 59.99 for a game is a bargain compared to the amount of value you get with modern titles. I remember buying Nintendo and Sega games for the same price. Magazines only covered the biggest games, so the most informed you could be as a consumer is based on how cool the box art was, and most could be finished in an afternoon once you figured out the cheap mechanics designed to force you to start over.

> Meanwhile a multiplayer game - whether it be a MMORPG or a FPS, would net you countless hours of entertainment.

Not always. Consider that there are now so many the pool of potential co-players is spread among many. And servers don't stay up forever. As a patient gamer I usually miss the first wave. Then you're at a big disadvantage in skill or level.

And frankly there are so many jerks online that I prefer single player even if it means moving on to other games more often.

We're obviously remembering different NES games.

The NES games I remember could generally be beaten in no more than an hour, if you knew how to actually do it without dying 1000 times.

A good warpless speedrun time on Super Mario Brothers is about 19 minutes.

If warps are allowed, it's under 5.

Legend of Zelda? 27 minutes

Ninja Gaiden? 12 minutes

It's a bit absurd going off of speed runs is a way to accurately identify a game's normal play length.

I think all the games I had were 60+ hours, but I just liked JRPGs more than most genres.

FFVIII was picked not only because it was one of my favorites (FF1 too, SMB3, ...), because the remake today has turned it into 3 games, and even then those 3 games seem long by today's standards.

To be noted the famous term "Nintendo hard", which indeed... doesn't indicate that Nintendo games would be typically finished quickly (at least, without considerable skill) :-)

Interestingly, based on the Wikipedia page¹, the historical difficulty of the Nintendo games is quite nuanced.

¹=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_hard

What games do you play these days?

I have the opposite experience - I feel buried in 60+ hour games I want to play and feel like games could be shorter.

There's a bit of difference between an NES and as PSX, which came out a full 2 generations and 12 years later.

The NES didn't have any way of saving, for instance.

The two have about much in common as a PSX and an Xbox1.

Zelda II the Adventure of Link had a save feature. I thought Kirby's dreamland did as well. There were a number of games that had save files although of course many did not include the needed hardware on their carts.

FWIW, the SNES also had no storage, and saves were in the carts. Not until the N64 did Nintendo ship a device with fungible, non-cart storage.

Most NES games had a way of saving, except the earliest NES games.

Most of them had codes you'd type in that was a save point. Many had actual save states on the cartridge.

The earlier games got around not having a code by having a secret early on the game that was revealed later on in the game so you could skip all of the parts you previously played.

I wouldn't consider codes a save. They often loss state.

Basically just an encoding of "start at level X with Y lives". Maybe not even lives.

There were only 54 NES releases with actual, battery based saves, out of 716 officially released and licensed titles (and heaven knows how many bootlegs).

So, "most" is an overbid.

Well, most of the ones I wanted to play at least. ^_^

Yep, they were pretty short, and a lot of them had no save feature so had to be finished in one sitting (unless your parents let you leave it running and just unhook the coax cable so they could watch TV). I remember going to a local game store that would let you try out used games in the store to verify that they worked, and I actually beat a game at the store.

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