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Comment by ryan-allen | Hacker News Reader

Unfortunately for you, the game's industry is slowly and inevitably moving towards personal subscription based purchases.

This is slowly driving down the price of games (which is a good thing), and hopefully it'll lead to higher revenues for publishers so (the good ones) can continue to make more and better games.

More money for publishers and cheaper games for individuals? I think it's pretty win-win. The second hand game market really short changes the publishers, and it's very expensive to make a top title!

Imagine how much Portal 2 cost Valve to make, was it worth it?

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>Unfortunately for you, the game's industry is slowly and inevitably moving towards personal subscription based purchases.

It's my guess that this model will work until the first major publisher, for whatever reason, collapses - or simply stops bothering with providing access to older games. Then people will realize how insane and retarded this entire system of "paying for access" is. Same goes for cloud computing, by the way.

Besides, you are confusing publishers and developers. Valve is a rare case where both are one and the same, making them a very weird exception, but in general, direct distribution is bad for publishers (which is a good thing). It's really the same as with the (major) labels.

>Imagine how much Portal 2 cost Valve to make, was it worth it?

Valve is also a rare case in that they still make games worth playing. Most of the rest of the industry is a sea of bland, uncreative genericness with fancy graphics. I acknowledge Valve for this, but I still refuse to pay for access to games. I want a copy that plays where I want, whenever I want, and that still works three decades from now.

Until this insanity stops, I hoist the black flag. Yarr.

You should check out the roaring indie game scene. The Humble Indie bundle (http://www.humblebundle.com) has given me spectacular gameplay for very little money. (No, I don't pay pennies for the bundle).

I know a bit about and highly respect the indie scene. They are, in my opinion, the future of game development in general. I paid for the second bundle, and was highly entertained for quite a while. It's a very cool project.

Slightly offtopic, but Wolfire has also written one of my favorite articles/blog posts as of recent, as well - http://blog.wolfire.com/2009/07/linear-algebra-for-game-deve...

Thanks for the link! The concept from part 3 of treating the axes as unit vectors that default to (1, 0) and (0, 1) but can be rotated at will really helped bridge the gap in my mind between rotating vectors "manually" and using matrix multiplication.

I love buying these bundles to support the charities and the developers even though I never really play the games. But it does seem to me that there is more innovation occurring in the indie space than from the mainstream developers.

How about this alternative: "Until this insanity stops, I don't purchase their product, and instead buy indy games or games from publishers that support my policies". Voting with your wallet will encourage these policies in developers.

If you don't adopt this approach, you look more like the normal "entitled, rationalising pirate", a story I see regularly going something like:

1) I want games that aren't just fancy graphics! Give me gameplay, and I'll pay! 2) Oh, so there are these games now. Well, now I want easy access! Give me downloads, and I'll pay! 3) Hold on, I can download? Well, now they're too expensive! Make them cheaper and I'll pay! 4) So iOS games are about $4.99 for a high quality title? Well, that's still to expensive! Make them cheaper, and I'll pay! 5) Oooo, $0.99. Well, that was published by EA, sooo - use a publisher that doesn't use DRM on any title, ever, even back in time and I'll pay! n + 1) Insert new demand here, then I'll pay!

The result here being that, actually, said person didn't actually want any of these things. They just want excuses to rationalise away their taking the work of a group of people that they evidently do want (otherwise, why bother pirating it) without any kind of remuneration so they can do those crazy greedy things like feeding their family and raising their kids.

> The second hand game market really short changes the publishers, and it's very expensive to make a top title!

No, it doesn't.

"The second hand car market really short changes the auto manufacturers."

The car-intellectual property comparison is dubious when the MPAA is comparing downloading movies to carjacking, and it's equally dubious in this situation.

When you're sold a DVD in a game on it, you're buying the physical DVD to the same degree to which you're buying the wrapper when you buy a candy bar - as a container of the useful purchase. When you're buying a car, you're buying a car.

Your analogy doesn't really show anything. The candybar is consumed on use. Software isn't, but they're trying to make it so.

A better analogy is "the second hand book market really short changes the book publishers (or authors)".

If you're comparing the experience of playing a video game to a physical good, yes, but really you're paying for the right of use to interactive content. Comparing 'owning' a video game to owning a car is fallacious.

I think you'll find that when you look at car ownership rights and digital content ownership rights there is completely different legislation and laws for both, and with good reason.

The physical media distribution of a game has merely been a cost effective delivery method. If publishers could distribute their games directly to your device over the internet or whatever they'd have done that as a first option.

If the contract of sale determines that your license is non-transferrable then, well, that's that, if the publisher can enforce it. It's the way things are going for digital content, get used to it!

This is definitely a better analogy, but I actually agree that the second-hand games market is hurting the publishers, particularly the legitimised selling of pre-owned titles by bricks and mortar retailers.

There are always going to be x% of people who will get hold of the game for free (and x is going to rise as the means of obtaining them gets easier). So let's say 1,000,000 people are interested in playing 'Super Mega Hooper!' and 500,000 will find a way to obtain this for nothing. Before the dramatic rise in pre-owned sales, 500,000 would buy it from a retailer, and 500,000 lots of cut would go to the publisher. Now, only - say - 250,000 lots of cut go to the publisher with the other 250,000 people giving more of a cut to the retailer.

I'd say that over the last ten years of so the average price of a full-price game has remained reasonably constant given inflation, and the cost to produce (AAA) games has risen. Therefore: net loss to publishers using the traditional retail model.

(Of course, there has been plenty of opportunity for publishers to move away from the traditional model, but I'd argue that the culture of buying pre-owned is definitely having an affect on them.)

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