The Real Cost of Used Games
gamesindustry.biz
gamesindustry.biz
I like the changes the industry is going through now - like crowd-sourcing. Gamers taking back the market from non-gamers or at least cutting out a substantial niche for themselves again.
Speaking of wasting money and developer time. Do you know what's a complete and counterproductive waste of money? DRM. And you want more of it.
But the same could be said of used books, used furniture, used anything!
The only difference is that, with games, it is now technically feasible (I'm sure IKEA would love it if you couldn't resell their furniture second-hand, so everyone had to buy directly from them).
It really angers me that this approach is even legal.
Perhaps a way that game developers can combat the sale of used games undercutting their current offerings is to make games that are so good that people don't want to part with them so quickly.
While I'm sure it could potentially be a problem in high-churn stores like gamestop, most places do have a replacement policy on discs that are scratched at purchase.
We always try to buy furniture 2nd hand- for the price of a chipboard IKEA wardrobe you can normally get a big, solid wood, Victorian one which is quite likely to last a lot longer!
I myself own more second hand books than new ones.
I have a large collection of electronics books which are often expensive and electronics is only a hobby for me so it's hard to justify the cost. Sometimes you have to buy second hand books, many of the definitive Z80 books are out of print.
I started buying second hand books as a child. I wanted books on philosophy and this was the only way I could own works about Descarte, Locke et al without begging my parents for tens of pounds (my income way about £1 a week back then). I've even come to like seeing other peoples notes in the margins. I often wonder "What are they thinking?" when they highlight different sections of the text.
Used books are very popular among students, though, but that is once again something different.
-If gamestop really is strongly pushing used games over new, that's messed up and definitely hurts game developers and enriches gamestop(the useless middleman). It causes titles to have less longevity, which means studios end up caring less about time-less quality and more about releasing sequels.
-Piracy and used game sales have had negative effects on the quality of games. This is pretty obvious, many games now require an always on internet connection to play, many games now do DLC and micro-transactions, less single-player games, no LAN in starcraft 2 :(, less AAA pc games.
I think the model is fine if it's like what steam games do. You have an account, and purchase a non-transferable non-revokable license to play the game. Of course the lock-in with steam isn't great. Ideally there would be a "global" service that tracks games you've purchased in different digital stores.
The games he's talking about are sold in DVDs, and Gamestop can't exactly clone them, so yes, there's wear and tear. Pure digital game sales are usually not resealable anyway.
I think the economic incentives aren't so negative. There are many games I would not want to sell at any price that is less than for the game sold new (perhaps in the bargain bin, with age); the replay value is just too high. Good games with replay value are exactly the games I want to buy, and they also happen to be the games I wouldn't want to sell.
An anti-used game policy would really help (a) linear, low-interactivity experience-based games, and possibly (b) duds. I'm not a fan of either.
If you don't like what a company is doing, don't buy the product.
Only recently have publishers started introducing schemes where you get a first purchase unlock code/card.
Used games don't strike me as the cause of game variety disappearing, but instead the increasingly large amount invested in each individual project, discouraging all but the safest options.
Playing the violin on behalf of the indies seems disingenuous too, many of them publish via Steam or online stores of some description, where a used market can only exist if explicitly enabled.
Second hand games allow a user to buy a new game with the safety net of selling it if they hate it. Preventing me from selling a game I hate means I'm less likely to risk buying new games.
Surely that means experimental games are less likely?
Also, dear publishers, if you prevent me selling the game, it's price for me has just increased by the resale value. So don't be surprised if I buy less games.
Personally I don't see any creativity lacking in the AAA market. They've been delivering some of the best games they have ever delivered in the last couple of years. They're not known for "risky," games. Risk to them is a new title without a number on the end of its name. The kinds of games they're interested in developing are action-oriented experiences with long story arcs and mascot characters. I still buy plenty of these games and enjoy them quite a bit.
The only thing that the strong presence of a second-hand market indicates to me is that price is an issue with consumers. New AAA titles are walking into the $100 range which will limit the number of games I'll buy in a year drastically... which if I'm not the only one with a limited budget that thinks this way... could only mean that the industry will see more "hit" and "miss" behavior... but without any real numbers it's just speculation, isn't it?
I just hope the console makers aren't using this same speculation to drive the decision to include new anti-used-games features in the next generation of consoles.
The important take-away point for me (which I've never seen expressed before) is that so long as publishers are fearful of the pre-owned market, they will spend (waste?) development resources on features whose sole purpose is to further retention and disincentivise reselling games. Some of those features will be fun, but they will potentially alienate some gamers who feel they're no longer getting good value in their game. Witness how the First-Person Shooter genre has transitioned from story-based campaigns with a small multiplayer component into a far more multiplayer-centric experience, with a short single-player campaign which a lot of gamers simply ignore. Similar things have happened in other genres too.
Where I find myself disagreeing with Richard is that because GameStop have ‘used the nuclear option’ already, publishers and console manufacturers should do the same; when your customers are the collateral in this exchange, they won't thank you for it. We're also in a period of upheaval with videogame retail (I don't know how well GameStop is doing, but certainly in the UK high street videogame retailers are dying). Maybe in a few more years’ time the problem will solve itself, with the majority of customers choosing to buy direct from online retailers; the tactics that GameStop employs that have such a dramatic effect can't be employed when you're selling second-hand games through Amazon.
I can't think of a good interim solution off the top of my head, maybe there ought to be more stringent laws to prevent retailers from pushing used stock over new stock, or that they're prohibited from selling used stock at more than a certain percentage of the cost of new. These ideas probably have holes, but I'd rather see something along these lines pushed than see consumers be punished for somebody else's war.
"The variety of games out there is shrinking" - that's not true! There are more and more varied games out there than ever before, thanks to the App Store, Steam, XBOX Live and Wii Shop.
Any system that implements a "no used games" hardware option will see a resultant drop in sales. When we hear that MS and Sony are looking at less powerful next gen consoles and selling at cost rather than loss then they are not going to want to risk taking a hit on sales, especially if only one or the other does it. If they both do it then that is dangerosuly close to collusion.
There is a great documentary (from Arte I think) about this, cannot find links right now.
i watched a talk by the head of analytics at zynga, talking about how awesome their analytics system is, and how much they learned from it. for example, after a lot of research, they found out that people don't like clicking for no reason. thanks to that promethian leap of insight, there is now at least a little bit of attention being paid to how to get people to want to click things.
most of the internet is funded by advertisement. we use the massive computing resources at our disposal to learn everything we can about people, not to help them out, but to find out the best way of convincing them they'll be happier if they had the New Thing - which is clearly superior to the Old Thing, and (unlike Old Thing, Older Thing, and Thing Beta) will make them happy.
of course, this is a better use of computing resources than, say, wall street, which is computing, to fractions of a cent, just how much of other people's money a room full of wildly shouting cocaine-fueled neanderthals will become convinced that other rooms of testosterone-addled meatheads will be convinced that the entire assortment of powerful computers, suit-wearing sociopaths, and useful idiot politicians that control the world economy will become convinced about its collective conviction about the upper limit any of its members is willing exchange for an agreement to exchange three thousand pounds of pork for $2.25 a pound, in three months time.
oh yeah, and all of them make about 100 times as much as the guy who actually grows the pigs for a living, who is almost as naive as the guy who wants to make the game fun, regardless of how much money it makes him.
Unfortunately making good games is a full-time job, and people who don't make money don't eat. Your viewpoint seems too simplistic.
If the games industry switches to DRMed electronic delivery (as per the App store) then we'll probably end unable to resell, but I won't be like you're selling me a physical object specifically sabotaged to prevent being passed on.
Too many game studios are looking for one thing and one thing only: Blockbusters. They don't care about things that are merely profitable.
This criticism of the used game overlooks a lot of other factors. One is that games have a vanishingly short shelf-life because the producers want to clear the deck for another title. If the studios don't value the games three months out, why should the consumers? It's stale. Either sell it or throw it out, that's what they're telegraphing here.
this is very true - and it's a completely absurd relic of a time when only a tiny fraction of a civilization's resources could be used for anything other than agriculture.
most of our economic systems were developed to deal with scarcity that no longer exists - to insist that people must work if they are to be allowed to eat is just as silly as insisting that people must work if they are to be allowed to breathe.
And the point of the article is that if the incentives of money guys get subverted, their decisions will get subverted and that subversion which will trickle down the entire production chain.
Used games spread the very high cost of games across several people. Do you think anyone would buy £60 games if they knew they don't have the option of selling them after they've finished them? It also lets people sell games they end up hating.
Make games cheaper, bring back demos and used games will be less popular.
Because my answer is selling your game on the sites that allow people to buy a new game as easily, or easier than used one. Preferably add value and sell it with soundtrack, making-of, sth like this, and without DRM. Just like CD Projekt RED did with Witcher 2. Somehow they've sold over million copies of single player, then-PC-only game.
They even got sued by their box publisher over disabling DRM in every version of Witcher 2, when DRM prevented people to play the damn game.
This shows whose interest it is to prevent people from playing games they buy.
I simply wouldn't buy games at a $59 price point if it didn't include the ability to trade or even just let friends borrow.
I really, really love games, but my preference has shifted toward indie and 2D. There are exceptions (Fallout 3), but most AAA console titles impart too much of a 'Michael Bay' experience and aesthetic for my tastes.
The real cost of used games is the damage that is being
wrought on the creativity and variety of games available
to the consumer
Any measure to prevent the ability to play 'used games' will be reverse engineered and circumvented. Combined with the first-sale doctrine, this will always allow the reselling and playing of used games. If you don't like it, why don't you, you know, think of a creative solution?
On the other hand most of the PC gamers buy games that are activated on Steam, Origin or Battle.Net and that causes the resell value of the plastic disc to fall to Zero
The bookstores that don't are in many cases going bankrupt.
I agree DRMed electronic copies cannot be resold, which is good insofar as it may represent a disintermediation of the sales process and cost saving to the customer -- but if EA wants $60 from me for what it used to get for selling me a disk I could sell, lend, or give away, then that's not right.
I have no objection with EA wholesaling games to me.
I don't think my soon-to-arrive daughter will find as much fun in Pac Man or Space Invaders as I did, but I'm quite sure the arms race in game development cost really got out of hand. Maybe the industry should focus on games they could sell for a profit for less than US$20.
With everyone carrying at least one internet-connected PS3 equivalent in their pockets, I don't see a bright future for consoles anyway.
...just like most of this article then. I doubt many dispute the outcome (decline in game quality, trend towards multiplayer or DLC), but the author hasn't even shown a correlation let alone cause.
FWIW I don't agree with the rebuttal quoted here. I would simply point to the same trend in Hollywood movies. Greed and risk aversion have done the damage, not piracy or second hand sales.
If a store buys back a used game at $5 and sells it for $20 they make $15.
I forget the exact break down now, but I remember a new blockbuster brought in something like $5 a copy to the store, as the publisher, studio, console manufacturer, etc all need to be paid out of the new title's sale.
As a result they sell used titles very aggressively, selling used copies for only a couple of dollars less than new and actively persuading customers to choose a used copy instead of new.