Do Games Industry Folks Buy Games New or Used? 79
Gamasutra has another of its usually-interesting Question of the Week features up, and this one deals with the issue of used games. The question : Do Games Industry Professionals Buy Their Games New or Used? A lot of anonymouse answers this week. From one mouse: "I buy both used and new games, depending upon what the price differential is, and availability (old games are hard to find 'new'). I think the used games market is good for the industry for two reason: * it increases the value of game--people buy games knowing that they can get money when they sell it back, and * the game gets greater exposure--the purchaser of the used game might not otherwise have played it. This does not mean that people have the right to steal our products by copying them, reselling the originals, and playing the copy. But we made a product and sold it to them. It is theirs. They are free to resell it, the same way you're free to resell your car, house, or furniture. - Anonymous, Microsoft"
Huh? (Score:5, Funny)
For those who make games. (Score:5, Insightful)
There's the same split in society. People who buy it immediatly, people who wait for reviews, and people who wait for price drops, there's no rule for the industry or for the game. And btw we go "ooh" and "ahhh" to tech demos. We have guys who buy every EA sports game, we have guys who buy none. We have guys who play Smash brothers every day at lunch. We have guys who haven't owned a video game system in years, but plays board games weekly. We have magic fans, we have Warhammer 40000 fans.
However the best thing about my company is we get all that here. We can ask each other what's good or not. If we get sick of a game we sell it to someone else at the company, and there's a whole gamer culture here.
But the simple answer is we do the same in the industry as outside the industry. The only bonus is you work with gamers so instead of having to go to ebay, you can trade internally, get similar prices and get it from reputable sources rather then some guy on ebay, but in the end it's not different then regular society except everyone here is likely a gamer in some way.
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I don't think we're any different than j
They left one out. (Score:5, Funny)
Hideo Kojima
Re:They left one out. (Score:5, Funny)
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Mario Mario
I buy new (Score:1)
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It's probably some mild form
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Mild?
Good lord, man, you're every game industry worker's dream!
You have to be kidding. You preorder everything? There's no way...
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the longer you wait, the more you need 'used' (Score:3, Insightful)
Lots of reasonable people, a few whiners (Score:5, Insightful)
There is a lot of very reasonable commentary there. And a few whiners. The whiners are more fun.
From Anonymous at the University of Texas [gamasutra.com], "Perhaps a moratorium on the sale of used copies of a title within the first month of its release." If you have a serious problem with used sales in the first month of release, your game is probably either too short, or just plain sucks. My friends with tigher budgets note that they typically have to what two or three months before the find used copies of game they want available.
I'm also fond of Pierre-Luc Lachance at Ubisoft's response [gamasutra.com], "We can only try to sensitize people to the ethical integrity and fairness of buying new, first hand games." Ethical integrity? I'm curious about Pierre-Luc's view of the ethical integrity of purchasing a used car or a used book. Idiot.
This anonymous comment takes the cake: [gamasutra.com]
Again, I'm curious if anonymous has ever bought or sold a used car, CD, or book. Have the car, book, and music industries been forced to online distribution by resales? ("Now downloading Subaru Impreza 2006. 3% complete. Downloading at 6.02 zeptoatoms/second.") Also, exactly what "hard handed" tactics have used game stores engaged in? How do they force me to buy and sell used games? I've never been "forced" to sell them a game. When I buy a new game, they do sometimes offer me a used game ("You can save five bucks on a used copy"), but that's hardly a hard sell. They've never refused to sell me a new copy when one was available (which I usually do, as it's worth $5 to me to get a shiny new copy).
There is a subset of the video game industry who are giant whiners. This isn't some conspiracy against video games; it's the free market. Resale of copyright protected works existed for hundreds of years before your industry even existed. Expecting to get some special protection makes you piss-poor capitalists.
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I understand you're making light of the subject, but really, the car analogy is totally broken in this case.
As to CDs, there's more to it than you make it seem. First, the cost of producing a music CD is far less than the cost of producing a top-tie
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So foresight in avoiding a negative outcome is unwanted? What's the point of critical thinking if we don't use it to improve our situation and/or prevent a decline? Is this the same logic you use in your personal life? If, for example, you're on a mountain bike looking down a cliff, do you ride over the
Re:Lots of reasonable people, a few whiners (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm a gamer, I've been gaming since pong, and I still buy tons of games. And I sell some back to the store, so I can buy more games. You know which ones I sell back? The ones that SUCK.
If it's got no replay value, if it's got a crappy story, or a crappy interface, I sell it back. Why not? They don't care enough to make it fun, I don't care if they lose money on a new user.
On the other hand, I have computers and game systems that I painstakingly maintain so I can keep playing the older games that I love. And I buy new copies when the media dies, or when they release an "updated" version that's compatible with newer hardware and drivers.
So here's your wake up. Good products make good money. Good books are profitable, even when tons of used copies end up in the used bookstores, even though one person may buy the book and loan it to ten other people. That's what it means to be a good product.
The same goes for games; one guy buys a copy and loans it to ten friends. If it sucks, those friends give it the hell back, and he trades it for a new game. But if it's good, they go get their own copy, and if it's really good, there AREN'T any used copies. That's the way it works.
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So, your argument is that games that fail because NO ONE BUYS them, are the fault of stupid consumers rather than poor design? I know it goes against your indie l33tness, but just because you think it's cool, doesn't mean it somehow "deserves" to be a best seller. Quality niche games are often quite sucessful. But if you don't play to the consumer, then who the hell are you making the game for?
And I know people keep revisiting linux gaming. I just put my job on the line recom
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It's not a question of fault, it's a question of pragmatism. The laws of the market (such as they are) are no more the consumer's fault than they are the fault of the producer.
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Economics, which you don't seem to know anything about, states that demand and supply are intimately connected, and that, and this is important, demand will create supply. If people want it, someone will find a w
Re:Lots of reasonable people, a few whiners (Score:5, Insightful)
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At GameStop, as well, if you buy a used game, you can return it for a full refund within 7 days if you don't like it. So not only is it $5 off, you actually get an opportunity to get your money back if you don't like it. If I'm still unc
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You are comparing two different things. Cars are not the same as books and video games or other media. Automobiles, and all machinery for that mater, have a limit life span and they cannot be copied for less than the original manufacturing cost. Purchasing a used car is purchasing something that has already had a portion of it's possible usage already expended, this is not true of used media. The content
Ye olde good software (Score:1)
eBay (Score:3, Interesting)
1) eBay gives you essentially the "real" value of the game.
2) Amazon used&new will (rarely) give you a better deal than eBay and (usually) give you a higher confidence in not getting screwed over.
I've found that eBay and Amazon used&new will typically have used stuff at similar prices. And always* significantly lower than going to a physical store.
*Unless the game JUST came out.
Always new for me (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm a game programmer and I always buy games new, unless it's an older game and I can only find it used. The money difference just isn't worth it for me to justify when it means not only getting a used product but also that I'm sending my money towards Gamestop/EB instead of a fellow developer.
I am often surprised at how many of my co-workers buy games used.
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I'm a professional programmer too, (although I work in factory automation.) Let's face it, the product that our industry produces is, when you get down to the bits and bytes, information. Ultimatly, information has value and a shelf life. I get bothered when my peer information workers, wether they are programers, writers, musicians, screenwriters, actors, ect, insist that the general public pays inflated values for information.
Not every
Either works. (Score:2, Insightful)
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Before I was a game programmer (Score:1)
I quit recently though. I just can't get past the feeling that the once thriving wealth of audacious ideas and awe has become a barren wasteland of production devices and factory mass-marketism. Yes yes I know, don't worry. I'll do one better *myself*, even if it takes me a 100 years. I'll enjoy working on that, at least..
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I can see why you would want to see what others have done, to see what works and what doesn't. But how does that give you brand new ideas. At worst you would create something that followed what not to do, at best you would create something that took all the good ideas and combined them into something really cool. But in neither of those ca
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Boy, aren't we critical today
To be innovative isn't all that difficult, but what makes it hard to put it in a fun game is wrapping it up in game play mechanics that work for the player. Hence my interest. If you think out of the box (experience and books aside), fantasy and innovation (and fun) come easy. Then you take it step by step, and try to see how to make it possible technically. If you start with the premise that everything is here already, you might just as well close the industry down and give
The Psychological Value of "New" (Score:5, Insightful)
I generally don't buy games when the first come out- simply because I already have a backlog of games that I need to get through as it is- so when I do go to buy a game there are generally used copies available. Most of the time though, if there is a new copy I'll buy it.
I think that there is some psychological value of having a new game- from peeling off the cellophane and cursing for hours as you try to get those stickers off the edge so you can actually open the case to the smell of freshly stamped pastic and toner from the instruction manual.
Systems like Valve's Steam make "used" obsolete (Score:3, Insightful)
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Well if you wanted to be able to sell your games that you bought on steam all you would need to do is register one account per game, then sell the account. It IS possible, as well it should be, i wouldn't be surprised to see this type of feature in the future on these new distro platforms.
If I could "unsubscribe" a game from my steam (using your steam example) subscription and then sell it to another steam use
Re:Systems like Valve's Steam make "used" obsolete (Score:4, Informative)
In other words, once you get the game, it's yours. You can't sell it used. And the more games that move to this kind of system (or to Steam itself) the fewer used games there will be in existance.
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No (Score:2)
Always buy new (Score:3, Informative)
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Diddo (Score:1)
I whole-heartedly agree with this comment.
Almost every single time I go to buy a "used" copy of a game, usually because a new copy is not available, the game is in terrible condition. I wonder if the common game stores even bother checking these things, or just acc
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I've seen a clerk reject every single game a customer brought in because the disc was scratched so they do check but I guess they have varying standards so some will accept a disc in a condition that's unacceptable to you.
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Get out more demos (Score:3, Interesting)
Frankly, I agree. These days, especially as a college student, I'm hard pressed to shell out for a $50 that got so-so reviews, only to be able to get 60% (if that) of my initial purchase by selling it used if I think it sucks. A lot of the people I know who pirate games say they do so to give it a "test drive". While they certainly could be trying to clear their conscience, I think this makes sense. The problem is that for those who do it, they usually finish the base game and have no real reason to go out and pick up the real copy at that point.
What game companies (and I mean ALL game companies) need to do is put out more demo discs. Yes, they cost money, but that would likely be offset by more new sales.
Hell, they might not even have to take a loss on it. I would gladly pay a small monthly fee (~$5) to receive a demo disc each month for games coming out in the next month or three. A level here, a video collage there, and it would really help with my decisions and picking where to spend my money. Not a small picking, either; even if all I get is a movie, I want at least 10 previews on each disc. Even a full battle from an RPG would work, as I could gauge the battle system.
The Big Three already do this, but the discs are only available for retailers and generally are only updated four times a year (if that!). A few PC Game Magazines also have this, but I've seen none for the XBox or PS2 (and I don't actively look, so I could have missed them).
With all three consoles coming online, hopefully demos will increase. I believe XBox Live already has free downloadable demos, while Nintendo (and possibly Sony) have hinted at a similar thing, which will also work with their handhelds.
People buy used because they're worried about the financial hit. As the prices of games increase (might we see $80 for MGS4?), the demand for used games will only increase.
As a developer, I buy both. (Score:2)
Certainly so-called 'ethics' doesn't come into it; I have no objection at all to people buying and selling secondhand copies of