CliffyB Thinks Used Games Are Bad, Sony is "Playing Us"

[suntt123]

"The visual fidelity and feature sets we expect from games now come with sky high costs,"

1- Don't care about visual fidelity
2- WHO'S FAULT IS THAT???

Who is this obviously insane person, and why should I care what he thinks?
Why is it that Nintendo never seems to be bothered by this stuff?

 

[UberNoodle]

And games are NOT the same as piracy. That is a poor equivalency for obvious reasons that at least one sale to the manufacturer was made. Subsequent reselling and trades are also generally via stores and shop fronts online.

Used games are EXACTLY the same as piracy. Atleast from the viewpoint of a publisher, one copy gets sold, and passed around X times in both cases.

You've missed the point. It's only 'exactly like piracy' because of a fallacious equivalency between the two which serves to toe the current corporate line. Besides, you've failed to take into account that the second hand market relies on physical product which cannot multiply exponentially. Each product sold as second hand is also legit and eligible for official support from the manufacturer. A second hand sale is a transfer of license from one party to the next. Thus the number of users remains at a 1:1 ratio. So no, these two things are NOT 'exactly alike'. Even as the publishers recognise the similarities between the two, they know that they are both worlds apart. Unless you'd like to argue that second hand sales of other product is also 'exactly the same' as piracy and counterfeiting?

 

[gamegod25]

He is right...that the current "AAA" business model is not sustainable as it is. However that is their fault for spending more than they can realistically make back, charging more for less content, charging consumers for content they already paid for, and gating off content behind online passes. Make a game people will want to buy day one and keep forever...boom...problem solved.

Pardon me if I don't shed a tear for you Cliffy with all your money you've made "despite" a healthy used/rental market out there. Not all of us have millions of dollars to spend on every game out there like you do.

 

[ObsidianJones_v1legacy]

Minecraft
FTL
Orcs Must Die 1 and 2
Audiosurf
Bastion
Torchlight
Limbo
Super Meat Boy
Braid

I can keep going, Cliffy. You know, listing indie games that had maybe no more than 30 people tops working on them (if anywhere near that many) that sold hundreds of thousands if not MILLIONS of units. All due to strength of game play and word of mouth over how fantastic these games were.

Then tell me why we need the huge budgets and whatever. It will be an enlightening conversation.

 

[gamegod25]

Does this guy just like being contrary to what people are thinking?

I mean, he says SOME reasonable things at times. But the stupid shit he says just makes him look like an egotistical nutjob.

"Assassins Creed games are made by thousands of devs."

And they're still shit Cliff.

"The visual fidelity and feature sets we expect from games now come with sky high costs,"

Uhh. Cliff didn't you say that Microsoft and Sony should open up their consoles to users and independent game makers? [http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2013-02-25-industry-turmoil-worst-since-80s-crash-says-bleszinski] The indie developers who DONT REQUIRE large costs? Oh you know what, nevermind, you said this also:

"It is up to Epic, and [Epic CEO] Tim Sweeney in particular, to motivate Sony and Microsoft not to phone in what these next consoles are going to be. It needs to be a quantum leap. They need to damn near render Avatar in real time, because I want it and gamers want it-even if they don't know they want it."

Because as we all know graphics are the most important thing above story and actual gameplay. No we need those brown and grey chest-high-walls to be photo realistic!

 

[Lunar Templar]

I know he's worked in the games industry a long time an all, but he's still managed to some how NOT know what the fuck he's talking about.

it's admirable in a way, and sad in another.

the only reason costs are so high is because of one thing they have control over, marketing, pretty much every one save a few devs have let it get so out of had we hear things like 'Dead Space needs to sell 5 million to stay viable' and this asshole is part of that problem.

If they didn't spends millions upon millions more then they needed to on marketing, for games most people have already made up there minds on no less, no one would even care about 'the evils of used games'

Actually, I don't find it admirable at all, just sad.

It's not just marketing that makes it overly expensive. Among other things, it's the idea that you need "top-tier" graphics in order to make a successful game. If a game were kick-ass in the first place, it wouldn't matter if each character had physics calculations determining where each bloody *strand* of hair should fall on their shoulders when they walk or fire a gun.

I knew I was forgetting something when I hammered that out, so thanks for the correction.

Not sure if sarcasm? Sorry if my post seemed hostile. I wasn't intending to be.

At any rate, I agree with your marketing argument as well. After all, if the overall budget were lower, it would be a lot easier to sustain the games industry. But we have so many publishers thinking that "more money spent = more profits gained, as long as every freaking game moves 5 million units," which is a completely broken idea, that we are seeing a painful learning period for the industry as a whole, I think. Ultimately, it may be the indies who benefit the most from it though, because they can tailor the requirements to a bunch of different PC systems, and nobody thinks indies have to go balls out on graphics to make a good game.

It's the same argument in a lot of ways to the one I hear that says we can't have truly meaningful, truly engrossing game narratives until we have something akin to the holodeck. What they don't get is that quality and immersion is not really dependent on superficial things. Sadly, those superficial things have been driving the games industry nigh-on forever, and we are hitting a point that it's going to kill the industry (or eat up consumer rights, a la Xbox One) if something isn't done.

wasn't sarcasm, and i took as one would take a factual correction, I really did forget about the graphics thing (cause T tend to not play games with super high end stuff cause it waste money better spent on other things)

I love the 'we can't have meaning full experiences in games till we have X-level of graphics' it makes me giggle from just how totally wrong they are. Dust; An Elysian Tale, made me cry, twice, and it, well looks like this [http://www.vgnetwork.it/images/Dust_An_Elysian_Tail/dust-an-elysian-tail-02.jpg], not exactly 'cutting edge graphics is it? And yet I care enough about the characters and world to shed tears at a couple points.

they want games to be en grossing and meaningful? Learn2write, simple as that.

 

[UberNoodle]

He is right...that the current "AAA" business model is not sustainable as it is. However that is their fault for spending more than they can realistically make back, charging more for less content, charging consumers for content they already paid for, and gating off content behind online passes. Make a game people will want to buy day one and keep forever...boom...problem solved.

Pardon me if I don't shed a tear for you Cliffy with all your money you've made "despite" a healthy used/rental market out there. Not all of us have millions of dollars to spend on every game out there like you do.

Yes, the problem as Cliffy B and others describe it is entirely circular.

 

[remnant_phoenix]

Dude....

I see your lips moving but all I hear is:
"PONCEPONCEPONCEPONCEPONCE"

Ugh never liked this dude.

Yeah. When I saw the headline I thought, "And I should care about CliffyB's opinion...why?"

He was a part of some key things in this generation, but that doesn't mean he suddenly knows everything about how the industry does and should work.

Here's my thought, CliffyB: movies and books have had second-hand markets and rental markets for decades, not to mention that you can borrow loads of books and DVDs from the library for free. A second-hand market is an inevitable part of a capitalistic society, unless you start placing sever restrictions on consumer rights and freedoms, and those things are the greatest things about capitalism.

If the industry can't handle the existence of a second-hand market, then the industry needs to adapt around it, rather than trying to undermine it.

 

[Bat Vader]

An easy solution to this would be for game publishers and developers to stop having such high budgets for games.

 

[Arslan Aladeen]

Can someone send Cliffy a link to about the half-dozen or so Jimquisition episodes Jim Sterling did on this very subject? Must be depressing for Jim to find out the type of people who need to hear his message the most clearly haven't.

 

[Proverbial Jon]

I'm totally alright with calling Cliffy B "Dude Huge."

I only buy games I'm going to want to play more than once. If I knew I would buy a game and trade it in after only a single playthrough I just wouldn't bother with such a purchase. So you better make damn good games, that's all I'm sayin'

Oh, by the way? I never played any of the Gears games more than once. Go figure.

 

[Pebkio]

The word "big" isn't exactly the right word to use for AAA games. The word you're looking for, Cliffy: Bloated.

But don't think I haven't considered the possibility that a large corporation isn't being honest or doesn't have the consumer's best interest in mind. To the contrary, that's assumption number one, but at least Sony is putting on a show, being nice about things... Microsoft employees have been nothing but massive dicks about the whole thing.

Oh, and Cliffy B can go die in a fire. I've never liked the man personally and he just LOVES telling us to put up with bad business practices so corporate asshats can get the most profit out of bloated second-rate mediocre farces. Sure, he can develop a popular game, but that doesn't mean he knows everything about the business.

 

[Salvius]

You know, I'm old enough to remember a time when a new release movie on home video was $79.95 (or more). In fact, a quick googling shows that the first movie to be deliberately priced for consumer purchase (rather than selling to, yes, rental stores) was $39.95 in 1983 (Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan). In inflation-adjusted dollars, that's $90.66 in 2012. And if you also adjust the price of the machine to play it on for inflation, it comes out comparable to the upcoming generation of consoles.

And then the prices started dropping, and profits kept going up, because more and more people would buy movies at $40, or $30, or $20, than ever did at $80. Note that they didn't even need to reduce the budgets of the films, or even their advertising budgets. All they did was drop the price.

Now, that's not really fair as a direct comparison, for any number of reasons: Movies do still have larger audiences, so perhaps volume pricing can be more effective. There's a theatrical release period (though at this point, home video is an increasingly large share of most films' profits). They make a lot of their money on overseas releases, and localizing a videogame is presumably more effort (i.e. more costly) than adding subtitles to a DVD.

Even so: Rentals, used DVDs, bloated blockbuster budgets, and even rampant piracy have all somehow failed to cause the utter collapse of the film industry. Perhaps there is *some* useful lesson that can be learned from them?

 

[bells]

Awesome... Cliff B thinks the industry needs more Stupid PR campaings like sendig fake body parts around or forcing people to "commit sins" or simply making their PR campaing in a sleazy strip club... cause that model has success and sustainability written all over it!

Lets not forget that most of the more expensive games are being blasted by games with MUCH smaller budgets and sometimes only word-of-mouth as the main engine of their PR campaign...

Dude made 1 game whose prowess was "it looked really good for it's time" and then remade the exact same game 3 more times. What was his contribution to better gaming? Chest High Walls and cover based shooting? Fuck off!!

I'll trade the entire gaming legacy of Cliff b for Telltale's walking dead, Striker Suit Zero and Super House of Dead Ninja and i would still feel like i came out on top on that trade.

 

[Sheo_Dagana]

'cause I'm sure Cliffy B knows all about how the numbers work and in no way has a personal bias towards Microsoft.

 

[Shamanic Rhythm]

Used games are the market's way of telling you that your prices are too high. If that means your business model is unsustainable, then perhaps you should address that instead of trying to shoot the messenger.

Cliffy B is the sort of person who would probably solve a fuse constantly blowing by swapping it out for a piece of fencing wire.

 

[The Artificially Prolonged]

Cliffyb here sounds like a man trying to fix a leaky tap on a sinking ship, kind of missing the more obvious problem. It sounds like the budgets of AAA games are the problem to me.

 

[Casual Shinji]

So the message is, "We want more moneyz to make our bloated, linear rollercoaster rides. So you can all just suffer under our iron fist and like it."

Fuck you, Cliffy , and the horse you rode in on.

As has been said already, these multi-million dollar budgets can't be sustained NOT because of used games, but because of... THE MULTI-MILLION DOLLAR BUDGETS AND MARKETING