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

[NKRevan]

Oh I agree with that. Quite a few developers are falling into the trap.

However I do disagree that there was no desire from fans for better graphics without developer influence. I remember playing X-Wing back in the day and wishing it would look just a little better. I remember playing on my Atari 2600 and wishing I could see just a bit more of the environment.

Like I said, I'm not going to go about and say it is the customers own fault alone. It's a two-sided story.

And even for a developer that moderates their budget, games are more expensive to make. And AAA titles will still cost millions because you need the people to make them. Even in a perfectly budgeted project that will be the case for those titles and the titles remain in demand and not only because developers are pushing it on consumers.

That's my only point. People here try to say that it is all the dev's fault. And I very strongly disagree with that.

Well, it's human nature to desire pretty things. My point is that developers have emphasised that to the expense of anything else. Like I said, developers think that graphics and sound take precedence over game design, which means that they will always fall back on them. As a result, you get a lot of pretty but disposable titles. Style over substance.

As for assigning blame, while money problems may not necessarily always be the developers' fault (the publishers set the budget and the deadlines), it certainly isn't the consumers'. The consumer cannot be blamed for not wanting to buy a title. Piracy is another matter, but consumers rights don't deserve constant assault simply because the consumer base isn't interested in the product being sold. The problem is a vague assumption that the developers know what people want and will go to great lengths to try to please everyone. It's a common phrase that the easiest way the fail is to try and please everyone.

Assigning blame is being played here, right now. And people assign blame solely on the side of dev's/publishers. As if everyone would be happy if we just stopped advancing graphics, animations, AI, writing, and so much more. There is the assumption on the side of the consumer that they can't be blamed for exploding costs because supposedly no one asked for "more".

I do not agree. And certainly don't agree on lumping every AAA developer (or any team larger than 20 people for that matter) into the one category of "dev's who waste money". And that's what these people are saying. GOOD AAA titles also require large amounts of money and according to people here, apparently, those are not required anymore.

Yes, there are devs and publishers who overspend and focus too much on gfx over substance, but that doesn't automatically mean that we no longer need budgets of $100M plus to make good games.

 

[josemlopes]

Lets face it: He has a point.

Many of us want games with high production values. We want shiny new graphics and big and open worlds filled with tons of professionally spoken dialogues, featuring super realistic physics and unbelievable lifelike animations all the while being very interactive.
All of this costs money. We heard it time and again that development costs have increased dramatically with each console generation. Sometimes the budget of a video game dwarfs even movie productions (SW:ToR, GTA IV).
Despite all this people want to stick to the currently established business model which is pretty old and if someone says it might be outdated he summons the shit storm.

This stance is pretty unreasonable tbh.
I'm not saying Microsoft is going about it the right way. But there must be room for discussion.

I personally have little problem with account bound video games. It has been for me this way since the introduction of Steam.
However if the industry wants to sell such a system it has to provide the customer some benefits as well.
In this regard Molyneux is right. Why should I, as a consumer, would want this system?
Microsoft did not demonstrate its system from this point of view. It therefore appears completely publisher centred which is not entirely true.

For example I read that you can add 10 people to your family on the XO. You can then share your games free of charge between these 10 people and still play the game yourself! This is actually a pretty awesome feature and leaves Steam in the dust. My brother living 350 km from me can borrow a game from me virtually and I can play in multiplayer with him. Imagine playing every coop game with your best buddy or family but only having to buy one copy.
This is only possible with account bound games. It is an advantage but Microsoft failed to demonstrate it or communicate the circumstances correctly. Therefore the customer is left unsure and reacts rather hostile.

I too am for the PS4. But tbh I think that is partly because I know that it will work the same as the PS3 which I already know. The XO won't and Microsoft did not a good job dismantling the fear that they or the publishers wouldn't abuse their power in such a system.
After all publisher are usually seen as greedy scumbags by gamers. Why should we trust these scumbags?

It's like Michael Bay saying we need to eliminate sales of used DVDs in order to have more explosions in film.

You are aware that movies (and music) have several income streams (1. theatrical release → 2. DVD/BR + rental release → TV release) and therefore don't need to collect the production costs in one big swoop like video games have to? You therefore are aware that your comparison is kinda worthless right?

Please, dont bring sense and logic to a Microsoft/Sony thread, if you dont hate Microsoft with all your heart then you are bad and you should feel bad.

 

[Sejborg]

For example I read that you can add 10 people to your family on the XO. You can then share your games free of charge between these 10 people and still play the game yourself! This is actually a pretty awesome feature and leaves Steam in the dust. My brother living 350 km from me can borrow a game from me virtually and I can play in multiplayer with him. Imagine playing every coop game with your best buddy or family but only having to buy one copy.
This is only possible with account bound games. It is an advantage but Microsoft failed to demonstrate it or communicate the circumstances correctly. Therefore the customer is left unsure and reacts rather hostile.

Incorrect. The game can ONLY be active on ONE console at a time.

"Xbox One will also allow you to give up to 10 family members access to "log in and play from your shared games library on any Xbox One."

You can always play your games, but only one of your family members can be playing from your shared library at a given time."

http://www.ign.com/wikis/xbox-one/Used_Games_and_Rentals

Stop spreading lies.

 

[TsunamiWombat]

Overblown budgets are a symptom of poor developer and publisher culture. Games are made haphazardly, slapdash, not planned out. Publishers have unrealistic expectations, unreasonable demands, and bloated and inefficient marketing. This is a recipe for COST that must be surmounted by raw sales.

Work SMARTER not HARDER. Plan your games to be lean, mean, and well designed FROM THE START. Don't make changes halfway through. Yes, I am well aware this goes against the practices of industry darlings like Valve and Blizzard who will shitcan a project 9/10ths completed because they don't like how it turned out - both of those studio's have unique financial situations to support them (WoW, Steam/TF2). And frankly, Blizzards quality has dropped noticeably recently(I blame Metzen), whereas Valve hasn't actually 'made' anything since Left 4 Dead 2.

PS: Cliff Blizinksi worked for Microsoft for a long time and being unemployed, probably would want to again. His games are the protoplasmic goop from which the bloated, big budget brainless slugfest AAA game template grew. He caught lightning in a bottle with Gears of War, but hasn't done anything notable since. He is correct that Electronic Media budgets are inflated, but he is INCORRECT that used games are a problem.

 

[Goro]

Hey Cliffy, I bought a used copy of Gears 3, finished it, loaned it to two friends... and when they were done...
I traded it in!!!
I am your worst nightmare!!

 

[Ishigami]

Incorrect. The game can ONLY be active on ONE console at a time.

"Xbox One will also allow you to give up to 10 family members access to "log in and play from your shared games library on any Xbox One."

You can always play your games, but only one of your family members can be playing from your shared library at a given time."

http://www.ign.com/wikis/xbox-one/Used_Games_and_Rentals

Stop spreading lies.

Where was I lying?
I can always play my games on my XBox One and one family member can play from my shared library. Hence two people can use one copy at the same time. Therefore I can play coop with my brother even if only one of us bought the game.
It is right there in what you have quoted.

This is exactly what is wrong with Microsofts presentation. There are two ways to interpret what has been shown. You claim that this means only one XBox can use said games and I say that since I can always play my games and only the family members are restricted to one active copy that actually two people could use the game at the same time.

Demonstrating the system live would clear this up but Microsoft didn't do that. So the first reaction of people is like yours: Refusal.

 

[Gashlycrumb]

So a Dane Cook look-a-like dudebro asshat who specializes in games featuring large, vaguely coherent slabs of pork roast and their love affair with chest high walls, idiotically helmet-free armor, and the color grey has opinions about used games and blah blah blah flarrrppplop! Christ I seriously hope that when the Xbox One sinks, "Cliffy B" and his cancerous frat boy ilk get their legs caught up in the line, and are dragged down to Davey Jones shithouse to rot beside it. And for good measure, someone could dick brick the knob that invented QTE's, and send his ass on a 1.4 league trip to the depths of the Dreamcasto sea as well.

 

[Andy Shandy]

To be fair, he did also say this

[Tweet t=https://twitter.com/therealcliffyb/status/344930321382383616]

So how much he actually believes what he's saying, who knows.

And he did say as well that most money goes into marketing nowadays. Maybe you could start cutting back a bit there, perhaps, eh Cliffy?

 

[tehroc]

Continue playing the good corporate stooge Cliffy.

 

[Sejborg]

Something went wrong with the post. I will post again.

 

[Synpathy]

Is this not a much more agreeable option?>
Games are being released digitally alongside psychical this generation right?
Why don't the pubs and devs just put there games on sale after a time so people will buy the 'new copy' one digitally, rather than a used copy, thus more money direct to the pubs and devs. I mean you could even throw in free dlc or something to you know make it desirable to customers!
If you can get it 'new', cheap, with extras, right from your chair, rather than Gamestop you would right?

The customers don't owe these companies anything but they seem to think we do?!

 

[Jigero]

What people fail to realize is the majority of AAA video game budgets don't actually go into making the game it self, it goes into the marketing and promotion. Heck EA spent 100 million just on BF3's advertising alone.

http://www.gameinformer.com/b/news/archive/2011/04/06/ea-spending-100-million-to-beat-call-of-duty-with-battlefield-3.aspx

Pushing technology is not the problem here, Advertising and promotion budgets already stretch profits to the breaking point, so if there is any problems or frivolous spending in the actual dev cycle it makes it next to impossible to run a profit.

But there is frivolous spending in development too. To use a recent example Call of Duty: Ghosts When they talked about how they mo-capped and scanned an actual freaken dog, I nearly lost my god damn mind.

You don't need to mo-cap a dog it's absolutely insane that anyone agreed to pay for that. Any animator fresh out of college can animate a dog from references, it's quite literally the first thing you learn in a college animation course. Heck Disney and laid out how to perfectly animate a dog.

Mo-capping humans makes sense because humans are super aware of how other humans act and it comes off fake if the slightest thing is wrong. People can't do that with other animals, so mo-capping a dog is needlessly expensive and entirely pointless.

I've seen stuff like this happen in other games too, like one time while watching a dev dairy of Age of Conan they actually brought in horses so they could mo-cap them for the animations of the mounts in game.

 

[Wyvern65]

It's like Michael Bay saying we need to eliminate sales of used DVDs in order to have more explosions in film.

You are aware that movies (and music) have several income streams (1. theatrical release → 2. DVD/BR + rental release → TV release) and therefore don't need to collect the production costs in one big swoop like video games have to? You therefore are aware that your comparison is kinda worthless right?

You are aware humor exists, right? No? Oh, my bad.

I honestly do not understand corporate apologists.

Do you know how many revenue streams movies had throughout most of their history? One - the theater. Yet they still somehow managed to make Cleopatra.

Do you know who fought tooth and nail against the VCR, claiming it would destroy their 'revenue streams?' If you guessed the movie industry you're correct!

You are claiming it is /reasonable/ for me to give up a right I enjoy with every other product in existence (the right of resale) because it might make the life of developers a bit easier and because the poor publishers don't have aftermarket revenue like DVDs, and games are too expensive.

Online passes, DLC (dirt cheap to produce usually and quite profitable,) loss of printed manuals, transition to digital distribution where they charge the same amount of money even though they have literally almost ZERO production costs, more and more restrictive DRM where the consumer is presumed guilty until proven innocent and the only people hurt are the honest consumers not the pirates, on disc DLC, day one DLC, near elimination of demos so you can't try before you buy all combined with the inability to return software if you opened it. Trying to make every game have an online component. Telemetry recording in-game decisions so the publishers don't have to pay for market research.

Yeah, you know what. I think I've made enough concessions for the poor struggling developers and publishers. The compromise you so rationally call for has all been one-sided to date.

Get back to me when Cliffy B is the least concerned with my revenue streams or whether I can put food on my table.

 

[Azwrath]

Consumers ALWAYS wanted more realistic graphics (not every one, but a lot of them). So dev's delivered.

Right, we all remember the consumer strike in 2000. When everyone stoped buying games because they had too few pixels. Man those were dark times for all of us. Wait... that never happened did it? And it would never happen because ultra-realistic graphics and hollywood voice acting constitute a very small and almost insignificant part of what makes a game good.

Also, you are basicaly throwing blame on consumers for wanting more out of developers? That is like a guy that was arrested for robbing and killing several persons throwing blame on his kid saying he did it because the kid wanted more toys. It is a crap of an excuse and it only proves the developer's incompetence at managing their own budget and dealing with consumer expectetions.

You see, in the sentance "You cannot have game and marketing budgets this high while also having used and rental games existing", there are 2 ways developers can deal with this. First they can dictate what someone does with a product they buy and hope that solves anything, i might be off here but i don't think it will, or they could... i don't know, make better use of their budget? Not throw money on flashy CGI, motion capture, hollywood actors, ridiculous marketing schemes while expecting the entire population of the earth to buy their game because the chart says so.

I don't need to feel the wind blow in my ass while i ride around on a motocycle backwards in GTA IX to have fun playing it, but that is what the current gaming industry seems to think.

In conclusion, a company that spends, on creating a product, more then they should ever hope to sell, and still expect to make a profit is a bad company and taking used games is not going to solve any of that.

 

[Evil Smurf]

Dude....

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

Ugh never liked this dude.

Even though he helped create Jazz JackRabbit?

 

[kuolonen]

[HEADING=2]Technology isn't cheap.[/HEADING]

[HEADING=2]$100 Million Budget
[/HEADING]​

Is BioShock Infinite
The Last Gasp For The
Triple-A "Art Game"?​

I buy games full price.

I remember spending $100 of my Junior Graduation money on Prince of Persia: Sands of Time and Socom. And it was worth every freakin' penny! because I wanted those titles.

We all want quality, cinematic experiences -- elaborate environments, life-like character animations, complex dialogue trees -- and that last 25+ hours.

But we never think about all of time and energy going into those realistic animations of Ezio's assassination jump. We love the care so many coders took in writing perfect sequences of dialogue w/ action, of illustrating a diverse number in CPU characters and their A.I. You realize that people are creating massive virtual worlds!

[h4]It's hypocritical to demand "low budget" games for
cheaper costs and then simultaneously rip developers for
being lazy with low textures and stiff animations.[/h4]

Yeah, no. You say "we all want". Who is this we? It is certainly not me, and no matter how small a percentage, that by definition means that not all of us want for "elaborate environments, life-like character animations". I do however feel I would want complex dialogue trees and for that I am ready to sacrifice considerable amount on those other aspects you mentioned. However I dare guess that creating complex dialogue trees requires a smaller budget team, than one that feels the need to render every single tree and blade of grass from environment I have about 1 second to look at before dashing on.

I feel the technology long since passed the point of minimum requirement for me to buy a game, in terms of graphical and animation quality. Now it is merely a nice extra, but certainly not worth paying fricken 60% of the games price, or a main reason to buy a game. I would much rather pay for more complex story or dialogue choices or so forth. And I am not egotistic enough to think I am the only gamer on the planet that thinks so.

 

[NKRevan]

Consumers ALWAYS wanted more realistic graphics (not every one, but a lot of them). So dev's delivered.

Right, we all remember the consumer strike in 2000. When everyone stoped buying games because they had too few pixels. Man those were dark times for all of us. Wait... that never happened did it? And it would never happen because ultra-realistic graphics and hollywood voice acting consitute a very small and almost insignificat part of what makes a game good.

Also, you are basicaly throwing blame on consumers for wanting more out of developers? That is like a guy that was arrested for robbing and killing several persons throwing blame on his kid saying he did it because the kid wanted more toys. It is a crap of an excuse and it only proves the developer's incompetence at managing their own budget and dealing with consumer expectetions.

You see, in the sentance "You cannot have game and marketing budgets this high while also having used and rental games existing", there are 2 ways developers can deal with this. First they can dictate what someone does with a product they buy and hope that solves anything, i might be off here but i don't think it will, or they could... i don't know, make better use of their budget? Not throw money on flashy CGI, motion capture, hollywood actors, ridiculous marketing schemes while expecting the entire population of the earth to buy their game because the chart says so.

I don't need to feel the wind blow in my ass while i ride around on a motocycle backwards in GTA IX to have fun playing it, but that is what the current gaming industry seems to think.

In conclusion, a company that spends, on creating a product, more then they should ever hope to sell, and still expect to make a profit is a bad company and taking used games is not going to solve any of that.

I give up. -.-

What is so difficult about accepting that we expect more, therefor developers need to put more money into their products?

I never said only consumers are to "blame" for this situation. I also never said it is not "right" to expect more from developers.

All I am saying is that you can't have better things for less or the same money. Modern Games take more to make and yes, they sometimes take hundreds of millions. Even when developers budget and plan correctly. And yes, there are a LOT of people who WANT that type of game with that type of budget.

And people here act as though nobody wants AAA Blockbuster titles with enhanced graphics, better and more animations, better acting, better writing and whatnot. That's ALL I am saying. Stop acting like nobody wants those games and we all would be happy if all we had was indie titles.

AND I never agreed with Cliffy in the first place. The guy is silly and his point is simply over-generalized and in this case wrong. But again...people here give off the impression that everyone would be quite happy if we only ever got games from small independent developers with a small budget...as long as the game plays well.

Incidentally, I don't think I can say it more clearly anymore. So I'll leave it at this:

I don't think used game sales are impossible. I think a good way to deal with it has to be found. I also don't think consumers will be happy if developers no longer push the edge of graphics/animations/writing/storytelling AND gameplay. And for that we still need BIG budgets.

 

[nexus]

Publishers. Don't bemoan the gargantuan efforts put forth by dev studios, and the labor of each individual. Then in the same breath, go on to complain about the publishers losing money, fuck off. Publishers have always been the problem.

Mine your developers like resources then blame everything on the customer.

I hate it. This nonsense.

 

[Jigero]

Also I just wanted to post this study conducted in Japan the data showed that just getting rid of used games lead to an astronomical loss in profits, but getting rid of used games then cutting the costs of games in general actually increased profits.

http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-05/30/used-games-study

take from it what you will.

 

[Krantos]

Cliffy B's entire argument is "games are so expensive we have to hurt consumers to pay for them, suck it up."

Amazing how he doesn't even seem to consider that game devs could, I don't know, stop making games that cost more than the market can bear. It's like Michael Bay saying we need to eliminate sales of used DVDs in order to have more explosions in film.

Not interested in being held responsible for your excesses and inability to realistically budget and control costs on your projects.

Thank you.

Seriously, whatever merits his arguments might have, it ultimately comes down to exactly what you said.

We are being asked to shoulder the burden of their poor decisions.

In business, you determine your budget based on what the customers are willing to pay for and your expected sales volume. You do NOT tell your customers what they can and cannot do in order to justify that budget. That's backwards. Your budget should change to satisfy customers. Not the other way around.