EA Isn't Trying to Blackmail You

loremazd

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LordZ said:
loremazd said:
The only way you could do a job you like is if you work for an independant company? Absolute drivel.
Well, I choose not to count masochists. If you enjoy being the whipping boy of a corporation, that's all you.
Wow. Just wow. I'll go ahead and let you think that everyone who works for them hates their jobs and loves "The Man" and don't think like normal human beings. But boy it sure sounds like a wierd world to me.
 

LordZ

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loremazd said:
Wow. Just wow. I'll go ahead and let you think that everyone who works for them hates their jobs and loves "The Man" and don't think like normal human beings. But boy it sure sounds like a wierd world to me.
I already said that people who love money would love working for EA. If you love games more than money and you work for EA, you're doing it wrong.
 

Therumancer

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I disagree with this "innovation" for a number of reasons. First up games are ridiculously expensive as it is. The gaming industry seems to think that consumers are made of money and that everyone can afford to drop $60 for a game constantly. They tend to forget that one of the things that makes this affordable for some people who are not afflicted by the "collector mentality" (which I am actually, I rarely trade in games) is the fact that they can get a good portion of that money back by trading in a game. Of course when a used game's price to get the full experience jumps up $10-$15 the deal of buying used decreases, a trade in that had it's content already inserted reduces in price, and of course the guy who makes the trade is going to get less money in return from the store.


I get that game companies are out to make money, however all of this is based on the fundementally flawed assumption that people are simply being cheap, rather than acting practically.


Another reason why I disagree with this, is that I feel it's rife for abuse. People can point fingers at it and say "this is harmless now", and make a decent case. It's absolutly correct that none of the content we have seen *yet* has been all that integral to the game. However if the trend continues I think it will be, as the industry will become more and more forceful. What's more the "Cartel behavior" of the industry will probably find some of them trying to claim that the "free DLC" in new packages which otherwise would be "part of the game" when your buying it new is a good justification to raise the prices $10 accross the board again on what are already very expensive products.

Am I wrong here? Well look at DLC in general. Originally the idea was to allow the game industry to produce bigger products, cheaper, and lower the prices of games universally. Or at least that was how it was promoted. This is not what happened. Rather digitally distributed games wound up selling for the same price as their boxed counterparts, with the money saved on package and distribution being pocketed. What additional content we wound up seeing were not "Ultima 7" type packs, but tiny expansions retailing for $10-$15 apiece with serious expansions like "Shivering Isles" or "Dragon Age Origins: Awakening" costing a premium... as people have discussed.

What's more, when I look at the adventures of guys like "Richard Garriot" and "Itigaki", and the amounts of money they had sticking out of their back pockets at times, I have a hard time taking the whole "Woe is me" attitude of the industry due to their development costs seriously. Honestly I have yet to see much in the way of justification for some of these massive budgets going towards human resources. Granted not everyone makes tens of millions of dollars off this stuff, but for all claims to the contrary I'm pretty sure the prices are raising to cover some increasingly lavish lifestyles among even the rank and file developers.

Seeking profit is fine, but there is a point when prices keep increasing and people keep finding gimmicks to nickel and dime me, that I take a close look at what I'm dealing with. If your product isn't all that expensive to me, I don't much care what the profit margins are for the people producing it. But when your dealing with the price of games it becomes something else entirely.

-

Also, when it comes to Susan and her receiving free games, I don't think that is an issue. However I do think her perspective is a bit differant from regular gamers simply due to writing for The Escapist, which has implied it's frequented by industry types. While critical at times the site itself DOES seem to have an agenda at times, the majority of what it puts up being almost totally in favor of digital transactions and promoting the idea that nothing can stop them, and ultimatly that it's a good thing.

Right now, I think there is no real reason to not keep everything on the discs other than simply trying to nickel and dime the consumers, based on the perception that we're all wealthy and tight fisted and can afford the full price (and they want to get it out of us, even if we wait to buy used).

Let's be honest, guys like Richard Garriot ran game companies when piracy was even more ridiculously rampant than it is now, and on top of that there was a smaller overall base of gamers. He made enough money from his successes (like Ultima) where he was able to have himself launched up into space as a bloody tourist... stop and think about this. Apparently he was able to pay people enough where they kept working for him to boot.

Okay he's had some failures, but he made all that money (what he did with it, and what his finances might be like now is irrelevent). You can't see things like that, and then take companies like EA seriously when they cry "oh woe is us, we are losing so much money to used games and piracy to the point where we can barely afford to operate". I don't care what they say to justify it, I personally do not buy it. The bottom like is when I'm buying an expensive bloody product I feel I have some rights, and that includes my abillity to exploit the used game market, which still isn't all THAT bloody cheap. Oh sure in a couple of years a game might drop to $30 used, but if I have to pay $15 to get the DLC that was included new, I'm suddenly looking at $45 + tax which is very close to the new price tag before the game cartel hopped the price up $10 accross the board not too long ago. I don't care what they actually make off of it, I care about what comes out of MY pocket, and how fair it is to me. Oh sure right now missing say Shale or Zaeed or whatever isn't that big a deal, but give it a couple of years if we let them establish this. Like everything else with the gaming industry as it is now, it WILL get worse, and as exploitive as possible. The industry has not exactly won a lot of trust, nor has it treated it's consumer base well (or even with a modicum of respect) for years. "Oh yeah, we'll include inconveinent DRM, because even though you spent a good chunk of change, we want to treat you like a gutter thief who mugs grandmothers".

My opinion might be differant if the industry behaved differantly, but it doesn't.
 

thenamelessloser

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loremazd said:
thenamelessloser said:
Imagine being able to only have a chapter or character in a novel if you buy the novel new. Ridiculous right? Why shouldn't the same thing be true for video games? They are both fun escapist experiences.
Yeah, but this would be more like buying Lord of the rings with the part where they hang out with Tom Bombadil for months cut out. Plus, people don't sell used books, they donate them to libraries.
Ever been to www.amazon.com? 0_o I mean, there are TONS of used books on that site.

For the other criticisms of my post, I don't think I would be as against a special edition of a game that cost extra and has more chapters which I think actually does happen at times with fiction and non fiction books. But the act of buying a product new or not I don't think should make a difference of what comes in the product whether it be characters or extra area/chapters.
 

TOGSolid

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I really don't see the problem here. "Buy our game, get stuff for free." Where's the problem? I think this is honestly only worth getting in a huff over if, and only if, they start making the 'freebies' actual game critical stuff.

Even then I won't really give a shit. I buy all my games new anyway :D.
 

civver

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Noooooo, everyone knows DLC is a fundamental human right. EA trying to give incentives towards those who buy new games is therefore a crime against humanity. Their executive board needs to be tried at the Hague. Also, EA is evil.
 

Playbahnosh

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How does arguing about this change anything? In no fucking way, that's how. So what's the point in arguing about it?

This greedy DLC moneytrap is coming like a fucking cargo train, and we simply can't stop it.
Games in the future will be like "free" MMOs today, only the bare necessities included and all the fun excluded, but for full $60 pricetag. If you want fun, you're gonna pay for every single drop of it with cold hard cash.

And for anyone, who argues that publishers don't rip huge chunks out of complete games to issue as DLC, are simply blind or brainwashed by all the fucking propaganda. Don't tell me the huge DLC missions like the one in DA:O or ME2 are not part of that game's experience. They had them ready for launch day! You know, ten or so years earlier developers released finished games, and what they could not include for whatever reason, and the stuff they developed since were issued as Expansion Packs, that included any number of awesome new stuff for your game, like extra maps, missions, characters, units, story, whatever, and they were priced accordingly, because these are just enchancements to the game. But paying fucking $10 for a 10 minute mission, that supposed to be in the game anyway, is overkill. Fuck you, EA!
 

Rooster Cogburn

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I feel like I've stumbled into a nightclub for masochists and submissives and everyone is looking at me like I'm the weird one. It's not that I object to actual arguments being made, I just don't understand why everyone here is so hostile to the interests/concerns of gamers who want more and better content. It's like this site is populated by EA execs.
 

loremazd

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Playbahnosh said:
How does arguing about this change anything? In no fucking way, that's how. So what's the point in arguing about it?

This greedy DLC moneytrap is coming like a fucking cargo train, and we simply can't stop it.
Games in the future will be like "free" MMOs today, only the bare necessities included and all the fun excluded, but for full $60 pricetag. If you want fun, you're gonna pay for every single drop of it with cold hard cash.

And for anyone, who argues that publishers don't rip huge chunks out of complete games to issue as DLC, are simply blind or brainwashed by all the fucking propaganda. Don't tell me the huge DLC missions like the one in DA:O or ME2 are not part of that game's experience. They had them ready for launch day! You know, ten or so years earlier developers released finished games, and what they could not include for whatever reason, and the stuff they developed since were issued as Expansion Packs, that included any number of awesome new stuff for your game, like extra maps, missions, characters, units, story, whatever, and they were priced accordingly, because these are just enchancements to the game. But paying fucking $10 for a 10 minute mission, that supposed to be in the game anyway, is overkill. Fuck you, EA!
Look, i'm just sick of these tin foil hat musings. I'd have a problem with this only if the base game wasn't just fine standalone. But that isn't the case, so i'm fine. The only thing you should give a damn about as a consumer is if what you buy was worth what you paid. If 10 dollars for a 10 minute mission is overkill, then you don't flipping buy it!

And another thing, there's probably a big point you're missing, and that's the number of stuff that didn't get finished that were just cut completely, and never issued as expansion packs. No one can really know how long that list is.
 

olanmills

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Wow, one way you can tell arguments are stupid is when they assume the world consists only of extremes:

"If you make games for money, you work for a corporation like EA where you don't have to worry whether your next pay check bounces. If you're in it because you love games, you work for an indie company that may or may not ever make it because of the shoe string budget they often have to work on."

So you can either be a money-grubbing soulless person, or you are an artisté who is willing to risk and/or sacrifice his financial security and quality of life for his art. There is no inbetween.

Even forgetting the one-dimensional view many people have of EA as some greedy corporation like we see in TV and movies, LordZ makes another laughably extreme point that EA only makes "crap games" except when they do make a quality game, it's by accident.

Of course, these successes only happen because the people working there are only in it for the money. There can't be any other reason.

I myself am a programmer in a business that I don't have a particular passion for, but I think the things we build are very important and impressive. Sure I wouldn't want to do this job for free, but I'm proud of my company's work, and I feel bad and a little ashamed when something I've worked on causes a problem for our customers.

You don't have to work at an indie shop to care about your users or have passion for quality.

Nobody here knows what goes on inside EA, so it's not fair to judge their motivations taht you know nothing about. What is fair is to judge their output and its impact on you. Review their games, complain about features you don't like, etc.

For instance, if some company releases a game with some DRM that really sucks and hampers your ability to enjoy the product, then by all means, complain. Let them know how you feel. But don't call assume they're evil and hate their customers. That's stupid.

There ar emany other problems I have with the arguments agains this article. The first problem I have is with people saying that games are expensive. I understand people have different perspectives, but relatively speaking, games are not that expensive. I understand that it takes a lot of money to buy lots of video games. All this means is that most people will never be able to have everything they want. I will not begrudge people who want to buy used games. It is a system in place, and people are going to take advantage of it, but you can't blame publishers from trying to incentivize people to buy new games.

First let me explain why I don't think games are that expensive. Compare them to other forms of entertainment. Movies are usually less than two hours long and the movie studio gets to sell the movie multiple times in different markets. First they get to sell them to movie theaters, then they get to sell them on DVD/Blu-ray and license them to rental stores, and then they can also sell them to premium cable channels, and then they can sell them to cable networks, and finally they sell them to broadcast networks. Further more, more people watch movies. They can charge $8 for a movie ticket because many mor emillions of people are going to see the average movie than buy the average video game. A studio sells a few reels or whatever format to a theater and that theater can charge anywhere from $3 (cheap matinees) to $15 per ticket, and they'll show that same movie hunders of times to thousands of people. Many of those same people, plus some new ones will later rent/and or buy those movies again.

A typical $60 game delivers anywhere from 10 to 100 hours of content. I just don't think there's really a comparison. Compare hours of entertainment provided versus cost for other activities and tell me where you'll find a better value than video games. I would argue that the only things that can beat it are classic toys like a ball, Legos, a deck of cards, etc. And those things are all made extremely cheaply. Meanwhile, games, like movies, need to be made by many highly skilled people, at significant financial risk. Many games these days also need to maintain online services as well.

You can't even test a game to see how it fares without hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars in sunk development costs.

Finally, there's the fact that the price of video games has not inflated that much. SNES games used to be $40 to $60, and sometimes as high as $70. Furthermore, these days, there are many more budget titles and sales than there used to be. There are more options for buying games.

I'm not saying, "Hey games are actually cheap! You're a loser if you can't buy them all new!"

All I'm saying is that the price for games is not unreasonable.

This brings me to the last thing which really annoyed me in this thread.

"The gaming industry seems to think that consumers are made of money and that everyone can afford to drop $60 for a game constantly."

"I'm also not really with you on the whole 'developers deserve to make as much money as they can from their games' position. The industry exploits gamers year-in year-out and EA is one of the guiltiest parties. Look at their sports franchises and you'll see occasional innovation (e.g. FIFA 10 was a big step forward) but most years it is just a case of updated stats and rosters."

It seems to me that these statements come from a sense of entitlement, like EA or any other publisher owes it to the world to sell games for less. These are video games, people. They are pieces of entertainment. They are toys. Nobody needs these and no game company owes you anything. Furthermore, you don't have to buy them, andmany don't, at least not at normal prices.

There are a lot of people, but not the type of consumers who would be foudn on gaming message boards, who never buy games when they're newly released.

The fact is, people can afford to buy games at $60 and they do it everyday. Then there are those who are patient and only buy games after they're a year old. There are others who only buy used games. The fact is, if consumers were'nt willing to pay $60 for a game, then games wouldn't cost $60.

As stupid as most people thinkthe horse armor was a lot of people still bought it. As stupid as I think paying for avatar clothing is, a lot of people love it and buy that stuff.

If you love games then you'll find a way to deal with it. When I was a kid, sure I couldn't afford every game I wanted, especially newly released ones. So guess what? I didn't have every game I wanted! What a concept!

As soon as I turned 16, I got a job, and I've pretty much bought every game I wanted whenever I wanted since. I cared a lot about video games, and so I spent money on that. If there's something you love, then you'll find away to support that passion. If you have other priorities, then you have to pick and choose. Unless you're one of the few, you're not going to be able to have the best of everything you want in every area of life. No company, not EA, or anyone else, should be obligated to try to make their products more affordable to you.

Instead, they should make the products affordable to them, in terms of what it costs to make, and affordable to the market, in terms of what consumers are willing to pay.

And right now, it looks like consumers are very willing to pay $60 for new games, and whether you like it or not, people seem to love DLC.
 

Rooster Cogburn

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loremazd said:
The only thing you should give a damn about as a consumer is if what you buy was worth what you paid.
But why? Why shouldn't I be trying to get more for my bank? As a consumer, I don't apply this standard to any product.

I appreciate how obnoxious it must be to put up with ignorant accusations, I just think this is taking it a little far. I'm not defending the genuine nut jobs, but I certainly think gamers should be pressuring companies to provide better products and voicing/pursuing their collective interest. The vibe I'm getting from a lot of posters is that input from customers is always and completely irrelevant, which borders on the silly.
 

Triggerhappy938

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iamthehorde said:
Triggerhappy938 said:
What strong language! But, not undeserved, I would say.

I personally have been a fan of this idea for some time. Every time someone opts to buy a used copy of a game over a new one, the people responsible for the game you are about to enjoy do not see a penny from it. I totally understand why they would want to give added incentive to buy new games as opposed to used ones. This is not to say that buying used is a sin, though I tend to limit my used game shopping to non-current gen consoles.

There is a line of reasonability, but for the time being, that line is still being defined. Hopefully as time goes on we will have that line more clearly defined, but in the meantime the best you can do is vote with your dollar. If you don't like a company's practices, don't give them your money. If you think the horse armor is dumb, don't buy it.

Also, I agree, 15$ for two multiplayer maps is pretty shady.
there are good reasons why we are free to resell our goods if we don´t need´em anymore. would you rather trash an old game or resell it, to a broke buddy for example, for some bucks, so he can enjoy it, too? every used copy was once new and most likely full priced. and mind you the only people that will resell bc2 are the ones not interested in multiplayer or people that may not like the game at all.

good games, especially multiplayer ones, are not that often resold at all. there´s a reason why most used games that have actually used game-price tags are either old or pretty shitty, besides the occasional gem in there. every newer release is still so expensive that, in the case of bf2, you could just hope that the preowner did only play sp and the code remains intact. if you bought the game at 10 bucks discount without the codes, you´re screwed. and granted most people buying that game used won´t even know about the fact, because only a small percentage of gamers goes to sites like this. when they experience a broken multiplayer, because they frequently get thrown out because they don´t have the mappack, they are almost forced to buy it so they don´t experience a broken online experience.

and if you look at the kotaku-article regarding this and the comments, you see many people have already chosen to not buy the game simply because of this policy. however, our nerdy crowd is, unfortunately, too small i guess to make a difference in this case. this game will shit bricks for ea. it´s naive to think that they care what a few nerdy gamers on some message boards think about their price policy, even if it´s the royal escapist. that said, i´m also still getting it, but as ironic as it is, i will only be able to get it because i will trade half my games in for it.
If BC2 is the only point on which you are arguing, we aren't arguing, I agree with you. As I said, the line is still being wrought. Some people are going to overstep that line, it is inevitable. The only upside to such actions is that it helps us define what is "crossing the line". BC2 can generally be agreed to be "crossing the line"
 

Flyte 79

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Movie equivalent to "Project Ten Doller":


You buy the movie on expensive blue ray with features, extras, photos, storyboards and other junk you don't want then you get the whole movie.


You buy it on dvd out a bargain bin at the local gas station they cut off the first 3 minutes of the movie.


You borrow the dvd from a friend to watch one night with your new girlfriend. You're not that bothered about seeing it but it's something to do with your new girl and allows plenty of intimate sofa cuddling. They cut out all the sex scenes, all the jokes and the first 20 minutes of the movie is in spanish.


You watch the movie on tv for free. The ultimate sin (see Universal studios vs Sony corp 1983 to 1984). They remove the ending of the movie including the twist that explains why the kid could see dead people. The picture is blue filtered and upside down and there are 8 inch high klingon subtitles obscuring 95% of the picture.


Still think these bully boy tactics are fine?
 

IntangibleFate

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I would be happy with seeing gamestop knocked down a notch or two. I don't mind really, I only really buy a game used if I am unsure about if it is worth it, now that used game will be cheaper because it won't come with this content. And if it isn't worth buying in the first place no big deal.

As far as not having the dlc interrupting the play... doesn't halo make sure you have the dlc before you can play in most of the normal playlists? Isn't that taking away features? I love how some think this is a new practice. But no, they are bungie...so its ok.

I also think that dice/ea did a good thing by rewarding people that had bought previous battlefield games with an advantage.
 

thehorror2

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My big problem with DLC isn't that we're getting charged for it, or that it's made up of content that would otherwise have been in the game from the beginning, (although those two facts do piss me off) it's because it leaves those of us without even a basic internet connection to our consoles NO WAY to claim our brand-spanking-new game benefits. I still haven't bought Dragon Age because I'm an obsessive completionist and even the newer retail copies that sell for full price with the DLC included only actually give you codes to redeem for the stuff. I would GLADLY pay $60 for the game with the DLC included (if it's as good as people say it is, I might even pay more) but I cannot stand not being able to benefit from the good side of a good/bad tradeoff. (And yes, I realize that people like me are in a distinct minority. It still sucks.)
 

Somebloke

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Fortunately it's going to take the terrorists some time to take down every backbone router, armed as they are only with shuttles and travelling by horsecarriage.

EDIT: Oops, that was an old thread... carry on, circulate, nothing to see here.