"Games are a luxury item." So?

[jklinders]

What if you had no money but you looked at a picture of a Star Wars poster on a library computer hooked up to the internet? Because unless it was properly uploaded by Lucasfilm, it's the exact same crime as downloading a videogame. Copyright infringement is something very different from theft, in terms of both degree and kind, and that's another reason why I can't take the "it's a luxury item" argument seriously; sure, stealing a luxury item is bad. Getting it for free because there's a way to make infinite copies? It's not so clear cut. It reminds me of the replicator in Star Trek; if it existed in real life, its creators would get sued into oblivion for ending poverty.

Fuck, I knew this would happen. Note to self, don't use any analogies on the Escapist - ever. Even if they are not misleading, people will delve into the semantics to find any inconsistencies between the subject matter and the analogy. And given that it's an analogy there are always inconsistencies.

No. No. No. No. I will tell it as straight as possible: games are luxury items, in that they are not required or mandatory in any way. Therefore "I cannot afford it" is absolutely wrong as there is nothing that forces you to spend the money or get the game. Saying "I will pirate this game because I cannot afford it" is an inherently stupid claim to make.

I did not try to say that piracy is anything like stealing. Luxury items are just extras you can go without. That was the whole point. If you cannot afford something you can go without...then why not go without it? Getting illegal access of any sort is not justified because you don't need the luxury items in the first place. That's why they are called so.

I think when you say that games are luxury items you are underestimating their value as a cultural phenomenom. When games are finally accepted as an art form it won't be ethycal to prevent people from playing relevant games just because they don't have the money. You surely can live without books or music, but you would suffer from a cultural poverty for doing so and if games were respected as they should the same would apply for them.

Captcha: Talkin' about Purina Dog Chow! That's funny and surprising. I chose: yummy

Books and music have budgets. Even the guy with the guitar on the street corner has to eat. Games have a lot great costs than music and books. If you want the medium to stay then you have to pay for it. You will still have bedroom programmers who will make games on an amateur lvl, but our real artists of any medium lived doing devoted a 100% to their given medium. Not just on their off days.

Yes, but there must be an alternative like libraries for books.

Now this is interesting. I can see what you are saying here. But it's irrelevant until games are recognized as a viable art form. Books and movies entered the public consciousness before the internet and it's capacity as a copy/paste machine of ridiculous proportions. So the DRM model would have to be adapted for this model. The designation as a cultural art would take care of the IP rights, but I suspect that if this happened at all then the only games to hit libraries for free would be those games that are 5 plus years old. That is long enough to remove the library idea from the debate altogether.

Still if the IP rights and DRM could be straightened out then it could be a viable alternative. The publishers would fight to their dying day to avoid this though.

 

[MercurySteam]

Brink? Fuck man, that's 40 quid I wish I'd never spent.

I retuned my copy after three or four days. Glad I got my money back from that pile of crap. That and Duke Nukem Forever.

 

[jklinders]

Hilarious

I feel that the fact games are a luxury item is fully part of the debate, gaming is my primary hobby and I am as poor as a church mouse. But apparently I have too much money. It really is laughable.

The hilarious part would be you completely missed what I was saying, maybe I should extend my statement, people who don't read also can't be part of the discussion.

What you said is that is "It's an argument made by people with too much money, which shoots them right out of any price discussion, if price does not affect you then your opinion is meaningless." Bullshit. You missed the point of the OP completely. We are talking about real world pricing not whatever fictitious overpricing you think could happen in the future. As it stands, pricing is not an object for me. Therefore by your logic I have too much money and therefore my opinion has no value. I hope that explained my reading of your post better. If a game was ever priced at say $120.00 or more local currency then yes I would be stopped until the price went down. It doesn't stop the game from being an item I can do without and doesn't make you point any less useless.

Maybe I am guilty of not fully explaining myself but I am hardly alone in that one m'kay?

 

[Vampire cat]

I feel the gap between "worth it" and "waste of money" can be massive, and usually seems to be. Sometimes you get a game like Minecraft. I bought it in the first few weeks notch even allowed people TO buy it, so it was dirt cheap. Since I have gotten countless hours of entertainment from a game that keeps on challenging my creativity trough just being open and free to do whatever I want. It's great mod support pushes it even further along the way.

Similar in enjoyment was Oblivion and even more so Skyrim, but of course these were much more expensive. I still consider them well worth the price, I think the diference between this and Minecraft is that I don't feel bad some times for having payed so little for such a great game (not that Notch NEEDS my money currently X3).

On the other end of the scale is Sniper: Ghost Warrior. For me this is the worst purchase I've ever made. It is so terrible that I've never even played a full hour of the game, and I've tried once alone and twice with friends that wanted to see the terribleness. It's not just being a bland shooter, it's what it does to a brilliant concept that Sniper Elite managed so much better despite being quite an older game now. Should have read the damn reviews BEFORE buying that one XD.

 

[Kerboom]

Move to Australia, then you'll have something to ***** about. We have to pay twice as much while fighting off 6 foot tall spiders on our way to the store.

Your minimum wage is also MUCH higher than EVERYWHERE ELSE.

Ireland: ?8.65/hour (11.07 AUD)
England: (Different rates corresponding to age groups. Over 21 is the one I'm using) £6.08/hour (9.77 AUD)
Australia: 15.51 AUD.


I could go on listing examples, and sure, the cost of living in Australia is a slight bit higher than over here (not much though, our minimum wage isn't sufficient to give people a standard of living any higher than those on social welfare) but you earn more money than everyone else. Why should you have to pay the same?

 

[omega 616]

snip

What really makes me laugh is you are from America, the place where you are ripped off the least for games ... go ask an Australian how much a game is, if I remember correctly it is about $100.

So next time your thinking "game prices are too damn high" your next thought should be "but not as damn high as other places".

 

[Monsterfurby]

Anything can only be too expensive for the individual. If the individual is not willing to pay for it and still wants the item, the item gets pirated. The problem, then, might be with pricing. It might be with the acceptance of piracy. It has most likely to do with both.

Believing that there is a "universally and objectively fair price" for anything is bullshit. It always depends on your market and the individual you are selling too. Hence - no offense to the OP - this whole debate is fairly pointless.

 

[Paradoxrifts]

Move to Australia, then you'll have something to ***** about. We have to pay twice as much while fighting off 6 foot tall spiders on our way to the store.

Your minimum wage is also MUCH higher than EVERYWHERE ELSE.

Ireland: ?8.65/hour (11.07 AUD)
England: (Different rates corresponding to age groups. Over 21 is the one I'm using) £6.08/hour (9.77 AUD)
Australia: 15.51 AUD.


I could go on listing examples, and sure, the cost of living in Australia is a slight bit higher than over here (not much though, our minimum wage isn't sufficient to give people a standard of living any higher than those on social welfare) but you earn more money than everyone else. Why should you have to pay the same?

You honestly believe the extra forty dollars (Very occasionally more.) that Australians have to fork out to buy the game actually mostly goes towards the costs incurred by shipping, marketing and stocking the game over here? Really??

Listen, mate.. this is your lucky day! I've got this deed to this little building down in Sydney, waterside property you understand, one of a kind architecture, nothing else like it in the entire world, you might have even heard of it, the Sydney Opera House.

 

[Chairman Miaow]

This might just be the exchange rate talking here but $60 sounds wonderful as opposed to $120-130 for all new released games.

Surely that can't be American dollars you're on about. $60 American is normal. I'm British and we pay around £30-40 for new releases.

It's more like £40-£50 these days...

 

[laggyteabag]

I just sometimes hate how games go down in price to stupid levels, I can buy Fifa 07 on the XBox 360 (Second hand) for 50p... 50p!!!

I recently got Mass Effect for £5 on Origin during a sale, £5 for that game? And its probably a lot better than most new releases that cost £40.

This is why I dont blame people for buying games a few months after they release.

 

[Chairman Miaow]

snip

What really makes me laugh is you are from America, the place where you are ripped off the least for games ... go ask an Australian how much a game is, if I remember correctly it is about $100.

So next time your thinking "game prices are too damn high" your next thought should be "but not as damn high as other places".

I'm not from the US but I hate this damn attitude. "People have it worse than you so shut the hell up"

 

[omega 616]

snip

What really makes me laugh is you are from America, the place where you are ripped off the least for games ... go ask an Australian how much a game is, if I remember correctly it is about $100.

So next time your thinking "game prices are too damn high" your next thought should be "but not as damn high as other places".

I'm not from the US but I hate this damn attitude. "People have it worse than you so shut the hell up"

Yeah, it's called perspective!

Instead of being "woe is me, I have it so fucking hard!", try putting yourself in somebody else's shoes.

Plus this shit is first world problems.

 

[iseko]

I don't really game all that much anymore. Only thing I do game is swtor. And in my opinion its worth it. I bought the game for 30 euro's. Paid another 30 for a game time card. So For 60 euro's I have 3 months of playing. In general I play 3 hours a day. If I keep that up for 3 months I have +-90 hours of game time for 60 euro's. Why is this worth it for me?

Because normally if I'm bored I go out for a drink. Even if I don't feel like it. If I'm feeling cheap this costs me 10euro's easily. So I'd spend like 20-30 euro's a week.

I've played Crysis 2 for a day when I was with a friend. I really enjoyed the game. Still not going to buy it. Why?

A) It has no replay value. B) Costs 60 euro's C) Can be completed in 8 hours. It costs me more to buy and play that game then it costs me to go out with friends. I prioritize spending my 'free-time' money in hours of fun. That is why I don't buy most AAA games. If crysis 2 was 20euro's I would buy it. Because then it would be worth it. Most of my friends think that makes me weird. They are broke .

 

[SpAc3man]

I guess they are. Even free ones need a platform. Expensive ones are even more of a luxury.

 

[Ryank1908]

To be honest we're fairly lucky. We get to pay shit-all cash for older games on Steam sales, or indie games, so a money-savvy gamer only needs to pay £5-10 per game, if he's saving money.

And if he's not; people know how much games cost to make, right? Higher end publishers market their games for so much because those games are bloody expensive, and if a few less people than they estimated get their game, they're going to have to fire people. So they have to charge high prices to give themselves some comfortable wiggle room.

 

[Toby Kitching]

What if you had no money but you looked at a picture of a Star Wars poster on a library computer hooked up to the internet? Because unless it was properly uploaded by Lucasfilm, it's the exact same crime as downloading a videogame. Copyright infringement is something very different from theft, in terms of both degree and kind, and that's another reason why I can't take the "it's a luxury item" argument seriously; sure, stealing a luxury item is bad. Getting it for free because there's a way to make infinite copies? It's not so clear cut. It reminds me of the replicator in Star Trek; if it existed in real life, its creators would get sued into oblivion for ending poverty.

What you are saying here, when it gets boiled down, is that it is absolutely wrong to steal something if it's difficult, but it's more ambiguous if it's easy. this is my main problem with software pirates: they seem to think that they are completely justified in stealing things because there is no way to get caught. the equivalent would be if you walked into a shop, took a disc off the shelf, went home and burned a copy and then put the original disk back.

 

[SenseOfTumour]

I don't think we can really change the $60 price point, but all of us can stop just taking it, and queueing up to hand over the $60.

We all know the prices drop sharply, often within weeks. So unless it's those two or three games a year you truly must have at launch, why not hold on, check digital distribution for sales on older stuff, and enjoy gaming! Just because EA says COD MW BO part 7 is 'Essential', you don't have to go sit outside Gamestop at midnight with $150 for a collector's edition.

I do agree that the perceived demand for graphics is part of the problem, making games more expensive. I point everyone to WOW, Blizzard understanding that talent and art style is more important, and keeping minimum specs down opens your title to far more PC sales.

 

[Griffolion]

Move to Australia, then you'll have something to ***** about. We have to pay twice as much while fighting off 6 foot tall spiders on our way to the store.

With the best of all concessions: Australian women.

 

[Arina Love]

If you think 60$ is a lot for a new console game then you are spoiled and probably don't have a job. I pay 80$++ for new console games and only after i researched game thoroughly and absolutely sure i will like it and get decent amount of playtime out of it. No extra stuff, no impulse buys, and no short games. Games are luxury if you can't afford 60$ for a game you better reevaluate priorities in life.
Said that, some 60$(80$ in my case) games of lesser quality or content just can't be sold at 60$, but they fall in price fast(at least in US) so it's not a problem.

 

[Alterego-X]

The problem with applying this "games are a luxory, you don't need them" argument to piracy, is that it isn't answering the original problems.

Very few pirates argue that they have some god-given right to pirate any content. And none claim that they would die without pirating them. Therefore, replying with "yeah, but you don't need them" doesn't really answer anything.

There are some logical arguements against piracy, such as the problem of funding games without obligatory paymentfor copies, and there are some compelling replies to these, such as statistics that show no loss of sales in counties where file sharing was legalized, and suggestions of alternate business models that don't depend on paying for the content's copies. To that, anti-piacy people might reply that even if we COULD restructure things, freeloaders don't deserve to get anything, and pro-piracy people might reply that we NEED to change, since the Internet makes automatic copying more and more easy and an integral part of life, we have to adapt to it, that's a higher priority than making sure that life sucks for freeloaders. Etc, etc, etc.

But that "games are a luxory" is a failed argument, it's basically a "first world problems" fallacy, that ignores all the piracy arguments pro and contra, and relies the idea that we shouldn't even question the current system, as long as it's not a matter of life and death.

It's pretty much like "why do you even care about the legal status of fetuses, when there are children starving in Africa?" or "Why are you so concened about american intenet censorship, when North Korea is killing people for their speech?

No, we don't NEED games. But that doesn't inherently silence every argument about improving the current, imperfect system of content distribution.