Jimquisition: Better Does Not Mean Good

[OldRat]

Ah, yes. I hate that argument. "Well, it could be worse!" used as an argument for quality. Just a few back, I called someone out on using it as her only argument for the supposed good quality of a certain TV show adaptation of a certaing thing I myself didn't like and that, factually, did not do very well with the fans of the original. It devolved into a hissy fit and stomping out angry.
See, the thing is, "Well, I thought it was good since there's been a lot worse series with the same theme!" is not an argument for quality. Ok, no, that's not true, it's an argument for the thing in question being not the absolute worst in quality. But, just by itself, "it's not the worst" does not, by its very nature, imply any kind of good quality. How could it, it fucking compares it to the worst thing possible. Saying you're better at running than a paraplegic ground sloth doesn't mean you're fast. It actually tells NOTHING about your actual placement in the scale of things.


Personally, I find it as much of an annoying copout as the good old "Well go watch Citizen Kane if you wanted QUALITY in a movie!" or the ilk. Because apparently some people can only express themselves through strawmanning extremes.

 

[Grey Day for Elcia]

ITT: lots of people saying a bunch of rhetoric who will no doubt fail to change their spending habits at all.

The average life of an Escapist forum goer seems to consist of flaming EA, buying EA games, complaining that games are too expensive, flooding forums with rage and doing nothing at all to solve the problem.

 

[wezzipooh]

Jim is such a fucking sell out. Look how much shrimp was shown in this episode.

 

[Shoggoth2588]

I am pleased with who I am and thank God on a daily basis for Jim. Great show as always Jim. Speaking of Batman; anybody know yet if all of the new content for the Game of the Year edition of AC is all on-disc or will it need to be unlocked using an online pass?

 

[Timmey]

wtf was with the shrimp? what was that for?

Better we shrimp the videos, than let the videos shrimp us.

Aint that the truth

For some reason I love the fact that Jim not only refers to the forums during the video, in reference to that EC vs Jim thread, but also posts in them after haha.

Ot: great video, loved the bran

 

[Thoric485]

Fuck yeah, Comix Zone!

 

[Adam Jensen_v1legacy]

I can somewhat tolerate people who say things like "it could be worse". I can tolerate them on the internet. In real life I'd probably break their fingers. But people who defend publishers and developers on a daily basis are fuckin' retarded and I have to speak up when I see one of those fucktards. What surprises me is that The Escapist is full of people who defend day 1 DLC, on-disc DLC, day 1 on-disc DLC and shit like that. How stupid do you have to be to defend someone who's taking your money and fucking you in the ass at the same time.

 

[Tel_Windzan]

Here's the thing - there's a point where the consumer's demand and the profits hit the rubber. They have determined based on sales, that $60 is the price point the US market will bear. And realize, while super games make a lot of money, a great deal of other games, while critically acclaimed and good ideas fail to sell. Not ever game makes money, so the bigger titles provide revenue for the publisher.

When you mention "bigger titles", I assume you are referring to games that are well known that the Sellers should know will sell pretty well, such as Diablo, Pokemon and many others. While I see where you are going with this, I still think there is a huge problem with this and it is because of the bigger name games that I have this problem.

You?re implying that the Publishers/Developers of video games should know if the game they are working on will sell well, so they know that they could slap on a $60 price tag and still probably come out even. But the thing I don't quite get is again, why place the price so high? If you know people are going to buy the game as soon as it comes out, you already know that probably covering the production costs of that game should be met in probably a few days or so based on the demand. So why not try to make that pool even bigger by reducing the price? That way, the fans of the game could recommend it to new players who in turn will probably buy the game because it is at a reasonable price. If you get more people to buy the game, that means profit would go up, wouldn't it? Because you already have a base of people you know will buy the game at any given price, just make the price a bit fairer and I think the companies should still come out even.

This is just I thought I had on the whole pricing of video games. I'd be lying if I said I really understood the whole thing as to why some Sellers do the things they do because I don't know a lot about economics. I just find it hard to believe that these companies are ignoring the idea that reducing the price for games is a good thing for everyone involved.

 

[Versuvius]

Shut up Raisin Bran Man and take my money!

Also we do get shafted more for just about every digital product (Like charging 1 pound for every 1 dollar because certain services cannot be arsed to convert it). But, this does not mean our brothers in the US shouldn't complain. Far from it. It just means we from the EU can complain louder. And swear more. Also fuck living on a bastard island where everything is taxed to shittery.

Thank god for Jim.

 

[J.d. Scott]

Here's the thing - there's a point where the consumer's demand and the profits hit the rubber. They have determined based on sales, that $60 is the price point the US market will bear. And realize, while super games make a lot of money, a great deal of other games, while critically acclaimed and good ideas fail to sell. Not ever game makes money, so the bigger titles provide revenue for the publisher.

When you mention "bigger titles", I assume you are referring to games that are well known that the Sellers should know will sell pretty well, such as Diablo, Pokemon and many others. While I see where you are going with this, I still think there is a huge problem with this and it is because of the bigger name games that I have this problem.

You?re implying that the Publishers/Developers of video games should know if the game they are working on will sell well, so they know that they could slap on a $60 price tag and still probably come out even. But the thing I don't quite get is again, why place the price so high? If you know people are going to buy the game as soon as it comes out, you already know that probably covering the production costs of that game should be met in probably a few days or so based on the demand. So why not try to make that pool even bigger by reducing the price? That way, the fans of the game could recommend it to new players who in turn will probably buy the game because it is at a reasonable price. If you get more people to buy the game, that means profit would go up, wouldn't it? Because you already have a base of people you know will buy the game at any given price, just make the price a bit fairer and I think the companies should still come out even.

This is just I thought I had on the whole pricing of video games. I'd be lying if I said I really understood the whole thing as to why some Sellers do the things they do because I don't know a lot about economics. I just find it hard to believe that these companies are ignoring the idea that reducing the price for games is a good thing for everyone involved.

Here's the thing - there's only a limited amount of growth one can get. Eventually, the growth curve and the price curve stop meeting up properly. At $60, 5M copies generates $300M in gross revenue. To get the same at $10, they'd have to sell 30M (and there's a physical cost with each disc, so it's more like 35M...) There's only so many buyers. So many physical machines out there. So many people willing to buy your game, irregardless of price.

And here's the thing - 5M is Modern Warfare 2 - an incredibly, incredibly popular game. People would have bought that game at pretty much whatever price, so there's only so much wiggle room.

 

[AbstractStream]

Wow, I just realized that buying 2-3 new games that were just released cost almost as much as a handheld (talking about the 3DS).

That's...pretty ridiculous. Especially when at least one of them isn't gonna be as great as you hoped.

Yeah, I'm hoping things get better. Way to go, Jim!

 

[Strazdas]

The episide is good but examples arent.
Sure american poor may be poor, but they still live better than my countries rich.

So you're living on the streets, wondering when your next meal will be, and dreading winter...all while surfing the net on your computer?

No. neither does an average american crying "were poor". Not long ago on this very forum i had a discussion where a guy spent 120 on electricity along and claimed he was living bad.

 

[Rednog]

The episide is good but examples arent.
Sure american poor may be poor, but they still live better than my countries rich.

So you're living on the streets, wondering when your next meal will be, and dreading winter...all while surfing the net on your computer?

No. neither does an average american crying "were poor". Not long ago on this very forum i had a discussion where a guy spent 120 on electricity along and claimed he was living bad.

You said the poor in America are living better than the richest people in your country.
If you honestly think that it true you are absolutely delusional.
We have plenty of people who are poor who live on the streets, don't have food, and don't have homes so please take your bigotry and hate for America and plug it somewhere else.

 

[Lord_Gremlin]

Hm, actually I've noticed that nowadays I buy more games on a later date, with a discount, although I have money. And that is directly tied to the way publishers sell it. For example, I have no problem buying Dark Souls or Shadows of The Damned day 1 at full price. You pay, you get the whole game, maybe there will be DLC, maybe not. However I've also wanted to buy Prototype 2 day 1 (liked the original) but now it comes with this Radnet pass, and not only that - CE comes with a code for DLC... In this case I just feel like waiting until I can buy the full game. Same with Asura Wraith - BTW I don't know if they released all episodes already or not? And it happens more and more often. In 2008-2009 I got almost all PS3 games day 1, but now...
Yeah, it could be worse, at least some games are sold complete. But it will get worse as major publishers try to milk as much as they can from consumers.

 

[Strazdas]

The episide is good but examples arent.
Sure american poor may be poor, but they still live better than my countries rich.

So you're living on the streets, wondering when your next meal will be, and dreading winter...all while surfing the net on your computer?

No. neither does an average american crying "were poor". Not long ago on this very forum i had a discussion where a guy spent 120 on electricity along and claimed he was living bad.

You said the poor in America are living better than the richest people in your country.
If you honestly think that it true you are absolutely delusional.
We have plenty of people who are poor who live on the streets, don't have food, and don't have homes so please take your bigotry and hate for America and plug it somewhere else.

I said rich, not richest. Here My earnings are around 1000 dollars a month and that is considered rich. Most people claim that you cant have a roof above you for that in america, so blame them perhaps?

 

[Rednog]

The episide is good but examples arent.
Sure american poor may be poor, but they still live better than my countries rich.

So you're living on the streets, wondering when your next meal will be, and dreading winter...all while surfing the net on your computer?

No. neither does an average american crying "were poor". Not long ago on this very forum i had a discussion where a guy spent 120 on electricity along and claimed he was living bad.

You said the poor in America are living better than the richest people in your country.
If you honestly think that it true you are absolutely delusional.
We have plenty of people who are poor who live on the streets, don't have food, and don't have homes so please take your bigotry and hate for America and plug it somewhere else.

I said rich, not richest. Here My earnings are around 1000 dollars a month and that is considered rich. Most people claim that you cant have a roof above you for that in america, so blame them perhaps?

Prices are relevant to your country's economy, your 1000 a month most likely carries much more weight in your country than it would in America, but that doesn't make you magically worse off than people who say make double that amount in the US, their relative buying power locally would be far less.
Hell look at Australia their average minimum wage is double that of the U.S., why aren't you hating on them?

 

[Griffolion]

1:01

Saw that coming a mile away, but still laughed stupidly hard!

 

[Strazdas]

The episide is good but examples arent.
Sure american poor may be poor, but they still live better than my countries rich.

So you're living on the streets, wondering when your next meal will be, and dreading winter...all while surfing the net on your computer?

No. neither does an average american crying "were poor". Not long ago on this very forum i had a discussion where a guy spent 120 on electricity along and claimed he was living bad.

You said the poor in America are living better than the richest people in your country.
If you honestly think that it true you are absolutely delusional.
We have plenty of people who are poor who live on the streets, don't have food, and don't have homes so please take your bigotry and hate for America and plug it somewhere else.

I said rich, not richest. Here My earnings are around 1000 dollars a month and that is considered rich. Most people claim that you cant have a roof above you for that in america, so blame them perhaps?

Prices are relevant to your country's economy, your 1000 a month most likely carries much more weight in your country than it would in America, but that doesn't make you magically worse off than people who say make double that amount in the US, their relative buying power locally would be far less.
Hell look at Australia their average minimum wage is double that of the U.S., why aren't you hating on them?

Except that prices are very similar to american ones here. Infact there are things, like oil products, that you pay less for. The main price difference is rent.