Jimquisition: Breaking the Bones of Business

NezumiiroKitsune

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My only observation is that I don't agree the implementation of these systems, that supported games such as Tribes, so they be allowed to continue with the free to play model, at the detriment of nothing, to the benefit of everyone, are ruined or lessened in value by their abominable attachment to games that did not need them, by publishers who perverted the "services" to suit their cheque books. I believe it is rather to the detriment of the games that they're attached to, both the model of commerce those games were originally supported by, and the type of games that are being affected.

Dead Space 3 is a tackier, less appetising game for this, and it could be so much worse, but the inevitable massive success of Dead Space 3 will tell publishers that there is room for it to be so much worse, and they will be ever so eager to see how much more radically awful they can make their games. Meanwhile the likes of Planetside 2 are still brilliant, and use optional micro-transactions properly.

The system won't be ruined by them; the games they're bound to inorganically, through unscrupulous greed, will however be ever dragged down by them, as the publishers get lazier and more cynical.

So... chin up.
 

Bujiraso

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Feb 12, 2011
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hm, he didn't say "thank god for me" (just hinted at it before cutting himself off)
Is this a first?
 

Quiotu

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mjc0961 said:
Buy the game to show that there's a market for these games, but whine your ass off to show that we don't want this DLC bullshit anymore. And don't buy the DLC. Not buying the game and not buying the DLC are two massively different things. Not buying the game makes the publisher think nobody wants that kind of game and they don't make that kind of game anymore (and probably kill the studio that made it). Not buying the DLC makes them think nobody wants that kind of DLC and MAYBE if that message gets across, the message of high sales for the base game but low sales for the DLC, finally they'll fucking stop.

But no, most people I see seem to fall into two camps: the "I'm not buying the game at all" camp, and the "I already bought the game and the DLC is cheap so I'll buy it even if I am getting fucked up the ass." camp. Seriously, I've seen people defend the Saints Row The Third forty weeks of DLC making you buy costumes that should have been unlockable for free like they were in the first two games with "It's cheap so I'll just buy it!". I hate these people SO MUCH for what they're doing to gaming, for the message they are sending publishers. And of course, I hate the people not buying the games at all for what they're doing to gaming as well. Once again, thanks Activision boycotters for not buying Prototype 2; Radical Entertainment is no more and CoD lives and sold better than ever once again in 2012. Good job guys! You showed Activision what for and got exactly what you wanted. ...Oh wait.

So yeah, remember the message from the previous episode. Buy the game but have yourself a righteous whine about the business practices. That's what this video is in some form: "I'm buying Dead Space 3 because I love Dead Space, but FUUUUUUUUUCK you EA for the micro-transaction weapon crafting rooms!" And if you love Dead Space, you should buy it too. Just be sure to not buy any Dead Space bucks and do some whining about it. If you buy the game and the bucks, they'll just do it again for the next game, and if you don't buy Dead Space 3 at all, there may never be a Dead Space 4.
That's not what I said. I said DON'T boycot. I buy games from publishers if they're GOOD, and if there not mocking my intelligence with the DLC and extra charges.
 

Zeckt

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You know, I just recently bought Dead Trigger a much hyped hardcore iphone game and sure enough you can only get HALF of the guns with in game currency and the rest with real cash that are HUGELY BETTER. Not to mention that with the in game money you keep through buying the real money guns will net you the best arsenal and boatloads of consumables because your not spending your in game money on guns.

Garbage Pay to Win all around. Fuck you Madfinger, I hope people know better now then to ever trust a game from you again and the only people who play it will be pirates and you go bankrupt so you stop shovelling your piles of crap on our industry. You lost me with one game.
 

Zeles

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Urh said:
How many Jim Bucks do I need for the hidden erotic gay fanfiction ending with Yahtzee?
You know someone somewhere on the internet has probably already written that.
 

Epona

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Jun 24, 2011
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You know, some people saw this coming as the future of DLC but those people were always told to sit down and shut up. After all, slippery slopes are fallacies.

Let's be realistic though, how many people were really excited about F2P? Really, anyone with common sense knows that the idea behind F2P is to exploit consumers by selling them a $100 game in small pieces. It the same as we see with DLC, you spend $60 on a game and by the time you buy all the DLC or even just the Season Pass you are out $100+.

I am happy to see Jim talking about another crash, it has been coming for many years but you can't talk about it because again, slippery slopes are fallacies.

Will Nintendo have to save the industry again?
 

IamLEAM1983

Neloth's got swag.
Aug 22, 2011
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GAunderrated said:
If you have hard statistical proof of every person pirating or buying a game and have hard evidence to support this then I am all ears. Until then it is all conjecture and as I have said the whole correlation = causation is a fallacy. There is no proof to this there is only people's opinions, rumors, and excuses being stated as fact.
I'm just one guy. I'm not a statistician, I can't claim to know the exact reason behind the way the industry works and never did I claim to. These are just pieces that very conveniently fit together? Am I right? Did I say I was right? No. It's a theory of mine.

However, theories are based on observable facts. Ubisoft and others are harping about piracy killing the business, The Pirate Bay is bombarded with cease-and-desist letters, Kim Dotcom's oh-so-secure new service is already awarming with illegal content and amid it all, we're starting to see projected tech specs for the PS4 and 720. Games are costing companies *millions* to develop and produce.

Put these things together and tell me what comes up. The sixty-dollar price tag can't cut it anymore. You're a publisher. What do you do if you can't directly ask for a price increase or motivate one? You break up your final product, sell the biggest chunk as is and release the rest in bits and pieces.

You're a consumer and that bothers you. Maybe you don't even have the base sixty dollars for the core purchase. What do you do? You pirate.

I could very well be wrong, but pay attention to the news for the next couple months, or go back to what's happened over the last year. Pay attention to the publishers' release plans. I'm sure things are more complex than my one little measly theory could cover and this obviously is a personal one - but it does make sense.
 

Headbiter

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As much as I agree with that statement...well...I have to sound like a smartass and say "Saw it coming". Why? Because as much as people openly claim to despise being used as retarded cashcows unto the breaking point of insanity, isn't that what most of gamers are still doing? We keep on buying stuff from EA. Continously. "Because they still make good games" people say. "Because we want to hurt the publishers not the developers" they say. "Because I like the series" they say.

Well, I'm not saying those statements are wrong. I mean, given the sheer amount of games EA publishes, there are bound to be some titles among them that are at least decent. But that's the crux, isn't it? Do I rather follow my principles and reason, "suffering" a bit and investing a bit of time and effort to inform and offer some insight to people who don't know better? Or do I stay true to my series, just to watch it devolve into a horrible bloody mess and constantly shove money to people I would have already killed in the name of humanity in another time and country?

Clearly the latter one is preferred, presumably because it's so free of conflict and (in lack of a better word) abstinence of short-time fun. And thus companies like EA will continue with their practice of pushing the boundaries of business practices (and in this particular company's case good taste), other start-ups will see the financial success and imitate it and we keep on steering to that inevitable crash when every boundary is crossed and the people who are responsible are already safe in their platinum-made bunkers.

I for my part will keep on doing what I've been preaching for years now: If someone behaves like an utter and irredeemable asshole, STOP SUPPORTING HIM/HER/IT! EA hasn't seen a dime from me ever since Dragon Age 1 and the "great games" I missed out on...well, honestly I don't feel that much of a loss. And considering that even the supposedly really great games got famous rather because of some glaring design issues (with the mandatory empty phrase "But it's a fun game for the most part") that lack of regret gets even bigger.

So yeah, let's watch the train derail and in 5 years wonder how all of this could have happened.

PS: That part of your subconcious that started to wonder if I'm still only talking about video games around paragraph three might be onto something.
 

mjc0961

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Nov 30, 2009
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Quiotu said:
That's not what I said. I said DON'T boycot. I buy games from publishers if they're GOOD, and if there not mocking my intelligence with the DLC and extra charges.
You said you DO boycott. The other side of your "I buy when the game is good and they aren't pushing DLC down my throat" strategy is that when they they do overdo it on the DLC and extra charge front, you don't buy the game.

Don't know if you know this, but:

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/boycott
Definition of BOYCOTT
to engage in a concerted refusal to have dealings with (as a person, store, or organization) usually to express disapproval or to force acceptance of certain conditions
Not buying a game because you disagree with the DLC and extra charges is called a boycott. So yes, you did say you boycott, and you told others to boycott as well in your final sentence.
 

Adam Jensen_v1legacy

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Sep 8, 2011
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I don't buy DLC. And I rarely pre-order games. And when I see a game that has an awesome pre-order bonus that not having it would be a deal breaker, I simply ignore the game until it's $10 on Steam. Fuck the corporations.
 

Epona

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Adam Jensen said:
I don't buy DLC. And I rarely pre-order games. And when I see a game that has an awesome pre-order bonus that not having it would be a deal breaker, I simply ignore the game until it's $10 on Steam. Fuck the corporations.
It is irritating to walk into Gamestop and see signs everywhere for games that aren't even out yet. Online store like Steam are just as bad where half of the features games are not out yet but you can give them your money now.

One time my kid pointed out three games being advertised in Gamestop with big standees and none of them were out, 2 of them were Blop2 and Halo 4, can't remember the last one. It's irritating to repeatedly say "sorry son, that games not out for 2 more months". I don't know about most gamers but when I go to Gamestop looking for a game, it's a game I want to play TODAY!
 

Quiotu

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mjc0961 said:
Quiotu said:
That's not what I said. I said DON'T boycot. I buy games from publishers if they're GOOD, and if there not mocking my intelligence with the DLC and extra charges.
You said you DO boycott. The other side of your "I buy when the game is good and they aren't pushing DLC down my throat" strategy is that when they they do overdo it on the DLC and extra charge front, you don't buy the game.

Don't know if you know this, but:

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/boycott
Definition of BOYCOTT
to engage in a concerted refusal to have dealings with (as a person, store, or organization) usually to express disapproval or to force acceptance of certain conditions
Not buying a game because you disagree with the DLC and extra charges is called a boycott. So yes, you did say you boycott, and you told others to boycott as well in your final sentence.
A boycott would be if I didn't buy ANYTHING from a publisher. I don't mindlessly buy from a publisher even when the game sucks. Yes, I won't buy a game if the DLC insults my intelligence or the charges for content are terrible. That means I don't like the game. If there's a game I like and have no problem with it, but I won't buy it because it has a publisher's name on it... THAT would be a boycott. Otherwise I'm just not buying games I don't like.
 

RJ 17

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Nov 27, 2011
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Final Fantasy: All the Bravest?
Soooooo you literally have an army of heroes fighting....two to three monsters at a time? Who the fuck comes up with this shit?
 

aba1

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Doesn't help that they keep pushing things digital only which means only middle class and upper class first world nations can afford and stable enough internet connection. Anyone in second world nations or poorer people in 1st world nations will soon have to give up gaming all together.
 

aivalera

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Foolproof said:
Sooo....you're shocked that a business would try to find a way to make money off a new development?
Not shocked, pissed. And "not try to find a way to make money off a new development", more like shoving it down our throats not enough to kill us but something that has to be checked on.

Honestly though, this isn't one my "must change" policies but at the rate it's going it will soon be up there. This is the same as on-disc DLC that should be cut out soon before it becomes completely riduculous. We shouldn't have to pay to unlock the stuff we already bought. You may say that we aren't and that I'm ranting on about something else, but we are and I'm on topic. If this keeps up, we will be forced to pay for something that should have been in the game but isn't because we haven't paid another twenty bucks. It's not there yet, but it will be if this doesn't stop.
 

Eve Charm

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The industry won't crash. As bad as it gets it won't crash at all because call of duty, madden, assassin's creed, and any other low risk title that sells millions a company can keep pumping out every year. Sure more studios will shut down, but hell as long as the big guys can buy whatever is worth money and still put it out like they did THQ nothing is going to miss a beat.

And people won't not buy the next call of duty, or the next installment of X game, and the DLC season pass or coins cause heck that's about the only game they buy for a while.

Hell I bet in 2 years Activision will be Kickstarting to raise the funds for the next call of duty so it doesn't cost them a time, 500 dollars for a clan tag and all the dlc ;p
 

Catrixa

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...I've had people ask me "Why would anyone sane spend money on pixels!? Don't you know you're not getting anything real!?" and I usually answer "Why would you go to the movies!? Don't you know you aren't getting anything real!?" Entertainment is entertainment. You pay $10 and expect to get $10 of entertainment out of whatever you've paid $10 for. In the case of DLC/microtransactions, if you pay $10 for a thing, you will, in theory, get $10 out.

All this said, I think the problem isn't "This entertainment costs $10" it's "You need to pay $10 to extract any enjoyment out of this product" or "Here is a partial product. You can pay $10 to get the whole thing." The difference here is a combination of presentation, quality, and pricing.

For "You need to pay $10 to extract any enjoyment out of this product": this is a quality issue, and I'm not talking about overall game quality. Take TOR for example. When this game came out, it was really fun. I loved the story, characters, PVP, even the on-rails space missions. Yeah, like everyone else, I got to level 50 and wandered off from the title, but I picked it back up when it went free to play. And everything is now behind a pay wall. Yeah, I can still do all of the story missions, but they've taken the multiplayer out of a massively multiplayer online roleplaying game. And they remind you that you are a free to play player every single time you want to do something, ruining a lot of the single-player-goodness (I don't want to say immersion, because there's only so much you're going to get out of an mmo, but it kind of is, especially when it pops up to tell you everything you'd get if you paid every two seconds. No, I don't care that I'm not getting the absolute max exp for this quest). A lot of Korean grind mmos also take this model and run with it. Yeah, I'm sure I'd be having much more fun if I paid for exp boosts or items so I can get to max level faster, but if I don't know if the game will be any more fun with them, I won't buy them.

For "Here is a partial product. You can pay $10 to get the whole thing": this might seem like a quality issue, but I'd argue it's more of a presentation and pricing problem. You pay for a $60 game under the impression that you're getting $60 of product. But you're not. You're getting $30 of product. What that is can be somewhat subjective, but I'd wager if the game feels less substantial than its predecessors, and you know there will be DLC, you're probably wandering into this situation. Now, say they charge $30 for the game and promise $10 DLC later, and you can get a season pass. Would this be as bad? I'd argue no, since you'd be getting an honest price. For a lame metaphor, it's like going to a movie under the expectation of getting at least one hour and 30 minutes of run time, only to be cut off after 45 minutes and given a haphazard "to be continued!" Yes, it's sort of subjective, but I'd say most people would be frustrated by that tactic.

Honestly, I think there are ways to do free to play/microtransactions/DLC that don't feel like you're getting cheated. Skyrim for the PC is a pretty good example of a single player title, because even if you hate all of the DLC, you can still get some pretty stellar mods, or even write your own. For multiplayer games, I think League of Legends is a pretty good way to handle microtransactions. If you think you'll play a champion for long enough to get $10 out of it, go ahead and pay. If you're not sure, don't have the funds, or are on the fence in any way, that's cool too; you can wait. There are other ways to get what you want.

At the end of the day, paying for video game content is going to feel different for everyone, but I do think it shouldn't feel like you're being compelled to buy, and that's what the real issue is.
 

Weaver

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IMO, the crash is on its way.
Stocks are down all around. THQ is disassembled. Every week we hear about some studio closing.

I just think the industry is poised right now for a complete hostile takeover by Valve. The Steam Box might just upturn the whole console market quickly enough that all the big players won't even know what happened.
 

Atmos Duality

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irishda said:
It would be better serving though if he hadn't said in the video, multiple times, that he'd be willing to pay if the developers didn't A: charge so much or B: "beat him over the head with it." Which I'm not even sure I know what he's talking about. The closest I can think is that guy in Dragon Age that talks to you about some important mission, and then the game pauses to tell you you have to buy the DLC. But that's solved by just not talking to the guy again. If that breaks you out of your gaming funk for more than five minutes (or however long until you talk to someone else) than something's wrong with the game itself to begin with.
Well, even in the example you've given here, it's kind of a nasty practice.
Legal, well within their right, but nobody likes having proverbial keys dangled in their face.
I'll elaborate a bit more below.

No, Jim's not arguing against the practices, as he made very clear in the video. He's just mad that they're "forcing him to" or "charging him too much". Which, on both accounts, are fucking stupid reasons. If he REALLY wanted to speak out about it, he would've made a video about how retarded you have to be to spend money on a fucking cheat code or a hat for your character. But no, instead its a video on how the video game industry will burn and fall because publishers have the audacity to fish for people stupid enough or wealthy enough to pay for extra shit.
Pardon the personal interpretation, but I believe his outrage at these costs are in essence arguments against their related practices in general. It's not just price-hiking measures, it's how they're implemented.

At best, I find this problem akin to that of Product Placement in film; even if you try to ignore it, even if you walk away from it, once you're aware of it, it still cheapens the experience. Perhaps I'm a weaker person for it, but subconsciously, I hate it when I realize I just paid money for an experience and then have an advertisement shoved in my face.

At worst, well, we're seeing a trend in AAA games with more and more content focused on micro-transactions. Mass Effect 3, Dead Space 3, even Diablo 3...I call them "shell games".

Incidentally, I did some research on that iPhone/mobile Final Fantasy: All The Bravest, and Jim is right, it's a fucking terrible game.
It's so terrible in design and so greedy in its intent, I actually applauded Squeenix for making it.
FF: AtB's mere existence could be interpreted as (I do not say this with any irony or sarcasm) a statement of contempt for the FF fanbase, and the nostalgia-centric market they drive.

Squeenix really thinks their fanbase is so stupid, with such low standards that they will gobble up a game whose gameplay literally consists of rubbing once side of the screen until you win just because it has the Final Fantasy franchise stamped on it.
What blew my mind while researching this: I found people defending the game heart and soul. These people are spending money, sometimes lots of money, on SPRITES. Nothing more complicated in function or appeal, than an animated gif.

And it's because of shit like this, that I cannot get mad at Jim as you have.

I totally agree with you on the consumer taking a stand and rejecting bad offers rather than buying them and grumbling about how shitty the market is later, but there is a point where someone needs to stop and point out just how ridiculous these money grabs are getting, and that's what I took from his video.

spartandude said:
Atmos Duality... you sir are my new solemate
i get so sick of the "you dont like then dont buy it and shut up" mentality so many people on these forums have but you... i just want you to hold me
Careful. I've been stalked by a lady on this site before in a similar manner, and as it turns out, she's quite aggressive. >_<
But it's good to meet a kindred spirit amidst the madness of the net.