Jimquisition: Buyer Beware
- Thread starter Jimothy Sterling
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While I agree with the sentiment, this isn't a problem with just the games industry, and it's not something that can be fixed from within the games industry. Instead of effectively "zooming in" and imagining the video is about EA, try zooming out and imagine it's about the entirety of the multinational entertainment industry, through all media, consumer electronics, even to snack foods. The shoe still fits. Zoom out further to necessities... still fits. For better or much much worse... Caveat emptor is just a fact of life now. This shouldn't be our job, but it is.
Mind you, I'm absolutely with you. We need to show some solidarity, hold large corporations to account, demonize the shit out of them when they put one toe out of place, inform one another and commiserate rather than mock... and folks like you, Jim, are the kind who can get more people to do that. No matter what corner of the media you're a part of.
Mind you, I'm absolutely with you. We need to show some solidarity, hold large corporations to account, demonize the shit out of them when they put one toe out of place, inform one another and commiserate rather than mock... and folks like you, Jim, are the kind who can get more people to do that. No matter what corner of the media you're a part of.
This current video games market is so utterly broken that I'm glad that I only buy used games on Amazon, after they've been thoroughly peer reviewed ... there's no trust anymore, sellers don't care about reputation and how it'll affect their brand or its next game's sales, professional reviewers have become corrupted systematically, and buyers can't tell what's good without the most thorough of research ~ frankly, I'm amazed people buy new games at all ... there's gotta be a way to fix this system ~ lemon laws and automatic refunds for dissatisfied customers might become necessity to turn things around ...
You might be getting Jim and MovieBob a bit mixed up; both of them did come out against the players as a knee jerk reaction, but Jim actually took the time to look at our complaints and then backtracked on a bunch of the stuff he said.josh4president said:
I don't remember MovieBob doing anything of the sort. (If anyone has a link to MovieBob backtracking on his knee-jerk reactions, I'm quite open to revising my opinion of him upwards.)
re: Buyer Beware
I mostly agree with Jim's points, but I think that it might actually be best for the industry if this practice continues to get out of hand until the industry crashes, and huge companies like EA are forced to lay off dozens of the upper management because that's the only way that they might possibly - POSSIBLY - get the point that metaphorically strip mining an industry for as much revenue as possible in the short term is a terrible idea.
Unfortunately that's the mind set of Corporate America, and a distressing amount of Corporations worldwide, so even if the industry did crash and the executives found themselves unemployed, they would find employment in other industries quickly enough to have no need to reflect upon their mistakes. So what's more likely to happen is that the gaming industry will crash and burn, new companies will come up in their ashes, we'll have a few years of awesomeness and then the old Executives (both literally and metaphorically) will come back to destroy the industry again. Wash, rinse, lather, repeat until our current form of Capitalism implodes upon itself.
With some luck, someone, somewhere will find a way to replace our current model without destroying it entirely, so things won't go entirely to hell before they get better again. Fingers crossed.
I know with absolute certainty that one man, somewhere, has died of laughter.
As for the rest, pretty spot-on. Although I think customers should be a bit more aware than they are (preordering for fuck's sakes, that has got to be the epitome of naivete from any studio you don't trust with your life), there is so much misinformation, oversight and censorship that it's difficult to get reliable information if you don't go to the right sites.
As for the rest, pretty spot-on. Although I think customers should be a bit more aware than they are (preordering for fuck's sakes, that has got to be the epitome of naivete from any studio you don't trust with your life), there is so much misinformation, oversight and censorship that it's difficult to get reliable information if you don't go to the right sites.
Some of these practices should be illegal. In fact isn't blatent false advertising a legal issue?
I have to disrespectfully disagree with Jim, in that vein I am not going to give him the extra view on his video as he requested.
Voting with your wallet is a two part action. You have to withhold money from the entity that is doing something that you disagree with and part with your money with the business model you agree with.
When the culling begins. You have to ensure that your herd is the one that survives.
Voting with your wallet is a two part action. You have to withhold money from the entity that is doing something that you disagree with and part with your money with the business model you agree with.
When the culling begins. You have to ensure that your herd is the one that survives.
I would like to raise... not really a counterpoint, but a relevant side-point, Mr. Sterling, and that is: consumers are fucking stupid. You need only read this very thread for more than enough evidence of your own consumer base doing what consumers do best: being fucking stupid. I do include myself in that, by the way. I fully accept that as a consumer, I too, am fucking stupid.
Why is that? one might ask. Well, hypothetical person, stop being so fucking stupid for a second and listen. It's a problem of communication. Buyers and sellers have different types and qualities of information available to them. Sellers have access to copious logistical information, allowing (but not guaranteeing) effective management of available resources (including and especially their human resources) and overall control of their product or service. Consumers, on the other hand, want nothing more than to consume, and all they will ever see is things related to consumption or preventing their consumption.
The problems arise, not from the consumers being fucking stupid - how could they be anything else with so little information? - but when the sellers cannot be trusted. Consumers who refuse to trust a seller will make decisions based solely on their need, even to their own detriment. Conversely, sellers who abuse their consumers' trust quickly lose it, to everyone's detriment.
In short, you're absolutely right, Jim. The gaming industry is doing the exact same bullshit that nearly killed it 30 years ago - almost exactly 30 years ago, if memory serves.
...and I say we finish what they started. It's the only solution, the final solution. We must destroy this old world that refuses to learn from itself and allow it to regrow anew, fresh and vibrant, as it did before. It that shall not be spoken, the anti-game, the title that so very nearly destroyed the industry in its infancy, must be reborn to wipe this world clean with bile and flame and eye-bleeding 3D. They must make... ET: The Extra Terrestrial 2: Reclamation.
[fade out, echoing evil laugh]
Why is that? one might ask. Well, hypothetical person, stop being so fucking stupid for a second and listen. It's a problem of communication. Buyers and sellers have different types and qualities of information available to them. Sellers have access to copious logistical information, allowing (but not guaranteeing) effective management of available resources (including and especially their human resources) and overall control of their product or service. Consumers, on the other hand, want nothing more than to consume, and all they will ever see is things related to consumption or preventing their consumption.
The problems arise, not from the consumers being fucking stupid - how could they be anything else with so little information? - but when the sellers cannot be trusted. Consumers who refuse to trust a seller will make decisions based solely on their need, even to their own detriment. Conversely, sellers who abuse their consumers' trust quickly lose it, to everyone's detriment.
In short, you're absolutely right, Jim. The gaming industry is doing the exact same bullshit that nearly killed it 30 years ago - almost exactly 30 years ago, if memory serves.
...and I say we finish what they started. It's the only solution, the final solution. We must destroy this old world that refuses to learn from itself and allow it to regrow anew, fresh and vibrant, as it did before. It that shall not be spoken, the anti-game, the title that so very nearly destroyed the industry in its infancy, must be reborn to wipe this world clean with bile and flame and eye-bleeding 3D. They must make... ET: The Extra Terrestrial 2: Reclamation.
[fade out, echoing evil laugh]
To me the major problem with the game/software industry as a whole is that is almost all sales are final. What was once a reasonable policy to prevent piracy has been become a highly anti-consumer weapon wielded by the industry. In particular steam and similar services which track consumption have no excuse for an all sales are final policy. Steam could easily institute a policy of full return within 24 hours if you?ve played the game for less than X hour(s). or even return for in store credit. Heck they could even charge a reasonable restocking fee. (Yeah I know that restocking of digital content doesn?t conceptually make sense, but there are costs associated with a failed sale and keeping the service running, etc.)
I admit it might not be reasonable for a system gog.com which doesn?t include any type of DRM or usage monitoring to be able offer returns ( Lets be frank, far too man people would abuse it) but Audible by Amazon permits people to return audio books if they?ve found them not to their taste with only a few restrictions and it has only caused me to be more willing to check something out. Heck, I can say that Amazon has done well by me by being more consumer friendly, I have bought books that I might not otherwise have been willing to try and then bought 3-4 more books from the same author, and I have only ever returned 2.
My point being, if the stores themselves, Steam, Gog, Amazon, were better consumer advocates, it would really be hard for the industry to get away with it and the first of these major store fronts to go that route will probably get any costs paid back in full many times over from increased business from customers happy to finally get a fair deal.
I admit it might not be reasonable for a system gog.com which doesn?t include any type of DRM or usage monitoring to be able offer returns ( Lets be frank, far too man people would abuse it) but Audible by Amazon permits people to return audio books if they?ve found them not to their taste with only a few restrictions and it has only caused me to be more willing to check something out. Heck, I can say that Amazon has done well by me by being more consumer friendly, I have bought books that I might not otherwise have been willing to try and then bought 3-4 more books from the same author, and I have only ever returned 2.
My point being, if the stores themselves, Steam, Gog, Amazon, were better consumer advocates, it would really be hard for the industry to get away with it and the first of these major store fronts to go that route will probably get any costs paid back in full many times over from increased business from customers happy to finally get a fair deal.
I recently bought a PS3 and have been catching up on some exclusives and other older titles I had previously missed. Here is my routine before making a purchase - watch a couple of reviews from trusted reviewers (if I have never heard of the game before), check to see if all the trophies are still available, are there any game breaking bugs I need to worry about and finally, if there is multiplayer, are the servers still up and running. I can only imagine how intimidating a game store looks to someone who is new to the hobby. Curiously buyer beware doesn't sound all that fair or sustainable if we want to grow and be more inclusive to newcomers.
If you buy a movie, a car, an appliance, you might get a lemon or you might get a passable product or you might get something awesome. You don't really know unless you do the research.
Games are so cheap that personally I don't really mind throwing some money away on a game I didn't like as much as I thought I might.
Broken games deserve refunds, and that is an area that could see big improvements in the digital age, but I don't want Steam or Origin deciding which games are good enough to sell, because they have shown that they will not make good decisions in that space.
This is one area where I just completely disagree with Jim, and not for the reasons he presumes in his preemptive straw man.
I don't want Steam to be the arbiter of what games are available through their service. They don't have the time to get good games up in a timely manner. If Jim doesn't like what they have now he will certainly be unhappy once they go API and anyone can sell through Steam.
Games are so cheap that personally I don't really mind throwing some money away on a game I didn't like as much as I thought I might.
Broken games deserve refunds, and that is an area that could see big improvements in the digital age, but I don't want Steam or Origin deciding which games are good enough to sell, because they have shown that they will not make good decisions in that space.
This is one area where I just completely disagree with Jim, and not for the reasons he presumes in his preemptive straw man.
I don't want Steam to be the arbiter of what games are available through their service. They don't have the time to get good games up in a timely manner. If Jim doesn't like what they have now he will certainly be unhappy once they go API and anyone can sell through Steam.
Great video Jim. One of these days you should do a video about the people who justify every nasty action a corporation makes with "they are in business to make money". The "anything goes to make money" attitude doesn't help anyone.
On this topic, here's the thing. The publishers know that it's much harder to get a refund on an opened video game than most other products. They know that if they can just get you to buy a game, you will be stuck with it. Apologists need to see that too. If you buy a crappy TV, you can return it in most cases and yes, that's after you open it and try it out.
On this topic, here's the thing. The publishers know that it's much harder to get a refund on an opened video game than most other products. They know that if they can just get you to buy a game, you will be stuck with it. Apologists need to see that too. If you buy a crappy TV, you can return it in most cases and yes, that's after you open it and try it out.
I made a thread on the forums about Steam selling a game that outright didn't work because the servers required to run the multiplayer-only game were long since ditched by the developers.
I was really astonished at the amount of people telling me "Oh but it's the customer's job to find out if it's even possible for the game to fucking work at all".
Thank god for you, Jim, for making my point.
I was really astonished at the amount of people telling me "Oh but it's the customer's job to find out if it's even possible for the game to fucking work at all".
Thank god for you, Jim, for making my point.
We've gotten to the point where games that simply WILL NOT WORK NO MATTER WHAT YOU DO are being sold. Fray: Reloaded edition says hi. (Actually, this game isn't available for sale since a few weeks back... But that's still at least a year after all the servers for the multi-player only game were shut downThanatos2k said:
I'm watching the video a second time (to gather my thoughts as I type, not to pretend it's somehow worse when EA does it). It's a shame that Drill Queen is nowhere to be heard.
The problem isn't even just that there is mockery of the consumer for them buying the product. Companies berate us for disliking a game. They berate us for expecting a game to work. They berate us for expecting a game to live up to claims and/or promises. And that's just disturbing. It reads as "what kind of moron actually buys the crap we're selling?" and that's an absurd notion. Further, it comes off as the kind of smug idiocy that led to the Xbone fiasco: gamers will like what we tell them to like. And while it did poorly for Microsoft, other companies have done far better than they probably deserve.
Of course, we do bear some of the responsibility. I know that not everyone's on NeoGaf and I understand that lying to the consumer flat-out is wrong, but at the same time, even when this behaviour is called out we as a consumer tend to reward it. Even informed consumers, even the informed consumers who scream "boycott!" buy the games quietly and hope nobody notices it on their recently played list. I think to some extent, we get what we deserve.
But all things, as they say, in moderation.
For one, we seem to have one of the most deceptive and/or facilitative criticism/review systems in at least entertainment media. Having done the occasional CD review (that's how dated my time as a music reviewer was, people still used these strange silver platters as a media vector), I was encouraged to come up with positive or constructive criticism, but I've never known an editor to encourage someone to outright lie. It seems that not telling a game company that its shit don't stink is something that will have people demanding your head on a platter. And again, gamers do that, too.
I bring up music because of my own experience with it, but also because audiophiles can be hateful, petty, and entitled. And yet, I've only seen one attempt to have a music critic fired for a "bad" review, and I'm not sure that was a serious attempt or hipster irony. In gaming, heads can roll and we help facilitate that by raging against people who don't tell us exactly what we want to hear. On this site we had people say crushing YouTube's gaming section would be a small price to pay to get rid of PewDiePie. And I assume most claims like this are histrionics, or even jokes. But some of the folks I know and have every reason to believe they're serious.
That is to say we, the hardcore, enlightened, edumacatued gamer are still often one of the biggest stumbling blocks as far as gaming goes. We are facilitators. Less so the common gamer, who might not know and honestly, shouldn't be expected to be this unreasonably in the know.
But I digress. Not only do we seem to have a worse system for evaluation of games, we have fewer recourses. Many stores won't even exchange physical copies, and digital services are "all sales final" in most cases. The GOG and Origin refund policies are considered novel selling points, and we're far from seeing it adopted elsewhere. You can pitch a fit for a refund on Steam, but even with broken games they are reticent to offer a real refund. Yes, there are exceptions. So freaking what? Basically, they can be cajoled into making exceptions. That's not a good model for the consumer.
One of the ways we guard against bad products is the refund and warranty system: if something doesn't work, we get to take it back. And the companies have to deal with that.
Meanwhile, addressing both the point of consumers not taking it and the later point that people frequently make an exception for EA, America specifically and maybe the West in general (but I don't know) seems to have raised a couple of generations with a sociopathic streak. Or at least a narcissistic streak: when it happens to someone else, it's all "boo hoo, you entitled idiots, go kill yourself." when it happens to them, it's "this is the greatest injustice in the history of mankind." And we do see a lot of that swing. It's not just "I don't care." It's "I don't care, screw you for caring, and I will berate you for it." There is berating behaviour whether you are just disappointed in a game or disappointed that you were sold a bill of goods.
The Simpsons once had an episode where Homer's attitude towards a gay guy is changed only because said gay guy saved his life. The character jokingly comments that if only every gay could save his life, they'd be set, and that's sort of the principle we have going: a bunch of people who can only relate to things as they directly impact them, hence EA getting so much hate even from the "Buyer Beware" crowd.
A nation of Homers. *shudder*
An extra big "Thank God For Jim" on that note.
The problem isn't even just that there is mockery of the consumer for them buying the product. Companies berate us for disliking a game. They berate us for expecting a game to work. They berate us for expecting a game to live up to claims and/or promises. And that's just disturbing. It reads as "what kind of moron actually buys the crap we're selling?" and that's an absurd notion. Further, it comes off as the kind of smug idiocy that led to the Xbone fiasco: gamers will like what we tell them to like. And while it did poorly for Microsoft, other companies have done far better than they probably deserve.
Of course, we do bear some of the responsibility. I know that not everyone's on NeoGaf and I understand that lying to the consumer flat-out is wrong, but at the same time, even when this behaviour is called out we as a consumer tend to reward it. Even informed consumers, even the informed consumers who scream "boycott!" buy the games quietly and hope nobody notices it on their recently played list. I think to some extent, we get what we deserve.
But all things, as they say, in moderation.
For one, we seem to have one of the most deceptive and/or facilitative criticism/review systems in at least entertainment media. Having done the occasional CD review (that's how dated my time as a music reviewer was, people still used these strange silver platters as a media vector), I was encouraged to come up with positive or constructive criticism, but I've never known an editor to encourage someone to outright lie. It seems that not telling a game company that its shit don't stink is something that will have people demanding your head on a platter. And again, gamers do that, too.
I bring up music because of my own experience with it, but also because audiophiles can be hateful, petty, and entitled. And yet, I've only seen one attempt to have a music critic fired for a "bad" review, and I'm not sure that was a serious attempt or hipster irony. In gaming, heads can roll and we help facilitate that by raging against people who don't tell us exactly what we want to hear. On this site we had people say crushing YouTube's gaming section would be a small price to pay to get rid of PewDiePie. And I assume most claims like this are histrionics, or even jokes. But some of the folks I know and have every reason to believe they're serious.
That is to say we, the hardcore, enlightened, edumacatued gamer are still often one of the biggest stumbling blocks as far as gaming goes. We are facilitators. Less so the common gamer, who might not know and honestly, shouldn't be expected to be this unreasonably in the know.
But I digress. Not only do we seem to have a worse system for evaluation of games, we have fewer recourses. Many stores won't even exchange physical copies, and digital services are "all sales final" in most cases. The GOG and Origin refund policies are considered novel selling points, and we're far from seeing it adopted elsewhere. You can pitch a fit for a refund on Steam, but even with broken games they are reticent to offer a real refund. Yes, there are exceptions. So freaking what? Basically, they can be cajoled into making exceptions. That's not a good model for the consumer.
One of the ways we guard against bad products is the refund and warranty system: if something doesn't work, we get to take it back. And the companies have to deal with that.
Meanwhile, addressing both the point of consumers not taking it and the later point that people frequently make an exception for EA, America specifically and maybe the West in general (but I don't know) seems to have raised a couple of generations with a sociopathic streak. Or at least a narcissistic streak: when it happens to someone else, it's all "boo hoo, you entitled idiots, go kill yourself." when it happens to them, it's "this is the greatest injustice in the history of mankind." And we do see a lot of that swing. It's not just "I don't care." It's "I don't care, screw you for caring, and I will berate you for it." There is berating behaviour whether you are just disappointed in a game or disappointed that you were sold a bill of goods.
The Simpsons once had an episode where Homer's attitude towards a gay guy is changed only because said gay guy saved his life. The character jokingly comments that if only every gay could save his life, they'd be set, and that's sort of the principle we have going: a bunch of people who can only relate to things as they directly impact them, hence EA getting so much hate even from the "Buyer Beware" crowd.
A nation of Homers. *shudder*
An extra big "Thank God For Jim" on that note.