Jimquisition: Buyer Beware

[leviadragon99]

Well yeah, that's the thing, Caveat Emptor should be a valid argument, but in such an environment cultivated to actively misinform and yank money out of us, people can hardly be blamed for being misled by the whole ordeal.

 

[Something Amyss]

Wait, Jim, didn't you mock Mass Effect fans when they expected what they were promised back with Mass Effect 3?

I could swear he changed his tune with more context. I could be wrong, though.

Yep. These corporations have us by the short hairs. It shouldn't be that way and the only real thing we can do is be aware of what we're buying. Go! Go! Libertarian paradise.

No consumer protection, rights or recourse. Isn't this already a libertarian paradise?

Remember - we had E.T: The Extra Terrestrial for the Atari back in the 1980s.

Remember--you're pointing at a period of crash, one predicated in large part by shovelware. Pointing to that doesn't make a compelling argument. Pointing to a period noteworthy for its shovelware to the point it was a contributing factor in the biggest crash of the media (in the West, anyway) is sort of ridiculous. There has always been shovelware, yes, but there have been varying levels. Pointing to the relative infancy of gaming is also kind of a poor way to rationalise it. I would expect better quality control from an industry that's several decades old as opposed to one where major developers were still in single digit lifespans.

Perhaps partly, but I think it was mostly to do with the rise of the home computer.

This argument would be valid if it was merely console sales that saw issues. However, home computer software also took a hit, and we ended up with the whole market shrinking greatly. You don't seem to be following the facts but instead massaging them to force them to go where you want.

The personal computer did impact the console market, but beyond that is just trying to shoehorn an explanation through the back door.

Wow people actually disagreed with you about Steam quality control and and spouted buyer beware.

In part, but mostly people argued against it without paying attention to his video. Jim already mentions the context of the other half of the video, but I sometimes suspect people just see a title like "Steam needs quality control" and jump in to argue against the title without watching the video. It's even less surprising when Valve/Steam is involved, because Steeeeeeeeam has an even bigger/more rabid defense force than Nintendo.

OT: I do overall agree with this Jimquisition. Though I do not think another Video Game Crash is on the horizon, there will be a huge backlash against this lack of quality control and it won't be pretty to the industry as a whole.

I'm just going to add to what you said: not only do I not think another great crash is on the way, it's virtually impossible for one like the '83 crash to happen again. I'd be willing to wager THQ was as close as we're going to come, and that came down largely to speculation on a peripheral.

Erm...the same reason people buy dedicated consoles for gaming today? Simple installation, plugs into the TV, guarantees to some degree that the software will work with the hardware, and exclusive titles. That's just quick, off-the-top-of-my-head reasons.

Many of the home computers on the market were very similar to the consoles on the market. There was little issue (at least, comparatively) with things like "dedication" at that point. I'd also point out that prior to the crash, the hot titles didn't tend to be console exclusive, so that's unlikely.

No, it's not a get out of jail free card.

Games can be shit and the companies that produce them will get verbal abuse, but researching your games before you buy, is still sound advice, unless you like to play shit.

It's not like righteous indignation will solve anything by itself.

I don't think anyone's arguing that research is bad. Jim makes a solid argument in his video for the larger problem of information in gaming and contextualises his statement about "Buyer Beware." No offense intended, but did you actually watch the video?

 

[Something Amyss]

We've got to the point where people are actually selling illegal games on Steam?

Yes, we have. TotalBisuit also did a video on a game that was not within the publisher's right to release, including copied elements from the original. I won't name it because I'm not sure how it fits with the forum rules, but....

We're seeing Steam selling games that the people selling don't have the right to in one way or another.

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 down

And they put some of those games on sale because Steam seems to want to get your moneys any way they can.

But also, we have illegal games being sold on Steam, which was the question.

 

[gamegod25]

Have a feeling those that use that "Caveat Emptor" excuse are either pretty well off (they can afford tossing money away on crap), work for those same companies and suckering consumers is their meal ticket, or they are just assholes trolling.

If you are really making excuses for a lack of QA from these companies then you are part of the problem.

 

[grigjd3]

I have to admit that the recent flood of shovelware onto steam has put me into the position where I don't bother looking at what's available very often. Hell, there aren't even any games I can think of that I am looking forward to. Part of the issue is greenlight and the "indie scene" which is kind of like the explosion of cable channels in the late nineties and early 2000s: total quality remaining a constant while the quantity keeps growing. When this started, I liked that there was a way for people not interested in the old stodgy ways to getting their games published to access the audience directly. Now it seems like every college kid with too much time on their hands wants to sell me their latest RPGMaker collage.

 

[Aardvaarkman]

Remember--you're pointing at a period of crash, one predicated in large part by shovelware. Pointing to that doesn't make a compelling argument. Pointing to a period noteworthy for its shovelware to the point it was a contributing factor in the biggest crash of the media (in the West, anyway) is sort of ridiculous.

I'm not sure how it's ridiculous - it emphasizes how things today are not the worst they have ever been, as Jim claims in his video. If shovelware was so bad in the 80s that it led to a major industry crash, then how is it not a compelling argument that things aren't nearly as bad today as they were then?

I would expect better quality control from an industry that's several decades old as opposed to one where major developers were still in single digit lifespans.

Indeed. Which is why Jim's contention that quality control is worse today is so strange.

This argument would be valid if it was merely console sales that saw issues. However, home computer software also took a hit, and we ended up with the whole market shrinking greatly. You don't seem to be following the facts but instead massaging them to force them to go where you want.

But home computer sales rose throughout the 1980s, including during the console crash of 1983-1985. The market for home computers certainly did not "shrink greatly" during that period - it grew.

You mention home computer software sales. I'm not sure what figures or sources you are using for that, but it seems pretty irrelevant. Software piracy was much easier on home computers than on consoles, so even if software sales did shrink, that doesn't mean that the home computer market wasn't growing at the expense of consoles or computer software sales.

My anecdotal evidence from that era is that less than 50% of software used by home computer owners was purchased - much of it was pirated. I'd be very interested in seeing your figures for software sales, especially if they include a worldwide breakdown, to see if they match my experience.

The personal computer did impact the console market, but beyond that is just trying to shoehorn an explanation through the back door.

I wasn't aware I was suggesting anything "beyond that." My contention is that personal/home computers had a significant effect on the console market. It appears you agree.

 

[Aardvaarkman]

Have a feeling those that use that "Caveat Emptor" excuse are either pretty well off (they can afford tossing money away on crap), work for those same companies and suckering consumers is their meal ticket, or they are just assholes trolling.

No, "Caveat Emptor" is not an excuse, it's a warning/suggestion. And it's a suggestion that's meant to save money, so the idea that people who think you should think carefully about your purchases before spending are rich people throwing around money seems rather absurd.

Even more strange is the idea that people who suggest you think carefully about your purchases are working for companies that want to suck you in. If somebody wanted to suck you into spending money on dodgy products, then why would they suggest you carefully think about your purchases?

If you are really making excuses for a lack of QA from these companies then you are part of the problem.

Who's doing that?

 

[gamegod25]

Have a feeling those that use that "Caveat Emptor" excuse are either pretty well off (they can afford tossing money away on crap), work for those same companies and suckering consumers is their meal ticket, or they are just assholes trolling.

No, "Caveat Emptor" is not an excuse, it's a warning/suggestion. And it's a suggestion that's meant to save money, so the idea that people who think you should think carefully about your purchases before spending are rich people throwing around money seems rather absurd.

Even more strange is the idea that people who suggest you think carefully about your purchases are working for companies that want to suck you in. If somebody wanted to suck you into spending money on dodgy products, then why would they suggest you carefully think about your purchases?

If you are really making excuses for a lack of QA from these companies then you are part of the problem.

Who's doing that?

The problem is that some people use it not as a warning or suggestion but to make it sound like the buyer is the one at fault not the company that put out a broken/shitty mess or allowed it to be sold on their site. My point is even when exercising caution its far to easy to get misled and not only will the companies act like its not their fault/problem but fanboys will be all "Oh buyer beware, you should have been more careful lol".

 

[Voulan]

I remember back when I first bought Skyrim for the PS3 and it was suffering terribly with lag issues and bizarre bugs before they eventually fixed the problem, and then they announced that they were not going to release the DLC for it (although they did eventually). I was part of a vocal group expressing bitter disappointment about the whole issue, and I actually had someone tell me something along the lines of, "Well, you never should have bought Skyrim for the PS3. You never should have bought a PS3 as well. You should have KNOWN. It's YOUR fault."

I was practically lost for words. Glad I'm not the only one that thought that kind of argument was completely stupid.

 

[Aardvaarkman]

\
The problem is that some people use it not as a warning or suggestion but to make it sound like the buyer is the one at fault not the company that put out a broken/shitty mess or allowed it to be sold on their site.

But that's not what you said in the post I was replying to. You implied that everybody who used the term was either a rich person throwing their money around, or someone in the pocket of the industry, or a trolling asshole.

So, now it's just some undefined amount of "them" who do this?

 

[Kuro Serpentina]

If a game is bad, it could be named and shamed as being as such. Nothing progresses and nothing grows if no points out faults. That said, the point of critic is to make sure less bad games get made. Be elitist about it and expecting everyone to be as informed as you is just dumb.
I shouldn't even have to worry about a game I pick up being bad! Bad games are supposed to be a rarity, an oddity, that slipped through the electric fence of quality control. If I have to search for a good game, through a pile of shlock, someone on QC needs to get fired!
Great video Jim, as is to be expected of you these days

 

[james.sponge]

You've made a valid point but truth is always somewhere in between, both consumers and developers are at fault here, the former for actually participating in horrible marketing schemes, DLC business, pre-order packs, DRM you name it, the latter for hyping their products beyond human comprehension and saying that less and simple is actually better.

All in all better stay out of it and spend your money on developers who actually respect you, I can live without buying next ME game

 

[Magmarock]

In part, but mostly people argued against it without paying attention to his video. Jim already mentions the context of the other half of the video, but I sometimes suspect people just see a title like "Steam needs quality control" and jump in to argue against the title without watching the video. It's even less surprising when Valve/Steam is involved, because Steeeeeeeeam has an even bigger/more rabid defense force than Nintendo.

Yes I would agree with that. I haven't been happy with Steam for a long time. They haven't shown any games that I want or couldn't get from other places. I would say that Steam has the strongest white knights but after getting into some trouble of a thread I started about the decline over consoles. I'd say that consoles still have the strongest fan following.

 

[Melion]

Having worked with commercials both as a job and as a study project, I can safely say that we as consumer for most of the time have the odds against us. We have to realise the publishers want to sell a product and also profit from it. Ofcourse they want to shine that product in the most positive light as possible. This doesn't ofcourse apply to every game developer and publishers out there but we still have to be wary just in case.

Sadly, it falls on the consumer to do atleast basic research about what they want to buy. I remember buying Other M at launch and did no research at all only went by the trailers released. I still regretting that purchase to this day.

Please do research before you buy that game everyone hypes about, it might save you from "buyers remorse"

 

[Lightknight]

A more informed consumer market will certainly help to punish the game companies that try to take advantage of them. But I also see no reason why blame can't be shared here. Not that Jim didn't admit some fault lie with the consumer but I do think it's important to emphasize that people who buy things without any knowledge of what they're buying do carry some blame. I do blame people who preorder a game based on a gussied up trailer for doing so. Like buying a car sight unseen based on a commercial where it moves a mountain.

It is, however, equally correct that PR companies are so controlling of material reaching the public before release that there's virtually no way to know that the game stinks. I personally do not buy games day one. I did purchase Skyrim and Halo 2 day one back in the day but the list is small enough to say I don't and I haven't been burned because of it. But Jim already advocates not preordering a game.

 

[Therumancer]

Wait, Jim, didn't you mock Mass Effect fans when they expected what they were promised back with Mass Effect 3?

That doesn't sound like something a consumer advocate should do.

What, precisely, were they "promised"?

For Starters (for jdarksun) Jim recanted on the "Mass Effect 3" thing and now agrees with the critics. I believe he even reminded us of this during his last video.

Secondly, for your benefit, Bioware made a lot of direct promises about how the ending of Mass Effect 3 was going to be, one statement from them was there was not going to be a simple "A, B, or C" ending, yet this is literally what you saw with "Mass Effect 3", as at the end of the game your literally given three choices for how you want to end the game. What's more Bioware long promised "Mass Effect 3" was going to be a complete story, and assured us that all of the questions were going to be answered by the conclusion of "Mass Effect 3". Not only did they not answer all the big questions, they released an actual app with behind the scenes information, where the game developers flat out say they never had any intention of answering all the questions since those answers could be spun out into other games in the franchise. What's more, when they started "Mass Effect 3" they literally had no idea on how to end it, apparently they pasted a fan-mail from a little kid up at one point and said "this should be the inspiration for our ending".

What's more there are thematic issues inherent in the whole "Mass Effect 3" thing. For starters the entire game is about winning non-win scenarios. Indeed "Mass Effect 3" has a central running gimmick where if you played the previous two games, you can literally resolve all of the hard choices in a way where you get your cake and eat it too and reap the benefits from both sides of every decision by having one of your previous companions who survived show up and lend
a hand. The ending is both surreal, and comes in one flavor of suck or another, there is no "the good guys flat out win" ending and having one is exactly what "Mass Effect" was always about even if other possible outcomes should have been there. What's more the ending didn't take into account all of the things otherwise going on, and rendered a lot of choices kind of irrelevant. For example through the game your putting together resources and new tech to fight the reapers so they won't have the normal advantage, among other things you are able to arm your ships with singularity torpedos and the like. This is to say nothing about various choices you make involving The Citadel and it's security.
At the end of the game in a playthrough where by definition the good guys should have tons of tech and preparation that The Reapers didn't calculate on, your still seeing everyone getting wiped out and so on. Raising the entire question of "why did I even bother?". To put things into perspective (since it's a favorite based on some of the flavor text) the basic idea of a singularity torpedo is it creates a black hole on/near the target, with all do respect to the reapers the whole bloody point of a weapon like that (and it adding to your resources) is that their shields and defenses weren't going to matter. Never mind the simple fact that by this point the good guys had themselves been re-arming
with the same tech/guns the Reapers had. The point here being that if you did everything "right" there should have
been a good ending with the Reapers pretty much getting their butts just flat out kicked in the final battle or whatever. This is to say absolutely nothing of the final "message" and how it's undermined if you say did manage to create a peace between the Geth and Quorians, you don't even have the option of saying "your entire cycle is BS, here
is evidence otherwise... oh and did you happen to notice that right now we have both Synthetics and Organics trying to stop you?"

The point here is that none of the endings gave "Mass Effect 3" a properly heroic series ending. What's more it was exactly the kind of "A B or C" choice they said wasn't going to happen, and the developers flat out lied when they said they were going to answer all the questions, and they knew they were lying when it happened.

Not to mention numerous game design issues. Having some Chinese Cyber-Ninja dude running around that doesn't fit in with the rest of the universe was really, really, bad. What's worse is when this same character that doesn't fit within the setting is used to railroad specific plot points "I kick the guy's butt... ooops here is a cinematic of him kicking MY butt and doing whatever I tried to stop him from doing and getting away anyway". In short exactly the style of garbage that "Mass Effect" was making a point of not doing. In a game where "your choices matter" suddenly saying the bad guy automatically wins in a cinematic (like a lot of games have done) is the exact opposite of what "Mass Effect" was supposed to be about and how this game series has worked.

Between this and "Dragon Age 2" (not to mention the desire to turn all their RPGs into Action-RPGs) I simply don't trust Bioware anymore. As I've said before I will not be pre-ordering any more of their games, and indeed will be waiting until after I hear all about them, including the endings... which means I can't even enjoy the full story anymore for fear that a bunch of developers with writers block decided to end the game while seemingly dropping acid
as they read fan mail from kids. Sure Bioware is making all kinds of promises "Really guys, Dragon Age 3 will be great, it won't be anything like these previous games... and we plan to give you all these options and have them matter for real this time, buy our product... please?", but they don't have any real trust from me anymore... and that's exactly what Jim is talking about, and where he's saying even more gamers should be.

If Bioware wants to get a serious pre-sell from me, what they need to do is sit down and actually re-do the entire ending of Mass Effect, at least giving it a proper ending for those that played the entire trilogy, even if they can't have ALL the choices matter like they promised (they themselves said this would be impossible due to all the variables... but it's not our fault they promised the impossible... so they deserve flak for that, but at the same time that doesn't excuse not having a proper ending). This whole "ending clarification" garbage might make things more clear, but it's polishing a turd... it's still a bloody turd, and I'm going to treat it like a turd as do a lot of people.

 

[Atmos Duality]

Some of these practices should be illegal. In fact isn't blatent false advertising a legal issue?

False Advertising is remarkably easy to weasel out of.

Just stamp a tiny, blurry disclaimer onto a video or image and you can say or show whatever you want without fear of legal recourse. (which is how Aliens: Colonial Marines got away with its bait-n-switch scam)

 

[Canadamus Prime]

Some of these practices should be illegal. In fact isn't blatent false advertising a legal issue?

False Advertising is remarkably easy to weasel out of.

Just stamp a tiny, blurry disclaimer onto a video or image and you can say or show whatever you want without fear of legal recourse. (which is how Aliens: Colonial Marines got away with its bait-n-switch scam)

Oh right, the old trick of putting "Footage may not be exactly as shown" in the smallest font size imaginable somewhere on the screen.

 

[KDR_11k]

Come on, you haven't done your due diligence without waterboarding at least three executive-level employees of the publishing company...

 

[Nazulu]

I've been saying for ages now how I'm sick of having to do deep research on every single game just to make sure it doesn't do something I'm against (like stupid DRM and Micro-rip offs) or because it's buggy as fuck. Even for fucking consoles now! Hell, they don't even make games I'm interested in any more. Then some fucking retard will come a long and tell me is all I have to do is look around. The industry now is fucking atrocious.