Jimquisition: Fighting The 'Problem' Of Used Games

[jthwilliams]

So I think I have finally come to a realization that has been bothering me throughout this series (on used games). From Jim?s perspective online play is a fundamental part of the game itself and not a add on. As someone who rarely plays a game ?online?, I think I?ve been missing the point till now.
That being said, online is exactly where it makes sense to have a fee. I would almost say sell new games with a 12 month online pass and then make people buy a 12 month pass to play online if they buy it used. Online is where the manufacture must maintain and run extra equipment in order to keep the game going. Of course you could argue that a pass should be transferable as long as it still have time on it, but that is a different argument.
That being said, I 100% agree with Jim that games shouldn?t all cost $60 out the door. It is basically collusion and price fixing at a scale that monopoly busters should take an interest in, but will not. If it wasn?t, there would be much more variety of pricing as there is in the PC game market.

 

[jthwilliams]

The biggest problem with PC and other games is that you cannot return them if you don?t like them. Name any other product where this is universally accepted by the consumer. I would have a lot more sympathy with game makers if they didn?t have an all or nothing, no returns policy. At least in the PC market they claim this is an anti-piracy thing, but so far I haven?t heard of a single game not being pirated and most even before they are released, I call bullshit on that. In the console game market, there is zero excuse for this behavior other than the tradition setup by the PC market which predated consoles.
Basically, as consumers we have permitted an appalling behavior to become the ?norm?. You wouldn?t except this from a restaurant. If you bought something based solely on the description on the menu, and didn?t like it, you would send it back and expect a refund. And in this scenario the restaurant is out the cost of making it because they can?t resell it, game makers could resell a disk.

 

[hooksashands]

That being said, I 100% agree with Jim that games shouldn?t all cost $60 out the door. It is basically collusion and price fixing at a scale that monopoly busters should take an interest in, but will not. If it wasn?t, there would be much more variety of pricing as there is in the PC game market.

Exactly. Put pressure on the publishers to lower their game's price so it matches Gamestop's used price. This eliminates any need to buy used. Problem solved!

 

[FoolKiller]

I loved the first two parts but unfortunately I think you are horribly terribly and utterly wrong.

The RAGE method is even more appalling and I refuse to buy that game new until I can get it in the bargain bin for $20 or less. The idea of keeping single player content is atrocious and they need to be shot for it. If you keep multiplayer locked behind a code, you still have to go online to get it. If you lock single player stuff away online, its a load of shit because you have to go online for it. This causes two problems (I will use Xbox as a basis because RAGE is on 360 and I primarily game on that):

1. There are 23 million members of Xbox Live, but 55 million consoles floating around. Theoretically (and I realize that dead or used console sales affect this number) you have only 50% of your user base with access to this content. This is a horrible punishment for someone who buys the game new and doesn't want to play multiplayer. Now they are not even allowed to get all the single player swag? That's just wrong. (Note: I know that Xbox LIVE is around 70% membership but that still leaves 30% without access to stuff they purchased)

2. Xbox's restrictive digital rights allows the content to only be played on the console its downloaded on or while the account is logged into LIVE. There are two consoles in my home and I hate having limited access to the content that I purchased because of it. But I can tolerate it when I want to play something online. But having to be logged into LIVE for no reason other than playing something upstairs if I downloaded it on the other console seems rather ridiculous.

 

[Harveypot]

I find it ridiculous that games ae the only industry this happens in. Can you imagine buying a Blu-Ray, trying to watch the special features and some text pops up saying: 'Pay £10 to do this as you bought a used copy' or getting a book: '"He's dead!" "Who?" You bought a used copy. Go back to the shop and pay £10 for the rest of the book.

 

[retyopy]

I like how everyone hated this guy when he came to The Escapist, but now, "wow, I love this guy, he's tottally better now." But he didn't change his persona AT ALL.

Anyway, great video as always. Keep it up, yo.

 

[notimeforlulz]

But used games are a blight on the people Jim! You've got people left, right and center buying bad games because they were cheaper!

And then.... *spooky light* they play them!

Wait a second.... Wasn't multiplayer suppose to solve the used game crisis? Isn't that why most games have multiplayer now.... What the fuck is with the online passes; maybe they should do what you say and make their game not suck.

And as to the people debating that only bad games end up in the bargain bin. Well yes you will find a good game in the bargain bin, years after it's release, but in the months that the publisher gives a shit about, where it affects their quarterly report, only bad games end up in the bargain bin and it affects the companies quarterly reports.

I wonder how much of that bitching about used game sales is just distracting shareholders from shit assets on the quarterly report. Apparently Enron's debt hiding book keeping is the go to for every large corporation nowadays, go figure. Can't trust small business either, generally they're money grubbing whores as well, just ask their workers how much they get paid. Fuck this world, time for more battlefield, before I have to loan some money to game stop and hold the game as the security to play it.

 

[thatguyfromaus]

Does it bother any other Australians to hear people complain about a sixty dollar price tag when we here in Australia pay a MINIMUM of One hundred dollars?

 

[00slash00]

my favorite part of this was the he took the thing rage was doing, that people were throwing a ***** fit about, and used it as an example of what games SHOULD do. hows that boycott coming, everybody?

 

[Ddgafd]

To everyone complaining about Rage cutting SP content:

The area that gets cut is worthless and serves very little purpose other than bashing Mutant heads in. There is no reason to be upset about it.

 

[Duffeknol]

I've learned to appreciate Jim's opinions, he's a clever bloke. This, however, was the first episode in which he actually made me laugh. Congrats, I guess.

 

[Mosstromo]

Elocuently said, mister Jim Torquemada.
Good show.
\m/(>.<)\m/

 

[Asuka Soryu]

Does it bother any other Australians to hear people complain about a sixty dollar price tag when we here in Australia pay a MINIMUM of One hundred dollars?

About as much as when an Australian complains about paying 100$ a game when someone else just wants a house to live in.

 

[TokenRupee]

Exactly. This is what they should do. Give bonuses to people who buy new (I still never understood why so many people hated EA's Project Ten Dollar, which was not base game content withheld to used buyers, but free DLC for people who bought the game new)

No, it does prevent used consumers from playing multiplayer. So their Project Ten Dollar has reason to be hated because it's just the same restrictions as everything else. EA is in the lead of bad idea race and I hope it costs them severely.

 

[KarmaTheAlligator]

Does it bother any other Australians to hear people complain about a sixty dollar price tag when we here in Australia pay a MINIMUM of One hundred dollars?

The point is still that the price tag is too high. Doesn't matter where you buy it, too much is too much.

And Jim, thanks for voicing all I wanted to say in this mini series on used games but couldn't find the proper words to say. Also, what's with the FF9 background music?

 

[Kilyle]

I've really enjoyed the points he's made over this three-parter. As a person who grew up with hand-me-down just-about-everything, I'm used to the idea of used clothing, used toys, and used vehicles (bikes, skates, boats, and cars) - used games don't seem any different, and I'm glad that our laws agree.

When he said you might buy a used game and turn that into a later new sale, I grinned, because that's almost what happened to me with Harvest Moon. Only the first one was a random SNES ROM of a game I'd never heard of, about ten years after it came out; I loved it so much that I bought two later games in the line, raised several nieces and nephews on the games, will buy more in future once finances aren't so tight, and am producer for a team that's doing a Minecraft mod based on the Playstation game (Harvest Moon: Back to Nature). Never thought a farming game could be this much fun!

Based on that experience, I know for a fact that exposure to free and low-cost games can lead directly to sales of sequels and brand loyalty.

Then he goes and mentions Left 4 Dead, as an example of a game that's managed to keep putting out new content. Wait, what?

Maybe I'm out of the loop, having moved on to greener pastures months ago, but didn't L4D2 manage, in two and a half years, to come out with precisely TWO new maps? I'm not sure what the normal rate is for DLC in other games, but for me that feels glacial.

It's sad, too, because L4D2 is the only FPS I ever really enjoyed. Not just "put up with" because my friends are into FPS games; I loved finding a shooter that I could actually become halfway competent at, due to an abundance of sound cues (spitter coming!), a simple weapon system, and fairly competent teammate AI. If the levels hadn't gotten so stale, I'd still be playing it; but I'm a soloist at heart, and when my friends moved on to other games there was little to keep me besides the promise of upcoming content.

The upcoming content turned out to be, what, a bunch of mutation modes that change weekly (I would love to play Last Man on Earth whenever I want), a port of the original maps for some reason (better tactics due to new zombies I guess), and two new maps. In over two years.

When I can drop a game for six months and return to find nothing's really changed, then the original game better have a good standard of replayability. And for a soloist player like me, the old maps really don't. I got to where I was playing nothing but Carnival, and even that grew old... so now it's on the shelf, and I've moved on.

At least my dad and nephew still enjoy it.

 

[disgruntledgamer]

So let me get this straight having a 5$ online pass and having to type that in is evil, but locking out single player content that's already on the disc and having to put in a pass to unlock that single player content is a GOOD idea?

THAT'S %$#&*^% RETARDED!!!

Lets set aside the fact that companies like EA will exploit the ^%$#* out this where eventually they'll be locking you out of half the game, locking out single player is not a good idea since eventually you could end up locking yourself out of this content in the future from reformatting and server shut down. Besides online Multiplayer servers get shut down all the time and I'd rather get locked out of a crappy tacked on or no longer existing multiplayer than single player content.

 

[Jimothy Sterling]

Sorry, but this is stupid... as Jim said in the first part of this mini-series, one reason online passes are bad is that they can't be used when the publisher's servers aren't up to snuff or some sort of infrastructure problem arises... how does using a code to lock away single-player content solve that? Right! It doesn't.
On top of that, I now need to be online to access content for a game mode I could normally use offline perfectly... at least when I want to use multiplayer, being online is a base requirement to begin with, so the online code doesn't change those.
Also, saying you feel rewarded for buying the game new with this "offline code" is shocking... do you feel rewarded for being allowed to buy day-1 DLC, too? No? Then why are you happy with what is basically the same thing?

I've never bought a used game in my life, but making people that buy used games pay another fee to the publisher just because the publisher thinks it's a good idea is retarded and should be illegal... no matter what part of the game is locked away, it's always bad.