BUY games? what are you, stupid?

[tabacco]

Here's a hint about how business works: Companies are out to make a profit, not to do what's best for the consumer. They'll charge what the market will bear, and will continue to do so as long as games sell at current prices.

[Ginger]

Firstly there are many startigies that firms employ (they are not just out to make profits) as its not just shareholders who make decisions in firms, although i agree profits are a major concern, however the point i was making was not to critise profit seeking but i was critising the massive inefficencies in the games industries which force prices up through firms covering the costs of these inefficiences. I was also saying it was up to us the consumer to exercise the massive amounts of power that we should have in an industry such as the games one.

[RLacey]

Games are too expensive, by the mass public shelling out £40 for an inferior game we merely perpetuate developers and publishers making crappy games that do not sell and need to be subsidised by making the price of all games high.

And what about the great games that don't sell? What about the Thief games, Deus Ex and System Shock 2? XIII, and Beyond Good and Evil?

You've confused me. Are you really suggesting that publishers should stop taking risks on these kind of games (and the plethora of games that have potential but happen to end up being bad) just so you can save £5 on Half-Life 2?

[ThunderPeel2001]

You know I still have magazines with interviews with top developers (like EA) back when CD's were the newest thing on the horizon. Y'see, up until then we all just copied our floppy software with X-Copy and there wasn't much they could do... and that was the official reason software was so expensive: piracy!

So, the interview continued: "Since there is talk that CD's can actually be cheaper to manufacture, and since the hardware available to copy them in the home is years away and extremely expensive, will this mean that CD games will be cheaper than their floppy-disk counterparts?"

The reply: "Oh absolutely! Since CD's will not be able to be copied it will mean we can lower the price of the software!"

A few months later the first titles started to appear -- and guess what! THEY WERE MORE EXPENSIVE!

I'm sure piracy is a factor in software costs, but the figures have always been blown out of proportion: The reason there's so many pirated versions is because they're CHEAP! The people with hundreds of pirated games would not have bought a hundred originals if the copy wasn't available! They only bought it because it was cheap.. Surely the software industry could learn something about this magical thing called pricing if piracy was really killing it, but it's not.

The reason there are pirated DVD's is because they're films that haven't been released on DVD yet, not because DVD's are cost prohibitive.

Anyway, I digress. I actually agree with Stuart Campbell on this one, he wrote an excellent essay on it.

And for the record: I buy games that I want to play. That means about 1 a year (not including cheap classic games that I'm constantly picking up). I don't have access to any copied software (I certainly can't be bothered downloading gigabytes of information!) so this is the grand total of my expenditure. Create some games that I want to play, Mr. Software Industry, and I'll buy more

[vimes]

Something like 18 months ago, I was still getting game from p2p... and most of the times, I wasn't playing to them... but you know I got this "gotta own, gotta own, mine, onllyyy mine" behaviour of the guy that has too much time on his hands.

And then, I realized that games didn't mean't anything to me anymore : games didn't had a value in my mind and I had lost the frustration of the wait and so forth,the joy to open the game box for the first time.

And then, I began to see that I wanted to earn my living by making games and I was like " I just don't want to end up like some doomed poet sleeping under bridges, ending his life as a demonstration-guy in some supermarket just because some guys like ME didn't buy MY game"

And so I stopped.. or nearly, because now I play from times to times, the complete games for an hours or so to get the main "feeling" of the game, a representative look that demos unfortunately can't give.

[MrHoatzin]

It is just theft. The western world was built on theft, we shouldn't be so negativistic before the very concept. By stealing we just pay homage to our forefathers.

[hermes]

He.....

very nice comment...

[spaceship789]

I buy heaps of games.

Infact, I think you are lucky to have me on this site, considering the consumer force I represent.

[Farbror]

All right, I'm going to revive this month-old topic now, and if you don't like it, sue me.

First of all, all arguments I'm going to use here are moral ones. If you don't have any moral, then leave, there's nothing I can do for you, you poor freak.

Second of all, I strongly recomend reading what Vgmusic.com's FAQ has to say on the matter. It's probably the best FAQ on the entire Internet. Here.

Now, there's two kinds of software piracy (basically). First, there's those who downloads old C64 games on their emulator so they can play with their memories and enjoy the old days. I don't really have any problem with them, at least not at the moment, so let's tackle those later.

The other kind of piracy is the one I believe most of us consider a "problem".

It's that kind, where peoples (Especially people in my school) only reason to enter a game store, is to check what's new in the game world, then they go home, fire up their favorite p2p-software, and downloads the latest First-person-shooter available.

When I confront them with it, they always have numerous and at first glance good but if closer examined worthless arguments.

"Hey, I only do it to check out if it's good, if it is, then I'll buy it, otherwise I promise I'll never touch it again. "

"Well, Farbror, what I'm doing here is actually good for the industry."

"It's not technicly illegal, you see."

"Oh my freaking God, dude, it's not like anyone will notice if I buy it or not, and anyway, the only difference is that Bill Gates makes more money, the programmers won't get a raise or something if I buy it."

"Hey, I'm just playing a game here, it's not like I'm hijacking cars or something, I just want to have some fun, like everyone else."

"It's got all those copy protections that makes the game unplayable, I want a cracked copy."

"Well, you're right, it is highly immoral, but everyone else does it, and frankly, I don't care."

Quite a selection they have, eh? These are just handful, so let's take them one by one, and If you can come up with anymore I'll crush them like bugs under my giant heels of morality later.

"Hey, I only do it to check out if it's good, if it is, then I'll buy it, otherwise I promise I'll never touch it again. "

I hate these. Not beacuse I have anything against the argument really, but people, especially software pirates never seems to do what they say.

The whole problem with this argument is quite similar to Kavka's toxin puzzle:

Can one intend to drink the nondeadly toxin, if the intention is the only thing needed to get the reward?

You see, when I pirate has díscovered that the game is quite good, and actually worth paying for, they suddenly realise that it does not matter to them if they buy the game. They already got it! Yes, true, they intended to buy the game, but things change quite quickly in the piracy business. After this, it is common that the pirate in question resorts to another argument.

And if they don't like the game? Well, 90% of them will just burn a copy of it anyway, "Just in case I want to play (and pay for it) later". Yeah right.

A variety on this argument new to me I saw on this forum was this:

As for the arguement a game not worth playing for isn't worth playing is bullshit (btw i buy most my software and pump thousands [well maybe about £1000] of pounds into the industry each year.) I'm not paying £40 for a game that i can complete in four hours and never play again, but it was worth playing for 4 hours, hell i would hire it out if i was able to but due to fear of piracy I can’t, so I’m forced to download it.

Okay, so the game is worth playing, but it's not worth so much you want to pay as much as the publishers want to, therefor you should get to play it for free withouth the creator of the game recieving any money at all, just beacuse they're overcharging a little. Ah, I love logic.

Here we reach a phrase I will repeat many times: If you don't think it's worth paying for, then don't pay for it, and make it without it! It's capitalism! It's what the world is built on! If you feel that these scissors are to expensive, then you don't steal them, do you? And you don't walk up to the counter and say, "Hey, could I get these scissors for free? I mean , they're so expensive." or even "Hey, could I have these scissors at only 5 dollars instead of 50? I mean I think that's what they're worth." You wouldn't do that? You would go and buy some other pair of scissors! You wouldn't for the world ever touch those scissors again, you would let the forces of capitalism do their job and force the scissor-company into bankruptcy! But if it's a game, then you see it all as an excuse to steal it! What's so different beetwen scissors and games?

"Well, Farbror, what I'm doing here is actually good for the industry."

This one comes in many flavors. One here on this forum is this one:

The publishers fuck us (look at the price discrimintation that goes on i nearly have to pay the same number of pounds for a game as a american has to pay dollars, so fuck them i owe the publishers nothing, i owe the developers something which is way I buy most of my games) If we just lie back and keep on taking it up the ass from the publishers nothing will ever change, if we want to make the industry better we have to dictate things with our money. Ok what u guys are doing (buying only good games) is a good way to go but still doesn't help with the unreasonable prices, so u've got to look at the warzers as doing some good.

Again, it's capitalism. Obviously, since people are buying the "unreasonably priced" games, they don't think they're unreasonably priced. If that was the case, they wouldn't buy the games now, would they? The majority disagrees with this.

Oh, and you are not really doing this whole "Downloading-games-for-free-without-the-hard-working-creators-recieving-a-dime" so that you can play free games, you are actually doing it to make the world/game industry a better place, this "Free-game-stuff" is just a nice side-effect, but not really the main cause.

And if that really was the case, then I suppose you've got an alternative to all this "capitalism"-stuff? Yes, of course, planned economy, why didn't I think of that, I wonder why we don't use it? OH that's right, it doesn't work. People tried it in Russia, but it didn't work. Silly me.

Protests are done with name lists, arguments, debates, ideas for alternatives. Not by doing the opposite of what you're supposed to.

The system works. Just follow, and you'll see that it works.

"It's not technicly illegal, you see."

I shouldn't really be arguing about this, since it's probably really different from country to country, and I don't know a freaking thing about laws, but as I said, all my arguments are moral ones. If you would find a loophole in the law that suddenly made it legal to rob banks, you wouldn't go out and rob banks, would you? No! Of course not, you are a human being, you have morals, you don't do something just beacuse you are allowed to, do you? You know how to tell the difference between right and wrong without carrying a whole freaking law book and calling your lawyer every now and then to check if it's okay to steal that old ladys purse. What's so different from game piracy?

All right, I'll make a stab at the illegal thing. Anything I say here may or may not be true. As far as I know, when you buy a game, you only buy a license to play the game. You don't only buy the CD-rom with the ones and zeros. If you just download it, then you got the game, but you haven't got the right to play/install it or anything like that.

As far as I know.

"Oh my freaking God, dude, it's not like anyone will notice if I buy it or not, and anyway, the only difference is that Bill Gates makes more money, the programmers won't get a raise or something if I buy it."

It's not about that. It's not only about money to the developers, even if that plays a big part too. It's about respect. It's about you thinking: "Wow, these guys have worked hard to make this great game. They are really super." How would you think if you were a developer and everyone said "Wow, your game is great, but I don'twant to honor you or show you some respect or something for making it. You see, I only care about the game, as long as I can play it, I'm happy. I don't really care about you, mr. Developer."

Respect, Dude!

What? Only 10 000 characters a post? Stupid Idle forums...

[Farbror]

Here we go again...

"Hey, I'm just playing a game here, it's not like I'm hijacking cars or something, I just want to have some fun, like everyone else."

Let's split this in three. "What I'm doing isn't really that bad.","I just want to have some fun, does it bother you?" and "Everyone else does it, why can't I?"

First part

Does it matter if what you are doing is a little illegal or much illegal? It's still illegal! Just beacuse it's a little less illegal, doesn't mean it's okay.

Yes, it's not likely that the police will come hunting you in a wild car chase as long as there are murderers walking among us, but that doesn't justify anything. Let's say your foot hurts after kicking wall really hard. It doesn't hurt too much, but it still hurts. Now someone hits you in the head, hard. It hurts a lot. You're head feels terrible, you barely notice the pain in the foot. But does it make the foot okay? No!

Second part

Oh, you want to have some fun? And you don't want to pay for it? Well, sorry to disappoint you, mister, but there are thousands of cheap ways spending your time withouth paying anything at all. Some people run in the woods, others play scissor, rock, paper with theír friends, others make paintings. Games are by no means a right, it's a privilsege. Food is a right, fresh water and a place to sleep is a right, but playing Doom 3 certainly isn't.

Third part

Well, people are stupid. And just beacuse many people does something, doesn't mean it's okay. Those people are stupid. If "everyone" started killing each other, or suddenly bought lots of schampoo, you wouldn't do it, right? You're not a lemming.

"It's got all those copy protections that makes the game unplayable, I want a cracked copy."

Do you know why the copy protections are there? That's right, so that you can't pirate it! If people would just stop pirating games, then the developer could stop spending time and resources on making ridiculous CD-keys or other ways to make sure they get paid and could focus on making good games. And if you think the game is unplayable, well, again If you don't think it's worth paying for, then don't pay for it, and make it without it!

There's no reason to steal the game just beacuse that version isn't perfect. It's still theft! There's no justification in this argument.

"Well, you're right, it is highly immoral, but everyone else does it, and frankly, I don't care."

Everyone else does it, I think I covered that above. And I covered that you do have moral above. So you should just stop pirating games right away. And if you still claim that you have no moral, if you do claim that you didn't care when two planes flew into World Trade Center, if you don't care about thousands of people starving in africa, if you don't care about the hundreds of developers out there who have to worry about wether their game will sell or if "everyone" will pirate it so they loose their job, if you claim that, then you are evil. In that case I hate you.

As a last resort to people who still don't get it, I could always tell you the story about the ice cream. True, it wasn't my story from the start, it was the software pirates who used it to "justify" their immoral practice. It used to go like this, before I modified it:

Mr X owns an ice cream. Mr Y takes it. That is theft. But if Mr X owned an Ice cream recipe, and he copied it and gave the copy to Mr Y, then it isn't theft, that's software piracy.

So far, so good eh? Well, I think it's time for my modified version, "The Ice Cream" v1.2.

Mr X has a dream. He wants to create a great Ice Cream industry, where he will create the Perfect Ice Cream . He spends a lot of time inhis basement, making experiments, he spends a lot of time doing marketing research, to find out what people consider the Perfect Ice Cream , and after two years, and many bank loans later, he had invented The Perfect Ice Cream !

He immidietly begins to sell it for 3 dollars. "Yes", he says, "it is an expensive Ice Cream, but if you don't feel it is worth it, then don't buy it, and do it without it. And I believe that The Perfect Ice Cream surely is worth it."

Mr Y sure likes Ice Cream, and he sure does like money too. He cannot stand the thought to part from his dear money for any Ice Cream, and he cannot either manage to live without Ice Cream. And when he discovers The Perfect Ice Cream , he begins thinking, if thera aren't perhaps a way to get the Ice Cream, and keep the money?

Now, instead of doing what the laws of capitalism orders him, like simply don't buy The Perfect Ice Cream and do without it or simply find another Ice Cream to buy or perhaps wait for a price reduction, he decides to steal, not the Ice Cream, but the recipe.

He borrows a friends Perfect Ice Cream , anlyzes it, discovers the recipe, and decides to share it with everyone he meets. The Recipe wuickly spreads, everyone begins to make their own Perfect Ice Cream , and noone buys it from Mr X anymore. Mr X cannot pay back his bank loans, and gets hunted by the bank dudes, and finaly dies, knowing that he created The Perfect Ice Cream, but not gaining anything back from those who enjoyed it.

Not only that, but Mr X was also busy creating The Greatest Candy , which would surely make the people happy, but now the people would never see any trace of The Greatest Candy , since Mr X couldn't afford to keep the research going.

Sure, Mr Y made the people slightly happier, but he also made sure that The Perfect Ice Creams creator didn't get any money for his job, and he also killed the chances of bringing any other good stuff to the people.

Judge yourself, who did the right thing, Mr X or Mr Y?

And finally, a quickie, that we've already seen, that noone has been able to argue against, and that will never be beaten.

Do you like games? - Yes

Well if everyone were like you and downloaded them for free then there would be no games at all ARE YOU HAPPY!!!!! - No...

Chepito, I love you.

I know, capitalism sucks. But so does democracy and people in general. But it's not really like we've got an alternativ, right?

[b0b]

Hmmmmm.

Publishers care about royalties and cash. Devs care about people playing and loving their games. Or should do.

This reminds me of a comment Bruno Bonnell (CEO of Atari) made when Warner Bros. told everyone they were going to chop publisher royalties for licensed titles if aforementioned titles didn't get more than 70% average review scores.

I.e. "If you take our licences and make crap, we pay you less!"

Bonnell was furious. His reaction was (and I paraphrase) "But Enter ze Matrix sold ze millions of copies! it made lots of ze money for everyone involved! how dare zey! oo cares if ze game is ze 'uge pile of merde!?!"

Publishers do not care about you. They don't care if you have fun playing their games. As long as you buy them, and keep buying them. They want your cash. They will foist overhyped unfinished shit on you, and laugh when you are stupid enough to pony up.

Screw 'em. Publishers are everything that's wrong with this industry. Console or PC, regardless of the medium, games prices are set artificially high and kept high by cartels of publishers and hardware manufacturers. The music industry is currently seeing a change in the way they distribute and price their product, because that the ease with which their IP could be ripped off is forcing change in the way that IP is bought and sold. The same needs to happen to the games industry.

(on that line of reasoning the "what would happen if we ALL just downloaded everything" argument dies - the industry would be forced to change the way they did business. You might have noticed that they won't bother unless they have to - look at the music industry behemoths, clinging on with all ten fingernails to an outdated method of content distribution because they're scared and greedy.)

It's also impossible to get any kind of sane figures on sales lost to piracy as well, the utterly ridiculous idea that every single pirate copy in existence represents a lost sale is.. well.. utterly ridiculous. But still entertained.

I believe that people who make games should do so because they want them to be played and enjoyed. People who make shit do not deserve my money. People who hype, cheat and lie to get me to buy their shit do not deserve my money.

Every so often I play a game that I absolutely adore, and I buy it. The rest of the time, screw 'em. The sad truth is that for every excellent title that doesn't sell too well and dies, there are a million million idiots (and idiots mums etc..) who keep buying crap, and keep bolstering the publishers current business model. Savvy gamers should know this. Piracy is so so so NOT the reason good games fail. Idiots who buy crap and wouldn't appreciate a quality title if it attached itself to them with crocodile clips are the reason good games fail. And the publishers are making games for these people. not for us.

You want to support the industry? Buy a programmer a pint. He needs one.

You want mediocre, generic, unfinished, overpriced crap to be rammed down everyones throats forever?

[b0b]

Oh yeah - and remember how games used to come with loads of Cool Free Shit, like the legendary Infocom "Hitchikers Guide" which had peril-sensitive sunglasses, and scratch 'n' sniff things?

Games cost a fortune today, and generally you get a DVD case, a DVD (or two! ooh!) and a tiny manual. The rest of the manual is usually in a PDF, or online someplace. See what I mean about greed?

[Simon]

I can't say I've never downloaded a game that I could have bought, but it's rare, I can only recall one in the past few years. On the subject of downloading games I already own to get round scratched-up CD-ROMs, I have no moral quibbles with that really, if there's a law against that it seems wrong.

Back to the main topic here - I just feel awful enjoying something that I should have paid for, that goes for movies too, I've spent hundreds amassing a DVD collection I could probably have built up illegally via BitTorrent. Also, there's kind of an aesthetic thing I dig about having a shelf full of real DVDs too, which perhaps goes back to really loving the artwork on all the old LucasArts adventure games - all of those box designs just rule, it's part of the whole buying/owning of a game. So that's one other aspect deterring me from piracy.

With games, I actually buy them less than I used to, for several reasons. Partly there aren't many that will run well on my PC, partly I don't have as much time/disposable income as I used to, and partly there aren't many I'm desperate to play as soon as they come out - but when I do want to play a game, I'll pay for it.

[Farbror]

If I don't want bad games, I simply don't buy them.

If I think that this game is quite good, but still not quite good enough for it's price, then I don't buy it. I do not go and download it.

The main argument for anything people do is beacuse they can. As long as people can download games for free, as opposed to pay for them and get the same thing, they will choose to download it. Sad fact.

Other sad fact, yes, many people who buy bad games are not aware of the fact that they are bad, which results in people buying bad games, so that publishers realise that they can keep creating bad games and reach the same result (In other words, recieve the same amount of money).

But I fail to see how that justifies piracy.

You want mediocre, generic, unfinished, overpriced crap to be rammed down everyones throats forever?

No, but I believe that "rammed down everyones throat" is rather, shall we say, exaggerated.

As I said, if I see a game that I consider mediocre, generic, unfinished, overpriced crap, then I simply refuse to buy it. I know, sounds hard at first, but is quite simple once you master it. And I also do not download it, for reasons in previous posts.

How does downloading games force the prices down/remove the bad games? That's what it seemed like you, mister b0b, tried to say, but I don't see why. Could you explain further?

Yes, bad games being bought instead of good games is certainly a reason good games fail. But how does downloading the good (Or the bad, by the way) game from the internet help the any of the games?

Ah, yes, publishers and marketing. I believe we have found our common enemy. I personally believe that the world would be a much better place if neither existed, or at least if they were forced to tell the truth.

But as it is now, bad games exist, they're being bought, and downloading anything isn't helping anyone.

Learn to tell the difference between good and bad games, buy only the good ones, and leave the rest! What's so difficult?

Edit: Uh, please ignore the "d" in believed in that part about the publishers and marketing. I still believe it, and probably always will.

Edit(AGAIN!): OH, you are being ripped of, you say? Well, simple as always, refuse to buy the game! There's no reason to download it, except for being egoistic.

[b0b]

If I don't want bad games, I simply don't buy them.

Good. Unfortunately loads of idiots will. Hence Bad Game 2 : Worse Game, and Bad Game 3 : Even More Shit.

If I think that this game is quite good, but still not quite good enough for it's price, then I don't buy it. I do not go and download it.

Ok. Don't buy it. Why not download it anway? You weren't going to buy it, so there's no loss of revenue there. The only issue is the moral one about getting something without paying for it. By playing the game anyway, you get the chance to appreciate it, which you wouldn't have if you let your moral qualms dictate your actions.

How does downloading games force the prices down/remove the bad games?

If enough people downloaded enough games, the publishers would be forced to drop prices, and (I believe) change their distribution model. Instead (perhaps) of paying forty five quid for a static dvd, you could download a core engine, and pay per-level, with new content updated and added each month. Once the distribution model changes, I think publishers will find their creative stranglehold on the market lessened. Fingers crossed this is happening anyway.

As for removing the bad games, I don't really have an answer for that one, I don't recall saying exactly that either, I think my tirade was more against the idiocy of people buying shit sight unseen.

It just baffles me that the vast majority of games are bought by people who don't know games, and aren't knowledgeable. Some of the few of us who know and love games then proceed to get all sniffy about warez because we feel like we're betraying the developers.

Publishers want you to buy games. Money is the most important thing.

Devs want you to play games. Enjoying a well-written game is the most important thing.

[Farbror]

It just baffles me that the vast majority of games are bought by people who don't know games, and aren't knowledgeable.

This fascinates me too (And I'm not sarcastic)! I blame it on marketing. I Hate marketing!

If enough people downloaded enough games, the publishers would be forced to drop prices, and (I believe) change their distribution model.

No. I firmly believe that 90 % of the people, when given a choice of getting a game for free or paying for the same game, will choose the "free" option. No matter how the publishers distribute the game, as long as people can get everything for free, they will take it.

Ok. Don't buy it. Why not download it anway? You weren't going to buy it, so there's no loss of revenue there. The only issue is the moral one about getting something without paying for it. By playing the game anyway, you get the chance to appreciate it, which you wouldn't have if you let your moral qualms dictate your actions.

Well, that ruins the whole point! "I don't think the game is worth paying for, therefor I won't buy it, and since I won't buy it I might as well download it and play it anyway!" The whole point with not buying the game is that you shouldn't get to play it, it's how capitalism works! Why not just accept it? And as I've said before, all my arguments are about moral, IF you don't consider yourself a person with moral, then I can't convince you. And I Hate people without moral.

As for removing the bad games, I don't really have an answer for that one, I don't recall saying exactly that either, I think my tirade was more against the idiocy of people buying shit sight unseen.

True. My blunder. I apologize.

Publishers want you to buy games. Money is the most important thing.

Devs want you to play games. Enjoying a well-written game is the most important thing.

I would really want that last part to be true, but unfortunately that's not the case. Developers have to eat too. They also want money. And if Good Developers create Good Games, they will still be viewed as Non-Money-Making-Developers in the eyes of publishers if most people pirate their game. If, however, you choose to support the publisher for choosing to work with such a Good Developer by buying the game, then the Good Developers will gain money and respect in a business where money is everything, so that they will have an easier time making games in the future, without Evil Publishers trying to make the game more "mainstream" (Bad) so that they will sell more, beacuse it has already been established that games made by the Good Developers sell good!

[Chris]

Oh yeah - and remember how games used to come with loads of Cool Free Shit, like the legendary Infocom "Hitchikers Guide" which had peril-sensitive sunglasses, and scratch 'n' sniff things?

Games cost a fortune today, and generally you get a DVD case, a DVD (or two! ooh!) and a tiny manual. The rest of the manual is usually in a PDF, or online someplace. See what I mean about greed?

Games do cost a fortune, but they cost a much smaller fortune than they used to. I don't know about other countries, but these days a new game costs between $30 and $50, and little budget puzzle games and stuff sometimes go for $20. Generally prices will gradually reduce over time unless the game is a super-duper bestseller. However, back in the day (early 90s and earlier), games were much more expensive. There were games that retailed for $100. You could expect to pay $60 for an average new game. And bear in mind that I'm not adjusting for inflation or whatever. If you adjusted those prices to current prices they'd be even higher.

I rarely pay over $30 (and almost never over $40) for a game because I don't generally care about getting stuff when it's new and I make sure to look out for sales. It's still a good amount of money but it's not what it used to be...

[Simon]

Games are generally cheaper than they used to be. I think when I bought Full Throttle the day it came out, it cost me £49.99 or something ridiculous (that's equivalent to about $90 in the US). By about 1998 I think things had become a bit more reasonable.

But if you say new games are costing $30-$50 across the pond, I think the UK is still only getting the high end of that price range. You'll very rarely see a brand new game for below £25 (about $45), and certainly not for a console. Rip-off Britain, you see.

None of that affects my belief that you should always pay for a game you want to play though. I just wanted to clarify that it's perhaps not everywhere that prices have dropped quite so much. Of course, as Chris says, waiting around for price drops and sales will always help you get good deal on the games you want.

* Edit: On a related note, I was reading on Eurogamer that Doom 3 has been leaked, then I checked a BitTorrent site - 26,600 people were downloading it at once. Whilst the game's still going to be flying off the shelves everywhere, that's quite a sickeningly huge amount of money lost, assuming that it's the real full game, and none of those people will now buy it (maybe some will though).

[Ryam BaCo]

when i was young(er) and rich(er) i used to buy more games than today. i usually play the demos of newer games and if i'd have time and if i'd be interested i'd buy it. soooooo...i bought all this bioware-stuff like baldur's gate 1+2, neverwinter nights or la-adventures like grim fandango, monkey3,4,etc...

unless i'm not one of these guys, who get the games from illegal sources i understand a few motives of people, who don't BUY games: for instance the manuals get thinner and thinner and extras (like the map of britannia in ultima 9) are kind of non-existent while the prizes are still high (because of THIS people...dumb vicious circle...) and german versions are sometimes bader "equipped" (the manual of baldur's gate 2 is for instance printed on fewer pages by using a smaller font) for higher prices. these are of course not excuses, but also publisher can do something for preventing pirate copies (pointing at ea and microsoft ).

[Erwin_Br]

I have no morals. Life is so much easier now.

--Erwin

[Intrepid Homoludens]

Good. Unfortunately loads of idiots will. Hence Bad Game 2 : Worse Game, and Bad Game 3 : Even More Shit.

Games are no different from any other consumer item. As with anything to be purchased, you must do your homework first. Read as may reviews and previews as you can, discuss the game with fellow gamers online. And if you're still not 100% convinced, wait til it goes on sale. That way you won't feel so ripped off if you yourself didn't like it and you can take full responsibility for your decision. Bad games don't just come only from developers and publishers, the gullible and uneducated consumers who buy them are also co-conspirators.

Ok. Don't buy it. Why not download it anway? You weren't going to buy it, so there's no loss of revenue there. The only issue is the moral one about getting something without paying for it. By playing the game anyway, you get the chance to appreciate it, which you wouldn't have if you let your moral qualms dictate your actions.

By beating a helpless pedestrian unconscious anyway and stealing his wallet, you get the chance to appreciate it, which you wouldn't have if you let your moral qualms dictate your actions. By embezzling money from your employer anyway, you get the chance to appreciate it, which you wouldn't have if you let your moral qualms dictate your actions.

If enough people downloaded enough games, the publishers would be forced to drop prices, and (I believe) change their distribution model. Instead (perhaps) of paying forty five quid for a static dvd, you could download a core engine, and pay per-level, with new content updated and added each month. Once the distribution model changes, I think publishers will find their creative stranglehold on the market lessened. Fingers crossed this is happening anyway.

If it changes and if it's a viable market. As it stands, there is still a huge market that prefers its games to come in physical form to be handled physically. I am of that market. I will pay to download a game only if it's proportionally priced, that is, it should be cheaper because there is no physical material involved (cd, packaging, etc.). Why should I pay $50 to download a game when I can get the same thing for the same price AND have it in physcial form that justifies that price?

As for removing the bad games, I don't really have an answer for that one, I don't recall saying exactly that either, I think my tirade was more against the idiocy of people buying shit sight unseen.

The market is the answer, b0b. If the market is stupid enough and uneducated enough to continue buying bad games, then it's still a viable market into which the industry will tap.

It just baffles me that the vast majority of games are bought by people who don't know games, and aren't knowledgeable. Some of the few of us who know and love games then proceed to get all sniffy about warez because we feel like we're betraying the developers.

Very true. Most people don't know their games, they only know whatever hype surrounds a title and whatever tie-ins it has (Enter The Matrix, anyone?) and they join in. Unfortunately the only thing you can do about it is to be that much more discriminating in what you yourself choose to play. As for warez, we as consumers ultimately don't have any kind of consensual relationship with any developer, so there's no one to betray. The only relationship is that of a business deal and of free choice.

If I chose to download a game I am not betraying anyone, because there was never any kind of agreement to begin with. So it all boils down to morality. However, if I were to upload a game on my website for anyone to d/l and I get caught, then its a legal betrayal, and I deserve what punishment I get. It's the same as sneaking a digital cam into the cinema and being spotted by the staff.

Publishers want you to buy games. Money is the most important thing.

Devs want you to play games. Enjoying a well-written game is the most important thing.

Yep, the most important thing to the respecitive parties who choose to be involved. Publishers want my money, I want a damn good game. If there's any reason I perceive the game is not worthy of my money I will not buy it. Simple as that. I don't do warez, not just because I feel it's wrong, but also because I'm too demanding as an educated consumer and I want a good game that I bought with my money.

[Lindset]

I think the thing is that you're not stealing a physical object. How about an example.

John have never stolen anything before. Well, except for the pack of bubblegum he stole when he was 9 because everyone else he knew experimented with stealing. John is a nice guy with wife and kids. He pays his taxes, and even donates some money to charity once in a while.

His morals forbid him to steal cars, computers, food, tobacco, telephones, christmas trees, dogs and babies. However, after a hard day's work he logs on to the internet where he's able to get the latest games and software for free. I mean, it's just data on his computer. 0101010110101011010101. How can that be considered stealing? He's not actually taking the data from anywhere. He's just copying it.

Uhm... Anyway... That's what I wanted to say. That's why some people's morals doesn't say "uh-oh" when they warez things. If the story is incoherent, bad or something like that, it's because I'm stupid and it's getting late... Bye!

[Lindset]

* Edit: On a related note, I was reading on Eurogamer that Doom 3 has been leaked, then I checked a BitTorrent site - 26,600 people were downloading it at once. Whilst the game's still going to be flying off the shelves everywhere, that's quite a sickeningly huge amount of money lost, assuming that it's the real full game, and none of those people will now buy it (maybe some will though).

You're forgetting that some of them probably wouldn't have bought it anyway. I've always thought the figures given by BSA, RIAA and similar organisations are pathetic. In their reports, they're inflating the amount of money lost by calculating each download as something that would've been purchased.

Uhm... Other than that, I agree, it's probably a lot of money lost. And that's probably not the only active torrent either. And then you have the newsgroups and other P2P networds. So, yeah, it's a lot of money.

(Btw, I've seen people talking about playing the game, so yeah, it's the real deal. The warez groups have people everywhere, so they usually receive a copy of the game before its release date. The chain between the developer and the shops have a lot of weak spots: Developer -> Publisher -> Duplication -> Shops -> Public)

[Chris]

The "wasn't going to buy it anyway" argument doesn't hold any water for me. If you weren't going to buy it, don't play it. Nobody is entitled to free games, believe it or not. I'm pretty liberal, and I think people should have food and healthcare and a place to live--games on the other hand are not a right. I buy very few games, but I don't steal any either. I just make do with playing fewer games overall, and it's not a big deal. It works out for everyone: I'm not buying crappy games and sending bad messages to publishers, I'm not playing crappy games that aren't worth buying (or downloading), and I'm saving money overall. Hooray!

[MrHoatzin]

So, as a staunch liberal, I am quite naturally pro-theft.

:ponycrap: