What if renting/borrowing became extinct?

[Inphidel]

Imagine if you will, having no choice, no petition you could sign (lol) to change this fact. How would you approach the game market?

lets assume in this alternate reality, all games became essentially DLC. It's tied to a User Account which is tied to a credit card. Even the games you buy at your local favorite video game store you bring home and the rights to play are unlocked by linking this game to your User Account via something similar to a CD-Key - all games require authentication servers and all that fun stuff.

No Resale, No Returns.

How would this change your buying habits?

How would you research before purchasing a game?

Would you be more demanding of a quality game that meets the price point they've set? or lower prices?

With the continuing trend of DLC and unfinished products I find myself worried that the console industry is slowly moving toward this in effort to phase out what they consider lost profits.

As we all know a lot of people either borrow games from friends after they have completed them or rent them in they don't plan on playing the multi-player aspect if its only got like 20 hours of play.

What price point would you demand of a game at this point? what do you feel is owed to you as a gamer for that purchase?

[syntheticgerbil]

Renting games already seems outdated to me, but I think a lot of people still rely on it to help them know whether they want to buy a certain game a lot. I buy games by the designer now whether good or bad, but I'm sure that's not a sane way for most others to buy.

But demos also sort of do what rentals do, but not as much. There are also the people who rent games to beat them with no intention of buying a copy for themselves ever. I've never understood that personally, but I guess $4.99 for a weekend sure beats $59.99.

There are already many games with the CD Key setup now though, right? Or maybe not to the extent of what you are imagining? Certainly, I'm already troubled by the trend of growing buggy disc games that are to be patched at a later date, just 'cause that's what the game designers or publishers can do now.

[dpp]

I used to rent games as a kid in the SNES days. I started using Gamefly this year, I played a couple of short games and so far it's been worth doing it (although Bayonetta has been stuck in my desk for a couple of months now). IMHO, renting is crucial for the gamer who plays a lot and doesn't have cash, especially kids and teenagers. Even for someone who buys a lot of new games like me, it's a nice complement for games that you know are short and have little replay value, like Heavy Rain. If there weren't renting services, gamers on the cheap would be severely affected, but the market overall wouldn't be impacted that much.

As for the used game market, it's a good option because games are a digital medium that doesn't lose value unless you break the disc in half or the game comes with codes for additional content. The movement from EA and other publishers to attach DLC to the new purchase will only reduce the resale value in the end, but I believe that someone who buys an used copy of Madden isn't hardcore enough to be playing online anyway. If the used game market went away, we'd see this trend disappearing and new game cost decreasing by about a 1/3, instead of being $60 at launch and then going down as used copies inundate Gamestop.

[Sombre]

I'd buy a hell of a lot less games.

[Armchair General]

I'd buy a hell of a lot less games.

This fo' shizzle.

[Inphidel]

It's spooky to think about if games somehow all went toward cloud services.

for me I'd definitely buy a lot less games as well, I would hope that something like this would in a way backfire on studios and distributors where if as a whole people are buying less they'd be forced to make higher quality games due to the risk that if someone saw a demo or game trailer and wasn't sold on wanting it they'd have on less person.

in addition I'd hope that in effect would mean that multi-player games might find their way back to lasting more then a few months trend before dying out.

but seriously. think about the game industry and how it -could- survive or what would happen if it went in this direction.

I for one am already really turned off by games that aren't everything the packaging promises.

[miffy495]

Me too. Not for my purposes, really, but for the fact that lending games to my friends is something I do incredibly awesome. Hell, just last night I was talking to a friend and said of Just Cause 2 "I'd lend it to you right now, but my copy is on Steam." Whups. I know going in to a Steam purchase that that's part of it, and I consider the reduced PC price to make up for that a bit. Now that PC games are creeping towards $60 while losing features though (seriously, fuck you Activision and UbiSoft. I'm not paying that for the same reason I don't buy 360 games for $70) that advantage is going away. PC gaming is $20 cheaper than console gaming if you're Canadian, so I don't mind losing the ability to lend out my game when I'm done for that difference in price. If they reach parity though, I'll go with console for as long as I'm able to lend those. After that, I'll be a lot more reluctant to buy a game at full price.

[Patters]

I have more games on steam than anything else. I would have missed a lot of games when younger without borrowing them from friends and vice versa.

[elmuerte]

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html

Just substitute "book" with "Video game".

[Thompson]

It would change absolutely, completely and 100% NOTHING about my buying habits.

I rarely buy a game in store and mostly just use Steam now.

I have never sold a game, my collection ranges from about 1995-2008 and my Steam collection is about 20 games.

I am already demanding on quality and price because I have no job and money isn't too easy to come by.

The only thing that would happen is that I would be a little nostalgic for my local game renting store 'Pulsar'. I don't really rent games there anymore and I only ever rented about 4 or 5 but I still remember it extremely well and it informed a lot of my early game choices and shaped what kind of games I play today.

As I said, I don't rent games anymore but I do feel kind of guilty because they clearly don't get any business and I don't want them to shut down. Problem is that the games that I would want to rent are things like MW2 for the PS3 (For a psychology experiment I want to try on my sister who is only a little bit into gaming) which they don't rent (I think) because you need an account for it.

/self indulgent wall of text

[syntheticgerbil]

Well besides rentals potentially leading to more real sales, does anyone know what a rental place pays to get a single game in the store? Do they pay one large flat rate per copy of the game in order to allow customers to rent or do they pay a percentage of each paid rental to the publisher/developer of the game?

I've also always wondered this about movies as well.

[Patters]

Well besides rentals potentially leading to more real sales, does anyone know what a rental place pays to get a single game in the store? Do they pay one large flat rate per copy of the game in order to allow customers to rent or do they pay a percentage of each paid rental to the publisher/developer of the game?

I've also always wondered this about movies as well.

For movies they buy a rental copy, which costs a lot more than the standard DVD.

[syntheticgerbil]

So it's just one flat fee then? If so, it sounds beneficial to publishers or developers that may release games that get bought in movie store regions where no one locally to a particular store has any interest in playing the game. But maybe they work out their demographics before hand?

[Patters]

So it's just one flat fee then? If so, it sounds beneficial to publishers or developers that may release games that get bought in movie store regions where no one locally to a particular store has any interest in playing the game. But maybe they work out their demographics before hand?

It's not clear to many if video games which are rented are standard copies or those that have been purchased at trade value.

[Thompson]

I asked the woman who owns Pulsar, she said they get rental copies at a low price. Doesn't sound like a good deal for game devs...

[elmuerte]

I rarely buy a game in store and mostly just use Steam now.

FYI, you cannot borrow a steam game to a friend, or you'll risk losing all of your steam games.

[lobotomy42]

As much as I want to say that my philosophical objection to such an idea would change my purchasing habits, I'm not sure that it would. The sad truth of the matter is that, for me as a human being, cloud-owned games are more convenient. I don't need to worry about where my physical copy gets stored or even how much disk space to manage. (Since, with most of these services, I can delete and re-download on a moment's notice.) There is the major issue of if I lose my console / the company goes under / big brother decides I'm a bad boy, I lose my game, which I don't want to trivialize. But I can just as easily lose physical copies (and have!) Frankly, it's nice to not have to worry about where to keep my massive video game collection anymore.

Philosophically, I don't like the idea of someone being in control of the media I've purchased. The trend towards cloud software saddens me. But in terms of habits, I think, if anything, it would actually *increase* my game buying habits by making them more of an impulse buy.

p.s. The future sucks.

[elmuerte]

p.s. The future sucks.

Yeah. They (writers and movie makers) lied to us how awesome the future would be.

[juv3nal]

It wouldn't really change anything for me. I'm not made of money or anything, but I am employed and my ability to purchase new games at full price far exceeds the amount of time I have to actually play games. The only difference is I'd be more bummed out if I happened to buy a stinker because I wouldn't be able to sell it back used. I do lend and borrow some, but borrowing tends to be of games I just wouldn't have played if a friend hadn't bought it.

[Thrik]

Haha, this thread reminded me of when I was younger and used to rent everything so my dad could burn a copy. Man what a pair of dicks we were.

Nowadays I buy every game I play. I seem to barely find time to play games I got like two years ago, never mind try and fit in a significant amount of playtime during the rental allowance.

With that said, with things like LOVEFiLM (UK's Netflix) you can rent games indefinitely. I've never really done it though, I find it easier to just have a massive stack of unfinished games on my shelf and play certain ones when I'm in the mood.

[Nachimir]

Ditto on the money/time thing for games. There seems very little point in pirating when it's so easy to build up a backlog anyway.

I really like digital stuff. Physical stuff is a massive pain in the balls for me, cluttering up where I live and busting my back when I move. The more things I can have as information rather than goods the better, but I have always had minimalist preferences.

It's a little odd to me that with something as walled as XBLA or PSN, people so readily accept that they can't resell or send back for a refund. It's like the difference in conditions for delivery never cross a lot of people's minds; I suppose they're enough steps away from retail that people just don't expect it to work in the same way.