fett on 15/12/2008 at 04:31
Quote Posted by Fafhrd
That's what sales and price drops are for. And the difference in price between a NEW new game, and a USED new game is FIVE FUCKING DOLLARS. You can't swing that? Seriously?
What fucked up ass-raping sites are you buying used games from? I got HL2 for $20 (that's a $30 difference) at Half.com, Psychonauts for $15 through a seller on Amazon (about a $25 difference), and am about to buy Guild Wars for $25 on e-bay. And just to be clear, sometimes YES, it comes down to $5 extra for a game, or jr. getting to go on the field trip next week.
Aja - it's not unwillingness to pay. If I could afford it, I'd buy several games a month brand new because I also want to support the industry. You seem to think everyone has the same disposable income that you do, but we don't. There are mouths to feed, medical bills to pay, and school supplies to buy. If the industry is looking to become a pastime of the privileged or financially elite, they're succeeding. But there are a lot of guys like me out there that can only buy new games from time to time, and appreciate the opportunity to purchase used ones to keep up the hobby. Apparently, they want to penalize me for not being able to afford the are-you-fucking-kidding-me prices they charge to begin with.
Aja on 15/12/2008 at 06:19
Hey I don't have a pile of disposable income, either. I sympathize but that doesn't change the argument.
june gloom on 15/12/2008 at 06:28
So your argument is still wrong. Okay.
Volitions Advocate on 15/12/2008 at 06:42
Quote Posted by fett
What fucked up ass-raping sites are you buying used games from?
Gamestop? My wife bought a Wii because she wants to get "wii fit" so I thought why don't i go buy Twilight princess or metriod prime 3. if theres any games on the wii i'd play it would probably be them.
Metroid was 55 dollars new, and 50 used. Same thing for Zelda. As far as the whole trade n' save thing goes. EB/Gamestop can kiss my balls. They make a killing on used games.
ercles on 15/12/2008 at 08:49
Firstly, of course they make a profit, otherwise they wouldn't do it. As far as using gamestop goes, your clearly getting ripped off if used games are almost as much as new games. Generally when I have bought used games in the past they were about 2/3rd's of the price.
doctorfrog on 15/12/2008 at 09:51
I'd like to note that what bugs me, and is the original issue for the OP, is not so much the prices of used games, it's their availability. Aerothorn was willing to pay for the game he obtained, but he found it unavailable to him due to unfair restrictions put in place by the publisher, and a likely dishonest seller. If I have to supplicate a publisher for permission to install a game, I have no control over my ability to use this content in the future. This is unfair.
Making used games untradable can potentially cause them to be completely unavailable to those who want access to them in the future. Most games are crap and this isn't such a big deal, but imagine for a moment that all Looking Glass games were distributed in such a way that they were only playable after an a-ok signal from the developer. Let's also imagine that a small, but fervent Thief community was not sufficient motivation for the corporation that inherited it as an intellectual property to make it available any longer, nor to develop or permit development of new works based on that property.
Thinking of games as less like cars and more like works of art (which they may or may not be), like movies, books, paintings, etc., it's a damn shame that something good and enriching (yes, I realize I am talking about games here, but movies and novels were at one time considered to be very frivolous and worthless things) should be put out of reach of an interested public simply to protect an entity that happens to 'own' the property.
I'm not really concerned with how much money goes to publishers or even game companies. I'm not going to lie awake at night wondering about their futures and so forth. These entities are capable of taking care of themselves, and that is overwhelmingly their primary concern.
I'm going to save my concern for myself, and anyone like me, who simply wants access to 'what's out there,' whether it's a wax recording, the text of an old out-of-print novel, or a classic game. We're at a magical time in history, where practically everything that's ever been done can be stored and accessed freely, and we spend far too much time figuring out how to either make money on it or lock it all away rather than mixing it up and making new experiences out of it.
Of course, I'm not saying that all content everywhere must be freely available, and is justifiably pirated. I'm willing to pay for my content, and I have again and again. The providers of content deserve compensation, but they do NOT deserve a draconian stranglehold over said content.
I'm just saying that I just care about the content and its future, and my ability to access and use it, more than I care about the company that either generated or owns it. Copyright owners can take care of themselves and they don't need us to sympathize or apologize for them. When you lock away a work behind closed doors, it's the work itself that needs defense.
ugh, i need to shut up and go to bed. I won't plague this thread anymore with my hand-wringing.
fett on 15/12/2008 at 14:36
What docfrog said. More on point and precise than my four posts of rambling frustration. :mad:
BlackCapedManX on 15/12/2008 at 15:39
Quote Posted by doctorfrog
I'm not really concerned with how much money goes to publishers or even game companies. I'm not going to lie awake at night wondering about their futures and so forth.
These entities are capable of taking care of themselves, and that is overwhelmingly their primary concern.This is essentially the problem with your argument. As much as you may not lay awake worrying about what happens to the companies who make games, the companies themselves do, and because they unarguable own the work, they can set whatever restrictions they damn well please on it, and the only say you have with whether these restrictions are fair or not is by not paying for it. Other than that, they don't owe you any access to their material whatsoever.
Quote Posted by doctorfrog
Of course, I'm not saying that all content everywhere must be freely available, and is justifiably pirated. I'm willing to pay for my content, and I have again and again. The providers of content deserve compensation, but they do NOT deserve a draconian stranglehold over said content.
Regardless of what they deserve or not, the legacy of capitalism is such that content providers are free to excersice a draconian stranglehold.
Quote Posted by doctorfrog
I'm just saying that I just care about the content and its future, and my ability to access and use it, more than I care about the company that either generated or owns it. Copyright owners can take care of themselves and they don't need us to sympathize or apologize for them. When you lock away a work behind closed doors, it's the work itself that needs defense.
I actually have a little bit of a problem with this on a personal level, because I'm presently studying to become an artist. If I were to put my content on the market, and get distributed by galleries or whatever, I need to be ridiculously protective of my ownership rights, because my work is my lifeblood. If my work is getting distributed or reproduced and I'm not being compensated for it, than I'm the one who suffers and as such the continued production of my work is at risk. Game developers aren't like musicians, they can't put together 60 mins of data and distribute it at a ridiculous wide rate and make money off people who come to see them at concert. Everything I've read suggests developers on average aren't stupidly well off, and unlike musicians which have a few stellar examples who have been distrubuting freely, developers rely on producers to make ends meet, because otherwise you don't make any money until the game's done. If you say "fuck the greedy producers, they don't deserve all the money they make" then it's developers as much as anyone who're going to get hit.
Basically I think it's a very limited view that separates the work from the artist (so to speak), and to imply that the artist (especially in fields like game design, where they aren't rolling in the dough) can do without a firm grip on how their material is accessed, is really doing a diservice to the people who are making worthwhile games.
That being said, that's not to say there aren't examples in the industry where the monetary expectations of the people selling games is just ridiculous. MMOs are a good example, and I know I certainly won't be buying Blizzard's Starcraft 2, because making me pay, what, $120
at least for one single player game is absolutely unfounded ridiculous bullshit. But since I don't own the content, my only right to protest is to not purchase (or attempt to galvanize a boycott, which might be fun, because Blizzard is on some kind of high horse right now and it's getting a little stupid.) I just think that you can't expect the industry to owe the consumer anything other than a good game and an solid assessment of product demand.
Zygoptera on 15/12/2008 at 22:25
They don't have the right to do whatever they want with and set whatever restrictions they want on their product, at least not if they want to sell it. That's because there are things called Consumer Protection Laws, which (theoretically at least) protect the consumer.
Laws vary of course, but here at least if you want a EULA (the usual way of removing purchaser's rights) to be legally binding then, as a contract, it must be viewed and agreed upon by both parties prior to purchase. Practically, viewing the EULA followed by purchase is accepted as agreement. Otherwise, all the normal property rights associated with buying a 'good', which computer software is specifically defined as, are kept. There are also specific rights which no EULA can remove, hence why every one contains a 'hey, finding something illegal in this agreement only invalidates that part, not the whole thing' clause.
Even in the US the status of EULA's legality is questionable, as is whether first sale doctrine can be extinguished by one.
fett on 16/12/2008 at 02:37
I've always wondered about that with the EULA.
"I agree with the terms."
"I do not agree with the terms."
I already shelled out $50 bucks for your product you asshats. Not much I can do about it if I don't agree at this point because the thing is opened and no retailer in the Western hemisphere is gonna take it back.
It especially pisses me off with games that have no demo. I have no idea what the game play is like, or if it will even work on my machine, but I'm supposed to buy it sight unseen without the opportunity to return it, and agree with the EULA before I can even tell if it will install (and don't get me started on the whole 'Games for Windows' bullshit campaign. Fuck GFW in their eyehole). I'm going to get a really tall machine so I'll at least have something to lean on when I'm bending over.
PS2 here I come.
