Second hand games and the industry

[Havoc]

Trips to the areas where video games stores exist are a once a week event for me at best. Generally far more rarely than that. Leaving it to download overnight is not really an issue in comparison.

Are you really so impatient that you must be able to play a game the instant you decide to purchase it? I'm amazed you're able to hold on long enough to get home from the store without ODing from anticipation.

I've actually had moments when I was younger where I absolutely had to play a game here and now. Mostly those were old games hidden away somewhere in the house and I would spend the entire day looking for them. If I couldn't find it, I would go out to every store I knew of and tried to find a copy. If that didn't work, I just sat around being pissed.

[Wings of Fire]

Are you really so impatient that you must be able to play a game the instant you decide to purchase it? I'm amazed you're able to hold on long enough to get home from the store without ODing from anticipation.

To be fair, I always take my DS with me when I go to buy a pokemon game so I can have a taste of it on the subway home.

[Manco]

Trips to the areas where video games stores exist are a once a week event for me at best. Generally far more rarely than that. Leaving it to download overnight is not really an issue in comparison.

Are you really so impatient that you must be able to play a game the instant you decide to purchase it? I'm amazed you're able to hold on long enough to get home from the store without ODing from anticipation.

I see your point, but I think it’s less patience and more having a tangible thing to show for spending your money. With physical copies, you might not be playing it the instant you buy it but you have a box, a disc – a physical object to see and hold. You take it home and you stick it in the console, and it works*.

When you buy a digital game, your money disappears into the ether and you are presented with a loading screen. Depending on the game and your internet connection, this screen may stick around for some time.

One one hand, you have a less convenient shopping trip, but the end result is more tangible. In the other, the process of buying is much quicker and nicer, but your game takes a bunch of time to appear on your hard drive.


*With certain exceptions.

[Havoc]

It's unlikely that boxes are gonna disappear soon. Digital distribution came some time ago and despite its popularity there are still box versions of almost every game

I think that it's mostly a matter of boxes disappearing in countries where internet speeds are high. For instance the Netherlands right now has an average internet speed of 15mb/s.

Glassfiber connections are currently being rolled out nation wide, so that figure is expected to at least double in the next 10 years. When everyone has a speed like that, people are more likely to use digital distribution than in a country where the average download speed is still around 1mb. So physical shops may die out around here, but may thrive in remote parts of the US or Australia for example.

[AlexFili]

Well, I have no idea if it was just my internet connection or Steam being bad at downloading, but Portal 2 took me in total about 70 hours to download. I can Stream youtube videos fine and an anime episode takes between 30-45 minutes to download, so I have no idea why it's taking that long via Steam. PC Demos are way too large in terms of filesizes too, now I just download indie games or watch videos on youtube for a better picture.

[Daxter King]

American ISPs have too slow of speeds and too many data caps for it to be viable in the forseeable future. People will also be less likely to buy a $60 game blindly since they can't trade it in if they don't like it.

[AlexFili]

How about a different idea. "Download Kiosks" where you could pay a piddly fee, £5 per disc, and get a 60GB game burnt onto a blu-ray disc in a few minutes. Everyone's happy.

[Nate]

but may thrive in remote parts of the US or Australia for example.

Haha. Within the decade, 93% of Australia is going to have 1Gbit connections and the rest will mostly have 6+Mbit. Don't tar us by association.

American ISPs have too slow of speeds and too many data caps for it to be viable in the forseeable future. People will also be less likely to buy a $60 game blindly since they can't trade it in if they don't like it.

I don't know where you're at, but American ISPs are faster and have larger caps (if not unlimited) than most of the rest of the world.



BTW, if you have access to fast internet elsewhere, you can actually download via Steam on a different computer (or get the files from a friend who has already downloaded it) and then transfer to yours using an external hard drive.

[Nepsotic]

To be fair, I always take my DS with me when I go to buy a pokemon game so I can have a taste of it on the subway home.

You're a handheld gamer? Eww. I sort of went off it ever since DSi. I don't even know why I have one. PS Vita looks promising though.

[Wings of Fire]

Not 'You're a Pokemon fan?' not 'You're a Nintendo gamer?' but 'You're a handheld gamer?'

That's new. Just as stupid though.

[Manco]

“You play on a small screen? Ewwww!”

[Nepsotic]

Not 'You're a Pokemon fan?' not 'You're a Nintendo gamer?' but 'You're a handheld gamer?'

That's new. Just as stupid though.

I was going to mention the Pokemon thing, but I didn't know how you guys would react, as some of you do seem like, "Pokemon" fans.

And it's not the small screen that annoys me, It's the quality of the games.

[Wings of Fire]

Good games are good games regardless of what console they are on.

And that's that.

[Manco]

I was going to mention the Pokemon thing, but I didn't know how you guys would react, as some of you do seem like, "Pokemon" fans.

And it's not the small screen that annoys me, It's the quality of the games.

Except the quality of a game should not be judged by the platform it’s on. A good game is one which does one thing or lots of things really well; be they emotive storytelling, solid gameplay, unique mechanics or great style. Being on a handheld platform does not prevent any of these from being achieved.

[Nepsotic]

I mean quality as in graphics, sound ect, you'd never find a game like Skyrim on PSP.

Good games are good games regardless of what console they are on.

And that's that.

But there are no great games on handheld consoles, no defining ones anyway.

[Wings of Fire]

But there are no great games on handheld consoles, no defining ones anyway.

That's a matter of opinion. I can't speak for the PSP (Though I know a few PSP games I'd love to play) but I've probably bought more DS/GBA games than games for any other console since the N64.

[Nepsotic]

I just see handheld gaming as more of a time killer rather than a hobby, but thats my opinion.

[Wings of Fire]

I don't understand the division between time killer and hobby.

It smacks of elitism.

[Nepsotic]

something to do when your bored and have got nothing else to do/something you can't wait to get home for

[Sekto Springs]

I buy pretty much all of my games and movies used. I don't really care who the money goes to, but I'm certainly not made of it myself. Considering most games worth playing are $60 or more, and I simply don't want to pay full price for that if I don't have to.

I await your stoning.

[Nepsotic]

I agree, if it's there, you take it! thats not our fault, its the developers who have to come up with a solution for it, not us.

[Sekto Springs]

Arkham City almost did that successfully by including the one-time-only-redeemable Catwoman codes. I think someone eventually managed to make a keygen though, or that's what I heard anyway.

I'm more a movie person than a gamer, I've never paid more than ten bucks for a movie I wanted thanks to the Exchange. That's a whole different ball game, as we know the film industry is an evil tyrant who actually has plenty of money and all the piracy and second-hand distribution in the world has yet to stop them from churning out a new 200-million dollar Michael Bay film every year.

The only games I've ever bought new were the Oddworld games, or Doublefine's, and not because I wanted them to see that money. I just wanted to play the games the second they came out.

[OANST]

the film industry is an evil tyrant who actually has plenty of money and all the piracy and second-hand distribution in the world has yet to stop them from churning out a new 200-million dollar Michael Bay film every year.

The film industry has figured out something that the games industry hasn't though. Yes, you need to have big games with big explosions, but to thrive and grow you also need more cerebral content. It feels like the games industry is getting close to figuring that out, but just hasn't quite grasped it yet.

[Havoc]

Also because most of the money made from movies is made in theaters, not from DVD sales. And the entire 3D hype gave theaters a new live, since watching 3D at home is pretty shit.

Games, on the other hand, have pre-order gimmicks. A lot of them simply don't use this to their full potential.

[Sekto Springs]

There are plenty of cerebral, story-driven games out there, but nobody plays them - even when they're backed by major companies. We all saw what EA did to OWI.

I do think that we're going through a period where gaming innovation and creativity is critically low, and they're starting to follow the wrong examples from the film industry. Namely, overproducing games that are all cut from the same mold and focus almost exclusively on aesthetic value. People get major boners for "groundbreaking" games like Mass Effect and Skyrim, but if you take a few steps back and squint, you realize that all of these games you spent 60+ dollars on are basically the same.

Then you have games like Limbo, Journey, and the Ico series that more than make up for the drought of creativity in the industry, but they also rake in less than half the revenue that these popcorn games do. I'm grateful for Steam. It's the last bastion for innovative gaming and it's a great stage for small, creative developers to strut their stuff.

[Manco]

I do think that we're going through a period where gaming innovation and creativity is critically low, and they're starting to follow the wrong examples from the film industry.

I actually think that this is incorrect. While big publishers keep churning out the likes of Call of Duty, there’s an ever-increasing amount of small teams and indie developers creating more and more creative and innovative games. Minecraft, Braid, Limbo, Super Meat Boy, Fez, and And Yet It Moves are all games developed and released by small teams. All of them have had great reception, and some have sold in ludricous amounts. Oddworld itself is now being handled by a small publisher-independent team.

Digital distribution and the possibility of being able to release games without going through a publisher is creating this steadily growing movement of indie games, and these guys are more than happy to try out new, creative things. And I think that movement will have an effect on the industry as a whole very soon, if it isn’t already.

[Sekto Springs]

I kind of said the exact same thing in the second half of my post...
When I was talking about innovation being critically low, I was talking about more main stream games.

[Manco]

I know, but your post as a whole makes it sound like the creativity and innovation is disappearing. I’d argue that it’s increasing overall.

[Sekto Springs]

I didn't say it was disappearing, I said we're at a low point, and that's the fault of both the developers and the audience. If it wasn't for Steam being such a popular showcase for smaller developers, I'm confident that there would be almost no market at all for games like Super Meat Boy and Limbo.

You could make the same argument in the film industry. Films are easier to make than ever nowadays, and there are always independent auteurs unhinged from the Hollywood regime who can turn out some pretty awesome shit. But on the whole, the movies that take the box office by storm are utter garbage, and without websites like Youtube and Vimeo, smaller, more innovative filmmakers would be struggling for air.

[OANST]

Oh, there are plenty of intelligent games being made, but the publishers don't know what the fuck to do with them, and most of them just get made outside of the traditional publisher ecosystem. It's not that the gaming industry doesn't produce great shit. It's that no one in a position to help it succeed either knows what to do with it, or cares to take the chance.