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Vital Parts of Games As DLC?
Posted by
Soulskill
on Mon Nov 10, 2008 09:49 PM
from the drm-by-any-other-name dept.
from the drm-by-any-other-name dept.
Epic Games president Michael Capps did an interview recently with GamesIndustry, and he had some interesting things to say about the future of downloadable content, and how it will affect the retail games market. He also discussed the trend toward social gaming, and Epic's plans in that regard. Quoting:
"I'm not sure how big it is here [in Europe], but the secondary market is a huge issue in the United States. Our primary retailer makes the majority of its money off of secondary sales, and so you're starting to see games taking proactive steps toward that by ... if you buy the retail version you get the unlock code. I've talked to some developers who are saying 'If you want to fight the final boss you go online and pay USD 20, but if you bought the retail version you got it for free.' We don't make any money when someone rents it, and we don't make any money when someone buys it used — way more than twice as many people played Gears than bought it."
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Game Designer Makes Case For Used Games 209 comments
We've recently had a couple of discussions about the plans of various game developers to fight used game sales — in particular, the idea of a free, one-time download that may be bonus content or may be a vital part of the game. Now, Soren Johnson, a game designer who has worked on Civilization 3, Civilization 4 and Spore, has written an article defending certain aspects of the used game market. Quoting:
"By opening up retail sales to a larger segment of the market, used game sales mean that more people are playing our games than would be in a world without them. Beyond the obvious advantages of bigger community sizes and word-of-mouth sales, a larger player base can benefit game developers who are ready to earn secondary income from their games. In-game ads are one source of this additional revenue, but the best scenario is downloadable content. A used copy of Rock Band may go through several owners, but each one of them may give Harmonix money for their own personal rights to 'Baba O'Riley' or 'I Fought the Law.'"
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Used Game Market Affecting Price, Quality of New Titles 384 comments
Gamasutra is running a feature discussing the used game market with various developers and analysts. The point has been raised by many members of the industry that used game sales are hurting developers and publishers even more lately, when they're already beleaguered by rising piracy rates and a struggling economy. Atari executives recently commented that used game sales are "extremely painful," while GameStop's CEO unsurprisingly came out in support of resales. We've recently discussed a few of the ways game designers are considering to limit used game sales. David Braben, chairman of UK-based developer Frontier Development had this to say: "Five years ago, a great game would have sold for a longer period of time than for a bad game — which was essentially our incentive to make great games. But no longer. Now publishers and developers just see revenue the initial few weeks regardless of the game's quality and then gamers start buying used copies which generates money that goes into GameStop's pocket, nobody else's."
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Video Game Trends In 2008 81 comments
Gamasutra is running a feature looking at some of the most important trends that have cropped up or become popular over last year in the gaming industry. Gamers' outrage over the DRM controversy built up a great deal of steam over the past year, and will likely remain strong in 2009. This year also saw downloadable content being used for new and varied purposes, and many developers are banking more heavily on user-generated content, as in LittleBigPlanet. They point out the increase in retro and neo-retro gaming after the success of Mega Man 9 and anticipation for the new Bionic Commando. What trends do you expect to see more of in the next year?
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They're insane. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:They're insane. (Score:5, Insightful)
That's just it. The renters and the used game buyers aren't their customers.
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Re:They're insane. (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:They're insane. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:They're insane. (Score:5, Insightful)
When you decide to start punishing non-customers rather than finding ways to entice them into being customers, that's a really bad sign.
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Re:They're insane. (Score:5, Insightful)
When you decide to start punishing non-customers rather than finding ways to entice them into being customers, that's a really bad sign.
Then it's a good sign that they're enticing non-customers into being customers, right?
Gears of War 2 has special downloadable maps for people who buy the game new. People who buy it used still get the full single-player game, plus full multiplayer functionality-- they just don't get the bonus maps.
They've identified a problem with their business model, and instead of legislating to protect their business model (like the recording industry), they've found a solution. What's the problem?
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Re:They're insane. (Score:5, Insightful)
Surely there's a difference between some "special downloadable maps" and (as stated in the summary) "the final boss"?
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Re:They're insane. (Score:5, Insightful)
Because it's unfair to consumers and violates the First Sale Doctrine [wikipedia.org].
For now, it is just "bonus maps" or something innocuous. Pretty soon they will disable the entire game unless you're the original purchaser. That means you'll never be able to sell your used games again, and nobody will be able to buy your used games.
Bought a game that sucked? You just bought a $60 paperweight, sucker.
No company since Sony with the rootkit fiasco has had more contempt for their legitimate paying customers. Personally, I won't be buying another Epic game again. It's bittorrent and piracy for me. If they are going to "steal" from their customers by eliminating our resale value, I don't feel bad about stealing the game from them in the first place.
The lesson to be learned here is "pirate often". These companies like EA with their ridiculous SecuROM DRM limiting installs and Epic need to be smacked down hard. They need to learn a financial lesson, that if you treat your customers like criminals, they tend to become criminals.
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Re:They're insane. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:They're insane. (Score:4, Informative)
Of course, this also begs the question: if a game can be sold at profit for less down the line, how the fuck can you justify the high price at release as something other than a money grab?
To cover the initial development investments. Once they are paid off, profits are made and prices drop.
Parent
Re:They're insane. (Score:4, Informative)
Of course, this also begs the question:
no, that simply raises the question. begging the question refers to a logical fallacy where one uses circular reasoning.
http://begthequestion.info/ [begthequestion.info]
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Re:They're insane. (Score:5, Funny)
This article got me thinking. We should really shut down sites like Ebay and Craigslist. It's unfair that people are able to sell their assets without generating any profit for the manufacturer.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Do you seriously think that it won't happen regardless? The vast majority won't know until it's too late, and that same vast majority are unlikely to look into things before the second purchase to prevent it happening again.
If they want to stop charging $60 for the game, give out the disks for free, and then componentize the gameplay modes as DLC (or rather, unlockable content on the disc), that's reasonable enough. Then I as
Re:They're insane. (Score:5, Insightful)
Why not just make games worth keeping?
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Re:They're insane. (Score:5, Insightful)
Do they seriously think their customer base will stand for behavior like that?
Yes, since the behavior is pretty clearly bluffing. "I've talked to some developers who are saying..." Yeah, you've talked to developers who were saying "Man, it sucks that we can't get a piece of the pie every time our games are sold, we should do something about it. Also, I really wish I had a unicorn."
You'll notice this is not him saying "In our next game, we're going to do this."
They realize it will directly hurt them eventually. If you couldn't sell a game back if it sucked, a lot of people would be a lot more hesitant to buy a game. I know I would raise my standards for such a game.
Plus, any idiot in the development buisness has to realize this isn't going to amount to beans. If I buy a game like this with a "first buy code" you know what the first thing I'd do would be? Post it online. They could make it such that you had to verify a unique code, but that's hurting their buisness then in another way: people without online capabilities won't be able to play it.
So yeah, if he is serious, he hasn't thought about it for more than 5 minutes.
Parent
Re:They're insane. (Score:4, Funny)
At least, being game developers, the fact that unicorns only associate with virgins isn't an issue.
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Re:They're insane. (Score:5, Insightful)
Any tactic like not selling the whole game is, if not a blatent violation of fair use, a dispicable act that will have the manufacturer forever banned from my collection.
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Re:They're insane. (Score:5, Insightful)
That's acceptable for something that's free. Not sure about where you are, but a lot of places have laws against selling things you know are defective.
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Re:They're insane. (Score:5, Insightful)
The first sale doctrine is the good excuse. For someone who claims to have nothing against it, you seem to be all too eager to restrict markets that don't even need restriction, not counting of course the harm caused by these restrictions. (Used record stores, for example, could not exist without the first sale doctrine.)
I don't know what used stores you are taking about where the used copy is sold far above the price of a new game, but if they exist, then customers will just buy from the retailer selling the new games. Any business reselling games at or higher than the price of a new game is not going to be in business for long.
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Epic Games.. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
They were a once great PC game company. I blame the culture of console gaming for their current attitudes.
Re:Epic Games.. (Score:5, Insightful)
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In other news... (Score:5, Insightful)
... a large printing company has started replacing the last page in it's books with a 900 number readers must call to find out the ending. Apparently the greedy buzzards weren't making any money when people checked books out at the library.
Killing used/rental (Score:5, Insightful)
Ok, they want to kill of rental and used games. Fine. Doesn't matter to me.... but the value of games as a bought item like a DVD or book is a lot higher to me than a non-tranferrable license. Price accordingly and I'll bite. Oh! You idiots thought we are going to keep paying $60 and not be able to loan it out to a friend or turn it at Game Stop? That's very different, that is just a big old price increase heading into a recession. Brilliant move guys!
Re:Killing used/rental (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Killing used/rental (Score:5, Insightful)
In this case, I think that scenario would result in the manufacturer getting EXACTLY as much money as they're entitled to.
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Re:Killing used/rental (Score:5, Insightful)
Not only that, but if the industry really truely wants to make gaming a mass market affair, they are going to have to lower the costs for players. If movies cost $50-60 per title, hardly anyone would buy them either.
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That would be like getting people to pay for sex (Score:3, Funny)
Never gonna happen
Re:That would be like getting people to pay for se (Score:5, Funny)
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It's exactly like that (Score:5, Funny)
...except here Epic is fucking you.
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Doctrine of first sale (Score:5, Insightful)
Doctrine of first sale still applies to other properties that can be purchased and re-sold, despite the fact that authors make no money off sales of used books, nor Ford off sales of used cars and trucks.
Its like the music industries attitude problem has somehow infiltrated the thinking of other digital organizations worldwide.
Harry Potter will have had way more readers than it had sales (probably more than twice as many) before accounting for privacy at all.
"Get over it" comes to mind.
Re:Doctrine of first sale (Score:4, Interesting)
Sure it's lame, but I don't think this applies. You buy a product with an included key that can be consumed once. You can turn around and sell this product to a game store or friend, but if you consume the key, the product is nearly valueless.
It's synonymous with food, well rotten food anyway.
Parent
OT: Heh (Score:5, Funny)
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Umm... (Score:5, Insightful)
"We don't make any money when someone rents it, and we don't make any money when someone buys it used".
Welcome to the real world! Want to be rich? Keep working!
Developers vs developers (Score:4, Insightful)
"I've talked to some developers who are saying 'If you want to fight the final boss you go online and pay USD 20, but if you bought the retail version you got it for free.'"
Surely they mean they've talked to marketing/admin at a games development company? Which in-the-trenches developer, likely a gamer themselves, would want their games to play out like that?
Make a good game. Sell it. If the replay value is high enough, people will keep it rather than selling or renting it. Same if you provide legitimate, on-going DLC (whether free or paid). Engineer some stupid scenario whereby you drag more money out of people for the hell of it and you'll miss sales.
DLC as DRM (Score:5, Insightful)
Behold the future of gaming: using DLC as a form of DRM.
Right of first sale (Score:5, Informative)
We don't make any money when someone rents it, and we don't make any money when someone buys it used -- way more than twice as many people played Gears than bought it."
So what? A car manufacturer doesn't make money when a second hand car is sold. An actor doesn't get more money when a movie is rented.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-sale_doctrine [wikipedia.org]
This fiction that every time a product is used, the people who made said product deserve to be compensated just shows up how greedy these people are. It's never worked this way before, and if you take this position and have ever bought anything second hand you're a hypocrite. Get a clue.
WTF? Seriously. (Score:5, Insightful)
Perhaps if enough people aren't willing to purchase your game at full retail, your retail price is too high for the product you are selling?
There's a reason GameStop, etc are basically pawn shops these days - they figured out that there's a whole lot more people willing to buy the games at roughly 30% off retail.
But no, your answer is to try and kill secondary sales.
I honestly hope you do, in some ways, as then you'll see that your logic is equally as flawed as the RIAA's and that each "secondary sale" or rental isn't someone who would have purchased it at full retail otherwise.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
30% off? Lolwut?
Per Gamestop.com:
Fallout 3 (New): 59.99
Fallout 3 (Used): 54.99
Expect to save $5 to $7 (paying 89-92%) on used games these days, and only get 10-30% trade-in (high end only if EVERYONE wants the game, and then expect to pay 95-97%
I don't think "New prices are too high" is really the deciding factor here...
Ponderponder... why'd I sell a game... (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's see, why would I sell a game... Hmm... Would I sell Civilisation II? Nah, I might want to play it again. Would I sell Alpha Centauri? Are you nuts, that game can still be a blast (provided you find a machine able to run it)! I also couldn't see myself selling my copy of Supreme Commander.
If you don't want your players to buy their games used, give your gamers a reason NOT TO SELL THEM. Simple as that. You can only buy used what others offer you. Replay value is what you're looking for. Of course, if you offer games that can be done in less than 10 hours and give the player zero incentive to play it again (EA, I'm looking your way!), the temptation to dump the game back onto the market before it loses too much value is quite high. Hey, if I buy it offshore and get it past customs, I might even sell it without a loss!
Gamers will take it, and LIKE it (Score:5, Insightful)
There's been A LOT of negative stuff with regards to games--mostly on the PC site. DRM, DLC that's promised and never delivered, poor quality. You know something else? None of these seems to have any real effect on sales.
Spore still sold millions of copies. Mass Effect sold well. As much as people SAID "Oh, I'm not buying this DRM crap" or "I hate these buggy games", they are still selling by the millions. Could these titles have sold BETTER if they didn't have all these negative points? Maybe, maybe not.
As soon as you have a major title that comes out, that will have some code like this...people will still buy it. And if publishers can put these kind of restrictions on games, why shouldn't they do it? There's no downside.
As far as piracy, or even renting goes(and when did THAT become evil)..it's limited to people that never really planned on buying it anyways. Those aren't lost sales despite what their studies say. The vast majority of people still still just go to a store and buy it. Good games still sell well. A cry of "OMG PIRACY KILLED OUR SALES" from a publisher is just trying to defend a bad title. Maybe Crysis would have sold better if it actually ran on more than 10% of the PCs sold at the time.
Expect these things to continue. Also expect them to be tolerated by the gaming public. All that crying about SecuROM is going to go away when Mirror's Edge comes out and you HAVE to play it. Having to have some code to get the last level of a game will be cried about on every forum--until Bioshock 2 has one. And it will sell millions of copies.
What can anyone do about it? Nothing. What COULD everyone do? Ignore the game. Don't pirate it. Don't purchase it. Don't talk about it on forums. But that won't happen. Most will happily take whatever the game publisher does to them just so they can have that shiny new version of their favorite game.
Re:Gamers will take it, and LIKE it (Score:5, Insightful)
There's a downside.
The fact that a second hand market exists means there are some people who sell there games once they no longer wish to play them.
I suspect 99% of the money they get for selling them to someone else they use to buy another game - in fact they probably just do a trade in deal in the first place...
If they can't sell that old game, because that market collapses with no buyers then they won't be able to buy new games as often. Hence new game sales fall (or prices drop, yeah right that'll ever happen).
Parent
Possible Scenario (Score:5, Funny)
Kid "Mom, I need your credit card to pay Blizzard $20 so I can defeat the final level boss Cement Head in Worlds of Warcraft Junior: Adolescence Rage"
Mom "What? You need my credit card for what? A video game?"
Kid "I also need $15 more to buy a magic sword +5 against cement."
Mom "But that's extortion, who does Blizzard think they are to charge money to get to the final level and buy a weapon to help you defeat a boss, and what kind of name is Cement Head anyway?"
Kid "But moooooooom, all the kids in Junior High are playing it, and if I don't beat Cement Head, I'll be laughed at lunch by all of my friends because my family is too poor or too stingy to pay for unlocking those parts of the game."
Mom "Well if they laugh at you dear, then they aren't your friends. I am not paying $35 for you to finish some stupid video game."
Kid "But Mom, G4 'Cheat' gave it five out of five stars, the highest rating they can give it."
Mom "I don't care who gave it five stars, I am not giving you my credit card and that is final!"
Better keep libraries a secret then (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm glad these guys aren't in the business of selling books, imagine how ape shit they would go if they learned about these places called libraries, that buy the book once, then lend it out free to whoever wants to read it? Hundreds, even thousands of people getting enjoyment from 1 sale, we better make laws against it fast, or book publishing will be doomed for sure!
Despite all their commercial success, Epic (especially cliffyb) seems determined to find excuses why their games aren't the highest selling entertainment product of all time. The PC version of Gears of War stunk, it had framerate and screen tearing issues, lots of bugs, and little to no effort put into adapting it to PC controls. When the sales stunk, they blamed piracy on the PC. Im sure when GoW 2 comes out, and doesn't outsell Halo, GTA , and Madden combined in the first week, he will blame modchips or paid off/bribed reviewers from Sony or whatever other thing he can come up with to massage his own ego. They owe a lot of their success to Id, who basically created the mold for their early games, but if you listen to them talk you'd think they are god's gift to gamers, bringing them ideas so innovative only truly inspired artists could come up with them, like a first person shooter where you fight aliens with guns, and chainsaws, and chain-saw guns.
So? 2nd hand is normal (Score:4, Insightful)
In holland there is a 2nd hand bookstore chain "De Sleghte" which has stores in all the major towns. Does the book industry complain about them not making any money from there sales? Well, they might, but nobody cares. 2nd hand books are normal.
Pawn brokers make a living selling 2nd hand goods, any decent sized town in holland got some kind of 2nd hand store for household goods.
What student doesn't get their household goods second hand from family? Does Philips complain that they don't get any money from people using their vacuum cleaners 2nd hand? Well, perhaps they do, but who cares. 2nd hand goods are normal.
How many first time car buyers buy a new car? Or even a 2nd hand car? 3rd and even 4th hand are common. Does anybody care if the car makers complain about this? Of course not, the 2nd hand car industry is triving and a big part of the economy and the only way most of us can afford a car.
Who of you lives in a new house? A 2nd hand house? I have lived in places (actually lived in a castle once) that were hundreds of years old. 30th hand perhaps? Nobody would take an constructor serious who wants a piece of sale price every time a house changes hands again.
So why is the game industry different?
Re:Small Monthly Fees (Score:4, Insightful)
Won't work. I still play starcraft and broodwar. I'm definitely not interested in paying more to play it. For your scheme to work, the subscription price needs to be small enough to entice me to continue to pay. At that level, the publishers aren't interested. What they are interested is the $15 or whatever people continue to pay for World of Warcraft. What they don't understand is that there's only *one* microsoft, *one* world of warcraft.
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Re:Small Monthly Fees (Score:5, Insightful)
No, god no. I don't frankly care if it reduces my costs overall. I'm fed up with this contract culture, where anything worth doing requires agreeing to terms that frankly, nobody understands. I want to have some control -- not to be bound to a million different obnoxious companies. Look at all the nightmares when people try to unsubscribe to AOL, for example. Now multiply it a hundredfold.
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:I was under the impression (Score:5, Interesting)
If you are a rental place, buying movies at retail makes it very expensive to build up a large collection, particularly obscure stuff that will take ages to recoup the initial investment, or the bursty demand for new, popular, releases. Instead, you can establish a revenue sharing agreement with the studio, who will furnish you with as many copies of a given title as you need at the cost of pressing, which is trivial, and then share the revenue from each rental.
http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/118972449/abstract?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0 [wiley.com]
http://cat.inist.fr/?aModele=afficheN&cpsidt=16851899 [inist.fr]
http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article.cfm?articleid=258 [upenn.edu]
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Dear Lifelong Gamer (Score:5, Funny)
We only sold 5.3 million copies [vgchartz.com] of Gears of War. At $60 a piece, that's a mere $300 million, give or take, in gross receipts. Our top executives can barely afford the maintenance costs on their exotic Italian sports cars. Please, think of the execs!
Regards,
Greedy Assholes
Parent