Game Designer Makes Case For Used Games

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.'"

Re:Who cares about the customer?

[Anonymous Coward]

OK, as an actual employee of Gamestop I feel like I've got to say something on this whole subject.

I'm not the hugest fan of my company, and we do a LOT of stupid things. However, there's a reason for the high margins, and that's the customers.

1, Those used games are warrantied for 30 days by default. If a customer buys a used copy of, say, Fallout 3, takes it home, and decides that shaking the 360 like an etch-a-sketch while the game's still running will make the graphics better, they can come back with their irreparably damaged game and give it to us for a replacement. And then rinse and repeat.
2. Those used games are also warrantied for a full refund within 7 days. So, if someone can beat the game in under a week, they can simply return it without having paid a penny, making us a sort of rental station with a higher initial investment, but ultimately free. Also, if they manage to damage the game, we still have to completely refund within said 7 days. This goes for used consoles as well.
3. We HAVE to buy your used games if they're in good enough condition and for a console we still sell. It's just that simple. This isn't e-bay, or a garage sale, or a swap meet, you're guaranteed a sale of every game you bring in. Hell, if it's a good enough or simply recent enough game, we'll take it back if the bottom's completely scratched. So we also pay for the shipping and repairs of consoles and games.

Also, of course we dedicate more shelf space to used games. There are more used games! Believe it or not, EA doesn't keep producing copies of Madden 05, but we still have to take them in as trades. Almost every game stops production after a while, but there are still millions of copies in circulation. And with each subsequent release in a sports-based franchise, the previous iteration becomes instantly worthless to the customer and is thus sold to us, resulting in an ever-expanding spot in the racks occupied by the creatively titled (Sports Franchise) 03. Following that, few people buy those copies but rather wait for the new copies of the newest version to be traded in.

Also, we actually offer a year warranty for our games. I don't know about you, but until I started working at Gamestop, I'd never heard of extended warranties for games. Given the average lifespan of the average used game in the hands of the average used game customer, those are fairly often returned. And should it be something like Electroplankton or Marvel vs Capcom 2, and we simply cannot secure another copy in the district, we pretty much have little recourse beyond a refund.

Yeah, there's a large margin between sale price and buying price. It's a company, it has to make a profit. However, given the sheer volume of theft, incompetence, and simple loudness(it's amazing how often a customer will win not by being right, but by complaining to customer service until they get their way) from Gamestop's customers, there also has to be a buffer zone for all the things that will inevitably go wrong with sales.