Total Biscuit plays Devils advocate: Used games. - General

[QUOTE=Elv02;40815447]Once they're gone, your game becomes a paperweight.[/QUOTE] [t]http://retro80skid.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/frisbee1.jpg[/t] wrong they make good frisbee toys

I don't have a lot of money, I mostly buy games in steam sales when they're dirt cheap, or used, rarely new. Online passes or having a console unable to play used games are a stupid idea, I still regularly buy ps2 and xbox games, they don't print those anymore, if they had online passes I'd miss out on some great games.

[QUOTE=Elv02;40815666] He may be condemning used game sales but it's not going to become like what we have on PC gaming.[/QUOTE] Microsoft has a terrible tract record for digital sales and PC DRM. Games for Windows Live is probably the worst DRM I have ever seen and Windows Games on Demand is probably the worst PC selling platform I have ever seen. I can't see why they wouldn't screw up with their history.

How's this for an idea, would there be an outrage I wonder. This is incorporating limited editions, dlc and season passes (all of which I personally don't really like the way its done at the moment anyway) Say you release a game. $60 price, lets call it complete edition, the price includes some limited content, and all of the future dlc. Basically outside micro-transactions or whatever you don't pay anything extra for later content. After you get your game, when you go online you stick in some codes to unlock the additional content which is then locked to your account. On the case of the game, you could hide the code behind a scratching surface to make it clear that if you are buying used, and the codes are gone. You are necceseraly only getting the basic version without the dlc and some features, which is not worth near as much. What you could also do, is after the release of the complete edition game (months or whatever determined amount of time), release a separate, basic copy, for cheaper, maybe $30. Basically what you would be doing is just making the used copy worth less, cutting down or possibly completely eliminating the profit margins the retailer will be able to make, if for example the basic version is only worth $30 new, why would the customer buy a used copy of the complete edition (which is basically basic version at this point), if he can just get a basic version, new for the same price? how will they make money on a used copy? The customer wins because he can still get the basic game cheaper used, and the developers of the game just got a new potential customer that may buy the dlc and whatnot in the future. tldr: Have content in games that is specific to a customer, reducing the worth of the used game, making more money for devs. You couldn't trade in a half full bottle of vodka for the same price could you.

I hardly buy used games anymore but the few I do It's because I wasn't going to buy it for full price anyway. Or it's some old game that's gone kinda rare and the most common ones you can find aren't new anymore. Also I've been into my local game and gamestation before they closed down one store for years and they never tried to sell me a used game when I was bringing a new one to the counter. If I asked for a used one they would sometimes even say do I want a new because 'random bonus code' will likely be used in the used copy... Kinda the opposite of his experience.

He didn't even talk about friends sharing games between each other. I think that's the more important issue than "giving your money to gamestop and being happy about it". What about all the use games being sold through ebay and craigslist. Not to mention I've gone split on games with friends. Does that hurt the industry too because 2 people get the game for the price of 1? Although if things are looking the way they are I'd never do that again if the game is locked to 1 device, or 1 account. Also for a lot of people it's get it used, or don't get it at all, so many publishers were never going to see that money anyways.

[QUOTE=carcarcargo;40815633]Yeah except its 16 years old. Why should I pay full price for 16 year old tech?[/QUOTE] you shouldn't - the price goes down naturally without any of you helping with the second-hand market a new copy of half-life 2 is 9.99. it certainly wasn't that back in 2004

My opinion on TotalBiscuit used to be "fucking cunt" now I think he's actually pretty spot on with the majority of things he says. The thing about Steam prices being the same as retail, makes me so mad.

If game designers attempted to add more replay value to their games these days, there'd be less used copies being sold. I've got some older games that I'd never sell, simply because I know one day I'm going to want to pick it up and play it again.

I'm just not convinced used game sales are really the threat everyone makes it out to be It's a lot like piracy, the people who buy your game used aren't the type of people who would have bought it new anyways. However you still get (non-short term monitary) benefits as a publisher by allowing your games to be purchased used - your games have a much deeper penetration in the consumer base, there is more brand awareness (little Jimmy who bought your game used is now connected to your franchises and is more likely to buy your next game on launch where it's almost impossible to find a used copy). If you are a person who has money to drop on spending $20-$30 for a used game, you're not going to buy new anyways in a market devoid of used game sales. You simply won't buy any game on that visit. I'm not going to go "Oh, well I thought about getting this game used but this console doesn't support used sales, so I'll just buy new!". That's not how things work. Instead, you get people completely skipping out on your content, which is [B]way[/B] worse than someone experiencing your content but you seeing no direct financial benefit from it. You also fund retailers which are the #1 source of your new game advertising, awareness, and income already. Also, you allow people to trade in games to buy your new game. Seriously, everyone I know does this. Give gamestop 5 of your games to get that new game you really wanted for really cheap. If used game sales weren't a thing, nobody would be doing this, and that is a flat-out lost sale right there. That's a massive market - trade in's twoard new games are likely a massive chunk of the retail console game sale profits, and I'm willing to bet money that publishers will actually [I]lose[/I] money at retail by banning used game sales instead of earning more profit because of this. How is this a downside? If used games didn't exist we would see greater short term profit but much worse adoption rates and much worse long term profit because the actual brands your franchises rely on are now worth much less when only people who pay a premium price can afford to be exposed to them, and less people will be buying games in general due to there being no cheaper option. Or rather, Steam will become massive and the consoles will go out of business because no publisher or console maker seems to want to adapt to steam's model of selling games for uber cheap, and only selling digitally.

We've established that cars do not make for a good analogy on video games. How about libraries? I've read hundreds of books that I've never paid for (apart from a smidgen of my taxes, and as a child I didn't have to pay those), and the publishers don't make any money from the hundreds of people who check their book out from the library. Heck, nowadays you can even get ebooks from libraries.

If you buy a used game, doesn't that mean that someone bought it for full price initially? It's like you guys completely forget that someone most likely already bought it for full price and then turned it in/sold it. Video game companies get the first release sale, and now they want the second, used game sale. There really isn't any other product like this where they go after the secondhand sale.

I really do appreciate these opinion pieces that he does. It's rare (for me to see at least) someone give their full opinion instead of blindly agreeing with others to avoid the controversy of not doing so. Albeit, TotalBiscuit is not shy to this kind of thing anyhow. Not to mention is that these videos seem to generate a downside more views, likes/dislikes and comments than his other usual videos.

Something I've been wondering. If selling games at $60 a pop simply can't make you back the money you put into it, shouldn't that be a sign that the market you are in just isn't sustainable? If you've got to rely on hitting your customers every single place you can (DLC, Online Passes, Used Game activation fee's, etc.) isn't that a sign that, with the apparent rising cost of production, at some point you're going to hit a point where people just aren't going to want to give you any more money? And also, how is Nintendo surviving all of this without throwing all of these fee's on their games?

[QUOTE=Uesrname;40816655]Something I've been wondering. If selling games at $60 a pop simply can't make you back the money you put into it, shouldn't that be a sign that the market you are in just isn't sustainable? If you've got to rely on hitting your customers every single place you can (DLC, Online Passes, Used Game activation fee's, etc.) isn't that a sign that, with the apparent rising cost of production, at some point you're going to hit a point where people just aren't going to want to give you any more money? And also, how is Nintendo surviving all of this without throwing all of these fee's on their games?[/QUOTE] Probably would be able to ask half of what they're asking if they didn't spend so much on advertising and actually make a decent game. aka retail version of witcher 2. £30 for [URL]http://img196.imageshack.us/img196/3830/witcherbox.jpg[/URL] yet we see many big names struggle to even have a book with more than 10 pages and ask £40+ with dlc/online passes in the box and planned dlc for the next 6months+... We're going slightly offtopic but I still think it's somewhat relevant still. I don't think used games would be as much of an issue if the games were worth purchasing for the full price in the first place.

[QUOTE=Pinut;40816711]Probably would be able to ask half of what they're asking if they didn't spend so much on advertising and actually make a decent game. aka retail version of witcher 2. £30 for [URL]http://img196.imageshack.us/img196/3830/witcherbox.jpg[/URL] yet we see many big names struggle to even have a book with more than 10 pages and ask £40+ with dlc/online passes in the box and planned dlc for the next 6months+... We're going slightly offtopic but I still think it's somewhat relevant still. I don't think used games would be as much of an issue if the games were worth purchasing for the full price in the first place.[/QUOTE] A lot of it probably does go into advertising.. And I'm guessing there are a growing number of instances where programmers/artists/management just don't work very well together or are as creative as the a group that put together Witcher. Companies like some of the ones under EA don't seem like the type of creative environments you need to get a good original game off the ground without mass promoting it.

[QUOTE=Uesrname;40816655]Something I've been wondering. If selling games at $60 a pop simply can't make you back the money you put into it, shouldn't that be a sign that the market you are in just isn't sustainable? If you've got to rely on hitting your customers every single place you can (DLC, Online Passes, Used Game activation fee's, etc.) isn't that a sign that, with the apparent rising cost of production, at some point you're going to hit a point where people just aren't going to want to give you any more money? And also, how is Nintendo surviving all of this without throwing all of these fee's on their games?[/QUOTE] This is exactly why some game critics are predicting the fall of the console market and the current "AAA busness model" as inevitably coming to a crash. Because when a game like Resident Evil 6 fails to meet expectations when they sell 5 million copies, you know something is fundamentally wrong with the current business model. If the AAA business does crash I suspect in the future we'd get a lot more games coming out from smaller studios as being the main force in the industry - i.e. games that don't have teams more than 50 working on them, sell for $30 and have half the development time. As currently, they are the type of companies that are suceeding the most in the current industry. It's why dark souls was a massive success for From Software despite "only" selling about a million. Smaller team, smaller marketing budget, smaller expectations, and much more of an interesting purchase for the gamer than what the current AAA offers. The current industry expects the world to pay $60 for a game you are done within a month before buying the next one and thinks that's okay, after spending millions on marketing alone. They think they can be the "next call of duty" when there realistically can only be one call of duty especially when most gamers think $60 is just too much for most games.

[QUOTE=Legend286;40815847] The thing about Steam prices being the same as retail, makes me so mad.[/QUOTE] Get over yourself. Valve still has servers to run, employees to pay, and I doubt developers/publishers would have flocked to steam as much as they did if Valve told all of them "Yeah we're gonna have to decrease the price of all your games by 40%." You more than make up for it with the constant sales, free weekends, free coupons, and the other services Steam provides.

[QUOTE=KorJax;40817277]This is exactly why some game critics are predicting the fall of the console market and the current "AAA busness model" as inevitably coming to a crash. Because when a game like Resident Evil 6 fails to meet expectations when they sell 5 million copies, you know something is fundamentally wrong with the current business model. If the AAA business does crash I suspect in the future we'd get a lot more games coming out from smaller studios as being the main force in the industry - i.e. games that don't have teams more than 50 working on them, sell for $30 and have half the development time. As currently, they are the type of companies that are suceeding the most in the current industry. It's why dark souls was a massive success for From Software despite "only" selling about a million. Smaller team, smaller marketing budget, smaller expectations, and much more of an interesting purchase for the gamer than what the current AAA offers. The current industry expects the world to pay $60 for a game you are done within a month before buying the next one and thinks that's okay, after spending millions on marketing alone. They think they can be the "next call of duty" when there realistically can only be one call of duty especially when most gamers think $60 is just too much for most games.[/QUOTE] That's all pretty well written and explains my thoughts nicely. I'd personally love to see the AAA market crash and burn even if we lose some good titles along the way. The amount of charm and "quality" between AAA titles nowadays (with exceptions, of course) and those from smaller studios is almost night and day.

TB is right in one respect though, a lot of things that go through resale already have a system in place so that said resale winds up being both good for the publisher and the consumer. For example, Movies go through about 5 or so different major sales (Theater, DVD, rental, syndication, and probably a few others) so that they just wind up making a large profit no matter what. Also, the whole paying a price tag bit for used games on Xboxnone wouldn't be so bad if it was a portion of the original price, the idea of paying another 60$ should you loan it to another person just isn't very good with a lot of people. Heck, make it 50% or 75% of the original price and people won't mind it so much, since you're still getting an advantage over buying brand new and publishers still get the profit. In all, Microsoft is just extremely shitty with their marketing schemes.

[QUOTE=Cryomundus;40818355] Also, the whole paying a price tag bit for used games on Xboxnone wouldn't be so bad if it was a portion of the original price, the idea of paying another 60$ should you loan it to another person just isn't very good with a lot of people. Heck, make it 50% or 75% of the original price and people won't mind it so much, since you're still getting an advantage over buying brand new and publishers still get the profit. [/QUOTE] Isn't that the point of all this though? The publishers feel deprived of a new sale. As above users have stated, they [I]need[/I] that sale or the game won't be profitable. I find it quite sad that good games like [I]Tomb Raider[/I] managed to be "failures" (although I recently heard it 'broke even'). This to me is a really bad sign of things to come in the gaming market.

[QUOTE=JCDentonUNATCO;40817441]Get over yourself. Valve still has servers to run, employees to pay, and I doubt developers/publishers would have flocked to steam as much as they did if Valve told all of them "Yeah we're gonna have to decrease the price of all your games by 40%." You more than make up for it with the constant sales, free weekends, free coupons, and the other services Steam provides.[/QUOTE] Excuse me? The only reason they're the same price is because of retail pressuring publishers. Did you even watch the video, he pretty much explains what everyone thought for ages already.

[QUOTE=Uesrname;40816655]And also, how is Nintendo surviving all of this without throwing all of these fees on their games?[/QUOTE] Nintendo (at least with the Wii) has found success with a completely different demographic. The Wii has great games, but I wouldn't call many of them AAA games. Many big franchises - Bioshock, Tomb Raider, Battlefield, Borderlands - aren't on the Wii/Wii U at all. When's the last time you saw [I]"Pre-order New Super Mario Bros. at GameStop for an exclusive ingame hat!"[/I]? Never, that's when. Nintendo is mainly aiming for the casual/nostalgic demographic rather than the dudebro/hardcore gamer. Of course, that's coming back to bite them - they're losing a lot of the casual market share to smartphones and tablets, a lot of consumers were unaware of the Wii U (and of those that were many were confused about whether it was a new accessory or a new console).

[QUOTE=Elv02;40815666]Right, finished watching it. How can he make the connection that new games are coming out cheaper and regularly go on sale? Oh right, he's a PC gamer using Steam. This doesn't apply to Xbox. Games to not come down in price. Especially on the Xbox digital store. Also, Xbox doesn't have insane sales like we experience on Steam. He may be condemning used game sales but it's not going to become like what we have on PC gaming.[/QUOTE] I just want to bring up something here. You can barely buy used PC games anymore, nearly all sales go straight to the devs/publishers nowadays when it comes to PC sales. Xbox games are still being sold in retail and are still selling in bulk as used games, which contributes nothing to the creators of the game. Sure they could lower the prices in the Xbox Marketplace but then you'll have to take into consideration the amount of physical used copies get sold these days (a reminder that we are talking about console games) as opposed to digital sales. So of course the prices are gonna still be relatively high, give it time after the Xbone's release and the prices will go down (unless publishers pull a nasty string and keep the prices high after used sales go down, then please continue bashing them (fucking EA...)). He even mentioned that Microsoft is essentially skipping a generation and pushing digital sales way earlier than they should be. Have to say, everything that TB said was backed up with good points, counter-arguments were spot on, the reasoning is sound and depth was given where needed. However I do have a couple of criticisms, both of which do affect most people here. When he was making his counter-arguments (how used games are not the same as used books/movies/music/cars), he made a few snarky remarks pointed to people who would make those arguments. While I would understand that he does have a point and people aren't giving his opinion any ground, it was probably unnecessary to do so. The second would have to the the Steam prices near the very end of the video, as I'm sure a lucky selection of indie games (made by developers that have to sell low for a variety of reasons) and a software tool does not account for the occasional high-grade game selling for $79-99 USD. What he should've done was also look for recent games that cost around the $40 mark, as it gives a more realistic representation and more weight for his point which I do not believe he portrayed as best as he could've. [editline]29th May 2013[/editline] [QUOTE=carcarcargo;40815179]Yes actually I would rather give money to some retailer rather than arbitrarily giving money to the publisher/developer. I'm not a charity for games companies, you want me to buy your stuff then stop trying to rip me off.[/QUOTE] So you'd give money to the same retailers that are actively forcing pre-order exclusives, influencing new game price rises and exploiting the used games market as opposed to the guys who actually made the games and need the money to continue making more games. I'm not even sure if you're taking the piss or not, it's used game sales from retailers (not independent sales between people) that have caused most of the problems we are seeing today.

[QUOTE=Corndog Ninja;40821194]Nintendo (at least with the Wii) has found success with a completely different demographic. The Wii has great games, but I wouldn't call many of them AAA games. Many big franchises - Bioshock, Tomb Raider, Battlefield, Borderlands - aren't on the Wii/Wii U at all. When's the last time you saw [I]"Pre-order New Super Mario Bros. at GameStop for an exclusive ingame hat!"[/I]? Never, that's when. Nintendo is mainly aiming for the casual/nostalgic demographic rather than the dudebro/hardcore gamer. Of course, that's coming back to bite them - they're losing a lot of the casual market share to smartphones and tablets, a lot of consumers were unaware of the Wii U (and of those that were many were confused about whether it was a new accessory or a new console).[/QUOTE] They may appeal to a different demographic, but we're still dealing with the same overall group of people here. People can say "But games aren't the same as other products! You can't compare the two!" all day, but they can't use the same defense in the case of other games. If one title needs to sell at $60 and then put out 5 DLC packs all while enforcing a resale fee to remain profitable, while another game can sell at $40 with no DLC or second hand enforcement and still break what they spent, which one can only assume is true in the case of Nintendo else they wouldn't continue certain franchises.. If that is happening, then the problem doesn't lie in the resale of games. It's a problem with the developers overspending on their title and then saying to consumers "Hey, we know other games might offer you more for less, but we were kind of banking on bigger profits here... So.. Here's 3 maps for $15!" [editline]29th May 2013[/editline] Also, a lot of people say that "Used games haven't been a thing on the PC for a long time." I'd like to disagree. A lot of AAA titles now may be locked to the likes of GFWL, Steam, UPlay, Origin, or a similar platform, but AAA games certainly don't represent all of the games everywhere. They may be the ones that "Drive the industry", but to say that there just aren't any games you can't resell on the PC isn't true. There's also the thing where people have been saying used PC sales haven't been a thing for quite a long time due to product keys. I don't know if I missed something somewhere along the line, but in my experience most games had you enter the key into the games install window, hit okay, and that was it. To sell the game all you needed to do was include the box that most likely had the key stuck to it or the manual. Maybe I just wasn't buying games that had limited use keys, but I don't remember a system like that being widespread.

[QUOTE=Uesrname;40822405] There's also the thing where people have been saying used PC sales haven't been a thing for quite a long time due to product keys. I don't know if I missed something somewhere along the line, but in my experience most games had you enter the key into the games install window, hit okay, and that was it. To sell the game all you needed to do was include the box that most likely had the key stuck to it or the manual. Maybe I just wasn't buying games that had limited use keys, but I don't remember a system like that being widespread.[/QUOTE] In the absence of locking games to an account we've had DRM like SecuROM that essentially was a case of having limited use keys, and certain multilplayer games that wouldn't let you play with people that have used the same cd-key. But yes there was a time when cd-keys were not that big of a deal as game piracy didn't have nearly as much of an impact in, say, the 90's as opposed to the last decade has had given the increased ease of playing pirated material (helped along by people working together to crack games, the introduction of broadband speeds and a few other reasons).

[QUOTE=jechtman;40822677]In the absence of locking games to an account we've had DRM like SecuROM that essentially was a case of having limited use keys, and certain multilplayer games that wouldn't let you play with people that have used the same cd-key. But yes there was a time when cd-keys were not that big of a deal as game piracy didn't have nearly as much of an impact in, say, the 90's as opposed to the last decade has had given the increased ease of playing pirated material (helped along by people working together to crack games, the introduction of broadband speeds and a few other reasons).[/QUOTE] So I missed the entire last decade of video games? :v: That aside, one thing I did know about was the "two people who have the same key can't play the same game together" thing. But that always seemed like common sense because in some games there were more than likely hard technical limits imposed where each copy has a unique ID used to connect to servers. Not necessarily a DRM feature, but just the way certain engines were programmed to handle connections. Piracy has certainly increased due to the long standing period where it was just a thing where you did and nobody thought anything of it, but I don't really think it's hurting game sales as much as some groups let on. But lets not get into that topic else this thread will never recover.

How can you take a person this delusional, thinking they're always right, seriously? Totalbiscuit is a joke. [url]https://twitter.com/Totalbiscuit/status/339089593947287552[/url] [IMG]http://i.imgur.com/gayZrCN.png[/IMG]

[QUOTE=Cryomundus;40816267]If you buy a used game, doesn't that mean that someone bought it for full price initially? It's like you guys completely forget that someone most likely already bought it for full price and then turned it in/sold it. Video game companies get the first release sale, and now they want the second, used game sale. There really isn't any other product like this where they go after the secondhand sale.[/QUOTE] It's still only one copy going towards the devs and the publishers. They're the ones maintaining the servers, providing the updates, working on future titles, providing tech-support. It's not even comparable to movies/music because they've embraced multiple streams of revenue (digital distribution/public syndication on radio/television/live shows (music)/box office releases). For video games, it's "buy new, we get a cut, if not we'll never see a dime".

[QUOTE=carcarcargo;40815138]I'm sorry but people against used games are just dumb. If you buy something why on earth shouldn't I be able to resell it? I bought it so it SHOULD be rightfully mine (games,films and music seem to get special treatment in this regard and get to tell people what they can and cannot do with something they've bought) and thus I should also be able to resell the working product.[/QUOTE] This is such an old fashioned look on things. You don't even own games on Steam. You're technically buying the license to play it but you don't "own" anything. [quote]Steam and your Subscription(s) require the automatic download and installation of Software onto your computer. Valve hereby grants, and you accept, a limited, terminable, non-exclusive license and right to use the Software for your personal use in accordance with this Agreement, including the Subscription Terms. [B]The Software is licensed, not sold. Your license confers no title or ownership in the Software. [/B]To make use of the Software, you must have a Steam Account and you may be required to be running the Steam client and maintaining a connection to the Internet.[/quote] [url]http://store.steampowered.com/subscriber_agreement/[/url] I mean by your logic, if I buy a game on Steam, I "own" it, right? I paid for the software that's installed on my machine. Or the disk if I bought it from a retail store. It's such a double standard. When someone else restricts second hand games, people go ape shit but it's A-OK if Valve does it. Valve #1. You could argue that Steam gives you incredible discounts but that's because they don't have the risk of people reselling the games.