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Of course developers tend to be against the notion of used games -- they count every time a game is resold as money out of pocket. And, in the case of multiplayer games that require expensive servers and a crew chasing cheaters and glitchers, they have a point.
But the consumer point, that $60 bucks in a lot of money, is right as well.
Anybody who buys games knows that video games rarely go on sale. When a new movie, book or record comes out you can rush to Best Buy the first day and get it for a steal. That never happens with video games. Your reward for being a first-day customer is a shitty poster or downloadable in-game costume that you'll never use.A new angle has popped up lately -- that notion gamers are on the hook to support the people that make great games. I agree. I have, after all, been haranguing anyone who will listen to go see Scott Pilgrim. But there are limits to such devotion -- when the consumer has been bent over a barrel once too often.
If game makers weren't so stingy for so long with the price of games we wouldn't be having this discussion.
Prices budge so infrequently that used game vendors can get away with selling a used game for just five dollars off. Few used goods, especially those that aren't purported to be rare or collectible, retain their value so well. Used DVDs sell for dirt cheap and used CDs? You'd be hard pressed to find a store in most U.S. cities that even bothers to buy and sell them.
I posit that if publishers hadn't been so abusive with the pricing of their games for so long there wouldn't be such a great demand for even the slightest discount.
A long time ago, recorded music was in a similar fix. Back in the '90s before most people had even heard of an mp3 there were used CD stores all over the country. That's because CDs were exorbitantly priced and had been so for ages. Customers were sick of getting dinged for fifteen to twenty dollars for music they hadn't even heard yet.
Garth Brooks was so ticked off at the idea that he was losing royalties to used CD shops that he threatened to punish record stores that sold used CDs by not allowing them to sell his new releases.
It wouldn't surprise me in the least if similar such threats have been mulled by game publishers.
I don't consider it a coincidence that in my lifetime as a consumer I've only received two awards in class-action settlements. One from Nintendo because they were such anti-competitive jerks to retailers in the '80s and '90s and one from the record industry because they bent me over and had their way with me every time I bought a CD at retail in the '80s and '90.
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We all know how miserably the record industry has failed to adapt to the changing market. But I think the solution that video games has come up with is much more elegant. I totally support the notion of one-time codes, online fees and other ways for game makers to defray the costs of making games. But those additional costs should go hand-in-hand with lower boxed game prices.
If that means making smaller game, so be it. I don't need my games to be 70 hours long any more. Big, sprawling games like Fallout are excepted, of course. Bethesda, please continue to make big, full-priced Fallout games and I will gladly pay what they're worth.
But the rest of you? Start thinking smaller and cheaper. Think episodic. Think The Orange Box and Torchlight. Think about working some wiggle room into your retail price. The reason why the used market thrives is that you've painted yourselves into a corner. Game makers have for too long thrown everything at the wall, slapped it with a top-of-the-line price tag and called it a day. That needs to change.
Give us a break. Loosen your margins so retailers can use video games as loss leaders. You'll sell more new games and you'll take a little bit of steam out of the used game market.
I know that making games is an expensive undertaking. So is being a gamer. Lets meet half-way.
Pretension +1 is a weekly video game column by Gus Mastrapa that only occasionally sides with the little guy.
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