These guys need a reality check. It's not "problematic" when your dealing with an industry that makes billions of dollars to begin with. It's only a problem because some bean counter tells them that if all those guys who bought used games bought the game new, then they would be making more money on top of the giant piles they are already sitting on. It's not a matter of used game sales COSTING the game industry anything.
What's more I think there is some detachment from reality here, one of the reasons why these guys can charge insane prices for games is because people realize they can trade them in and get some of that money back. That $60.00 price tag is a lot easier to stomach if you can get say $25 back if you trade the game in within a couple of weeks.
The games industry in it's mouth-frothing, rabid greed, seems to fail to realize that by making trade ins more difficult they are also discouraging customers from buying those products due to the simple fact that they won't be able to rely on recouping part of the price.
Now, if the game industry was not making billions of dollars in profit overall, I'd agree that maybe things like this were an issue, but right now it's not a matter of the industry losing money or anything like that, it's a matter of them eyeballing more profits, and there is a SUBSTANTIAL differance, and nobody should let themselves be convinced otherwise.
Right now, I think that the game industry needs to just chill out and embrace slow growth, instead of constantly looking towards even bigger potential piles of money that can come by gouging consumers, or taking away things that we already have.
What's more, I find it deliciously ironic that at the same time the games industry is talking about stopping used game sales, they are also pushing to raise prices (and despite people in the industry saying games are underpriced, that is hardly the case. I think that if they keep it up they are going to take all the joy out of gaming, and make the hobby unapproachable for the average person. If they say get the price of games up to $100.00 and cut down on used game sales, I'll be blunt in saying that I doubt many people could afford that, or at least they would be buying less games which would mean less sales overall for the entire industry. If somehow that didn't effectively kill the consumer base, you'd still be seeing them QQing about how they aren't making enough money, because no amount of money is enough for big business.
See, a big part of the problem is that the guys involved in game development have decided that they should be worth Hollywood dollars. Not the price of movie stars, but of the general workers. They have also convinced themselves that their skills are vauable to other industries and that "well I could make more money elsewhere" when that is hardly the case. Computer guys with degrees are glutting the market, that's one of the big sectors of people being hit by all these layoffs since everyone got into that "growth industry" in my generation and too many people combined with competition means a lot of them being put out of jobs.
Typically games are funded by developers setting the price for what it will cost for them to make a game, basically deciding what to pay themselves. Producers wind up paying that money as an investment, hoping they will get more money back. Developers frequently lie about their role in the process, and act like they have an actual financial stake in the games, or see a share of this profit, they rarely if ever do. The exception is usually when they borrow money and become their own producer, paying themselves whatever they want to live off of, and then hoping that they can pay off the loan with the product, and anything beyond that being profit.
The issue is generally that the developers become increasingly greedier as games make more money, they set a higher price tag for the producers, which of course leads to a lot of producer/publisher behaviors we don't approve of to recoup those costs. The success of a product of course causing developers to raise their price again, publishers to gouge more, and then if profit comes in the cycle starts again.
I've read articles about the process (albiet not in this exact way) over the years, Game Informer even did a bit on it once.
The point I'm getting at is that if you were to say cut out the used games, and/or raise prices of the games, there would never be ENOUGH money being made. With the higher prices and more profit would come higher fees being demanded by developers in proportion, which means that even if more money goes into the industry the publishers would still be wanting to raise prices. It's a vicious cycle (and I'm hoping I'm articulating it properly).
In general the best thing for the game industry right now is not for the game industry to find more ways to gouge customers to sustain the ravenous beast it has become, it's for the industry to cut what it spends. Basically the issue is at th ebottom with those game developers who we as customers tend to side with because they actually make the games. Those guys need to tighten their belts. All those "little" things like that huge Valve snack bar "The Escapist" did an article on once, that's the kind of garbage we're paying for... among other issues like the people just taking home too much money for what they do. I'm sure they will deny it, like anyone being threatened with a cut would, but it happens to be true. Nobody typically thinks their lifestyle is elaborate or excessive, and nobody wants to lose their house and move back down into a smaller or or an apartment, get a junkier car, or whatever else. When it comes to a line coder or whatever, their degrees don't mean much today where everyone has one, I think it's time to hold up the "welcome to the lower middle class" signboards. With lower development costs will come more profits, I won't say lower prices for us, because well... publishers and people like that usually don't move backwards when they can.
Now, some people might be screaming "unfair", but let me explain something. Right now I am disabled, my parting from the industry I worked in for 10 years was not pleasant, but I won't go into details. Suffice it to say it had nothing to do with job performance, rulings by the state that I was fired without cause (for unemployment and such), and me hiring lawyers only to have them pull the "Indian Reservation" card, and put me in a position where I couldn't afford to pursue the issue since it can take a decade or more to get the Federal Goverment to force them to face you in an actual US court. Of course I benefitted from that same tribal status when I worked there to some extent just by being an employee (I'm not a Native American) but I won't get into that, shoe on the other foot and all that.
My job? It was casino security. Two of the three largest casinos in the world (and by this I don't just mean Indian casinos) are down here in Connecticut, and I worked for two of them. It's a point of pride that I made it longer than most people (10 years between them) and was able to control pretty much every situation I was in without any kind of violence or nastiness by dealing with things correctly. HOWEVER it's important to note that not only did I go to college (Criminal Justice), but I took a risk of potentially getting shot, beaten down, stabbed, hit by a car in the parking lot, or dozens of other unpleasant fates every single time I came to work. I won't go into the specific details of various jobs I did, but the point was that these possibilities existed by the nature of the job. Comparitively speaking some guy who has a degree in computers (any sort) and gets to go work in a nice, safe, work enviroment, does not deserve to be making the kinds of money these development budgets allow for. It's just not worth that. In general the industry doesn't want to release these budget numbers, but the bottom line is that these guys aren't living "hand to mouth" like they claim. Your looking at hollywood budgets, spread between a generally equal number of employees,to create those salaries, without the same avenues of recouping the costs leading to the insane prices, and so on as explained. Out of say a hundred million dollar budget, the cost of office space and computer is minimal the rest of that all goes towards employees. I'll also say that it's not just about the take home pay, but also about other benefits. To put things into perspective when I worked at the casinos, we DID have a free cafeteria but largely because the casinos already ran resteraunts and benefitted from employees not bringing their own food to work (complicated), on the other hand when I look
at things like Valve's snack bar, I have to question that, since the cost to run that figures into their development costs and trickles back to us the consumers, especially when you consider that what little of it I saw, seemed like it was better than what was provided for the employees of world class casinos. Aside from Valve (who I pick on due to the escapist article) if you look at various "virtual office tours" you'll find that perks like that seem to not be all that uncommon, combined with what seems to be a VERY unprofessional work enviroment. I understand hamming it up for the camera, but someone working in say IS (information services) with a work area anything like some of those areas would wind up with me being called down to pull their badge and escort them from the facilities (yes, doing things like that was part of my job. Security didn't do the firing, but we did walk people out).
The point here isn't to argue specifics in a tit for tat fashion, the point is that while security is not a high end job (mostly a dog and pony show), these guys aren't going to convince me that these operations are being run efficiently, or that these budgets are nessicary for the product being produced. To get the industry in shape, requires cuts starting at the very bottom which is the basic development process, which is almost toally based on what human resources are being paid.
Or overall: cut your own bloody costs, don't come crying to me about how you have to attack the used games market to get more money out of the customers to support a monster of your own creation.
What's more while the games industry has the abillity to get to the point of Hollywood and Pro-Sports franchises combined with enough time and evolusion, it's not there yet. When we have guys like Bobby Kotick who pretty much manages a video game company, flying around on a private jet (where he apparently has gotten involved in sex scandals with his employees) that's part of the problem. The reason why they want to gouge more money out of us, is so the industry can support things like that, with people in the games industry pretending they are much bigger deals, representing a much bigger industry, than they actually are. The cost of one snack bar, or one dude with a private jet individually don't mean much, but when you take the industry as a whole and look at all that stuff, it adds up, and increasingly lavish demands are the actual reason why these issues exist, with people looking for any avenue to make more money to support and expand this ridiculous infrastructure. Now maybe in a few decades of evolution the industry will get to a point where through sheer penetration it can support things like this (much like what are now bigger media industries like Sports, Hollywood, or Music) but we aren't there yet, and trying to pretend we are is also a big
part of the problem.
