"Games are a luxury item." So?

[Legion]

The only time the 'luxury items' argument is needed is when you get tools who try and claim they should be able to pirate games if they cannot afford them.

Regardless of whether or not they are overpriced, that still doesn't give anybody the right to take it for free instead.

You can't afford it? Tough luck. There is no justification for it, except people trying to make excuses so they don't have to feel guilty or be criticised.

 

[Darknacht]

Here is a cliping from a magazine from the early ninety (note, these are US prices).

Spoiler: games prices in the 90's

Call back when you have a clipping from a Walmart circular from the time. The prices in the magazine ads tended to be higher than what people actually paid at the time; stores weren't always so strict about following MSRP.

You know that in the early 90's Walmart was not as widespread as it is now, right? If the nearest Walmart is hundreds of miles away then that does not count as a realistic option for buying games.

Well, the fact that it's been shown that sales often increase profit margins by a lot should mean something to you, but honestly though games are expensive to make. I don't have any problems paying the price of games today, I have nothing against a publisher earning tons of cash. I am simply saying that the one I was discussing with, the person whom I was telling that games were expensive because they didn't have the same sweet deals as movies get thus they have a harder time to cover their expenses. You are basically telling me the same thing that I was saying myself a few posts ago. However I can see that he actually got a point even though I don't completely agree with it. Maybe game publishers can increase profits, maybe not. Valve certainly got enough evidence to suggest that they can do that. However you probably know more than Valve does about the game industry.

But what you are saying is wrong. Sales do not ever increase profit margins. The very definition of a sale means reduced profit margins. The only thing that sales do is increase sales. This causes you to have a chance at increasing profits. You keep using all these words that you dont know the meaning of.

You also dont seem to understand the point of having sales. The point of having a sale is not to make money off of the item you are putting on sale. Its to get more people into your website/store in order to get them to buy your other overpriced products.

So Valve has no idea if they are making money or not? Really, think about it. A game is listed at $60. No-one buys it. A game is listed at $30 a lot of people buy it. Valve put up Team Fortress 2 for 1 dollar for a short while and they found out that their profits form that game were multiplied compared with what they gained at full price. It is possible even though you don't believe it. Now I don't feel like discussing this when I know it's clearly not going anywhere. I think games are priced right, but might sell more at a lower price.

Valve has also found that its not the price that attracts people to a sale but the % saved. If they list a game for $60 and have a 75% off sale more people will buy it than if they list the game at $30 and have a 50% off sale, so this encourages them the have the initial price high so that their sales look bigger.

 

[ablac]

I always always bugger up snipping quotes so if this comes out wrong then I may remove it or try tp edit it to fit. Dexter I dont want to get into a long protracted argument, we do this all the time and your just no fun. You know in your heart of hearts that what you are sayiong simply isnt true. You dont strike me as an idiot, you do to much research for that, yet you are on the wrong side of sense. Games are a luxury by the way, I dont see how you cant accept that. If you plan on throwing the economic term in my face like you do to everyone who uses the correct describtion I would just like to remind you it doesnt make you look smarter, especially when you are talking to people who know when and when not the term is suitable for use. You are not the only one knowlegable of economics, dont act so high and mighty about it. one more thing. That mans questions were fair and your response was poor and dodged around the question.

I would have done just that, since I think it is the most compelling argument that it can't be a "luxury", but fine I'll use another.

Games have a very large breadth of usage by now. There's educational games, there's games or simulators training pilots or troops, there's Free2Play games as we have established. Hell, there's even games created for the sake of art alone and given out for free, there's actually a lot of them.
They're also in our every day lives from the mobile phone, to a cars computer and can even be found on things like toothbrushes nowadays.

When was the last time you've seen or heard of a "luxury good" that all of that and more applied to?

You also dont seem to understand the point of having sales. The point of having a sale is not to make money off of the item you are putting on sale. Its to get more people into your website/store in order to get them to buy your other overpriced products.

You're thinking analogue and not digital.
At some point everyone will have gotten the message that you can't compare bits of data without a natural scarcity or cost to produce to actual, physical products... I long for that day.

When we talk about this we are not talking about educational games or simulators for troops, we are talking about games for art, pretentious pieces of garbage though they tend to be, but since they and free2play games are free its bloody difficult to make a lost sale when it was never selling. We are talking about normal games, they entertain us, entertainment is a luxury, and that is their primary purpose. Therefore they are a luxury. To throw into the second quote, sales are designed to play off of the need to sell stock fast for whatever reason or to take advantage of people desring something more than they actually do because they fear the idea that they didnt take advantage of the opportunity. I didnt quite understand you response to him Dexter, whats your economics background if any? you seem the sort of chap.

 

[Agayek]

Games are not to expensive to purchase, they are too expensive to make.

Pretty much this. There's nothing wrong with a $60 price point for a game (though I will say it should not be a flat, industry standard price point, game pricing should be tiered out). If you think about it, for a given hour of entertainment, games are generally a pretty good deal.

Assuming you pay $60 for a game and play it for only 6 hours. That's $10 per hour of entertainment, which is somewhere between 1.5 and 2 times the price of a trip to the theater. If you play it for 12 hours, it's the same price per hour as going to the cinema. Once you clock in 200+ hours, you're literally paying pennies per hour of entertainment.

It's not at all unreasonable for a game to cost $60.

The problem is that games are so expensive to make (and the big, expensive, AAA games are still sold in a relatively small market), that all sorts of bullshit business practices have been invented to try and recoup their investment.

 

[poiuppx]

Games, regardless of how much value you or I put on them, ARE a luxury item. Same as fine wines, tickets to sporting events, etc, etc. Now, the question is, how much luxury do you want and how immediately? Do you wanna be the guy who adopts a blu-ray player right out the gate for insane prices? Or who gets to say you were courtside for the NBA Finals?

Or, would you be content with sticking to DVDs and watching your team from the comfort of your living room, or even just listening to games on the radio?

Now, the main reason the luxury item thing gets brought up is, of course, piracy. And I won't attempt an analogy here, because... there aren't any. Piracy is not theft in the traditional sense. BUT! (And this is the big but that in my mind at least kills the price-based excuse for piracy) It is still a luxury item. What that means is that you don't need it. You don't need it at full price, you don't need it at half price. If the price was a penny, you STILL would not need it.

The fact is, if you want a game, you WANT it. You and your family will not starve in the street if you fail to purchase the next Call of Duty game. Failure to buy the next NFL-branded game will not result in your loved ones dying of a terminal illness. Games are not that serious.

That's not to undermine how much games mean to each of us. We wouldn't be on these forums otherwise. But it does put things into perspective. If you can afford food, shelter, medicine, etc. for the purposes of maintaining basic human needs for yourself and anyone you are partnered with/supporting, whatever you have in excess becomes your money to do with as you wish. If you wish to spend it on brand new games on the first day of their existence, then the games and their cost is acceptable to you. If you choose to buy older games or games on hefty sales to minimize your entertainment costs, then more power to you. If you decide that your budget doesn't allow for the big games and you need to stick to smaller games or freeto-play games, then at the least you found a wise road around the issue. If you pirate them and claim it's the fault of game makers for pricing their games at a level that the mass market has clearly accepted... then you're a greedy impatient self-centered asshole.

As a coda, however, it's up to the consumer to support or not support what they feel deserves their cash. But it's also up to the consumer to be informed. Buy a game at full price and get burned by it being short/shit when reviews were plentiful? Then maybe it's not just the maker's fault. Just saying.

 

[Nuke_em_05]

Spoiler: snip

What if you had no money but you looked at a picture of a Star Wars poster on a library computer hooked up to the internet? Because unless it was properly uploaded by Lucasfilm, it's the exact same crime as downloading a videogame.

Alright, you want to play the "copyright infringement" vs "theft" game? That's fine, but don't omit inconvenient rules as a convoluted justification.

Specifically: Fair Use.

1. The purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes
2. The nature of the copyrighted work
3. The amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole
4. The effect of the use upon the potential market for, or value of, the copyrighted work
http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl102.html

1. Hosting or viewing the poster is not commercial unless someone is trying to sell it.
2. The copyrighted work is a film, the 'infringing content' is a poster.
3. How much of the film is depicted in the poster?
4. Will viewing the poster increase or decrease interest in the product?

#4 is actually exactly where the publishers stand on posters and the like. Free marketing. That's why they host desktop backgrounds and avatars for people to use for free. The film is copyrighted for sale. The poster is copyrighted for IP protection (you can't change the title and use it for your movie, etc.; or sell prints of the poster without a license), but not for promotional use.

Addressing it correctly as "copyright infringement" instead of "theft" doesn't make it any less illegal or unethical, and doesn't equate it to using or viewing promotional materials.

OT:

Calling games a "luxury item" does not invalidate complaints about the price. As I recently posted in the Jimquisition, I think the pricing structure does need to change. I only buy a few games new, and wait for others to price drop.

What "luxury item" means to me is, even if I disagree with the price, it doesn't give me the right to consume the content without paying for it.

Captcha: "gray skies".
Backup Captcha: "carbon copy".

One problem there: the poster itself is copyrighted, and it's the copyright on the poster that I was referring to. So many of the people who are gung ho about ending piracy don't realize that they "pirate" things every day of their lives.

Glad to see you agree on the fact that luxury items can be overpriced for what they are, though.

I did address that:

The poster is copyrighted for IP protection (you can't change the title and use it for your movie, etc.; or sell prints of the poster without a license), but not for promotional use.

It is part of point 1 of fair use: the purpose and character of the use. As well as point 2: the nature of the copyrighted work. The purpose, character, and nature of promotional material, like a poster, is to be viewed and shared. That is the exact intent for which it was created. You can't photoshop it a little and promote your own video with it, and you can't sell prints of it without a license, because that does undermine the nature of the poster.

So many of the people who are gung ho about piracy being copyright infringement and therefore "just like sharing a poster or having an avatar" ignore the fact that copyright law has already made a distinction for this type of use.

Except it's still copyrighted and fair use is a lot more limited than you think it is; you can't just put up a gallery of movie posters that you don't own the rights to, nor can you legally print one off in full quality for personal use. You have to justify the fair use part by, for example, using the poster as an illustration for an article that touches on the movie. Otherwise it's not really fair use.

And besides, I'm not the one who brought up the poster. If I were really bringing up the point, I would have gone right to the jugular and mentioned copyrighted music on youtube, something everyone listens to and almost nobody goes through the official channels for.

By the way, avatars generally /aren't/ created for promotional use. They tend to be created by people taking snapshots of and cutting down copyrighted material. The officially licensed ones are pretty few and far between.

You are hung up on only one facet of fair use. You went so far as to say sharing or viewing it online. I already agreed that printing it out like that would violate fair use.

It doesn't have to be justified by being related to the film in some way. "Nature of work" and "Purpose of Use" doesn't mean that the nature of use has to be in relation to the film, it just can't be to undermine it. The biggest point under fair use, when it comes to piracy, is point 4. "The effect of the use upon the potential market for, or value of, the copyrighted work". Printing the poster out for yourself would effect the potential market for the poster, but sharing it online would actually increase its intended value. That's only because of the nature and purpose of the poster. Sharing a full game or film online violates point 4 and 3 because the nature and purpose of the game is to be sold.

It's not a "match all four to win" situation.

Yes, YouTube "music" is a violation. I agree. People who use copyrighted songs without permission in YouTube videos are in violation of copyright infringement. It is all (or most) of the song, used for self-promotion. I don't think it quite falls under "damaging the market" because, quite frankly, watching a YouTube video for just the music is a terrible way to save money on buying a song; but the risk is still there for that type of use and it is a factor. The intent of uploading and viewing a YouTube video with copyrighted materials is generally not "haha! now people don't have to pay to hear this song!", but it is still a violation. Those videos that are expressly just the music over a background, or share a copyrighted video certainly fall more under this category than any other, but they are all still violations.

Actually, I got my avatar image straight from 3D Realms' website as a "distributional". But on that, if it was a cropped screen grab; 1. The purpose of use is personal, non-profit. 2. The nature of the copyrighted work is a video game, the use is just a still image. 3. It is nowhere near a complete duplication of the original work. 4. People who see it aren't going to say "well, I've seen all there is to see about that game, now I don't have to purchase it". In, fact, they may say "That game looks awesome, I shall now purchase it!". Or, realistically, they just won't care. Could copyright holders crack down on avatar users and win? Possibly, it wouldn't be the best use of resources, though since their motivation is generally point 4.

Fair Use is a sliding scale along all four points. Violate one hard enough, and it doesn't matter how the other three factor in. Violate three moderately, and being "all clear" on the fourth isn't going to redeem it.

None of that makes "piracy" anymore legitimate, legal, or ethical.

 

[scorptatious]

I think some games are over priced.

I ultimately value something by the amount of time and enjoyment I got from it.

Monster Hunter? Hundreds of hours of entertainment, well worth the price.

Journey? 2 hours long, but one of the best games I've ever played.

Brink? Fuck man, that's 40 quid I wish I'd never spent.

This is why I read reviews and opinions, so I can make an informed decision.

Sometimes it goes wrong though...

[sub]I hate you Brink, you suck so much.[/sub]

No offense, but the problem with that is the enjoyment people get out of games is subjective. While you may hate Brink, someone else may have enjoyed it and spent a lot of time into it.

One man's trash is another man's treasure so to say.

I will agree though, it is important to make an informed decision on what you want to buy. I just rushed into Sonic 06 thinking that it's going to be just as fun, if not more so than SA2. Boy did I regret that purchase.

OT: As for what I think about games being overpriced or not? They could be a bit cheaper, but as it stands I don't mind the price so far. Now if they start becoming like Australia's game prices then I'll have a problem.

 

[Beat14]

This is a shitty discussion, I haven't got anything else to talk about though... I hope water becomes to expensive for the people who complain about the prices of games, or food, oil what ever. For items that are so "expensive" it's funny how the industry still grows, maybe people keep buying them at what you see as an unreasonable price.

I must be the stupid one, as I'm sure the escapist is credited with being a reasonably intelligent forum. If the price starts getting to high get another hobby, if you can. Always hard work/living within your means.

Maybe the day will come where people will have to get loans to get the newest game...lol

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

Quality of wine and price of wine have little to no relation to each other.

There actually is a direct corelation between the quality of a wine and the price.

Above the crappiest box wines out there, not so much. At least, not when done through double blind trials. There is however, a direct correlation between perceived value of the wine and "quality".

To be fair, "good" was a poor choice of words there, but it was a rebuttal to someone who claimed anything under $100 a bottle was cheap for wine. You can pay thousands of dollars for just about anything, that doesn't mean that the expensive end of the scale actually starts anywhere near the top.

 

[Woodsey]

Game are a luxury item SO there's no justification for not paying for them. That's a different discussion to what you seem to think people use that statement for (pricing).

And now I shall strip naked and douse myself in petrol as I await for this inherently simple concept to be butchered.

 

[lacktheknack]

Where the heck did you get the idea that 8-30 hours of entertainment where you are in control isn't worth $60?

I've never regretted a video-game purchase.

Boom.

People forget that game's are incapable of being overpriced for more than a year or two. ANY product is worth what people will pay for it. People will pay $60. Thus, games are worth $60.

If YOU PERSONALLY don't value games at $60, then get them on sale, don't pirate them.

 

[Altorin]

calling them luxury items makes me care even less about piracy.