"Games are a luxury item." So?

[Arnoxthe1]

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.

Well, you know, you're also in complete control of your garbage. That's also entertainment that puts you in control. How about running the shower? That's also something you can control. Isn't that quality entertainment?

 

[Clive Howlitzer]

I think 60 dollars for a video game is pretty overpriced myself. I rarely pay it, I wait for price drops or sales on Steam.
Although I used to pay even more for SNES games back in the day and the price now is mostly the same, so I think it is a bit unfair to say the prices are too high. I don't think I'd have a problem dropping 60 dollars on a game if I knew the publisher wasn't going to try and gouge me later with day 1 DLC, collectors editions, more DLC, locked content, DRM, etc.
I find that shit WAY more annoying than 60 dollar price tags.
Oh and I guess on topic, I don't think the whole "Games are a luxury item, first world problems, blah blah blah" holds any weight. If I felt I was being screwed over by price in any other "luxury", I would still feel its garbage. It is partly why I don't go to the movies anymore.

 

[Porecomesis]

Move to Australia, then you'll have something to ***** about. We have to pay twice as much while fighting off 6 foot tall spiders on our way to the store.

I'd complain about that but we managed to get Xenoblade Chronicles, Pandora's Tower and The Last Story with no effort on our part. I think it's fair enough.

 

[pure.Wasted]

Have you stopped to consider that breaking a law is probably the single, least effective means of protesting the law?

I'm not sure if you're familiar with the concept of revolution. Say... French revolution? American revolution? Bolshevik revolution? That's basically how it works. People break the law, the law is powerless to fight back, and eventually we get a new law.

I have absolutely zero faith in anybody's ability to convince the POTUS and Congress to pass a copyright-defeating law that enables and encourages piracy. Not because I don't believe in the righteousness of the cause... but because that's not how western democracy works.

The only way for the pirates to win this battle is to make piracy so mainstream over such a prolonged period of time, that A) it stops seeming so outlandish when your best friend, your sister, and your dad are all doing it, B) artists begin to realize that they have a lot to gain by making their work more accessible, rather than going strictly through the traditional Capitalist approach, and C) the industries can't afford to wait long enough for the law to get savvy enough to do away with pirates and are forced to meet the pirates halfway, or otherwise find some way to adapt.

That is the only way this fight ends well for the pirates. Not through passing bills or legislations. That's simply not going to happen, no matter how right they are, no matter how wrong the government is, no matter what.

That it, in fact, HURTS the case far more than it helps by sending the message that people are more than willing to break any law that can be passed, thus they have no choice but to strengthen the laws to hurt the people they can hit?

Strengthen the laws? We saw how that worked out with ACTA and SOPA. It wasn't just pirates that rallied against these things, it was everyone (because these laws did threaten everyone). Jefferson said, "Better one hundred guilty men go free than one innocent man be condemned." "Innocent" people aren't willing to give up the freedom of the internet, even if piracy is the cost of that freedom. And I won't lie, for the pirates that's a good thing, and it stops exactly what you're saying from happening.

As for sending the wrong message... back to ACTA and SOPA for a second again. Not sure how familiar with it you are, but when it was being passed in Eastern Europe (Poland and Ukraine, specifically), the hacker community got together and took down numerous government websites to demonstrate their opposition. That doesn't say "people are more than willing to break the law" to anyone with a brain; it says people are more than CAPABLE of breaking the law ANYTIME THEY CHOOSE... but they CHOOSE NOT TO. Because most laws are constitutional, and are worth holding up. So maybe the one time they do do it, there are ethical considerations. Maybe we should pay attention.

And again, the hackers opposing ACTA acted as illegally as pirates do. You would say their actions are unconstitutional and unhelpful (Ukraine actually backed out of ACTA when this happened, and the stink in Poland made everybody the world over stop and take notice, too, so I'd argue that it helped quite a bit), but I'd say that the Internet is one of the greatest achievements of mankind, something we can truly be proud of, and I don't trust some idiot in Congress, or a hundred idiots in Congress, who have to listen to idiotic callers from Middle Of Nowhere, Georgia, to know what's best for the Internet. I don't trust them to touch it, I don't trust them to peek into its wires and circuits and tubes, I don't trust them to talk about it. As far as I'm concerned, they ought to pretend it doesn't exist, until they all die out and are replaced by our generation, which grew up with the Internet and understands A LITTLE of the Internet's value to humanity.

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

Have you stopped to consider that breaking a law is probably the single, least effective means of protesting the law?

I'm not sure if you're familiar with the concept of revolution. Say... French revolution? American revolution? Bolshevik revolution? That's basically how it works. People break the law, the law is powerless to fight back, and eventually we get a new law.

I have absolutely zero faith in anybody's ability to convince the POTUS and Congress to pass a copyright-defeating law that enables and encourages piracy. Not because I don't believe in the righteousness of the cause... but because that's not how western democracy works.

The only way for the pirates to win this battle is to make piracy so mainstream over such a prolonged period of time, that A) it stops seeming so outlandish when your best friend, your sister, and your dad are all doing it, B) artists begin to realize that they have a lot to gain by making their work more accessible, rather than going strictly through the traditional Capitalist approach, and C) the industries can't afford to wait long enough for the law to get savvy enough to do away with pirates and are forced to meet the pirates halfway, or otherwise find some way to adapt.

That is the only way this fight ends well for the pirates. Not through passing bills or legislations. That's simply not going to happen, no matter how right they are, no matter how wrong the government is, no matter what.

That it, in fact, HURTS the case far more than it helps by sending the message that people are more than willing to break any law that can be passed, thus they have no choice but to strengthen the laws to hurt the people they can hit?

Strengthen the laws? We saw how that worked out with ACTA and SOPA. It wasn't just pirates that rallied against these things, it was everyone (because these laws did threaten everyone). Jefferson said, "Better one hundred guilty men go free than one innocent man be condemned." "Innocent" people aren't willing to give up the freedom of the internet, even if piracy is the cost of that freedom. And I won't lie, for the pirates that's a good thing, and it stops exactly what you're saying from happening.

As for sending the wrong message... back to ACTA and SOPA for a second again. Not sure how familiar with it you are, but when it was being passed in Eastern Europe (Poland and Ukraine, specifically), the hacker community got together and took down numerous government websites to demonstrate their opposition. That doesn't say "people are more than willing to break the law" to anyone with a brain; it says people are more than CAPABLE of breaking the law ANYTIME THEY CHOOSE... but they CHOOSE NOT TO. Because most laws are constitutional, and are worth holding up. So maybe the one time they do do it, there are ethical considerations. Maybe we should pay attention.

And again, the hackers opposing ACTA acted as illegally as pirates do. You would say their actions are unconstitutional and unhelpful (Ukraine actually backed out of ACTA when this happened, and the stink in Poland made everybody the world over stop and take notice, too, so I'd argue that it helped quite a bit), but I'd say that the Internet is one of the greatest achievements of mankind, something we can truly be proud of, and I don't trust some idiot in Congress, or a hundred idiots in Congress, who have to listen to idiotic callers from Middle Of Nowhere, Georgia, to know what's best for the Internet. I don't trust them to touch it, I don't trust them to peek into its wires and circuits and tubes, I don't trust them to talk about it. As far as I'm concerned, they ought to pretend it doesn't exist, until they all die out and are replaced by our generation, which grew up with the Internet and understands A LITTLE of the Internet's value to humanity.

Not only is this full of truth, but we can take it one step further: ever hear of the civil rights movement? It was pretty much entirely based on people publicly breaking the law. It wasn't a complete overthrow of the government, but it still involved people brazenly violating the law in order to prove their point. It really doesn't matter what law we're talking about; when it's that firmly entrenched, breaking it often is the first step to getting it changed.

 

[General Twinkletoes]

You know why this is? Luxury items have price ranges the same as anything else. Just like $5 would be ridiculous for a loaf of white bread and $20 would be ridiculous for a gallon of milk, $10,000 would be ridiculous even for a high end home theater receiver, and $60 is ridiculous for a videogame. Anything can be overpriced, even luxury items -- especially luxury items -- so let's quit pretending videogames can't be overpriced just because they're not an absolute necessity for daily life.

Plenty of studios that release fullprice games go under all the time.

Games are bloody expensive, they need their money back.

 

[Aprilgold]

I think part of the problem is people feel entitled to too many games at once: If you have a library of dozens of games, you can't give them the time they need to be fully appreciated.

So I should 100% games then? My point is that if I don't enjoy something don't force me to scarf it all down. 'Fully Appreciating' is subjective. I just want to play Left 4 Dead for the campaigns, for example, and as such don't care about multiplayer VS modes. My full appreciation of Call of Duty is never to play it and instead play Duke 3D to remember when games were awesome.

Once again, its fucking subjective, and you can't demonize people over subjective things unless theres a objective underlying premise.

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Yes, it is a Luxury Item, but like all it has a certain time where it drops in price or is sold second hand. I'm not very rich [middle class] and as such can only truly afford games when Steam offers a sale or if its a ten dollar budget title.

As I said before, Games aren't overpriced, their over-funded. It shouldn't take Millions to make something other then a MMO, it should take a few tens of thousands of dollars sure, but not millions. Unless, of course, your making a engine which is a different beast.

 

[pure.Wasted]

Except the fight's not for new laws, it's for a removal of all laws in the name of misguided freedom.

"Put down those pitchforks, you thousands of uneducated peasants, you! We rule over you for your own good! Where would you be without us? You would have anarchy! Chaos! No law!"

Or not, you know. You think the world will stop spinning if we do away with copyright? I think the world worked just fine before we invented it. In some ways, it worked better. I think with some counseling, we'll manage to get over it.

Wait, how is piracy, in ANY WAY, righteous? It's the stealing of other people's ideas, and the rejection of any sort of due compensation. "Oh, you spent millions of dollars making a game/movie/musical piece/etc. for my entertainment? Here, let me show you how much this means to me by not compensating you in the slightest!"

Oh, the number of things to address in this small paragraph.

1. It's not the stealing of anything. I could not possibly be more against stealing if I tried. The power of piracy - the power of the Internet - is in sharing. "Knowledge is power." Right now, our society privatizes knowledge. Academic papers are so well hidden that even those vaguely interested in them have to go out of their way to first find them, then PAY for them, simply to read about new developments in literature, philosophy, biology, physics, chemistry, you name it! And then we're surprised that the average American is capable of spouting off meanspirited, moronic drivel like this [http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=nMANMIe0ZZI#]. Not because she's evil, but because she wasn't exposed to the knowledge and culture that you and I have been exposed to.

2. Ideas cannot be stolen. They don't exist. More often than not, they're just words, and nobody should ever have a patent on words. The belief that you somehow "own" an idea is a moronic concept that influential people (read: the church) introduced in the 16th century to make sure their influence wouldn't disappear with the invention of the printing press. The idea of "citing your sources," something every college and university will teach you to do in order to "respect others' ideas," falls apart the moment you look it square in the eyes. Every single idea you've ever had has its origin somewhere else. All of them. When I write a revolutionary analysis of Lucifer in Paradise Lost, that analysis is going to be based on a thousand different points that I read elsewhere. Maybe I read a critique of Doctor Faustus that presented Mephistopheles in a new light, and I just took the same approach, applied it to Lucifer, and bam! There's my "revolutionary reading." Completely stolen. That's how our brain works, yet we're supposed to draw an arbitrary line and say this kind of stealing of ideas is okay, because it's subtle and no one noticed how I did it, but this one's not, because it's less subtle. This isn't about awarding fellow scholars respect, and it never was, or else we'd be citing every sentence that came out of our mouths. It's about looking after your own skin and making sure you get as wealthy as you possibly can, regardless of the merit of your ideas, or their originality. It's not as though pirates are the only ones who infringe copyright law, after all. The same corporations that uphold it when it's convenient are more than happy to overlook it when it's convenient. Look at what's going on now with Microsoft in Germany. It's a laughing stock.

3. You assume that pirates have no interest in seeing their beloved industries grow, and the creators they respect get what they deserve. This... is... wrong. (Don't believe me? Feel free to supply some statistics that support your cause. I recently had a showdown on this very subject, on this very forum, so I'm more than game.) You also assume that the only way for creators to be rewarded is through an archaic model of payment wherein the publisher, aka the middleman who deserves ALMOST NOTHING but gets ALMOST EVERYTHING, sets an unnegotiable price. You know, the same publisher who isn't the creator, but ends up with the copyright. Who are we rewarding, again?

Oh, I don't doubt there aren't some lofty goals involved with the internet. But, as always is the case, those goals are so caked over in bullshit it's hard to see them anymore. Instead of a place for the free exchange of ideas, information and opinions, it's a place for the stealing of other's ideas and information, and the shouting down of anyone with a dissenting opinion to yours.

Shouting down? I don't know, we seem to be having a fairly civil conversation, you and I. I see only people attempting to come to a consensus through fact and reason.

 

[Phisi]

Games are a luxury item because you don't need them. It's not like food or medical care but entertainment and like it or not, game companies have to make money, if you think you could do it for cheaper then start up a studio, that is how capitalism is meant to work. I do acknowledged though that games are also art and having such high prices for games that go beyond returning your investment is kinda... douche. You are essentially saying that you are too poor to visit this art gallery, please go away you lower class peasants. Though I don't know that many people who pirate a game to study it from an artistic or critical perspective. It is mostly because they want to go in the art gallery to put Groucho Marx masks on the statues and to draw penises all over the paintings. Though I also hold the opinion that piracy when people actually can't afford it (like children who get $5 a week and will spend it all on games and not because they would prefer to go to the movies or whatever) is beneficial to the industry as that child can make better choices on which game to buy in future and what games they like, companies are not losing sales because that kid actually cant buy the thing and is not just saying that they wouldn't anyway.

 

[LifeMakesMeLOL]

Have any of you heard of supply and demand? Games cost $60 at launch because that's what the market is generally willing to pay. If people thought that was too much for a game then the "standard" price would eventually lower (although a lot of games drop to $20-30 within six months lately). Yeah, there are a lot of other factors (which I'm sure one of you will try to lecture me about), but at the end of the day the price you see on the store shelf boils down to that basic concept. You're over thinking it and trying to make it more complicated then it is.

As far as Piracy goes: I'll generally pirate PC exclusive games that are either Single Player only or Single Player with multiplayer that I'm not interested in. Why? Because I want it, but not enough to pay for it. Yup, that's the only reason. Feel free to call me the plague of gaming and even make the argument I'm the reason games cost so much, but I really couldn't care less. There is no real justification to piracy other then selfishness and greed, so the only appropriate respond is, "Deal with it."

 

[pure.Wasted]

^he's not with me.

I've never seen him before in my life, I swear!

 

[LiquidSolstice]

This sort of reasoning is so idiotic. I don't understand how you don't warnings for basically promoting piracy.

You know who you remind me of? All those guys who say marijuana is baaaaad and should be illegal. Except it's not enough for you that piracy needs to be illegal, we shouldn't be allowed to talk about it, either. Stop your civil discourse, everybody. Quit it! Copyright is flawless!

Have you stopped to consider that some pirates might be ethically opposed to copyright in many of the law's contemporary forms, and are taking advantage of emerging technologies to sabotage the unethical status quo with the only means available to them that might actually yield results? Just curious.

Step 1: Get off your soapbox.
Step 2: Think about why I'd say "I don't understand why you don't get warnings"
Step 3: Make the logical connection that perhaps this isn't the first time quoted user has said something like this
Step 4: Realize you don't know the full context and maybe you should think about that before rushing to said user's aid.

Easy enough, right?

 

[LiquidSolstice]

Bleh. I don't even want to keep going in this thread.

The only thing threads like these do for me is relieve me; I'm so incredibly glad that gamers don't run this country.

 

[pure.Wasted]

Step 1: Get off your soapbox.
Step 2: Think about why I'd say "I don't understand why you don't get warnings"
Step 3: Make the logical connection that perhaps this isn't the first time quoted user has said something like this
Step 4: Realize you don't know the full context and maybe you should think about that before rushing to said user's aid.

Easy enough, right?

Considering that the user you were talking to isn't exactly the only one disagreeing with you, here, you've got to admit that reading "I don't understand why you don't get warnings" as "I don't understand why any of you don't get warnings" was a pretty easy mistake to make.

But "get off my soapbox?" Why, I-- like it here, just fine. Great view.

 

[Steel_crab]

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]

MY GOD. I found someone who likes monster hunter! =3

And I agree that some game are overpriced - but they are easily matched by the games that are under-priced. I tend to pick up old games for my PC - like L4D2 or Bastion - in the Steam sales, and the price to the amount of fun you get out of them is a ridiculous ratio. People rarely complain about movies, where you get about 2 hours of entertainment for £5-£10, and I got L4D2 for about the same and spent 20 hours of awesome time on it in the first week.

 

[Fortunefaded]

Games are only over priced if you don't get the value from them, it is completely personal and subjective.

Example of cost versus hours played in the game:

Paying top sterling for a total war game, I always get 100's of hours of gameplay, well worth the costs.

Paying top sterling for Call of Duty black ops, not worth it. I didn't complete the SP and I've clocked less than 17hours of total play.


Games are also luxury items; no one needs these things to survive therefore it is pointless to demand that they be £20 etc.

 

[him over there]

But Brink was ambitious dude, it tried so hard you have to be nice to it.

Having read this, I feel like you have made a personal attack on my intelligence. Brink wasn't just terrible, it was also unoriginal.

Anyway, if a game gives you at least 12 hours of entertainment, you've already beaten out going to a movie theatre. As long as a game can provide 12 solid hours, I feel that my money is well spent.

It was supposed to be a light hearted sarcasm, note the extremely hyperbolic "you have to be nice to it."