"Games are a luxury item." So?

[Beryl77]

I agree with you mostly. "It's a luxury item" always seems like a cheap argument to me.
I think that games are too pricey in my country. Thank the Gaben for Steam where the prices are more reasonable, especially on a sale.
I know of only one retail store which has the same prices as Steam, in all the other stores the games cost more. Needless to say that when I buy a retail game, I always buy it there.

 

[Smooth Operator]

It's an argument made by people with too much money, which shoots them right out of any price discussion, if price does not affect you then your opinion is meaningless.

Everything has it's value/price ratio that should always be considered and more importantly compared to others before purchasing.

 

[devilofthemist]

well if you think they're too expensive, just don't buy them
"oh this solid gold xbox is too expensive, they should make it cheaper so i can buy it"

or just rent them, like azuras wrath, i wouldn't actually buy the game, because it is too short, but renting is a different story

 

[jklinders]

I'll bite.

In a perfect world, pricing would be set by a few conditions. Cost of production, size of market, availability of market methods of distribution and cost of distribution. There is more but you get the drift. In general if a producer thinks it's a fair price and the consumer pays that price then the price is fair. If no one buys it then no one wins. So whether we like it or not the free market does a pretty splendid job of price control.

What we have in games is a relatively small market (compared to say movies) fragmented among several different platforms (PC, x-box et al) and afflicted in no small part to an ease of copying that in real world terms probably does hurt the bottom line of the business. While I could stream The Avengers to my computer, my computer is not well optimized for viewing it. I would rather go to a movie. There is no such restriction on game piracy. Like it or not we have to add piracy to the formula for games as it does cost some money. How much money is a debate I will not get into. I'll leave that to the flamers.

I have seen a rumbling here and there that the publishers want to charge more at release but know they can't because there is little way a consumer would pay it. So like it or not the market pricing model is working to keep the price down. But this is also why we are seeing more Day one DLC and in some cases on disk DLC. It's a way to drive the price up after purchase. Of course the free market applies here too. Choose to buy it or not.

At the end of the day, much like the bottle of wine in you example (I'll not bite on the bottle of milk analogy, analogy does not allow for ridiculousness like that) if the buyer pays the price, then it's fair. If not, then the price will come down until the buyer pays. Then, it's fair. Pretty simple really. Let's not forget that games are more expensive to make than ever though and they have not gone up in price at all in in 20 years. They may even be cheaper when inflation is factored in.

Daystar Clarion hit the nail on the head in his first post as well. Really, it's what you think it's worth...much like any luxury item. That's why I don't get worked up over it.

 

[370999]

I'm a tad confused OP. the argument that they are a luxury good is used as a response to piracy, i.e you don't need games to live. If you think games are over priced then don't but them till they go on a sale. As there is no real rule as to when something is over priced, it's more of a consensus that emerges that the market will pay at most X amount.

 

[jklinders]

It's an argument made by people with too much money, which shoots them right out of any price discussion, if price does not affect you then your opinion is meaningless.

Everything has it's value/price ratio that should always be considered and more importantly compared to others before purchasing.

Hilarious

I feel that the fact games are a luxury item is fully part of the debate, gaming is my primary hobby and I am as poor as a church mouse. But apparently I have too much money. It really is laughable.

 

[Astoria]

$60 is not over priced for a game, that's about right to me. $100+, now that's overpriced for a game. Hell even $80 would be nice but because Australia's so far away they can add pretty much whatever they want on top of the price due to 'shipping costs'.

OT: You definitely do have a point with the whole 'being a luxury item doesn't mean you can over charge' thing. Sadly though, gaming companies are like any other and will try to make as much money as they possibly can.

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.

You also make twice as much money.

And pay twice as much for food, petrol, houses, electricity ect and that's set to get even worse soon. It's not like we're living lives of luxury down here.

 

[pilouuuu]

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. Copyright infringement is something very different from theft, in terms of both degree and kind, and that's another reason why I can't take the "it's a luxury item" argument seriously; sure, stealing a luxury item is bad. Getting it for free because there's a way to make infinite copies? It's not so clear cut. It reminds me of the replicator in Star Trek; if it existed in real life, its creators would get sued into oblivion for ending poverty.

Fuck, I knew this would happen. Note to self, don't use any analogies on the Escapist - ever. Even if they are not misleading, people will delve into the semantics to find any inconsistencies between the subject matter and the analogy. And given that it's an analogy there are always inconsistencies.

No. No. No. No. I will tell it as straight as possible: games are luxury items, in that they are not required or mandatory in any way. Therefore "I cannot afford it" is absolutely wrong as there is nothing that forces you to spend the money or get the game. Saying "I will pirate this game because I cannot afford it" is an inherently stupid claim to make.

I did not try to say that piracy is anything like stealing. Luxury items are just extras you can go without. That was the whole point. If you cannot afford something you can go without...then why not go without it? Getting illegal access of any sort is not justified because you don't need the luxury items in the first place. That's why they are called so.

I think when you say that games are luxury items you are underestimating their value as a cultural phenomenom. When games are finally accepted as an art form it won't be ethycal to prevent people from playing relevant games just because they don't have the money. You surely can live without books or music, but you would suffer from a cultural poverty for doing so and if games were respected as they should the same would apply for them.

Captcha: Talkin' about Purina Dog Chow! That's funny and surprising. I chose: yummy

Books and music have budgets. Even the guy with the guitar on the street corner has to eat. Games have a lot great costs than music and books. If you want the medium to stay then you have to pay for it. You will still have bedroom programmers who will make games on an amateur lvl, but our real artists of any medium lived doing devoted a 100% to their given medium. Not just on their off days.

Yes, but there must be an alternative like libraries for books.

 

[Smooth Operator]

Hilarious

I feel that the fact games are a luxury item is fully part of the debate, gaming is my primary hobby and I am as poor as a church mouse. But apparently I have too much money. It really is laughable.

The hilarious part would be you completely missed what I was saying, maybe I should extend my statement, people who don't read also can't be part of the discussion.

 

[jklinders]

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. Copyright infringement is something very different from theft, in terms of both degree and kind, and that's another reason why I can't take the "it's a luxury item" argument seriously; sure, stealing a luxury item is bad. Getting it for free because there's a way to make infinite copies? It's not so clear cut. It reminds me of the replicator in Star Trek; if it existed in real life, its creators would get sued into oblivion for ending poverty.

Fuck, I knew this would happen. Note to self, don't use any analogies on the Escapist - ever. Even if they are not misleading, people will delve into the semantics to find any inconsistencies between the subject matter and the analogy. And given that it's an analogy there are always inconsistencies.

No. No. No. No. I will tell it as straight as possible: games are luxury items, in that they are not required or mandatory in any way. Therefore "I cannot afford it" is absolutely wrong as there is nothing that forces you to spend the money or get the game. Saying "I will pirate this game because I cannot afford it" is an inherently stupid claim to make.

I did not try to say that piracy is anything like stealing. Luxury items are just extras you can go without. That was the whole point. If you cannot afford something you can go without...then why not go without it? Getting illegal access of any sort is not justified because you don't need the luxury items in the first place. That's why they are called so.

I think when you say that games are luxury items you are underestimating their value as a cultural phenomenom. When games are finally accepted as an art form it won't be ethycal to prevent people from playing relevant games just because they don't have the money. You surely can live without books or music, but you would suffer from a cultural poverty for doing so and if games were respected as they should the same would apply for them.

Captcha: Talkin' about Purina Dog Chow! That's funny and surprising. I chose: yummy

Books and music have budgets. Even the guy with the guitar on the street corner has to eat. Games have a lot great costs than music and books. If you want the medium to stay then you have to pay for it. You will still have bedroom programmers who will make games on an amateur lvl, but our real artists of any medium lived doing devoted a 100% to their given medium. Not just on their off days.

Yes, but there must be an alternative like libraries for books.

Now this is interesting. I can see what you are saying here. But it's irrelevant until games are recognized as a viable art form. Books and movies entered the public consciousness before the internet and it's capacity as a copy/paste machine of ridiculous proportions. So the DRM model would have to be adapted for this model. The designation as a cultural art would take care of the IP rights, but I suspect that if this happened at all then the only games to hit libraries for free would be those games that are 5 plus years old. That is long enough to remove the library idea from the debate altogether.

Still if the IP rights and DRM could be straightened out then it could be a viable alternative. The publishers would fight to their dying day to avoid this though.

 

[MercurySteam]

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

I retuned my copy after three or four days. Glad I got my money back from that pile of crap. That and Duke Nukem Forever.

 

[jklinders]

Hilarious

I feel that the fact games are a luxury item is fully part of the debate, gaming is my primary hobby and I am as poor as a church mouse. But apparently I have too much money. It really is laughable.

The hilarious part would be you completely missed what I was saying, maybe I should extend my statement, people who don't read also can't be part of the discussion.

What you said is that is "It's an argument made by people with too much money, which shoots them right out of any price discussion, if price does not affect you then your opinion is meaningless." Bullshit. You missed the point of the OP completely. We are talking about real world pricing not whatever fictitious overpricing you think could happen in the future. As it stands, pricing is not an object for me. Therefore by your logic I have too much money and therefore my opinion has no value. I hope that explained my reading of your post better. If a game was ever priced at say $120.00 or more local currency then yes I would be stopped until the price went down. It doesn't stop the game from being an item I can do without and doesn't make you point any less useless.

Maybe I am guilty of not fully explaining myself but I am hardly alone in that one m'kay?

 

[Vampire cat]

I feel the gap between "worth it" and "waste of money" can be massive, and usually seems to be. Sometimes you get a game like Minecraft. I bought it in the first few weeks notch even allowed people TO buy it, so it was dirt cheap. Since I have gotten countless hours of entertainment from a game that keeps on challenging my creativity trough just being open and free to do whatever I want. It's great mod support pushes it even further along the way.

Similar in enjoyment was Oblivion and even more so Skyrim, but of course these were much more expensive. I still consider them well worth the price, I think the diference between this and Minecraft is that I don't feel bad some times for having payed so little for such a great game (not that Notch NEEDS my money currently X3).

On the other end of the scale is Sniper: Ghost Warrior. For me this is the worst purchase I've ever made. It is so terrible that I've never even played a full hour of the game, and I've tried once alone and twice with friends that wanted to see the terribleness. It's not just being a bland shooter, it's what it does to a brilliant concept that Sniper Elite managed so much better despite being quite an older game now. Should have read the damn reviews BEFORE buying that one XD.