Jimquisition: Used Games Have A Right To Exist

[CM156_v1legacy]

By that train of thought, Josef Fritzl was forgiveable because Hitler was worse.

Annnnnnnd less than 5 pages in, someone invokes Godwin's Law. And reductio ad absurdum

Congradulations sir!


OT: I agree Jim. Good point.

 

[Redlin5_v1legacy]

This is my favorite episode to date. I have some friends who need to see this gospel ASAP.

THAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAANK GOD FOR JIM!

[sub]Seriously though, what a bunch of shit. The games have already been paid for. Do car companies whine when used car sales cut into their massive margins? Yes. The difference is that car owners don't take their side.[/sub]

 

[Redlin5_v1legacy]

By that train of thought, Josef Fritzl was forgiveable because Hitler was worse.

Annnnnnnd less than 5 pages in, someone invokes Godwin's Law. And reductio ad absurdum

Congradulations sir!

Nice to see someone was on the lookout for it.

 

[Nurb]

Video games are the only products that a customer can't return or exchange if unsatisfied with it. Imagine being stuck with a poor quality TV and be unable to return it or get a different model. Jim's got the "control" part down too, publishers want to control every aspect of your experience so they can force you to buy a sequel.

With no dedicated servers, the publisher just has to shut down the company servers to force you to buy the new game to continue your online play. They took control away from the customers completely there.

Also: Digital distribution.
When publishers abandon physical media and force you to use their own online service for exclusive access, imagine all the hassles with all the games coming out if you have to deal with 4-6 publishers' versions of steam.

 

[Staskala]

By that train of thought, Josef Fritzl was forgiveable because Hitler was worse.

If by "forgiveable" you mean reintegrate him into society, then yes, he very much is after proper therapy.
Or rather would be, because he'll most likely die in prison unless he gets much older than 90.

 

[Draitheryn]

I almost always buy new, and never trade in my games. I keep my games because I never know when I want to play them again, and how inaccessible they may be in the future. When I buy a used game, its because its for a system that no longer produces new games such as ps1. The fact that if this trend continues, in 20 years we will never be able to play games we love today just because we didnt have the funds to buy them all when they came out is abhorring to me.
I dont always agree with Jim, but this time he he hit the nail on the head.

 

[SenseOfTumour]

Yeah, EA's going to have to pull something MIGHTY special out of it's ass to get me to sign up to Origin, or more honestly, Assgas, as it's an inferior kind of Steam.

The big companies lose any right to complain when they make it clear they give not one particle of a shit about right and wrong, legal or not, just about what isn't giving them the most money.

When it comes down to it, piracy is pretty much an impossible enemy, can't be beaten, most pirates just don't think they're going to get caught, so it'll keep on happening.

However, with the sheer weight of cash behind the big companies, they may be able to destroy the used games market. That's as good as killing piracy, to them, with none of the moral right behind it.

Here's a tip, if you want to kill preowned sales, and it's not just about squeezing the last few cents from anyone with a games machine,release an untradable Modern Warfare 3 for $40, and a tradeable one for $60.

Give us the money we'd trade it in for, off the price of the game in the first place.

That's pretty much how Steam works for me, I buy stuff in sales, knowing it's entirely untradeable, but knowing I paid half price or less.

when buying new, I shop around, and check for deals, and make sure I pay no more than 75% of the new price.

Oops, I've admitted to looking for discount offers on new games, I guess I'm a pirate, EA, come get me.

TL;DR version - twats.

slightly longer version- twats, the lot of em.

 

[SenseOfTumour]

I almost always buy new, and never trade in my games. I keep my games because I never know when I want to play them again, and how inaccessible they may be in the future. When I buy a used game, its because its for a system that no longer produces new games such as ps1. The fact that if this trend continues, in 20 years we will never be able to play games we love today just because we didnt have the funds to buy them all when they came out is abhorring to me.
I dont always agree with Jim, but this time he he hit the nail on the head.

I'm gonna go ahead and hope you don't have to worry too much, some will slip thru the cracks, but as storage and bandwidth naturally increase, I think we'll find the catalogs of Steam, GOG.com, Green man Gaming and the like widening to include more and more old classics, prepatched, pretweaked and ready to work on Windows 7.

I still maintain a digital version should be cheaper however, no creation costs, and no trade in value, means I want at least a 25% discount on retail boxed copies.

I genuinely believe the next gen will be fitted with a hard drive, and there'll be no discs however.

I also believe the hard drives will be bespoke in some way, and both Sony and MS will fuck us rigid for like $200 for 500gb. To store the stuff we're buying from them!

 

[Zato-1]

Used Games Have A Right To Exist

Publishers would have you believe that used games are the biggest threat to the games industry. Even gamers will sympathize with these huge companies and equate the used market with piracy. Unlike piracy, however, used games have plenty of right to exist and are not the demonic entity others make them out to be. Jim Sterling, naturally, has the band-aid of reality to plaster over your fantasy cuts.

Watch Video

Hi Jim. As an economist, I can't help but feel that there's a whole side of the used games argument that you're missing, or at least you didn't address in your last two videos (Relevant but unnecessary Wikipedia article for further reading [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rivalry_%28economics%29]).

I need to lay out some groundwork first, but bear with me:

You can categorize all goods in two axes:
*Rivalrous goods (goods that, when consumed by one person, can no longer be consumed by another person) versus Non-Rivalrous goods (goods that when consumed by one person can still be consumed by others); and
*Excludable goods (list here if you can exclude certain people from its consumption) versus Non-excludable goods (list here if you cannot exclude certain people from its consumption).

That's a bit arid, so here's a more relatable and useful deduction from the definitions above:

*PUBLIC GOODS is what we call Non-rivalrous, Non-excludable goods - courts of law, a military to defend our countries from foreign invaders, police service, public lighting and so on. You cannot realistically exclude any one person from the benefits of these goods, and the fact that Jon enjoys their benefits does not exclude Paul from doing the same. Because of the nature of these goods, it is best if they are provided by a governing body and paid for with compulsory taxation.

*COMMON GOODS is what we call Rivalrous, Non-excludable goods - for instance, if you have a river whose waters belong to no one and can be used by anyone. Common Goods are problematic (see The Tragedy of the Commons [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons]), but you can solve this problematic by re-defining property rights (see Coase Theorem [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coase_theorem]) and turning them into Private Goods; I won't go into detail as Common Goods aren't central to my point.

*PRIVATE GOODS is what we call Rivalrous, Excludable goods and make up the vast majority of goods we consume- food, electricity (if you don't pay your bills you stop getting it), clothing, most things that private companies sell. Capitalism works great when dealing with Private Goods, which is most goods we produce and consume anyway.

*CLUB GOODS is what we call Non-rivalrous, Excludable goods - books, movies, games and pretty much all intellectual property goods fall into this category. Club Goods and their characteristics, I feel, are pretty central to the debate about used games.

You know the ads- "You wouldn't download a car!", or whatever it is they say. Well, of course not; I _cannot_ download a car. A car is a Private Good, and it is Rivalrous; if you have a car, I cannot have that very same car. But if you have a PC Game? Then that's a Club Good; I _can_ make a copy of it, and two people can enjoy the very same game.

The Movies, Music and Games industries all sell Club Goods, and have been doing their darnedest to try to restrict our usage of their products until they resemble Big Mac-esque Private Goods. The Games Industry's assault on used games is nothing more than one more front in this war they wage- where piracy and used games are both obstacles for their goal of turning games into non-durable Private Goods. Physical copies of Used Games already resemble durable Private Goods, and a good deal of the logic you used on your show to defend Used Games was to compare them to other durable Private Goods.

My point in writing all of this is: The games industry (as well as the music and movies industries) is different from the soft drink and shoe industries. When someone says that piracy is stealing, they are applying Private Goods rationale to Club Goods; the concept of stealing makes little sense when we're talking about Club Goods. When Publishers pull stunts like Online Passes that punish and inconvenience their paying customers, most people are rightly bewildered as to why they would do such a thing; surely Nike and Coca-Cola wouldn't do things like that! Piracy, Used Games, DRM, Online Passes and other such issues are best understood if looked at from the point of view of Club Goods and their particular set of characteristics.

- Roberto Desormeaux, Chilean economist.

 

[Epona]

I;m only against Used games, When they are sold through the same retail store that sells the real thing.

If you want to buy used games it should be through craigslist,Ebay, or a cashconverters(not sure of the american equivilant(or if there is one))

This way there isn't that checkout conversion that everyone who has been in a gamestop or EB hates. of "You can get the used copy 5 dollars cheaper" Being able to have a last ditch attempt to divert a customer that was going to buy the new copy to a used is the biggest issue in my mind.

If you remove used games from the gamestores that sell them, you put the onus on the customer to go and find a copy(even if it means Gamestop were to open a used game's shop chain) seperate it from the new purchases.

And while i have no conclusive evidence to back up this claim. I expect that when someone buys a used game even if they were going to buy it new, the fact that it's a used copy means it is much more likely to be sold back to the same place it was just bought from.

The fact is that everyday people can make far more than Gamestop will ever give them for their used titles, and at the same time gamers can get a reasonable price instead of the minimum amount gamestop believe needs to be taken off the title to make it appealing to buy

So you think it would be better for publishers if people could NEVER buy new from a Gamestop store. Brilliant!

Why should YOU care if I buy a used game from eBay or Gamestop? There is no logical reason why you should care one way or they other.

 

[Bluecho]

Here here! If the physical copy of a game has been sold, it's the right of the buyer to do with that one copy as he wishes, provided he doesn't make an unauthorized copy. If they want to sell it off to someone else, they have that legal right.

Hell, that whole unlockable content on the disk thing isn't a terrible idea if publishers want to make money off it. But then again, if they're going to make some of the content locked and requiring additional cost to unlock, can I as a person that might not want that locked stuff pay less for a game? Please?

I don't have a current-gen console. Too expensive. But if I did, I certainly wouldn't put up with the kind of crap publishers try to force on me. And I would frequent the used game establishment. Because in order to get that used copy, someone had to pay the publisher.

 

[Razorback0z]

The amount of effort that goes into making games untradeable would not be accepted in any other form of product in the market. Imagine buying a car that ceased to function if you tried to sell it, no one would accept that.

As gamers we do oursleves quite an injustice by allowing our desire for new product to overide our self interest in the long term. We have taken to such outrageously flawed concepts as DLC and Paid BETA access with gusto and in the long run we will pay dearly.

Im as guilty as the next person and I hate myself for it.

 

[StrixMaxima]

Having seen that apparently there are people that defend the developers and publishers on this specific stance, I feel defeated and dirty as a gamer.

This has proven to me that the gaming companies won, and managed to melt the brains of some of their customers into... I don't know exactly why.

It is getting more and more difficult, every day, to remain a gamer. I already won't buy products from certain companies. I won't buy titles that sell first-day DLCs. I won't buy games with unreasonable DRM.

And, why? Because, sadly, the majority is at the very least neutral to these predatory practices, this giving companies carte blanche to squeeze us even further.

But I didn't believe they could mold our collective minds that much. Apparently, I was wrong, yet again.

 

[Ariyura]

I'm all for used games. Most used games for me turn into new games sales. Since I cannot always afford to buy new games I'm rather behind on the game market so to buy new it has to be a really good game in my eyes. So I bought U2 used, and now I have U3 fully paid for, day one buy. There is good that can come out of the used game market.

Just because I can't afford to always buy a brand new game doesn't mean I'm a pirate. I just have to be more careful where I sank my dollars.

 

[Kanatatsu]

This is kind of a tough one since I hate game publisher execs and Gamestop with equal ferocity.

 

[Epona]

console gamers need to take a long hard look at pc gaming, what companies did to it, how the used game business does not exist and you are pretty much forced to register every game you buy. that is the future of console gaming and its going to come very soon.

Exactly. The example of where console gaming is heading is right before everyone's eyes but they refuse to see it and to make matters worse, you won't find Steam sales on your console. You will be paying top dollar the entire console cycle because the big three won't need to compete with retail and used sales will be impossible. You think you'll ever see the Wii Virtual Console games go on sale? That is the future for console games. Your disc based games will be just as crippled as digital download only games are today.

 

[sageoftruth]

Jim, I support you in the whole, "Screw greedy publishers" thing, especially after reading about the atrocities of Activision. Still, it looked like you were contradicting yourself when you were describing reselling bad games as our only recourse, while simultaneously showing a gamefly advert. I've got to say, thanks to gamefly, I can always be sure I want the game before I pay to keep it. The only downside, of course is the monthly fee, but I still find it preferable to buying games from retail.

Wow! I sounded kind of like an advert myself there.

 

[Active Schizophrenic]

People still buy games on discs? I thought we were done with that tomfoolery.

 

[Emergent System]

Jim, thanks for, making "The Live by Capitalism, Die by Capitalism" argument. It's one you never see brought up, at least clearly enough. If the industry wants to rake in the profits through the system, then fuck them saying I can't sell my stuff.

It's Capitalism bitches!

Uhm, but if you think it's fine to sell used games because "capitalism, bitches!", then you can't complain when the publishers add stuff like DLCs and require you to pay to go online and various other crap, because that's also "capitalism, bitches!"

I though the entire episode was idiotic. It was just "EA is bad so let's be bad as well because when we're bad it's good lol", "selling used games isn't the same as pirating because it's on a smaller scale!", and several minutes of whining and bitching about how you people think that your expensive luxury hobby is too expensive... well thank god it's a luxury item then and not bloody food or antibiotics. The entire previous episode was just an exercise in unwarranted self-entitlement. "I PAY MONEY AND THUS MUST BE TREATED AS A GOD", followed by whining and bitching about how the needless luxury items that we apparently deserve to be treated well for spending money on cost too much money.

Yeah, talk about "having your cake and eating it too". Entitled but unobligated, the perfect phrase to describe this nonsense.

 

[Epona]

So in essence your argument is:

Waaaaah!!! Piracy is worse than trade-ins therefore trade-ins aren't hurting the industry at all!
Waaaaah!!! EA is a worse company than Gamestop (which they aren't, not by a long shot, at least EA actually funds games and many great games at that.), therefore all of Gamestop's bullshit nickle-and-dimeing and intentional working around the companies that actually makes the games are perfectly acceptable!
Waaaaah!!! I don't want the corporate fat cats at EA making money! I'd much rather give my money to the corporate fat cats at Gamestop!
Waaaaah!!! Murder is a worse crime than assault! Therefore punching random people on the street in the face isn't a problem at all!

Class act there Jim.

But alas, you're wrong.

You know who is really hurt by used games? All those smaller titles you talked about two weeks ago. They're the ones that can't afford great marketing, and thus can't push many unit at launch, but because of used sales, slow sales over time quickly regress to no new sales at all, because the games are being traded in is very high compared to the rate at which the game is being bought.

Fantastic. Could not have said it better myself

I still cant believe he wants to whine for 3 full episodes with these flawed arguments.

I'm sorry, I just find it amusing that you find this mans "arguments" to be "Fantastic" (even though he just uses rethorics and call Jim a baby) yet to condone Jim for his "flawed arguments", Jim pretty much using nothing but rethorics himself.

My amusement put aside, I have to ask you; Do you believe it's right to lose your right to sell something you own? Because all the other "arguments" put aside, this is a rather solid one.

Yeah because this is all new. No1 has ever made a pay as you go system for entertainment before.... cept since the invention of entertainment.

I'm sorry, but you didn't answer my question, you just referenced that there ARE places where you pay from time to time (such as movies), but they never sell you any property, so your argument (if it even was one?) is invalid.
Answer the question, please.

Cable TV

But putting that aside Movie tickets still count. A game in a box is just a movie ticket. It has a playtime and it has an end. Thoes that dont have an extra service, usually one that they pay for.

But putting that aside you are changing the question. There is no proberty involved in games. Do you pay for the disk or the entertainment on the disk? You ne to categorise it as entertainment rather than proberty. and all of a sudden its not a big issue that they try to change it as a pay as you go system.

Cable TV is a service. No property changes hands. A movie is a service, the ticket is just your proof of purchase which is ripped in half when you enter the screen room. It's not property that you keep because it has value.

A game is a product, ownership switched hands between the retailer and you. The publisher lost ownership when they sold it to the retailer. It's really simple and you have to go out of your way to pretend not to understand that.

When you misspelled "property" once I overlooked it but when you did it twice...well why?