Why is it that the game industry is the only entertainment industry that's fucks people over?

[Fonejackerjon]

Broken games, DLC, day 1 season passes.

Why is the games industry the only entertainment industry that hasn't evolved?

Music can be bought cheap, £1, films DVD £10 blu ray £12 and download options. All entertainment has gotten cheaper and more consumer friendly but why does the game industry continue to push and push and push its luck until enough people get so pissed off the AAA industry will crash?

This problem seems exclusive to games (or AAA games I should say)

When do people think this house of cards will begin to fall? Am curious. 2015 looks like a year in which this will get worse! check out Evolve for starters!!

 

[Silvanus]

A game costs more than a film because it's often far larger in both size and duration, as far as I can see.

 

[Fonejackerjon]

A game costs more than a film because it's often far larger in both size and duration, as far as I can see.

Maybe, but in this day and age when you can get a months worth of films on Netflix providing hundreds of hours of entertainment for next to nothing, £50 for a single piece of entertainment on a disc just seems so dated and backward.

Honestly how many games do you replay after you complete them?

 

[Evonisia]

£10 for a standard "new release" (some major ones like Frozen can go for £15 new) of a film. Most films are between 90-120 minutes long. You're basically spending £5 per hour.

The standard AAA game costs £40 on old gen, £50 on new gen, and the prices tend to drop much faster than DVD. A standard AAA game is between 8-10 hours long. So it's about the same price, and I'm excluding the ability to replay the game or the film. Film is pretty damn extortionate brand new, though. £10 per person to watch a film in a cinema? The fuck is that?

Now there is Netflix, of course, but Cinema and DVD are still big business. Gaming is only taking its baby steps, with PC vomiting sales and sales constantly pop up on Xbox Live/PSN. I don't see the problem with Season Passes themselves, but apparently they're bad regardless of whether the dev cuts content for DLC or whether the dev starts making DLC after the game's come out. Either way people who were going to buy the DLC anyway get it for cheaper.

Music is pretty cool, though, 'cos they know people won't put up with paying more than £10 for an album, and even then it drops massively (especially in digital formats).

 

[tippy2k2]

Other industries don't?

So when I go to the movie theater, it doesn't cost me (at least) $10 per person; plus (at least) $5 for a drink and (at least) $6 for a popcorn and (at least) $4 for a box of candy if I am feeling special? Is that too much? I'll just wait for the home release! Oh...$25 for a blu-ray that comes with a free DVD and digital copy? Well...I just want the Blu-Ray....I can't get just that for cheaper? Well, that's OK, I'll just Redbox it! OH...the movie company has an "exclusive" deal and it won't show up on Redbox for another month? Well...I guess I'll just Netflix it! Good thing Netflix has new rele....damn it!

Music has gotten a lot better now but does no one remember the 90's? "Hey guys, we have this great single! It's a killer track that we have to get out there! We got Superstar guy to do the producing, Superstar guy to do the mixing, and it's awesome. Just fill the CD up with a bunch of garbage made by the singer's cousin and let's go get some cocaine!". Music changed because it was forced to change; not because one day a music executive saw the spirit of music in Whoville and their heart grew three sizes that day.

Well that's OK, I've always got my books! Damn....$15 for the newest Stephen King book. Well that's OK, we have digital books now! All of the convenience with a cheaper price!....$15 for the newest Stephen King book on my Nook? Well...damn.

You can villainize the game industry all you want (and it deserves it in a lot of respects) but if you think other industries don't try the same stuff any chance they get, you're fooling yourself.

 

[Mezahmay]

I feel it's an important distinction OP to say you think the video game industry is "the only entertainment industry that fucks consumers over" to avoid the tangential issue of creators getting raked over the coals by executives. That being said, I agree with tippy2k2. The reason these practices are still around are because the market allows it. It was probably an executive that proposed these things initially but these guys aren't stupid. If they stopped turning a profit because gamers were not willing to put up with their nonsense they would stop doing it. We have no one to blame for this but ourselves demanding more content and permitting preorder exclusive content with our collective proverbial wallets.

A lot of these problems you mention can be solved with a little restraint. That method has been working very well for me for years. I wait a few months for all the launch day bugs to get patched/modded out or several months until a GOTY bundle is released and in the mean time I play a game I like for hours on end like Diablo 3, Hearthstone, Fallout: New Vegas, Minecraft, or whatever until a Steam sale rolls around.

 

[Silvanus]

Maybe, but in this day and age when you can get a months worth of films on Netflix providing hundreds of hours of entertainment for next to nothing, £50 for a single piece of entertainment on a disc just seems so dated and backward.

Honestly how many games do you replay after you complete them?

Not many single-player games.

Then again, there's only one game I can remember that actually cost me £50, and that was Guild Wars 2-- being an MMO, I still play it. It's given me hundreds of hours.

I do recognise what you're saying, though, and agree to a point. Triple-A releases are often prohibitively expensive.

 

[DoPo]

Other industries don't?

My question exactly - MPAA and RIAA are each worse than Activision and EA combined. I mean, it's pretty bad when you vehemently oppose new technologies that are a marked improvement for everybody, but when you start suing people in order to suppress them, it crosses a boundry. Or five. Or when you start suing people at completely random like, let's see, people who do not have PC and internet, or people WHO ARE DEAD.

I know there have been a few bad games released - Unity being one of the most recent examples, but I don't think even 100 or 1000 Unities combined cannot compare to the damages the music/film industry is attempting to inflict over the whole internet. By comparison, the most recent non-video-entertainment-industry thingie in Canada is effectively extortion which the Canadian government had to outlaw, which should have been surprising to nobody, yet it had to be outlawed in the first place. Because money were being extorted. Sure, I guess Unity is also bad, but I don't think it's unlawful.

 

[StriderShinryu]

The simplest reason why it appears that way is because videogames, to this point, have largely only had one point of sale, that being the initial launch. All other forms of entertainment media have varying points at which they can charge you for various things and, in some cases, the actual physical product release isn't even the main money earner. Even books have at least a hardcover, paperback and ebook release these days. Videogames are looking for a way to increase points of sale while expanding their appeal to a wider audience with varying levels of interest in spending varying amounts of money.

 

[Xeorm]

I'm not sure where to start, perhaps with the statement that I'd call video games the cheapest and most consumer friendly entertainment going right now. I can buy a brand new game for singleplayer that will compete on a for time basis very well against movies. The price doesn't go down as much, but that's often because the multiplayer aspect creates a lot of extra "content" for the player vastly making it better for cost.

Music is the worst. A song that plays for a few minutes is worth $1? Maybe. Depends on how often you listen to it, I suppose, but it's also not like you're often only listening to a song and not doing something else at the same time. And you can be sure that much of the DRM laws looking to be passed are from the music industry. They're certainly not there to care about the customer, but to make sure they get every cent that they can.

 

[WeepingAngels]

The game industry is bad but let's not pretend that the music industry wasn't much worse before Napster and the movie industry rips you hard when you go to a theater. Personally I don't want digital copies, I can make my own for free.

 

[T_ConX]

Because we let them.

It's one thing to complain about getting fucked in the ass. It's another thing when you're constantly presenting your naked gaping bunghole to potential butt-fuckers.

Why do companies keep releasing games before they're actually finished? Because we keep buying them before they're released. Preorder Assassins Creed Victory today to receive the exclusive Gentlemanly Strapon DLC!

Did you like The Last of Us/Grand Theft Auto V? Well how about buying a SLIGHTLY BETTER LOOKING version of it for a better console for a FULL $70!

How about Kickstarter?

Look at me! I'm a developer who used to make really good games in the 90's! Please give me money for a game I haven't even started work on! I'm a YouTube Activist! Give me money so I can make more YouTube videos, then proceed to spend as little time as possible making videos and more time whining about the hate mail and death threats that I keep sending to myself!

Seriously, how about you vote with your dollars. You don't need any of this crap.

 

[Random Argument Man]

I'm pretty sure that you can find controversy in any industry if you look up information on it. Go to a forums for movies, books, tv or else. You'll find something. Although, gamers can tend to be pretty vocal about certain stuffs.


Then again, I'd go for TV since Fox exist. Firefly anyone?

 

[Vigormortis]

It is? That's news to me.

I had no idea the film, music, television, literature, porn, and "fine art" industries have never figuratively[footnote]Or literally, in some cases...[/footnote] "screwed people over".

Damn those accursed video game companies and their nefarious and completely unprecedented business practices! CURSE THEM!!

 

[Asita]

A game costs more than a film because it's often far larger in both size and duration, as far as I can see.

Likely true to at least some extent, but it's hard to deny that the gaming industry has some practices that are...well, rather notably more 'anti-consumer' than other forms of media, though the extent of which will vary spectacularly on a case-by-case basis. Using Assassin's Creed 2 for the sake of example, you might recall that the game actually makes a point of telling you about a missing segment of memory that you can't access (the Bonfire of the Vanities DLC). It's hard to imagine a book or movie pulling a similar stunt. The closest I can think of to either hitting that mark is the rare "interquel/midquel" which tend to follow the same content and style rules as a prequels/sequels do. In a more broadly applicable sense there's also the shift we've been seeing towards treating the game products as if they were leased rather than truly purchased, and the quality control issues in recent years (I think we could aptly put AC: Unity's glitches as Uwe Boll level flubs, if not surpassing them), though I suppose in all fairness this applies more to PC games than handheld and console games. Still, they're troubling aspects that we certainly could stand to see better guards against.

 

[Zontar]

Really now, the only one? Last time I checked the only reason the music industry stopped being the worst medium in terms of screwing costumers over was because of the fact the internet made it impossible for them to do so. Or cabal with the over-inflated dvd prices for their shows (Game of Thrones and The Walking Dead are perfect examples of this). Or the ever increasing price of movie tickets which screws both customers and theater operators alike.

And don't even get me started on anime.

 

[Jingle Fett]

Confirmation bias--you follow game related news very closely and follow comparatively little news in other industries. Therefore you hear about all the big and little problems in the game industry more often and so it seems like the game industry is worse than others. In reality, the videogame industry is actually I would say comparatively much better than many others.

The animation industry is particularly brutal I've heard, I have a friend who's a former Disney animator and lets just say there's a reason they called it Mousechwitz back in the day (true story)
The VFX industry isn't doing too great either, in fact there was a protest/strike of more than 500 VFX artists recently in 2013, after the studio behind the VFX of Life of Pi closed just days after winning an Oscar for it.

 

[The_Waspman]

I think the worst thing about the gaming industry is how impatient most of the consumers are, that they buy a new copy with launch without waiting to see if it works, that's why studios prefer to release new games on marketable months more than shipping a completed game. If most of the consumers waited on buying until knowing if the game is 100% functional than the games would come out better mechanically.

Not that I want to play devils advocate here, but I think part of the problem is publishers announcing games like, two-three years prior to its scheduled launch. Then again, announcing a launch date three years in advance is also the problem. Because thats one of the things that makes consumers impatient.

I'm aware that game development takes a lot longer than film development, or tv show development or whatever, which is why announcing a game so far prior to launch is pointless.

But here we can blame the internet, and social media I guess. Because there is now this need to produce content, 24/7, which means that every tiny scrap of information needs to be discovered, analysed and disseminated, feeding into the massive meatgrinder of hype.

Sadly, this is the trend across a lot of the entertainment industry. Not just games, but movies, and tv. I don't suppose its much of an issue with books, unless said book happens to have been made into a massive multi-film franchise, and I fear that the publishing industry is now more heavily geared towards finding new works to publish for just that very reason, to get it franchised by a movie studio.

 

[Burgers2013]

Customers get screwed over for all sorts of entertainment. In most cases, video games are actually a better deal than movies and perhaps even TV. Movies for sure, because your entertainment time per dollar is much larger for a movie (theater or buying a Blu-Ray). Netflix and others are turning this around (and will hopefully continue to do so as long as the FCC does the right thing), but the theater is expensive.

Even though a Blu-Ray is $20-25, most movies are only watched a few times; so that's what, like 6 hours over the lifetime of the movie? Games usually have much longer running times and/or more replay value. I'd expect to get a good 20 hours at least out of most $60 games. That puts them at roughly the same value at ~$3/hr. However, I usually buy games on sale (lots of steam), and many of the games I play have longer play times. So, any savings from sales or longer games purchased only add to the value of the video game where as the blu-ray is stagnant. I know it's sort of hand-wavy because prices/playtimes vary so much and the number of times one watches a movie fluctuates a lot, but that's how I look at the value of games vs the value of a movie: more entertainment hours per dollar. Video games' per dollar value destroy most movie theater values.

I don't even have cable because while there are shows I'd like to watch, the value proposition is too awful for me to even consider. I still pay for and play video games though. They have much more value for my money. Cable TV is awful unless you watch a TON of television. Cable companies many times have boarder-line unbearable prices/customer service. Again Netflix and other online services are really helping in this area, but it's far from perfect. It's still on shaky ground right now due to the net neutrality thing.

Yes, there are nasty practices with video games, but movies/cable aren't really a better deal. As far as video games are concerned. I try avoid the anti-consumer practices by paying attention/doing research as much as I can before buying. I usually avoid buying brand new games and never participate in "season passes." I rarely even consider purchasing DLC. There are too many good, full games out there to waste my time with risky, low value stuff like that.

Books and music are probably a better deal (now anyway) than video games for the same reasons. Music used to be terrible though.