Gameboi wrote
an article on comments by Free Radical's David Braben about how the purchasing of used games hurts the industry as a whole.
My response:
Bullshit.
Has downloaded music hurt the music industry? Well, some would say yes, but it hasn't hurt it enough to shut it down or prevent crappy music from coming out in droves...
You want to know what's hurting the industry? 99% of games licensed after movies. Batman Begins? Catwoman? Fantastic Four? Please. I think that developers and publishers must take more responsibility for the products they produce. If every game had the quality of games such as the Half-Life series or Psychonauts, then I could understand why it is hurting an industry worthy of attention here.
The way I see it, gamers have always been buying second hand games. just not from a store. I had plenty of friends in the NES and SNES days that would trade games and/or sell each other games for less.
What is the real problem? Low quality games. They are lucky to be sold at all and to be perfectly honest, being able to trade in games is part of the reason questionable games are purchased at all! If you have a way to back out, through trading back in, albeit for less than half the paid price, some consumers are willing to take the risk. If this option did not exist, people would simply rent games.
Also, right now, you can purchase a used game from Gamestop and return it within 7 days for an exchange and again turn that game back in for another exchange, no questions asked. I have friends that do this on the regular until they hit a game they want ot keep.
Does anyone else feel that the purchasing of used games is not the bane of the industry it's being made out to be? Do you purchase new games over used if you know it's worth it?
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It's the bullshit said by a guy who simply thinks that if people aren't buying the game fresh that it automatically equates to losing cash.
This is crap.
To go back to the music industry as an example, of all the music I have downloaded, the makers never lost a cent. Why? Cause I was too fucking poor to buy their stuff anyway. They lost NO money because there was never going to be a sale. They said the same about taping records and that was a whole big load too.
The only albums I have bought have been purchased because I liked the stuff I downloaded and felt honour-bound to give those guys some recompense for the fun their art had given me.
The exact same is true for games. The second hand trade allows games like Psychonauts to spread well after the regular retail has stopped, and, like an underground musician, the people who are exposed to it will pay attention when a game is made by the same team/person/etc. Games like Psychonauts, Beyond Good and Evil et al didn't fail because of any kind of second hand trade, but their names will live forever because of it.
Fuck him, share games, spread art.
Go back to gamer on gamer trade, honest barter, no filthy agentry in the middle.
A co-op of games, honest value exchange, fuck their markup.
However, I hardly buy a used game because when I know something good is coming out, I pre-order or buy it day one. Other games that I don't know much about, I buy used. If it's shit, I return it and go for another. It is the fact that there are so many shitty games out there. Like, what the fuck is Ford Racing or that new ass looking Shrek game?