I hate economics.

So I had this argument. Being the confrontational person that I am I went on pressuring the other person to make a stronger argument for their statements. Even though we did reach a consensus I still feel as though they didn’t see that what was important in what I was pointing out.

Let’s go back for a moment. So this is specifically about the used video game market and online passes and publisher control over “creativity”. Reading this to myself I feel silly for even getting into an argument about this subject, but that’s what happens at 2 in the morning while playing Mass Effect 3 on xbox live.

For the most part, I made the point that most games aren’t good creatively simply because they are funded by a large publisher, who is more concerned with the profit motive and market instead of making a quality game, but rather that they are great based on the creativity and work of the developers, an example of this is a multitude of indie games that are made with a studio of less than 5 people that are mostly self funded projects. That’s not to say that devs can’t be abusive with the way they use money to create games, but that’s for later when we go into Sega And Gearbox.

Another point is that Most of these large publishers complain about the used game markets and all the losses they have because of second hand sales of they products. I could understand if these arguments came from small devs who can barely fund their own games and can only survive by new sales, but this kind of talk only comes from large publishers. Their solutions come as an always on internet connection, registering your copy to a specific account and not enabling others who bought it used to play without buying a new license, and sometimes an online pass to incentivize a new purchase or force someone who bought the game used to buy an online pass to recuperate some of “profit losses” from the used game.

The part of this I spent the most time discussing was the need for an online pass and the reason consumers buy used games and the effect it has on the publishers. First point was, the publishers needs to survive and the used market is taking money away from them. My answer, Most of those used game were sold new the day it was released and the publisher already made their money on them. Anyway second hand sale didn’t cause them to not survive or go out of business. Most companies that have have shown to be because of bad management, but that’s debatable I guess.

Second point was, If there wasn’t a used game market, the people who would have bought them used would instead buy them new at full price. My answer, Pure BS. The main reason people buy games used is because they usually can’t afford it for multiple reasons and most likely wouldn’t have bought the game anyway so there is no “lost profit” from those people because they wouldn’t have bought it new in the first place.

Third point was, The online pass it put their to supplement the “lost profit” from used game sales and put it towards the cost of maintaining the online aspect of the game and anyone who doesn’t contribute to it shouldn’t have access to that part of the game. My answer, This is the point where it gets heavy. I point out that again that there is no “losses” from used game sales because they would not have otherwise bought them new and the solution doesn’t even cover most of what the game originally cost and is pointless. A comparison, they only make $10 or $15 from that online pass that someone with a used game purchased yet the a full price game is $60? Doesn’t seem to me as those its really fixing the problem of “lost profits” as is not an elegant solution at all.

I go on to point out that the online aspect of the game is included with the budget of every other part of the game and is paid before the game is even launched and is maintained not from the money they receive from sales, but instead from what the original funding was from the publisher’s budget. You can’t honestly say that anyone actually contributes to the cost of maintaining those servers and the bandwidth and expect people to be happy when you block access to them because they didn’t pay for what you expect them to. The money they receive from all the sales go directly to pay back the publishers for what they “already spent” on the game’s budget. Anything else is pure profit and all of these arguments for stopping used games and making everyone have an online pass to play comes simply out of greed and the profit motive of any corporation. They need more money than they already make and I’m personally tired of hearing about it. Although, you know I could understand if these kind of complaints came from a small publisher or developer because even with every sale they make they might not break even, but that’s rare to hear from them.

Either way, going to another point about game creativity. My point is that sometimes publishers only care about what will sell and not as much about the quality. For most that is true, but in Sega’s case I feel like they’ve become better than they were years previously. A example of this, a failed one though, is Aliens: Colonial Marines. A highly anticipated game that they spent a lot of money funding for years. We find out that the developer, Gearbox studios screwed them over by using that money and time to create Borderlands 2 instead and even shifting some of the work to another studio. This shows that sometimes a developer can be abusive and royally screw over just about everyone. I feel like Sega really wanted to make something great, but ended up letting fans down when they shipped something lackluster. And the problem was mostly about money and Gearbox’s priorities. Its so disappointing to see a developer that’s so highly regarded to be so shameful. Makes me glad that I never bothered to play any Borderlands game. Although Anthony Burch was probably the best thing that ever happened to that company. Just Saying.

I hate economics. End of my rant.

Seriously, I'm telling you guys, its the same person, look!!!




Okay it's not really, but imagine if it was... Anywho, let's have a battle.
Mr. destructoid versus Deadmau5.

Fight!!!

No, this isn't NPR or PBS, but I say we still need support from the community, all the love from you guys will help get us up in the rating, hopefully getting as much viewers as HAWP. Although I love HAWP we need the destructoid faithful to get on and watch us. Also look through the cracks and you'll find secrets to an upcoming spiderman movie, it'll feature villains like, Venom and Carnage! Yes we here at Dtoid are making big strides in Hollywood... even though some of us are still in Miami.

Gosh, I'm still have this fantastical idea that I can reach lots of ppl by posting here. Maybe some Cblogs are read regularly, but my poor attempt to promote P.A.D. just makes me depressed... where will it lead? Maybe I'm just frustrated because Anthony left and the world will end in 2 more years and only one of those will I legally be able to drink... Although I still don't have the money to buy a good bottle of whiskey...

Anywho, is it me, or is Dtoid trying to hard to be mainstream? What do I mean exactly? Well this whole videos section is so odd to me. I never use it and I barely watch any of them... waiting for the podcast to come back so I can hear the sweet voice of Jim Sterling again... Wow this just became a rant hasn't it? No not yet. Well anyway, I don't want to leak any news on my front other than I'm working on websites now. None of which are up or anywhere close to being finished, but it'll be great. Times are a changin'!

http://destructoid.com/elephant/rebirth-index-author.phtml?a=50874

http://www.youtube.com/user/NeranjanVenom

The endless study...

Should I speak of Assassin's Creed 2? Maybe I'll be destroyed for loving the sci-fi part of that game series, but now I don't need to worry, Mass Effect 2 is here and it makes up for anyhting else that came before. It truly is the second coming for the gaming world; the first was Pokemon... heh, jokes... Now to also mention the iPad with Mass Effect I would think is relevant since I predict that EA will get some other developer to make an iphone/ipod touch/iPad version that ties into the Mass Effect mythology.

Now I'm not the uber fan of Mass Effect, I bought the original around the end of '08 start of '09, I really don't remember. I bought it for like $15 used, finally bought the two DLC things and yeah, been having fun with it, gave it a chance, although I was sure it would be a good game since I heard great things about it and I noticed the problems in the combat, but now I've gotten used to it after quite a few hours of experimentation.. yeah it was a slow process for my brain.

Since Mass Effect 2 came out all I've heard is of it's greatness and I'm sure it's all true, but this is the first time I'm righting about a game I haven't played so it's hard to truly say what is great about it without first hand experience. Maybe I should just delete this blog post and think of something else to write, I have no idea, maybe I'll talk about Dishwasher: Dead Samurai when I finish playing (just bought it off XBLA... finally...).

Sure, we have computer art in wikipedia's list of visual arts, but that refers to a wide range of things that can be made with a computer and what kind of art it is seen as. Interactive media is also something that's a bit vague in terms of certain principles and priorities in terms of something like a web site, or general user interfaces, communication networks (not so much, but it's included somewhat as like pop-culture references to like facebook in art), and games.

Specifically I want to discuss games simply because this is destructoid and we gamers are a more important bunch. Anywho, this a topic that is certain brought up a lot in destructoid: questions when we'll reach a golden when games are perceived to be art in their presentation. Also the fear that this type of entertainment will become like what comics are perceived to be by society that has never taken an open mind to go deep within the subculture to see there are truly certain graphic novels that could and sometimes are considered art.

Although some may want games to stay the way they are and never become anything more than they are, I personally and getting tired of them. Every year I buy less games and play the ones I have less and less (I don't like to trade in games, I keep them and replay a lot, too many in my collection...). I'm tired just tired of this generation of trends with almost every consumer product that is released. We're becoming like our parents or grandparents were in the 60s with all those crazy trends that are now somewhat mainstream (I confess, I'm a hippie by heart, but incidentally a pretty boy, its what happens in Miami, the sunlight makes you lazy, but you're forced to look good out of spite). *sigh* I ramble too much.

I've seen so much of it at CES '10 with gadgetry and I definitely expect more of it following later today, the 27th aka, god declared apple.inc and steve jobs as the second coming, finally. Gosh I've been waiting to confirm this for a long while, now I know it's true. Heh, jokes... So for games, the simple argument is with games like the guitar hero trend (I hate that game...) and the large amount of horrid games for the wii and multiplayer in games that don't need it, *sigh*. Story of my life I suppose. I just really want to ask this gamer community, do we really need all this? Is it really that important to you? I'd rather have more of xenosaga or shadow of the colossus and uhh... oh oh, echochrome!!! Yes; simple, but beautiful. Maybe a bit too simple, so much so that it gets a little tiresome.

Those three games are perfect examples of art in games, or games that are visual art. If you don't agree please comment, and if you have any games to include, please do. Anywho, I just hope that maybe there will be more of a demand for fun and visually inspiring games that can truly seen as art in a gallery being demonstrated on a nice widescreen display on the wall right next to a famous painting... maybe I'm overstepping this, maybe I'm foolish, but I truly believe that if there was a demand for and there were people new to this type of interactive media, they could appreciate it like I do with certain games.

Whatever the future may hold for games as art, I just hope that activision blizzard dies and guitar hero dies with it, bring fcukin' call of duty as well... (I'll instantly dislike anywho who makes the claim that mw2 is a work of art)

So I made this post like the night just before Destructoid when faulty, I was like the only person still awake I suppose, no other posts for ours on the Cblogs... Either way, I just feel responsible yet spiteful. I wrote this long post about the games announced at the VGAs (which "I didn't watch, I saw the trailers at none other than gametrailers, a godsend of websites) that I found very interesting, or quite amusing, in my opinion, my favorite post so far, I try to keep a basis for what I write, sometimes drifting off a bit to only give more detail into a certain subject that relates to underlying topic. I also like to at least, somewhat schedule what I may write in advance of a few hours than write in one go, like right now and then just let my inspiration and creativity drive my efforts in writing something that no one will read, but I tried and I liked the end result. Saddens me and frustrates me when things happen and a site croaks for a moment, but when it's revived I wish that everything would be restored, but oh well, my post got deleted. Everything else went back to normal, two podtoids went up for compensation and I listened and let my anger pass. Anger at technology, not at Destructoid. I still love this site even though I'm new to it and I only know about it because of HAWP. Story of my life.... seriously, this should be tagged as a rant, but I put this as About Destructoid, since of course most of the rant is about the site...

READ SCOTT PILGRIM!!! UBISOFT is making a game out of it, woooyeah!!! :D