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[Matz05]

fenrif is exactly right. Video games are not magically different from any product ever.
If anything, the best analogy would be a DVD. DVDs are identical, negligibly-degrading entertainment commodities that lose value over time almost solely from age of the story and cinematics contained within. A DVD movie will slowly decrease in value not because the object itself changes, but because the market and society changes.
It is not "new" because it has not been handled, it is "new" because it contains an emotional and audio-visual experience novel to a large portion of society.
As such, after "everyone's seen that movie, and the effects are so dated", the value will drop; EVEN IF THE DISK IS FRESHLY PRESSED!

Videogames are the same thing. The novelty of the experience is what gives them value, and not the "use" of the item.

[Sergius]

ITT: players attack developers incomes so that indie developers no longer exist and all you get is call of duty and sims

ITT: Dey took yer Jerbs

[NRN_R_Sumo1]

fenrif is exactly right. Video games are not magically different from any product ever.
If anything, the best analogy would be a DVD. DVDs are identical, negligibly-degrading entertainment commodities that lose value over time almost solely from age of the story and cinematics contained within. A DVD movie will slowly decrease in value not because the object itself changes, but because the market and society changes.
It is not "new" because it has not been handled, it is "new" because it contains an emotional and audio-visual experience novel to a large portion of society.
As such, after "everyone's seen that movie, and the effects are so dated", the value will drop; EVEN IF THE DISK IS FRESHLY PRESSED!

Videogames are the same thing. The novelty of the experience is what gives them value, and not the "use" of the item.

You also seem to excuse the point here that like most games, dvd's can be easily completed within a week or two of release date.
If someone makes a game that has only 20 hours of gameplay, and players burn through it in a weekend, then sell it, the people playing it after them would not be giving money to the developers, thus this short game will not make money for the developer.

All I can see this doing is making initial prices go up so that people can still make a small profit before everyone sells off their copies to other players.

The reason people can buy from pawn shops without affecting much is that, those big companies sell directly to stores, not to the players.
If you cut out the middle man, then the developer relies on the initial buyers to pay them.

[MasterFancyPants]

ITT: players attack developers incomes so that indie developers no longer exist and all you get is call of duty and sims

I see a problem with you conclusion: http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/

Toady asks for no money and we owe him no money, Yet we still pay him. If you make a good game, people will support you.

[Matz05]

Wait, what? Fast completion LOWERS resale? A certain movie has a 2 hour length and is palatable to watch 20 times. That still is only 40 hours of playtime, a value which most games far exceed. Who here regularly watches the same movie 20 times? The faster a movie becomes boring, the HIGHER resale will be.
I've never seen a mainstream game shorter than a movie, and the movie industry hasn't collapsed from resale; even though the "replay value" of a movie is orders of magnitude smaller than that of a well-built game.

[Leafsnail]

With movies it's not so much the "replay value" as "I want to have it available in case friends want to see it" or something like that.  I wouldn't watch a movie again on my own but if my friends express an interest I'd be perfectly happy to.

[G-Flex]

You wouldn't, therefore nobody does. Right.

[Shadowlord]

If someone makes a game that has only 20 hours of gameplay, and players burn through it in a weekend, then sell it, the people playing it after them would not be giving money to the developers, thus this short game will not make money for the developer.

All I can see this doing is making initial prices go up so that people can still make a small profit before everyone sells off their copies to other players.

In the USA, console game prices have not been going up past $60 for regular/pre-order (non-special) editions of games despite inflation and trade-ins (and even trade-in promotions, and competition between the major retailers for customers, e.g. in the US, GameStop, BestBuy, Amazon...) - and yet PC game prices have gone up from $50 to $60 for most AAA games in the past year or two despite the fact that you can no longer trade in physical PC games at any major retailers in the US, AFAIK. I'm not sure if there are even any small places you can trade in (or rent) PC games anymore. They didn't appear terribly profitable, and were treated as supporters of piracy by $everyone_in_power.

To combat resale, console games commonly (a) include pre-order bonuses, which are frequently different for different retailers to entice customers into pre-ordering when prices are highest and the maximum amount of profit goes to the publisher, (b) are starting to include Online Passes or Content Passes which are one-use codes to online gameplay or content, and (c) also sell special editions with extra junk for higher prices.

If you buy a pre-owned copy, you end up having to either replace it with a new one or buy a code (using for example XBox Live's interface for buying DLC and stuff with microsoft points), if the previous owner used the code.

I've said this several times by now, but y'all keep going back to pretending reality doesn't exist and arguing about some theoretical game-trading dystopia where re-selling something magically forces companies to raise their prices instead of, you know, dealing with it like they've always done. They've already crushed PC game trading (and renting) once. I doubt they feel very threatened now.

[alexandertnt]

ITT: players attack developers incomes so that indie developers no longer exist and all you get is call of duty and sims

So thats it, just a statement? Players just do attack developers income?

There are a few things to consider:

firstly if no one is buying indie games then no one wants indie games. Tough. Indie developers are not entitled to money just because they are indie developers (nor any developer for that matter). Im not arguing that this rule wont decrease revenue, but if there is less revenue, less people want it (and infact if people are satisfied with a smaller ammount of money going into the industry, it seems to only have made it more efficient).

Secondly, no one in this thread is "attacking" developers in any way, this just seems like an appeal to emotion.

Thirdly if people actually want the game, then they will buy it. Everyone will flock to the second hand sales, and when they relise that there are no second hand copies because everyone else did the same thing they will start to buy first hand copies until the market reaches an equilibrium.

Fourthly, if Activision releases another identical COD, there will be less incentive to buy it as many people will just think "$100??? I will just get a second hand copy of the earlier one for $30". So it seems it may make slight reiterations of games harder as the market would become saturated (instead of what we have now, where Activision can sell the previous version for $95 or something).

I see a problem with you conclusion: http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/

Toady asks for no money and we owe him no money, Yet we still pay him. If you make a good game, people will support you.

Exactly. If people are not handing over their money, its because they dont have a desire to. Want money? Make something that people want to pay you for, and if people actually want what you are making and like it, they will buy it.

[pilgrimboy]

wait, so games from GoG don't have issues with modern computing systems?

I'd have expected that they would have at least needed DOSbox to run.

Some do. Some don't. The great thing is that all of the configuration is done by GOG. You just install the game and run it. It's wonderful.

[fenrif]

ITT: players attack developers incomes so that indie developers no longer exist and all you get is call of duty and sims

ITT: People think self-identifying as "indie developers" is an acceptable stand-in for forming a coherent argument, making salient points, or defending their own position.

Alexandertnt allready covered this, but I'd like to expand on it a bit. You seem to have made the same error most major publishers have made. Namely that the act of creating something entitles the creator to monetary compensation. It doesn't. It entitles them to profit from their work, sure... But it certainly doesn't mean that you deserve money just by virtue of putting together a game. That seems to be the driving force between big publishers assault on our rights as consumers, and since you're kinda just parroting those views I assume it's your belief too? Now this might be considered a bit of a strawman (and I really hope it is, because that's kind of a silly view to hold), but I basically had to infer your meaning since you seem reluctant to engage the topic with any real thought or effort on your part.

But here's the thing that I find most hillarious about your point. As has been allready said: you're posting it on the Dwarf Fortress forums. A game that's free. A game that has seen it's developer supported through huge amounts of donations over the course of it's life. Just ponder that for a minute and I'm sure you'll see the irony.

I like how you are suggesting that only getting big-budget triple-A franchises is a bad thing. Your attempt at developer solidarity would have probobly come off a bit more sincere if you didn't throw an underhanded jab at your fellow devs in the same sentance. Food for thought.

You also seem to excuse the point here that like most games, dvd's can be easily completed within a week or two of release date.
If someone makes a game that has only 20 hours of gameplay, and players burn through it in a weekend, then sell it, the people playing it after them would not be giving money to the developers, thus this short game will not make money for the developer.

All I can see this doing is making initial prices go up so that people can still make a small profit before everyone sells off their copies to other players.

The reason people can buy from pawn shops without affecting much is that, those big companies sell directly to stores, not to the players.
If you cut out the middle man, then the developer relies on the initial buyers to pay them.

I don't really get your point here. You seem to be arguing that since DVD's (or even VHS tapes) were invented then the movie industry ceased to exist because once a critical mass of people bought a DVD noone else would ever buy it again. This must mean that initial DVD prices have been going up for years! DVDs must cost THOUSANDS! (Is it just me, or is he arguing with himself here?)

With movies it's not so much the "replay value" as "I want to have it available in case friends want to see it" or something like that.  I wouldn't watch a movie again on my own but if my friends express an interest I'd be perfectly happy to.

THIEF! Every time you show a movie to your friends you're literally killing a movie director via starvation because they don't each have to buy their own copy. You monster!

People buy stuff from GOG generally because either their physical copies have degraded or because their physical copies create issues when trying to make the software compatible with modern systems. It's really not a good comparison.

I think people buy stuff from GOG for a multitude of reasons, and those are definatly some of them (though I think it's more of the conveniance issue than physical copies degrading). But here's the point I'm making: GOG.com versions are demonstrably better than the original retail versions. They never "degrade." They work, for the most part, flawlessly on modern systems. They often even include all the rulebooks and soundtracks and all those goodies. Their value is higher.

Yet they cost only a fraction of what they cost at launch. This is because, while the only thing missing is the physical box, the games themselves have decreased in value. It's not really a measurable thing. But people would absolutely balk at paying recommended retail price for these games.

And also as completely anecdotal evidence: I know many people who buy GOG.com games purely because they either don't know how or cant be bothered to set up dosbox on their own. There are guides for this all over the place, and it's not really a hard thing to do. But people are more than willing to spend money to re-buy their own games again, even if they still have working copies of them.

[Leafsnail]

You wouldn't, therefore nobody does. Right.

That's not what I was saying at all.  I was just pointing out an extra reason why you might want to continue owning a DVD that I feel is more prevelant.

[Sergius]

The next step: having games use fingerprint-reading to prevent your buddies playing a game on your computer without paying for it.

If people can just go to their friend's places and play games nobody would ever buy!

[pilgrimboy]

Since we cleared up that there is a difference between digital and physical - something some were trying to say didn't exist - I'll move on.

Another key component of the issue is whether the market should decide how games are made and sold/purchased or whether video games are an essential enough industry that we need government regulations telling us how the industry and consumer rights should be managed.

In the former, if people think that secondhand selling is good to the industry, they should start a business that will do that. That's the way the free market works. Negotiate deals with publishers and start selling secondhand digital games. Or you can just tell people who make the games and distribute the games how they should do it the way you want. That's a lot easier than trying to actually create a company that proves this is what the consumer wants, is willing to financially support, and is superior to the system we currently have. Develop the system. Get publishers on board. And run with it. Make your millions. If it's good for the industry, then it shouldn't be that hard to get it going.

One other brief note to the conversation going on. The movie industry is a terrible example. They have a window of exclusivity making profit in the movie theaters. Games have no such window. And if secondhand reselling happens that exclusive window to make a profit has been narrowed to about one second. Whether a movie is eventually digital or not does not matter during the whole time it is in the movie theater.

[Shadowlord]

In the former, if people think that secondhand selling is good to the industry, they should start a business that will do that. That's the way the free market works. Negotiate deals with publishers and start selling secondhand digital games. Or you can just tell people who make the games and distribute the games how they should do it the way you want. That's a lot easier than trying to actually create a company that proves this is what the consumer wants, is willing to financially support, and is superior to the system we currently have. Develop the system. Get publishers on board. And run with it. Make your millions. If it's good for the industry, then it shouldn't be that hard to get it going.

The free market works based on deciding what will be good for your wallet, and your desires and needs, not what will be good for other people ("the industry"), unless for some reason you need to keep them happy (an incorporated company with them owning shares for instance), and even then that's still not "I will found company to resell games because ITT this is good for industry." Besides which, who said it was good for the industry? There is the positive note that it reduces material wastes on production for physical games, as trade-in/resale essentially acts like 100% efficient recycling. That isn't the case for digital games, however, as they have no manufacturing cost in materials or money.

Games have no such window. And if secondhand reselling happens that exclusive window to make a profit has been narrowed to about one second.

So what? How many times do I have to say "Companies have come up with ways to punish buying pre-owned games by requiring purchasers to buy codes to access the full game experience and all desired features" - and they regularly charge more for it ($10) than they would make in profit on a sale of the game in a retail store. Obviously, they make considerably more with digital games, and if they are forced to add re-sale or trade-ins for those, they will probably just add a similar mechanism to them, and I would expect (but cannot predict) them to set the price for it higher than for console games, to make up for the greater theoretical profit loss on digital pre-owned games not being bought new.

(Okay, so I just said it's good for the industry because they can potentially make more money with the one-use online passes or content passes than the actual game. So sue me. I doubt they can do so with games on Steam, as they get a large part of the profit rather than a tiny profit, I think.)