The title is, of course, tongue-in-cheek, Shamus clearly doesn’t believe that second hand sales are ‘cheating’. But, regardless of that, the reason I wanted to link to his article is this paragraph :

The thing that movies have that games don’t is a graduated pricing system that lets people pay according to how much they care about a given title. If you’re anticipating a film, you can pay top-dollar to see a single showing in the theater. Or you can wait a couple of months, pay a bit less, and see it at the cheap theater. Or you can wait until it comes out on DVD and watch it until you go blind. Or you can wait until the DVD gets marked down. Or you can wait until the movie appears on cable. The less you care, the longer you wait and the less you pay. Games should have been doing this as a matter of standard procedure years ago.

Which is a great point. Everyone knows that hyped games tend to have a massive initial spike in sales, a spike which is accounted for by all the people who were keenly anticipating a game going out and buying it shortly after release. But give it a few months and the game is yesterday’s news. Not just for the gamers themselves, the massive marketing machine that creates and maintains hype for games has moved on to greener pastures. Which creates a gap that used games have moved in to fill (selling a game cheaper years later as a ‘Classic Hit’ is waiting too long, IMO). A space where people aren’t rushing out to buy a game in slavering enthusiasm, but can be convinced if you offer them a good deal. That recent, massive steam sale is a good example. I bought 16 games during that sale, purchases from that sale account for around 80% of all the games I’ve ever bought on steam. And most of them are titles I wouldn’t have forked out for at full price, but the deals on offer made it worth taking a risk to try them out. I haven’t played even half of them yet, they’re sitting there just waiting for when I’m bored and needing something to play.

And sometimes they lead to further sales. For example, I started Machinarium last week, a truly great little adventure game (give it a try, it’s filled with incredible soul and is as much a piece of art as any game I’ve played). I’d actually forgotten how much I enjoyed adventure titles. When a friend mentioned that the Special Edition of Monkey Island 2 was on sale on steam, my recent enjoyment of Machinarium led to an instant purchase. Neither of these purchases would have happened if they’d been sold at full price. The low pricing point was a convincing factor in my purchasing decision. Similarly, I’ve purchased those ‘Classic Hits’ games, knowing that they will look a bit aged, simply because I’ve heard good things and they are cheap enough to make the financial risk minor.

To end off, another quote from Shamus :

Gamers who buy used aren’t “cheating” you. They just don’t want to pay that much. There is no reason to not do business with these people once you’ve made your money from the core fans.

Or you can just keep whining for gamers to pay extra in a bad economy when a cheaper alternative is readily available, while at the same time haranguing them with DRM and micro-transactions. I’m sure you can re-shape the long-understood consumer behavior of the average human being if you can just make them feel guilty enough.

So Penny Arcade has started a bit of a discussion around the issue of used games with their latest comic, with further discussion being found on the main page.

I’ve heard publishers take pot shots at used games before, getting worked up about how used games are killing the industry, and judging by the responses from developers, they share that sentiment, at least in part. According to a THQ exec, they feel they are being cheated by used-game sales.

I can’t understand that stance, personally.

If you’ve ever read piracy debates, one of the common arguments is that piracy isn’t worse than a library and since libraries are good, piracy is fine. This is bollocks. The difference between piracy and a library is that a library isn’t creating a new copy of a book. When they lend it out to me, you can’t have it out at the same time. Piracy violates copyright by taking a single copy of a game and turning it into many copies, all of which can be played at once, and which the developer doesn’t receive fair compensation for. A library has paid, once, for each copy of a book on their shelves. They can then lend that book out to others, the book being unavailable for further lending until returned.

The library metaphor isn’t a good one for piracy, but it is good for used games and other second-hand sales. When you sell something you own to someone else, and no longer have a copy of that thing to use, you haven’t violated copyright. A single instance of that thing hasn’t become many instances. The original producer, in this case the game developer, have received 1x payment for the 1x good that exists. This is fair.

Oh, you can argue that the bulk of worth in a game is not the media but the experience, and that once someone has played it through and sells it to someone else they have created 2 copies of that experience. But that’s the same for any second-hand sale, and in fact lending thing to friends. What is next, do developers expect a second payment if I lend a friend the latest 5 hour Call of Duty game and they finish it in an afternoon?

Tell me, developers, why do you expect many payments for what is only ever a single instance of your good, regardless of how many times it exchanges hands? Which other industry gets that? If I sold my car and Toyota pitched up and complained that I hadn’t paid them a cut of the second sale I’d laugh in their face. I see devs talking about how second hand sales are stealing food from their children, appealing to emotion, but that is a shitty tactic. What about the factory workers at car manufacturers? I’m sure it would help the workers feed their children if they received 3 payments from the cars they produce instead of 1 but that’s neither realistic nor fair. When I own the good in its entirety (having paid you fairly for it), I get to sell it and keep the money from that exchange. If the second hand car dealer then sells it for a markup, well, they paid for the good, did the work fixing it up and getting salespeople to sell it on their showroom floors, which is space they either bought or rent. What the fuck are you guys doing besides whining how it’s unfair on you that you don’t benefit from other’s property and trading skills? You want a cut of resale profits, how about you start your own second-hand dealerships, like the car manufacturers do?

I can see an argument to be made around tech support of second-hand sales, that they should perhaps have to pay for the service since it costs the developers/producers resources to maintain support centres. Personally I’d call that a bit short-sighted, if someone has bought your game second-hand and is having trouble playing it, it’s far more efficient to help them get it running and potentially create a first-hand customer for your future products (if they end up liking the title) than implementing DRM or even marketing campaigns. Someone who has phoned you for help getting a game running is already interested, offering great service could help sway them to buying your games first hand in the future.

As a last point, I want to discuss this post I saw on Penny Arcade :

“I am a gamer and a developer (art and animation side of things). Theres a lot to say here, but it really boils down to this:
What other customers expect a used product be be identical to a new product? Buying a used car comes with increased wear (and thus decreased function). Buying a used book means you are risking page damage or a broken binding. Buying anything used means that you get a cheaper price for decreased function or increased risk. It also requires a little more awareness on the part of the customer to make sure they are aware of what they are getting. In the video game case, if you know the game wont have multi-player used, you can adjust what you are willing to spend on it, the same way you might offer a few hundred dollar less for a used motorcycle due to rust.”

Ok, yes, second hand goods are generally a bit inferior because of wear and tear. If they’ve been cared for well then that might not be a big factor, but there is generally some wear, yes. BUT. This is completely different from Toyota designing a car whose wheels fall off when it is resold because they are peeved they didn’t get a cut of that resale value. That is just bald-faced greed and publishers should be scorned for it. I’d love it if some law could be passed, something about acting in bad faith or whatever, but that seems unlikely.

So yeah, in my opinion, these developers need to buck up hey. It’s not unfair, it’s not killing the industry anymore than libraries and second-hand book stores are killing the publishing industry and writers. This kind of ranting just makes you look greedy. And, if you want my advice on how to make your games less susceptable to second-hand sales, how about making games that people want to keep and play for long periods of time, instead of disposable clones they can finish in an afternoon. I’ve sold games I was done with to pawn shops, when I was young and broke, I never traded a game I cherished. Nor would I sell a treasured novel. Learn the lesson there.

A statement by some PR guy at Firaxis, shortly after letting about 20 people go :

“I can confirm that Firaxis has realigned its development resources in order to streamline its development process, reduce costs and maximize the overall performance the studio.This will result in the elimination of approximately 20 positions. These reductions will not impact Firaxis’ ability to create and deliver AAA titles, including its forthcoming Sid Meier’s Civilization V and Sid Meier’s Civilization Network for Facebook.”

It’s truly mind-boggling to see this kind of thing in action in corporate environments. When middle-management reachs a certain critical mass it begins wrapping itself in more and more layers of this bullshit doublespeak and bureaucracy. Someone will be giving you this speech and in your mind you’re thinking “Are you fucking kidding? You an I both know that the only reason I’m accepting what you’re saying is because you have power over my salary and career. Can I go back to my desk now?”

It’s incredible how rare actual leadership qualities are in people who hold positions of power. Most are….well, they’re this guy :

What terrifies me is I’ve personally heard managers use each and every one of those buzz-phrases. *shudder*

I’ve been keen for Alpha Protocol for a while, right? I’m sure I’ve mentioned that. Anyway, the release month is upon us. But it turns out I have to wait almost a month to get my hands on AP because it will only be released on the 28th here.

To further add to the shenanigans, the xbox version has been out here for 2 weeks. Internationally, the game was released in Europe a week or two before North America.

To further compound the nonsense, it appears that digital distribution is bound by these dates as well. People in Europe are downloading the game from Steam, those in America are pre-loading and I can’t see anything but a ‘coming soon!’ advert on Steam. Not even the option to pre-load.

What the hell were Sega thinking? Why bother spending money on DRM systems if you’re then going to stagger your release dates like this? The internet (and hence the pirate) community is a global entity. Sales spike in the initial few weeks of release. Putting out the retail version in one part of the world and not in others is plain stupid, gamers now have access to the pirate version but not the legit one and they are hearing all the other gamers talking about it online. Humans are not patient creatures, you’re asking them to not only ‘do the right thing’ but to fend off temptation for weeks.

For box copies I can, grudgingly, see a case for staggered release dates. The logistics of the international retail chains and bureaucracy involved might make it difficult and expensive to synchronize a global release, I don’t know. But digital distribution? Are you kidding me? By definition people willing and able to buy online are a piracy risk, they have the means and desire to download games. To create a situation where your ‘competition’, the pirate version, is dangled in front of them for weeks while your digital store sticks to arbitrary regional release dates is batshit fucking stupid.

I feel for the Obsidian guys. Some of them are from Troika. This isn’t the first time they’ve suffered from this kind of stupidity. *cough* Arcanum *cough*

Nobody better post AP spoilers in the comments, I will leap through the screen and tear out your eyeballs, for real.

“I must of been asleep at the switch the last few years. When did “indie” games get so pretentious?”

- Tim Aste

For those of you who don’t know him, Tim is a game artist and producer. He got his start on GarageGames, he was just an artist in the community at the time. He produced some really great art packs, packs which managed to look great despite the limitations of the aging TGE engine. It got him noticed by GarageGames, they offered him employment and now, years later, he’s got a portfolio of games under his belt. I deeply respect Tim, he worked hard, that hard work and skill got him attention, opened doors for him and he built a career out of it. That’s the kind of spirit I respect, whether from the mainstream or indies.

And I fully agree with his quote, there is this creeping disease of pretentiousness spreading in some parts of the Indie community. The reason I hate the ‘Are games Art?’ discussion is the people who discuss whether things are art or not tend (not always) to be pompous wankers. See Roger Ebert. This is the mindset I prefer :

JE Sawyer on the ‘Are games Art? question’

It’s a tricky thing, since discussion around the merits of games and how they are built has value, definitely. But there seems to be a line where it devolves from being discussions of craftsmanship to esoteric nonsense attempting to draw arbitrary classifications on subjective measures. Look at the question in that link :

Do you think that the view of video games as low art, or not art at all, might stem from the fact that despite being mass-produced, their media value is entirely Cult as opposed to traditional art which is non-mass produced with high exhibition value?

Fucking art grads.

So, a couple of days ago Shamus Young presented his theory on what is responsible for the ‘dumbing down’ of RPGs.

You know what he’s talking about, that ‘dumbing down’ thing, right? Games were all awesome when we were kids, now they aren’t, there must be foul machinations at work.

Well, I’ll return to that point in a second. Firstly, I want to say that I agree with Shamus. I do think voice-overs place a huge limitation on the amount of content you can provide. Not just on dialogue, but on scripted sequences and the events that tie the game together, as the game has to recognize those choices. We’ve all seen instances of good VO, I’m sure. But that doesn’t change the fact that it is really expensive and a good portion of it is wasted as people either skip it because they can read faster or because the VO itself is terrible. I loved Irenicus in BG2 and a huge portion of the character’s personality came from the great voice acting. There is a whole depth and dimension to communication that is conveyed in tone and emphasis and text will never convey that depth like a great voice actor can, no matter how powerful your imagination. But that is the best case. Worst case, the VO is grating, out of place, destroying immersion. So I’m of the camp that thinks VO is good in moderation, it should be used to establish character for main NPCs and supplemented with silent but flexible text.

But is it really voice over that killed ‘choice’ in RPGs?

I don’t think so. In fact, I think that the idea that ‘choice’ is being dumbed down over time in RPGs is an optical illusion. General gameplay mechanics, perhaps. But ‘choice’? I say ‘optical’ illusion here because it is based on where you are looking. In this case, you’re looking back in time, at the past.

The proof guys like Shamus will put forth generally takes the form of Fallout, Arcanum or Planescape. Which many RPG fans will hold us as shining examples of choice and all the good things the RPG genre can hold. Which is great and all, but that accounts for what percentage of of all the RPG games released? I also remember Might and Magic 6 and Rage of Mages. Shining examples of player choice and agency? Not quite.

In a gamer’s mind, ‘the past’ is a huge expanse of time which contains all the games up till a few years ago. The problem is we don’t see it clearly, we look at it through the fog of memory and nostalgia. Like a landscape shrouded in fog, all we see are the mountains sticking through the haze of faded memory, those glorious experiences which made a huge impression on us. We forget all the cruft. And there was cruft. Lots of cruft.

So when you look back on 20+ years of gaming and see the small collection of games you remember fondly, and compare it to the recent years, you’re left with the conclusion that ‘times are changing’ and things in the modern era are inferior. You remember the good bits of old RPGs, the cool choices in this one and the entertaining combat system in that one and it blends together into this shining memory of ‘the way things were’. This is the same nostalgic haze that affects everyone as they age. Everything was better in the past, kids were more respectful, there was less violence and crime and politicians were more honest.

There is also the effects of novelty and the lack there-of in our experiencing of new titles. It’s one of the things that has bothered me more and more lately. Very few games I play are fresh for me. I buy a game and see it is well made and would probably have been awesome if I was younger and new to gaming. But I see a pattern I’ve experienced 100 times already and enthusiasm quickly drains away. I remember when each new game I played was something new to explore and master. It’s easy to blame the industry for churning out the same thing but part of the problem is my eyes just aren’t fresh anymore.

I can’t say a game is bad just because it has no novelty for me anymore. In the same way that you can’t call someone a bad lover simply because, as time passes, you struggle to recapture that electric excitement you experienced the first time you explored each other’s naked bodies.

A new generation is discovering these genres for the first time but I am becoming harder and harder to please.

1) Lies
2) Damn Lies and
3) Statistics.

Ok, so some guy named John Davidson wrote a blog piece called ‘Too Big, Too Hard‘ (Har Har), the gist of which is that game developers are including software to track how long people play games for and where they ‘get stuck’. And have concluded, based on this evidence, that games are too hard and too long.

See, this is the problem with statistics. Even when they are not being deliberately distorted, in the hands of the uninformed they do as much harm as good.

So let’s go back a step. Game developers have included tracking software which lets them track for how long players play their games, and at which point they stopped playing. From this, we can conclude what?

Actually, not particularly much.

We can certainly conclude that, of the games tracked, many of the customers who were available to be tracked didn’t finish the title. We can say that with a fair amount of certainty. What we can’t do is do anything but makes guesses as to the reason, based on that.

For example, it may be true that gamers simply rarely finish games regardless of the length or difficulty, that those factors have no impact at all. Unlikely, but it’s a possible reason.

Or it could be that those players quit because they got bored? I know, that’s not an answer the developers want to consider, their game was pure awesome sauce and they totally nailed the pacing, the gameplay, the atmosphere. The only reason for people not finishing is attention span, right?

I know that I, personally, rarely quit games until I get bored of them. Putting down an engrossing game, like putting down an engrossing book, is difficult for me. I’m not evidence of this being a common trend, but it’s just as likely a solution, that gamers quit when they no longer felt the reward the game offered outweighed the opportunity cost of investing their time in further playing?

Again, speculation, but it is as valid a guess as assuming that people don’t know themselves when they say they want longer, harder games. One way to respond to the conflict between that statement and the data is just to assume people don’t possess self-knowledge. Another way, the more scientific way, is to try to determine if you’re simply missing factors in the equation. Perhaps, when people say they want longer, more challenging games, there is an implicit understanding in their minds that the game must maintain a high level of fun and good pacing throughout that length, and they won’t keep playing a game just because it is long and hard without those unstated factors.

And, of course, as I highlighted, this data has only been collected for certain games, and only from those gamers which are allowing their apps to “phone home”. And this article doesn’t give any other contextual information about the games themselves. To make a blanket statement like ‘games are too long and too hard’, one first needs to determine whether :

1) The sample is representative of a broad spectrum of game genres.

2) The sample is representative of the full player base. Do most of the people who play single player games do so with an active internet connection? Do they allow their games to send data to game servers?

3) Is there significant variation across game types which indicate that genre/mechanic is an important factor in determining whether people finish games, or play for long periods of time? Do the gamers who play Galactic Civilizations 2 play for longer before moving on than the ones who play God of War? What about Tetris or other puzzlers? I’m betting there is variance there, and averaging of data will hide that variation.

4) Is there significant variation within titles of a similar genre of games? This could indicate, for example, that people are more likely to finish games that are good, a shock, I know. Does the length of time before a gamer quits correlate in any way to the scores and accolades that a game receives?

5) Does the game have other modes which draw people away from the single player campaign? I’m betting not even half the people who play Starcraft 2 will finish the single player campaign. It isn’t necessarily indicative of the campaign being too long, more of the fact that some people are really just there for the multiplayer mode. Perhaps games which have a strong MP focus require less in the way of single player campaigns?

6) Whether other game releases impact peoples’ playing habits. For example, you might find that people put aside their games when new games hit the market. This would probably indicate that novelty drives the market, the desire to be playing the with the newest, shiniest toys.

7) Does platform make a difference? Do console gamers tend to finish their games more, or less? As a PC gamer I want to say they are likely to have lesser attention spans, but that is unscientific snobbery. Perhaps they play titles longer, simply because the games are more expensive and the greater investment means they flit between games less? Perhaps the greater piracy on PC titles means the average gamer has many more gaming options open to them and thus shifts attention often?

I’m sure I could think of more things to consider in this analysis, but I’m getting bored. So let’s move on to the next important consideration. Even if we establish some correlation, we still can’t really draw any conclusions.

At that point, all we’ll have is some educated guesses. To actually draw conclusions we’d need to start altering individual factors and determining whether that makes a difference. Ok, if we make the game long and easy, do people finish them? What about short and hard? What about short and easy? Maybe one of those factors is significant but the other isn’t. Maybe neither are, and people are quitting because the game is repetitive and uninspired. Let’s change up the gameplay midway through, see if more variety helps. Story? How does a stronger or weaker focus on story affect game completion? Novelty? Genre saturation?

Basically, without context and without really testing theories, we can’t make any real conclusions about why people don’t finish the games that were measured, whether this is in any way representative of gamers in general, and what steps need to be taken to fix the problem. Or even whether the problem should be fixed. A gamer might know a game has 8 hours gameplay and only finish 4, but leave the experience happy with their purchase. But that same gamer might play a 4 hour game, finish it and leave feeling cheated, even though in both cases they played the same amount. Perception is important in purchasing decisions.

There is a danger in catering to the ‘average’ gamer, you risk alienating everyone who isn’t that mythical ‘average’. I prefer the idea of creating games which adapt to individualism, rather than a homogeneous experience which truly satisfies no-one.

Oh, Bobby Kotick. Are you really, as you seem, the King of the Weasels? Or are you simply the most visible weasel in the horde of weasels infesting the industry. I’m having difficulty deciding.

Apparently a generic modern warfare shooter is a ‘platform’ now. Not just a popular, lowest common denominator title. A platform. Which apparently they are going to try to wedge down the throats of Blizzard fans. Seriously, that’s kind of an odd matching, to try market shooter games to people who are fans of Blizzard titles. Do they believe there is serious overlap, or is it just Bobby trying to get his shareholders excited with visions of selling CoD games to the enormous WoW player base?

Either way, I’m sad. I’m hoping I’m not watching the kind of thing that happens to all great developers who merge into the Publisher collective, the dissolution of what makes them great as they buckle under attempts to milk their genius for more and more money.

So apparently there is this thing going on with Roger Ebert right now. I dunno, he’s some famous American movie reviewer or something? I’ve heard the name before, even if I’ve never actually seen or read any of the man’s reviews. One of the joys of living outside the US, you kinda have this half-sense of American culture thanks to TV.

It’s like the way that you can run across a forum discussion of American politics and have just as good an idea of what is being discussed as if it was your home nation’s politics. Of course, any other country on Earth and you’re probably pretty clueless about their politics/leaders unless they’re worrisome or newsworthy, like North Korea. It’s a funny thing, this injection of Americanism into all your cultural reference points…

Anyway, I’ve gotten side-tracked. So there was this thing with Ebert. Kellee Santiago gave a TED talk about games being art, Ebert publicly disagreed, and now people are talking about that. Well, they’re sharpening their pitchforks. Talking is a bit of a strong word here.

I’d like to take this opportunity to weigh in with what I think is a fairly novel perspective on the debate :

Who cares?

No seriously. Who cares? Is it gamers? Do gamers actually think about this issue, or is the internet response really just people rallying to defend their favourite hobby from the vile aggressor?

I think it is more the devs who actually care. Devs care about whether games are classified as art or not because adult humans would prefer to think of themselves as ‘artists’ rather than ‘toymakers’. Its got a better ring to it, a bit more validity amongst peer groups. You can hold your head up high at those cocktail parties when someone else introduces their boyfriend, the lawyer. You’re an artist and artists are awesome! You aren’t producing toys to suck the money from teenagers and young adults, you’re producing works of cultural significance!

Kelee responded to Ebert, it hints at this issue :

Similarly, it’s time to move on from any need to be validated by old media enthusiasts. It’s good for dinner-party discussion and entertaining as an intellectual exercise, but it’s just not a serious debate anymore.

Was it a serious debate, at some point? Hell, I hope not. What a waste of time.

So I’d like to appeal to my fellow devs : Stop being defensive, stop seeking validation from snooty art-nerds, it’s not like anyone but other art-nerds really care what they think. If you love your job and make a good living from it, what more do you need?

…

Ok, I suppose I can’t resist the opportunity to weigh in on the actual question. Are games art?

Of course. Art is simply some expression of creativity. The fact that it may be expressed in the form of something whose primary function is utility does not make it less valid. The Sistine Chapel was, first and foremost, a chapel. They just payed Michaelangelo to pretty it up, and we get to enjoy the result of Mike expressing himself within the constrains of his commission. (He couldn’t paint some scene from Greek mythology, obviously.) Likewise, we can look at vintage cars as works of art, while they were primarily designed as transport they possess an aesthetic that was a direct expression of someone’s creativity.

So when a game is designed primarily to entertain, as a digital toy with rules and mechanics, and when the creators of said toy have a design concept constraining them like ‘make a game about some angry bald dude killing everything from Greek mythology’, that in no way prevents them from pouring a bucket of art and expression into that game, transforming it as a whole into a piece of art, just as the Sistine Chapel is both adorned in artwork and itself a piece of art thanks to that adornment.

It’s worth noting that just because something is art, that doesn’t make it good art. Your child’s finger paintings may hold a special place in your heart but that doesn’t make them any less crap And likewise, by this definition, toothpaste boxes and furniture are also art, they are designed and have graphics, patterns and logos and suchlike. Just about everything these days is covered in art, we exist in a space so saturated by artwork that we don’t even notice it anymore, only the exceptional artwork stands out. When Ebert states that some films are art but others aren’t, well, he’s being silly. The reality is that those other films are art, they just aren’t good art. In the same way that a child’s finger paintings, while crappy, are still definitely works of art, of personal creativity. They’ve simply got to hone their techniques to compare to the skill and nuance of the masters.

Personally though, I’d prefer the industry doesn’t concentrate too much on ‘being art’. Whenever I see people having these kinds of discussions my ‘pompous asshole’ alarm starts ringing. It causes people to forget their primary purpose. A car can be a work of art, but it must first and foremost be an efficient means of transport. Games are art, but they must be good games first. I read about Flower a while back and couldn’t actually see what, if anything, the gameplay was. Watching a pretty screensaver with some minor quick time events?

Let’s round up all the game developers who start wearing berets and turtlenecks and go around talking about ‘Art’ like they can pronounce the capital letter, and push them out the airlock. Along with Ebert.