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[Richard Kain]

By the way, we hear a lot of negative talks about Steam from game communities, too.

Well, there is no such thing as a perfect system, and every service has room to improve. In the case of Steam, I think discoverability is still an issue, as is their approvals process. They are attempting to address this through Steam Greenlight, but it is still an issue.

As to game communities, you are always going to get some whiners. Gamers are notoriously entitled. They've been spoiled by an industry that has spent the past decade and a half bending over backwards to please them. For my part, I have no major problems with Steam. And I was late to regularly use digital distribution. Steam provides a solid service with great products that are convenient to download and use. Most people who object to a service like Steam simply don't want their game library tied to an external service at all. While I can appreciate such a sentiment, you have to move with the times.

[Evilmincer]

 you are always going to get some whiners. Gamers are notoriously entitled. They've been spoiled by an industry that has spent the past decade and a half

You're right, a lot of gamers have been spoiled rotten. But some gamers are being ripped off too.

Example. I know of a group of people who played CSS and other Steam related games, and they use a custom vent overlay. They were banned because VAC said it was a cheat. They couldn't have been hacking, because they always had the shittiest scores, and bottom of the list in KD. But VAC banned them, and now they can't play any steam related games on ranked servers.
This doesn't happen often, but it does happen, and steam refuses to do anything about it. They just say, buy a new account, and rebuy all the games. YAH FUCKING RIGHT!!!

Or you take what PlayNC (Nexon) did.
AutoAssault, Tabula Rasa, Exteel. I for one spent hundreds on these games, because I loved em, thought they were awesome.. Except Tabula that was total shit.

Anyways, PlayNC turned around and just shut down their servers. Because they claim their profits werent high enough to warrant further business. WHAT THE FUCK!!!

Or Look at City Of Heroes... 10 years this game is running, and people moved away from it in the past 2 years. Last year this time they went from Pay to play to Free to play, and they allowed custom maps by the players. No other MMORPG allowed this. Now in 5 weeks they are shutting the doors to this game forever.

So are they really spoiled? Or are they just getting what they can, before the door is shut in their faces?

[Maud'Dib Atreides]

 you are always going to get some whiners. Gamers are notoriously entitled. They've been spoiled by an industry that has spent the past decade and a half

Or Look at City Of Heroes... 10 years this game is running, and people moved away from it in the past 2 years. Last year this time they went from Pay to play to Free to play, and they allowed custom maps by the players. No other MMORPG allowed this. Now in 5 weeks they are shutting the doors to this game forever.

WHAT

[Richard Kain]

So are they really spoiled? Or are they just getting what they can, before the door is shut in their faces?

Nope, they are definitely spoiled. When I was growing up, there was essentially one home console. Just one. There were competitors in the periphery, but their market share was so small that they barely mattered. Games for this system cost $30 - $50, and sometimes even more. The chips for these cartridges were proprietary, so there were constant issues with availability that unnaturally inflated already steep prices. Back in the mid-80s, $40 was a LOT more money than it is today. And games were such a fresh industry, that a very limited number of games got released, and of those only a moderate percentage were worth owning. The prices of games rarely ever dropped below their original prices, it wasn't until the next console cycle came around that you started seeing the previous-gen cartridges drop.

Generally speaking, you might be able to acquire two games a year, if you were lucky. Getting three or four games to play in one year was a miracle.

And that was just on the console front. PCs back then usually cost upwards of $3000, and that was just for the hardware. PC games were usually more affordable than console games, but they had their own set of issues to deal with. Gaming was an extremely expensive hobby, and access was very limited.

Compare that to today, where gaming is a huge and profitable industry. The kind of games that used to cost an arm and a leg are now available for $5 or less, and you can play them on your mobile phone. Consoles and PCs are comparatively cheaper than they've ever been. I bought a brand-new laptop for only $550 the other day, one with an i7 Intel processor that can handle most of the games I enjoy. I can walk into almost any big-box store and pick up handfuls of high-quality games for $20 each. (sometimes less) I have to work hard to locate a game that I CAN'T find on most store shelves.

Gaming is cheaper, more accessible, and higher quality than its ever been. So perhaps you can appreciate that some of us old-timers might feel slightly irked when we hear gamers whine and moan when their every whim isn't being catered to. This industry isn't perfect, but I feel quite safe in saying that modern gamers are quite a bit more entitled than they have any reason to be.

[Muz]

Games are a luxury thing. You can't really be "spoiled". 

[Klaim]

Games aren't luxury. Are movies luxury?

[quadisys]

Well, yeah. What we are trying to achieve is to bring this relationship of publishers and gamers back to normal. Because these days is exactly as you say -- publishers introduce ridiculous restrictions, gamers depend on their servers / existence... this is not a good thing. Our solution is file based, i.e. if we, for some reason, go bust, the original publisher just needs to publish the clean (unprotected) file or two and you can play forever without any further limitations.

[Muz]

Games aren't luxury. Are movies luxury?

Luxury isn't really the right word, but it's one of those things that's always at the bottom of the shopping list.

If anything, game developers are a lot more entitled. "My game is a masterpiece, it's priced the same as Baldur's Gate but nobody appreciates it!". I actually did a really long rant on this, but it's a massive derail. If you can't produce something that's higher quality, cheaper, and/or more unique, then don't complain about the customer not wanting to buy it.

[Oskuro]

Games aren't luxury. Are movies luxury?

Yes they are. They are items not essential to your survival or well being.


This still doesn't excuse abusive marketing practices. The bottom line regarding piracy across all entertainment media, is that pirated versions of the software are often more convenient for the user than the legal versions.

I'd point that this convenience is part of what makes digital services like Steam or Netflix thrive, they make it easy to access the content, and it turns out that a lot of people are willing to pay for the convenience, rather than be bothered to get it for free.

Want another example? Take Megaupload, and how a lot of people actually payed for an account just to more easily download stuff.

People are willing to pay for things, it should be the market who has to bend backwards to accommodate customer needs, but, oddly enough, the industry consensus seems to be that the user is the one needing to jump through all kinds of hoops and hurdles.

Yes, there are a lot of people who will not pay for a product, no matter how easy and convenient it is, but the mistake is in thinking that those are lost sales. They are not, those people are not your customers, they are using your product because they can get it for free, but if they couldn't, they wouldn't pay for it.

So the question with any DRM always boils down to... How will it impact people who are actually willing to pay for the product?

Hardware locking, by the way, is a horrible idea in an era where devices are diverse and specialized. People now have laptops, smartphones, tablets, and what have you. Not to mention the devices are discarded in favour of new ones continually. The hardware is becoming more disposable, locking unto it is officially a bad idea^tm.

[Klaim]

Games aren't luxury. Are movies luxury?

Yes they are. They are items not essential to your survival or well being.

Which is not the definition of luxury. Books and music are not either.

[Klaim]

Ok let me explain once what I think about the "game are luxury" mindset:

Games are a medium. Nothing more, nothing less.
As a medium, it convey culture, whatever that means.

All media have history that goes to the same steps. One important step that all media go through is the switch from "luxury" to "common people stuffs". Why?
Because luxury is a barrier to culture and culture is the real thing that stays.

When you say "games are luxury", what I think you mean is that it is not "necessary" (which is wrong, as culture is basically what makes life bearable) and that there is a barrier of access to it which I think is totally wrong at least in most of countries where we leave.

In other words, some games can be luxury, yes. Games, itself, is not luxury. It's culture.


As soon as you forget that, you're making tons of wrong assumptions about what could be or not done with games (or any other medium).
It's what made the evolution american comics so retarded compared to japanese comics for example (in the sense of what was possible to make with comics compared with what was made with it).


Games are not luxury. If you're really thinking that games are luxury, it's like living in the cavern of possibilities, when some others are outside, seeing no limit to the sky.

[RudyTheDev]

Which is not the definition of luxury. Books and music are not either.

It seems you are disagreeing on word usage semantics. If you bear with me, video games are luxury by dictionary definition, as in "non-essential". So are books and music, and most other items. This isn't an opinion, that's the definition. But this is one of those words that's never used right, even if everyone understands you. Which brings me to my point -- context, context, context.

The word "luxury" most people you hear use is in a subjective context. People use it to refer to goods they consider to be luxury goods. For example, over 90% of US has Internet access, but only 30% of the whole world do. Video games aren't luxury in US, but they sure as hell are in Sierra Leone. I'm sorry, but "I need video games" is a first world problem.

Until a few years ago, I had never bought a proper non-bootleg AAA video game (we didn't even have a non-bootleg video game shops until a decade ago). At €40 a game and about €300 m.w. salary, video games most certainly are a luxury to most people here. If I lived in US, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't call video games luxury. What I'm getting at is that the majority of people online who have a home, have a computer, have Internet access, and own video games are already a skewed minority.

P.S. Just so I'm clear, I'm not saying we shouldn't complain at the industry for many-a-wrongs they do.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

actually i do think games are a need rather than an option; someone's mind would be terribly stunted if they never played a game in their life

but by game i don't mean videogame, i mean any type of game. card games, board games, dice games, hop scotch, hide and go seek, rock paper scissors, whatever. stuff like that is free. even native tribes play children's games like those

basically amusement is a necessity, but expensive electronic / computerized amusement is not a necessity

[Klaim]

RudyTheDev> Sorry, I was not completely clear because I forgot the real conclusion (I was in a hurry - I should stop posting just before having to leave...).

Paul Eres is spot on what I intended to mean.

Video games are a medium to convey games that are culture.
Basically, any cultural thing are really important to all humans, which is why you see a lot of "culture" being bought by people who don't have much for a living. Saying that games are luxury is like ignoring the fact that it's unavoidable culture that need to exist to keep humans sane. So no it's not "non-essential", even if it looks like it is, because it don't yet have the same status as, say, book or music.

So what I mean is that you can't avoid even very poor people to want games, and video games enhanced games.

As Paul says, some computerized games are expensive but it's very relative to where you live. You can't generalize on games being luxury. Which is what I was reacting to.

[Oskuro]

I agree that art & entertainment are very important parts of the human experience.

But from a pure economic standpoint (and let's not forget that this thread is about games as a product) all entertainment media are luxury products, as in not essential for survival (unlike food, medicine or shelter).

*Takes a quick look at the Wikipedia entry*

Oooookeeey, quote time:

Luxury goods are products and services that are not considered essential and are associated with affluence.

In contemporary marketing usage, Prof. Bernard Dubois defines "luxury" as a specific (i.e. higher-priced) tier of offering in almost any product or service category. However, despite the substantial body of knowledge accumulated during the past few decades, researchers still have not arrived on a common definition.

In economics, a luxury good is a good for which demand increases more than proportionally as income rises, and is a contrast to a "necessity good", for which demand is not related to income. Luxury goods are often synonymous with superior goods.

Luxury goods are said to have high income elasticity of demand: as people become wealthier, they will buy more and more of the luxury good. This also means, however, that should there be a decline in income its demand will drop.

So it is a rather nebulous term. Guess that, to the very least, AAA games do qualify as luxury goods according to the previous definitions.

Edit: Been mulling it over, I guess the reason I personally define non-essential goods as luxury goods, is because of a common parlance around here referring to anything you buy that you really don't need as a luxury purchase. Even, say, going out for dinner, or purchasing some sort of service is defined as "giving yourself a luxury".

So yeah, semantics strike again.

[Klaim]

Yeah, and even invoking economy will not help because classic economy is based on the assumption that people make rational choices, which they don't, which spawned a new kind of economic studies which only have some years of existence so far.


Anyway, guess we're getting offtopic.

[Richard Kain]

Anyway, guess we're getting offtopic.

A bit.

I was just trying to point out that modern games are not as much of a luxury item as they used to be. This has brought both benefits and consequences. The biggest benefit is that games have become even more ingrained into popular culture. Having video gaming become a far more affordable medium has made it possible for far more people to experience it, and this is ultimately to the benefit of the medium. While some core gamers complain about the influence that the DS and Wii have had on the industry, ultimately the expansion of video games into more casual markets has been a positive development.

The consequence is that video game customers have become increasingly entitled, and many game experiences are being unfairly undervalued. The push to lower the cost of individual titles, and make a profit off of large-quantity sales has had far-reaching repercussions.

[quadisys]

Hardware locking, by the way, is a horrible idea in an era where devices are diverse and specialized. People now have laptops, smartphones, tablets, and what have you. Not to mention the devices are discarded in favour of new ones continually. The hardware is becoming more disposable, locking unto it is officially a bad idea^tm.

That's the reason why we allow to lock the game on as many devices as publisher think makes sense. So the decision is not made by us. You think your customers would need 10 machines at once? Be our guest, no limitation from our side.

[sigfarter]

where can i pirate your software? i'll download it and let you know if i have any problems, thanks