Used Games v.s. Pirated Games: Which Is Worse For The Developers?

Which Is Worse For The Developers?

Used Games VS. Piracy

There has been this battle going on for a while where developers say "Don't pirate our games, we need your money to continue to make quality games." The pirate says "If your games were quality I would buy them." And there is another group that says "I torrent games to see if I will like them, if I do I buy them." The last group is very small, and almost insignificant, but it is there.

Now, we hear this going on, we have our friends, our family, maybe our church, or other social networks telling us "Downloading music, games, movies, book, etc... is stealing.". While we all know in the back of our heads it is true that it is theft, and that it takes income to put food on the table, it seems like more times than not we, the consumer, really don't care about someone else's table.

It would seem that we, the consumer, have over looked something. The used game marker hurts gaming (More console gaming than PC) just as much if not more than piracy. I saw this and cocked my head sideways before finally realizing how much sense it made.

Here are some of the reasons I am writing this. You can pretty well educate yourself on the discussion if you check out these articles and explore their links.

Gamepolitics: Developer Labels Used Games Worse Piracy

Tech Spot: Preowned-Games-Are-Worse-Than-Piracy

1up: Market Study Shows Used Game Sales Hurt New Game Sales

Toms Guide: Used Game Sales Hurting Publishers?

I like what Andrew Oliver says, co-founder of Blitz studios.

Essentially Andrew Oliver suggests that console gaming loses 25% of its sales profits to used gaming, which, as said in a number of articles, is not a scientific statistic, but even if he is off by 20%, a 5% loss of revenue to used games is a lot of money when you consider all game sales across the board. But is pirating still worse?

I did some quick searching of the top 100 torrents on The Pirate bay ( a popular bit torrent site). I found that the most active video game torrent is Splinter Cell Conviction, a $60.00 game

There are 2,915 Seeders. This means that there are 2915 computers left on distributing this stolen material.

There are 10,431 Leechers. This means that 10,431 people are currently downloading this game from the seeders. Many of these leechers will become seeders when the download is done, and the process exponentially grows both seeders and leechers until the game loses popularity.

This means that 13346 people are interested in stealing Splinter Cell Conviction (FYI, the average PS3 game costs 15million dollars) adding up how many people times the retail cost, Ubisoft and retailers lose $800,760.00 to pirates based on what this torrent says.

Moving on

I am just going to use GameStop, since we all know and have grown to love their services.
(The below is taken straight off of the gamestopcorp.com website.)

GameStop operates more than 6,200 stores across the United States and in 13 countries: Australia, Austria, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Ireland, Italy, New Zealand, Norway, Spain, Sweden, and Switzerland.


Lets use our noggins for a minute now.
If GameStop has 6,200 stores around the world that look like my GameStop, with walls covered from floor to ceiling with used games, and only one wall with new games how many used game sales does GameStop make annually compared to new game sales?

http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3178585

This tells us that there is a growing trend in buying used games over new games, going from 22.4% total sales of Gamestop to 26.4% in only 3 years. A 4% jump may seem insignificant, but growth shows trends, and saving money is a trend that people have never really been against. I think we can conclude that this trend will continue unless there are regulations put into place about how used game sales produce a profit for the developer (I don't think this will ever happen.) Moreover, 26.4% of all sales being used games is 26.4% of sales that don't have any effect on the developers that made the game. (This very well may be the statistic that Andrew Oliver was referencing when he said 1/4 of game sales are lost to used games.)


Here we see gross profit.
You know the drill, you go into Gamestop, and they give you 5 dollars for a once 60 dollar game, and you use that money towards another game and the cycle goes on and on forever. Well, they just saved money buying that game from you, and not buying it from the developer, which means when they re-sell the game for $20.00 they are making a $15.00 profit for GameStop and nothing for the developer. This is why their lowest statistic of used game software the gross profit percentage is 46.8% next to new game software, when at best, was 21.3% gross profit in the last 3 years.

What can we glean from this?

First off, I want you to know that I don't think that GameStop is the only used game retailer in the world. These numbers do not comprise all used game sales in the past 3 years. In the same regard, GameStop is not the only new game retailer.

So what I would like to leave you, the reader, is this. The argument that the game was purchased once, which means that it is no longer the property of the developer is true, but that doesn't mean that it doesn't hurt them. I haven't heard anyone say anything about regulating this, it is merely statements made, and I believe that they are made to provoke those who have not made up their mind on supporting developers to, in fact, support them by purchasing their games from them, and not from a 3rd part retailer.

You can expect companies to try to make fail-safes, like EA and Microsoft, they want all the money they can get, it is a business, and it takes money to make money. It takes money to provide a product for the consumer, and it takes more money to make a quality product for the consumer. If the consumer gets a used product, the developer doesn't bank anything. They just get fans, and fans don't make a thriving developer, it takes money and time. When your fans haven't dropped a dime on your product (piracy) or are not willing to pay retail costs which means they are buying it used (Gamestop) the game scene will start to change. (It has. Have you seen the indie game scene? the games aren't beautiful, and don't cost much to make.) We will end up losing our favorite franchises to our selfish-frugality.

If you are broke. I understand, I am too- I rent games instead of buying them which is essentially the same as buying them used, but if you really love a developer, send them some bank in the mail or something, they would take a donation for sure. Pirates, I see all 13,346 of you, if they game is awesome, let them know with some money.

To sum it all up
Don't only be a "leech", sometimes you gotta "seed" too...
(Don't just take, sometimes you need to give back.)

Z. W. Van Kleeck

RPGs are not just games where you equip items and use magic.

Why call it an RPG when it is not?

What does it mean to "role-play"?

"You walk out of the building and are standing on the busied street of [insert town name]. The citizens of [insert town name] move at a chaotic pace, bumping into each other with no apology, though it seems the way of things because no one is getting angry. Buildings line the north and south of the street with buyers, sellers, and various shops. To your west there is a hurt boy laying on the ground nearly trampled by the stampede of people. To your east there is a cathedral though it is blocked off by an invisible wall that eliminates this direction as an option for you even though the description of the scene suggests that people are traveling to and from this direction."

Suppose you want to travel east regardless of the situation.

"Despite the narrative you choose to walk east. You walk aimlessly towards the cathedral with no success. After time spent running towards the cathedral, [insert your character's name] is taken over by a foreign though, 'I should see if that boy is alright.'"

Okay, that may seem like a waste of words to some of you, but let me explain. You would never come across a scene like this in a true RPG, because your options would never be so severely limited.

I have been watching this "next generation" of "RPGs" and have been drawn to near hopelessness for the genre. These are not Role Playing Games. They are more like games where you equip items to an already developed character to accomplish a task that you really have no control of. The player is merely the cursor of an interactive movie.

When a publisher gets it mostly right, as with the Forgotten Realms games, Morrowind/Oblivion, Dragon Age: Origins, or the Mass Effect franchise the story's beginning often suffers from the need to build a back story that the player did not invent. The beginnings of these games are stacked with dialog's that ask questions that sum up to "Is my character nice or mean?" and more times than not, you either have amnesia (The Witcher) or you are in jail (Many other popular RPG titles). Successful RPG titles have shown us the difficulty of creating an RPG that is both believable and holds to the "I control this character" aspect of role play.

Any games I reference are not because I think they are terrible games, but because their definition as RPG should most likely be revisited as something else. If you are merely moving a pre-developed character towards check points that build a plot into a well built story, you are not playing an RPG, you are watching an interactive story or playing and adventure game. To say these games are RPGs is very similar to saying that reading a book is like actually becoming the protagonist in the story. You are not actually the protagonist, you just have a good understanding of who he is and what he wants out of life.

With these non-RPGs, it is true, many of them have great stories, some of them are more overrated than others, but none of them achieve RPG in the literal sense of role play. Though you do travel the world and explore, the characters are not really your own. They are characters that you get to follow along with on their predefined path towards a goal that you will have no decisions to truly alter. The illusion of control implemented by dialog options gives the player a sense of real character development, but a second run through the game will reveal the truth; no matter what you choose the outcomes will remain the same.
My favorite example of illusory control is Final Fantasy VII so I am going to use it as my prime example throughout this post. when you meet Yufi in Final Fantasy VII, the illusion is that you get to make a choice to get her on your team or not, the game pretends your dialog choices mean something when you come across her, and she steals all your materia. But it doesn't matter, its scripted, and you can't kill her or capture her. She inevitably becomes an ally, which means that you are never given the choice to not forgive her, which means you really aren't role playing but observing a story that unfolds exactly the same for everyone who plays it. There are many situations similar to this throughout the entire Final Fantasy franchise, making them, not an RPGs, but adventure games with RPG elements.

I would like to point out some fallacies that I believe people have bought into concerning what an RPG is.

1
Statement: I get experience points, its an RPG!

Response: You get EXP for accomplishing things, Modern Warfare 2's multi-player option had EXP that leveled you up and you could buy features that would customize your person... It was not an RPG.

2
Statement: But there is such a large cache of items to find and equip.

Response: Just because I change my armor and weapon does not mean that it is an RPG. For Example, in Counter-strike, you choose your items every time a round starts.... It is not an RPG.

3

Statement: I do quests, and the story is so big.

Response: Doing quests is no different than fulfilling objectives in any game. "do this then do that then do that." When you finish it there is some sort of reward EXP, items, maybe a cut scene... None of this make a game an RPG.

4
Statement: But there is an Active Time Battle System or Turn Based Battle System.

Response: The only bearing that an RPG should have within combat is that the player gets to make choices, and that the environment at least feels interactive (i.e. Mass Effect). The combat should not eliminate the idea that the environment is persistent. If it does it makes combat feel like a mini-game, and eliminates your character persistence in that world, which makes it very difficult to role-play a person who stands and waits his turn instead of relentlessly assaulting his foe. There is a way to show a persistent environment that does not involve random battles and time gauge bars, its called real-time combat, and it works much better with immersing a player into an RPG.

5
Statement: But there is magic; it must be an RPG.
Response: Just because you are in a fantasy world where magic is used doesn't mean that it is an RPG. I feel like the modern gamer would look at the LOTR movies and get some weird impression that they are RPG-movies, just because there is both magic and adventure in it. Magic does not = RPG, and Fantasy does not = RPG.

Most importantly I think I should tell you how to know you are playing an RPG.

1

How to know:The game starts with character creation of at least one person that includes name, class, and race (Race if there are multiple races in the word. if it is that kind of game). Also, there should be a player's manual that comes with the game that aptly defines all races and classes so that the player knows how the world will interact with their character.
Reason: If you do not get to choose these things, then chances are that the game requires you to be "so-and-so, son of so-and-so." or the story needs you to be an elf archer, because it is going to play into the key plot. These sorts of decisions should not be pre-decided, you should discover the plot without following a linear path, all points should converge naturally at a climatic time which points the direction that you are lead to go, though not required to go.

2
How to know: You wondered how your friend got his awesome item. He told you he killed [person]. you respond "Oh, I saved them and they joined my party." and you both look at each other wondering if one choice was better than the other.
Reason: It is very important in role playing, as I have said many times, to put choice in the players hands, and to actually have those choices effect the progression of the game. Otherwise, there is no reason at all for spending time carefully choosing dialog options if the person will always join your party. Imagine Final Fantasy VII where you get to choose not to help Aeris get away from the Turks. Think about what kind of game you would be left with... I imagine Cloud would have spent a lot more time in the Sector 5 slums in that game.



3
How to know: Your character has a reputation based on the decisions you have made, and some people like/dislike you because of it.
Reason: You can't really role-play if you don't have realistic NPCs to role-play with. So, NPCs need to get mad at you, they need to be able to learn to like, and even love you. If they can't then your character looks very out of place in his world.

4
How to know: Before you start doing what you do in the game, you know just about every important part of your character, after all, he is you.
Reason: Who goes into a fight not knowing why they are swinging? Another reason why Final Fantasy VII is not an RPG, what if I didn't want to bomb the reactor... why cant I just live in Midgar, and try to deal with my weird clone-memories, make friends, and be a mercenary? Oh yeah, because it's not an RPG, and I don't get to choose.

Nick Drake is doing what he does, and you assist him... This is no way to start an RPG. You really have no clue whats going on at this point, you're just trying to live.

5
How to know: When you talk to your fellow-gamer friends, you refer to your character in the first person: "I was in the temple of the deep, searching for the lost sword of Bukaka when Isben, the dragon of wealth and flame attacked me."
Reason: YOU ARE THE CHARACTER! the feeling of absolute control should whelm the player as they play. You should be able to second guess your choices, and want to try it the other way immediately after making a choice.

Don't get me wrong, I love Warcraft III, Final Fantasy is a great franchise, and I think that Super Mario Brothers 3 is the best of all the Mario games, but to call these games RPGs because I have a character that levels up, I go on a grand adventure, and I collect items that assist me in conquering enemies just doesn't make sense.


Z. W. Van Kleeck

Another interesting article on this topic: Why is everything trying to be an RPG?

Preview 3D Dot Game Heroes

Presumed Score: Hit

"Do you miss the classic Zelda games?"

If your answer is yes, then I suggest you play 3DGH. Though I have not played it, it strikes me as an instant classic merely on part of its blatant Zelda clone game play that is complimented by a unique graphic style that is assuredly going to capture the gamer that grew up on 8 or 16 bit consoles games.
The negatives I am reading about this game right now go like this "Its a clone. They didn't make anything new. They are rehashing old successful game-play for a newer audience and hoping no one notices." To these statements I have a couple things to say.

1: Final fantasy VI and VII were rehashes of the same premise, yet no one flamed SquareSoft for that, because they were both great games.


2:Dante's Inferno was a copy paste of God of War, but people really enjoyed it.


3: Who cares, all the classic Zelda games were awesome...

4: For all this talk about how making video games is not art, why are you demanding so much?


5: $35.00 = a cheap and fun game. Win/Win?

6: ... JUST LOOK AT IT!



7: Really. Look at it, it looks awesome.

I have an idea that people are so defensive of their fanboy title, Zelda, that they are getting bothered by this game. Games are supposed to be fun. If this game accomplishes that, then this game is successful.

I am very excited about this game and have been for months. I was worried that Silicon Studios might not deliver this title to America. The good news is that it is and very soon (May 11, 2010). I encourage you PS3 owners to snag this up if you get the chance to. It's going to be a mere $35.00 from what I understand, which makes it VERY affordable in today's gaming market.

Hit, Crit, or Miss uses item: Pheonix Down.

My baby was born on March 14th, which left me with discovering the new responsibilities that were to behold within the variable of fatherhood.
I could blame these new responsabilities for why I havent finished Final Fantasy XIII, but to be honest, I think the game was every bit as overrated as Final Fantasy X (Come on, the bad guy was named "Sin"... I think at that point you go back to the drawing board and say "Lets try something a little less cliche, and a little more awesome.").
I do, however, excuse my lack of development on Hit, Crit, or Miss, and my slacking when it comes to awaring myself with the latest gaming news, is that my family will always come first... Yes even on a raid night when I am next in line for the Thunder Fury bindings, family comes first.


We would like to see Hit, Crit, or Miss become a community of gamers, instead of an empty pocket of ideas that gather digital dust. Let us know what you think of our reviews, combat us when you disagree, and by any means make your presence known to us.