Matthewmagic:
Honestly guys, Piracy. Fucking with these companys money is the only thing they understand.

Pirating their products gives them a fairly valid reason to act like douche-bags, don't be a part of the problem.

jehk:

IKWerewolf:

jehk:
Not all DLC is just a missing part of the game. Admittedly a lot of DLC has turned into that.

The major problem with gaming and these perverted business models is that distribution services do not release any data about sales as a whole. This generates a huge amount of risk (specifically when introducing new IP) and basically forces the developers to take advantage of the people who love their games the most. Hopefully one of these services will do IT sometime (I'm looking at you Steam). It would be an awesome shot in the arm for the industry.

Steam are actually already doing the right thing in terms of Greenlight, several of the games in my list and LOVING THEM (in between other games I seriously need to finish), if we want better games, we have to say this is what we want.

It is also the best way to reduce the risk; if something similar failed to get interest, an indie game maker they can look at how it was marketed, look at comments and see if its worth even designing that idea.

If you want better games and you have Steam the best way to get them is by looking through Greenlight, its a minimum of yes or no they ask AND will diversify the mainstream market more as global, free market research data will exist.

Greenlight is pretty awesome overall. However, its only a small part of Steam and only includes indie titles. It still doesn't solve the problem I'm talking about which is not having solid sales data to make informed business decisions. The markets for Steam, Xbox Live, App Store, etc are very different. There's a huge black hole of available public information about sales (unlike say film industry).

OK stand by for complicated arguement.

Greenlight may not be sales data but its a start... it is actually something more important. Steam's Greenlight is a Market Research Paradise; even if they do not put their own game on Greenlight they can search for similar games and look at comments to see the reception games of similar classes of games receive and can make an active decision whether or not they should make that game for Steam.

Other Steam elements also add to the toolset of future designers... Recommendations, Forums, Top Sellers and even Steamworks (logically the more made for Steamworks, the more a game is liked) can be used as more than just a Point of Sale and Community, a smart developer would use it as market research... although Sales Data doesn't exist there are clearly other ways of reducing the risk.

I love to see anger properly harnessed and focussed for productive purposes.

I think one of the main problems as well is that there isn't really a good way to tell these publishers that their business practices are crap.

I mean there's no shortage of games that do have these micro-transactions that rake in tons of cash, so from the publisher's point of view that can't be the problem. People are buying it so it's good.

When one of these games does fail it's chalked up to the IP itself, see Dead Space for example. If it fails EA doesn't plan to stop micro-transactions for full-price games, it plans to stop the Dead Space IP.

Gamers as a whole just aren't organised enough to send a clear message with their wallets and publishers are on average much, much too dense to understand any other message.

HuurDuuur - How do I ending?

I'm just surprised fee-to-play is even a viable business model. I've not paid for on-disc DLC nor crap like ME3's bonus packs ever. It's blatantly a rip off, so why do people do it?

I feel DLC is great for small-medium content boosts to the full experience, if prices accordingly (£5-10). If it's tat, pile it up into a pack with other tat to make it worth a fiver. Anything above £10 in price should be called an expansion, and EXPAND on the full experience as opposed to boosting it. If it doesn't fit any of that criteria, I don't buy it; never have.

For once I find myself agreeing with Jim - and he even cut short his ghastly catchphrase.

But on a more serious note, I also see a crash coming up - but I don't see it as a crash, but more of a tipping point or a good purge. The Pay-to-Play-and Play Again monetisation of games WILL come, and while we can moan about it as much as we like - it's going to happen.

But it will also mark the tipping point of gamer patience, gamers as a whole have had enough of overpriced and underwhelming DLC, oppressive DRM, too high an asking price up front and just too much greed in general. If gamers abstained, the leeches like John Richetello, Bobby Kotick et al would drop off and retire and take their gluttonous influence with them with any luck.

But the hard part is the abstainance of gaming, the publishers take the developers hostage every time and it tugs on gamer's collective heartstrings every time. We could try to avoid publishers with bad business practices - but finding good publishers is pretty hard these days. With all the publishers holding the developers as economic hostages who probably have developed some sort of Stockholm Syndrome for them by now - it's time to stop ignoring the elephant in the room and lock our wallets. If developers lose their jobs - so be it, it's all for a greater good.

If gamers don't stand up the the bullying publishers you can expect to be even more ripped off in the future. And believe you me, it'll be a VERY dark future for the gamer.

When marketing sanity in terms of DLC comes from NINTENDO, something is rotten in the state of Denmark.
I am pleasantly surprised at how Nintendo is handling the DLC in Fire Emblem and I'm going to support the hell out of them.

A lot of us gamers took so much shit for saying this was coming years ago, even from JimJim here (no hard feelings). It is sad to see so much of it coming true and making my hope for another collapse even stronger.

Chessrook44:
In short, "This is why we can't have nice things."

DVS BSTrD:
Who says the subscription based model is outdated?

I'd say the failure of TOR, most likely.

TOR failed because of so much hype and just delivering another WoW experience.

I honestly prefer the subscription model because it makes everything accessable to everyone who are on equal footing from the start.

People say they like F2P model, but in the end they don't like being pushed into a grind to get them to buy items or bonuses, or losing to someone who bought a fancy new weapon. No matter how good the game, the devs always have to put mechanics in to make it just frustrating enough to make people want to buy something.

Ickorus:

Matthewmagic:
Honestly guys, Piracy. Fucking with these companys money is the only thing they understand.

Pirating their products gives them a fairly valid reason to act like douche-bags, don't be a part of the problem.

Not really, if they weren't doing such openly greedy crap and screwing gamers so much, I'd have some sympathy for them. But now I want to see pirates really hit these big publishers hard just for a little payback.

I have never been able to understand how this type of market works. Why do people spend money on non content items. WHy pay money for better items or to be able to cheat at a game. The whole point of a game is to play the game.

I do buy the odd DLC, but itis always because of more content, not because I get a set of blue armour.

Love ya, Jim. Keep up the god-thankingly-worthy work.

The ending to this made me chortle in my chair.

Having never gotten on board with the Smart phones, I've avoided a lot of the f2p stuff. LoL seems to be doing it well enough. The shoehorned DLC which I experienced most intimately in dragon age Origins was off-putting, I hope they don't do that again. EA has a number of IPs I'd like to continue enjoying, if possible.

Well, I'm not buying Dead Space 3, that is certain. I love my games 100% complete. If the game is good - like Dragon's Dogma or Fist of the North Star or Dragon Age Origins - I just buy every piece of DLC - this is like a thank you to developer. I don't mind spending a lot on DLC.
But this microtransaction stuff? No. The only Dragon's Dogma DLC I ignored was rift crystals. It's not even content. But there it's a minor thing (those rift crystal DLC are actually 100% worthless- probably they're there just in case someone want to give capcom money?). Those don't add anything in the game and this DLC is not referenced at any point.
But games like Mass Effect 3, Dead Space 3... They are never complete and therefore a no-buy for me. Just like MMOs of all kinds.

I've tried 1 F2P game in my life, Tribes Ascend. Then stopped playing and regretted trying since you can't have it all 100%.
See, they crossed that line. DLC is one thing. You keep buying them until you have all and game sort of grows larger (sometimes with useless items, but still). But micotransactions just kill that. It will always be there. You can't like pay $15 or $60 and have it all, there will always be that option in the menu. And for me it's a strict no buy. I am crazy like that, I like when game confirms that I have everything I can have.
Yes, I can spend over $60 on skins and small stuff. But I can't stand the idea of microtransactions. Probably EA got the wrong idea when I've bought all those previous DLC for Dead Space games? Well, they're about to find out how wrong they are.
I wonder how many people are like me...

irishda:

Oh no, rest assured, I still watched the rest. Even including the part where he says "I would even buy some of this stuff if it wasn't ridiculously overcharged or if they didn't beat me over the head with it." In other words, Jim is wholly willing to support the shit he says he hates so much, if it just didn't cost so much, or they didn't ask him so many times. Good thing I watched far enough to see him back up his hypocritical position.

Voice your complaints all you want. Businesses don't give a shit until you stop paying them. And right now, you guys are paying them. So yes, the bitching is annoying because you guys whine and complain while still handing them money hand over fist. Then you act as though you were forced into it, like he was powerless NOT to buy the Infinite Weapon Durability.

I've been arguing with myself a great deal on just how to interject into this argument, and really, all I can think to say is...people are allowed to complain. You can feel free to disagree with the complainers and even complain about them complaining but ultimately...it's not going to stop them. Unlike instances of science this isn't as clear cut, there's not as many hard facts and comes down to a lot of opinions. You see Jim and folks like me that agree with him as whiny, whiny complainers who want our shit for free. While we see ourselves as people who are complaining that the big companies actually have the gall to try and charge us money for frankly ridiculous things. It'd be like if...say, you purchased an action figure of...Ragna the Bloodedge, and rather than just coming with his sword you have to buy the sword entirely separate, and then you have to buy another sword if you want it to extend into the blood scythe. Then on top of that they sell you special, brand paints for giving Ragna the Bloodedge his alternate color schemes, like that Sol Badguy one.

Both points are, in a sense, accurate. In a sense, we are complaining that the companies are charging us money for this. So if you put that the right way, yes we are whining that things like cheat codes, and costumes aren't free. Yet it also goes the other way, while we are whining that they aren't free, that same token can also be just as accurately described as complaining about ridiculous and downright silly business models. The only problem is that you see it from entirely one viewpoint, and most people see it from the other, with few willing to see it from both angles. Also I had more to say than I originally thought.

Hahahahaha, that end clip with Jim diggin the music and simultaneously bobbing his head in-game cracked me up way more than it should have.
Good video too Jim.

I fail to understand what EA is doing wrong here. As long as the in-game transaction system isn't the sole provider of all the resources for the gun-smithing and there are enough resources in game to get through it, they are not doing anything wrong. Actually, now that I think about it it isn't any different to the normal system. If you can go through a game of Dead Space 3 and then restart on the same save while keeping all your equipment couldn't you just go through the game again, collect more resources, and craft whatever the hell you want? Its time v.s. convenience. The essence of a free-to-play model.

Of course they could just piss it down their leg just as easily by making it near-necessary to buy stuff, but I doubt EA is THAT stupid (I wouldn't be surprised if they are though.)

Oh, and that "final fantasy all the bravest" thing is just utter horseshit. You don't sell ALL THE CONTENT. Make a base game that is completable and enojoyable on its own then sell additional level packs on top of that. If you do still want to sell EVERYTHING, however, make it like 10 cents per thing or something cheap.

Matthewmagic:
*Raises hand* Umm I've been saying this since DlC replaced expansion packs. Hell even Wows subscription service is a bit much. And don't even get me started on xbox live, paying to have twelve year olds scream racail epithets in my ear. I have bought dlc for one game only, that is Arkham City. Usually if I'm really excited about a game I'll just wait for the greatest hits version with all the dlc already apart of the game to hit, ya know, the full fucking game.

Games are too damn expensive for this kind of shit. It is too the point where I pirate every game and if I like it enough I'll buy the full version. Why should I pay full price for a half finished game.

This is why I only buy games that I KNOW will provide me a good value for its money. I gauge value by "how much money per hour" and compare it to movies. Right now, my most played game on steam is FO:NV. I bought it for $10 with all of its expansions and now have 108 hours put into it. that is less than 10 cents per hour. That is RIDICULOUSLY good. Also, second place is FTL at 74 hours. Again, about 10 cents per hour. Anything more than that and i'm hard pressed to buy it.

Vault101:

Nurb:

Not really, if they weren't doing such openly greedy crap and screwing gamers so much, I'd have some sympathy for them. But now I want to see pirates really hit these big publishers hard just for a little payback.

and guess who suffers? (its not the pirates or the company)

Paying customers have been suffering for 8 years as things have only gotten worse. The sooner they go bankrupt the better.

uchytjes:

Matthewmagic:
*Raises hand* Umm I've been saying this since DlC replaced expansion packs. Hell even Wows subscription service is a bit much. And don't even get me started on xbox live, paying to have twelve year olds scream racail epithets in my ear. I have bought dlc for one game only, that is Arkham City. Usually if I'm really excited about a game I'll just wait for the greatest hits version with all the dlc already apart of the game to hit, ya know, the full fucking game.

Games are too damn expensive for this kind of shit. It is too the point where I pirate every game and if I like it enough I'll buy the full version. Why should I pay full price for a half finished game.

This is why I only buy games that I KNOW will provide me a good value for its money. I gauge value by "how much money per hour" and compare it to movies. Right now, my most played game on steam is FO:NV. I bought it for $10 with all of its expansions and now have 108 hours put into it. that is less than 10 cents per hour. That is RIDICULOUSLY good. Also, second place is FTL at 74 hours. Again, about 10 cents per hour. Anything more than that and i'm hard pressed to buy it.

I have sunk a ridiculous amount of time into fallout new vegas. I'm currently getting my moneys worth out of far cry 3. FTL is a great game, really frustrating. Here is the catch though, I don't think I would care much for any of the games mentioned thus far if I had to buy the zorton ship for 2.00. Or was denied Power Armour training until I payed 5.00.

Nurb:

Ickorus:

Matthewmagic:
Honestly guys, Piracy. Fucking with these companys money is the only thing they understand.

Pirating their products gives them a fairly valid reason to act like douche-bags, don't be a part of the problem.

Not really, if they weren't doing such openly greedy crap and screwing gamers so much, I'd have some sympathy for them. But now I want to see pirates really hit these big publishers hard just for a little payback.

I'm not piracy's biggest fan, but just for once I want people too use it instead of a boycott. It makes perfect sense to me, you don't if you don't have to buy something too enjoy it, and the create is actively screwing over it's paying customers, why not screw them harder, with their own sand paper dildo?

I want too see this backfire in a big way. I am honestly of the opinion (with all the industry insight I really do not have to be fair) that if it doesn't we will have bigger problems.

Vault101:

Nurb:

Not really, if they weren't doing such openly greedy crap and screwing gamers so much, I'd have some sympathy for them. But now I want to see pirates really hit these big publishers hard just for a little payback.

and guess who suffers? (its not the pirates or the company)

I don't think that is fair. We live in a capitalist society and if theft catches on in the way it has with video games it is because the pricing model is royally fucked. I will not buy a game for 60 dollars if I don't think I will spend at least twenty hours on the game. Most games these days last eight hours, if you are lucky. The industry has two possible responses too this. Make the games so inexpensive that people don't consider piracy(though some always will). Or make the means for getting the game so awesome that piracy seems like a worse service(like steam is doing right now). Just raising the price on consumers will only drive more into piracy. We saw this with music, and we saw this with movies. It wasn't until someone came up with a better option that people stopped.

Considering how few demos are put out these days, it is hard to believe that people are paying 60 dollars for games they know nothing about.

The "whales and long tails" theory of mobile game monetization predicts that 20% of a free-to-play game's revenue comes from people who spend money like it's water (the "whales,") while the majority of your revenue comes from ordinary users who buy a few things things multiple times over the entire lifetime of the product. (This forms a "long tail" on the graph showing money-per-user spent over time.)

So what happens when the economy takes a nose-dive like the one we're in right now? The middle class spend less. Whales become a bigger percentage of the overall market share because they're the only ones with any money for discretionary spending, and they have no concept of how much they spend or what real-world prices are like, so they're perfectly willing to drop 200 bucks or more on something like Angry Birds.

(Hell, spending a lot is a status symbol for these people. You could probably make a mobile game that just puts a sign above your avatar's head saying how much you spent on the game, and watch those numbers go up and up and up as the Whales try to outspend each other for bragging rights!)

I don't have access to any sales figures, so I can't prove this theory. I could be totally wrong. But if the rich people who can readily afford these bullshit prices ever become more than 50% of the total market, well... EA's bullshit starts to make economic sense at that point.

What else are they gonna do? Make it up in volume? In THIS economy?

The Whales are the only people who can afford to buy several titles at $60 each and then spend an arbitrary amount more on top of it for in-game purchases. So if EA is making that their de-facto business model, they must expect everyone else to just stop buying their games altogether.

Fortunately, as this video points out, there are signs that it's NOT profitable when that happens, no matter how much you gouge.

So, bye bye, Old Guard! Have fun creating the most expensive games on the planet on 20% of the market share!

I fell you man, we all do. I sincerely doubt anyone will defend the industry practices against this video, unless they're trolls who are really good at lying to themselves.

Speaking of mobile games, the Playbook is a sad story right now. For the past 3 days, all of the new games have been aimed at babies & toddlers, & they're not even by the same person. Who in Jim's name lets a sobering infant play with a pricey fragile tablet? Dammit Blackberry, how about a little quality control?

I couldn't agree more.

Saddest part about this is, I'm studying to go into this industry. In my last year of university for Games and Entertainment Design so hopefully there's still some left by the time I get there.

I gotta say, when Jim first came on the Escapist, I loathed him. Now I feel he's kind of the Chomsky of the gaming world.

This is by far your best episode, Jim. Good job.

Well, if its really that offensive to people you could just NOT buy into the game. I got the season pass for Borderlands 2 and I feel like an idiot because whats the point of expansions if you can't level up past 50. So I will just not make that mistake again.
Everyone here is capable of NOT buying a game.
Even if you skip the "midnight release" with all of the fancy swag they hand out you can send more of a message than buying the game on midnight release and then crying about the DLC later.
I respect your opinion but we will have to change our approach if you want the companies (like EA/Square Enix) to change theirs. It would take about 500,000 people to NOT buy the game right away to even show up on the radars of the companies that pull this crap but surely you can make them wait 8 measly weeks, make them sweat a bit. OR you could buy the base game right away and say "Fuck off" to the season pass and the DLC.

What it comes down to is the buying side of the equation needs to make the move here because we all know that companies are built to make money in the most efficient way possible, that's why they exist. They are good at making money.

Crono1973:

Vault101:

Nurb:

Not really, if they weren't doing such openly greedy crap and screwing gamers so much, I'd have some sympathy for them. But now I want to see pirates really hit these big publishers hard just for a little payback.

and guess who suffers? (its not the pirates or the company)

If it's not hurting the company why are they claiming that it does and they use that to justify even more anti-consumer bullshit? Piracy is a scapegoat, entertainment industries have always been anti-consumer and they will use any excuse they can to justify anti-consumer behavior. If I am not mistaken, the entire reason the First Sale Doctrine exists is because book publishers were trying to control distribution of books after they sold them.

Entertainment industries are very pro consumer just like any other industry, thats how they make money, that's how companies grow to the size of EA, Square Enix, (whoever makes those farming sim games). Consumers give them money and if the companies cease to be entertaining or they start treating consumers like crap they lose money.
Of course, if you have a bunch of new, naive consumers (Grandparents for example), who keep buying movie/TV/cartoon based cash-in games ("Harry Potter XIV", "WWE Barbie Horse Smackdown Adventure 37") and they keep making money from farting out those games then they wont change.
Piracy does "hurt" the company but it really FUCKS the legal consumers who just want to play a game without having to enter in 50 digit security codes and answer what their favorite colored balloon is (because my favorite balloon color changes every 3 weeks because I am a simple man).

Piracy is one of those things that people think is going to "send a message" to companies, and that message is "MOAR SECURITY WILL FIX EVERYTHING" not, "WE SHOULD STOP BEING STUPID GITS". If you truly believe that an industry is being a bunch of stupid gits then why would you believe that they will be able to pick up the message your sending them? They won't. Even "Smart" industries wont. They chase sales numbers. More piracy = more security = more time wasted on failcurity = wasted time on everything else= higher costs = fucked legal consumers = more piracy = MORE security = more time wasted on failcurity = wasted time. It's a never ending loop that can ONLY get worse for the average gamers.

Legion:
I agree. I find myself getting sick of gaming and the industry more and more. I'm getting Dead Space 3 because like you, as much as I dislike EA's practices, I genuinely enjoy the series. I am getting Bioshock Infinite because I love the look of it. Beyond that though? I look at most developers and most games and I don't see an enjoyable game, I see for the lack of a better description, a bunch of politicians trying to see what they can claw from us.

If the self styled "discerning gamers" keep buying and promoting their products, you're part of the problem. Vote with your wallet and buy more independent games...

Legion:

canadamus_prime:

GoddyofAus:

Or they'll just take the massive profits they've already made, give the industry and its supporters the finger and walk away cackling into the shadows, leaving an absolute trainwreck in their wake.

Never underestimate the cowardess of big business when the chips are well and truly down.

I could see Microsoft and Sony doing that as they have their fingers in many pies and the fate of the video game industry wouldn't hurt them a whole lot, but companies like EA, Activision, Sega, Capcom, and Nintendo who's sole source of profit is video games, they'll have to learn to adapt to survive or die and any of them that don't won't be missed. And any of these businesses that are out to make money want to continue to make money.

The sad thing is, if it did happen they'd blame it on us, not them. They'd complain about gamers lack of support, or entitlement and so on. Then complain about how they needed things like DLC and micro-transactions to afford to make games profitable so that they can make more.

Hell, they have pretty much tried using these excuses to justify their greed already. Completely ignoring the fact that countless decent games have been made without tacking on multiplayer, adding DLC or micro-transactions.

Yep, it'll be a frosty day in hell before they'll admit to being in the wrong.