"The Devil's Halibut - Used Games"

[kane_magus]

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"TotalBiscuit brings you his opinion on the used games controversy circling around next-gen consoles and what the future might hold for the games market."

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While a lot of what TotalBiscuit is saying there might sound like it makes sense and all, maybe, I'm still going to avoid the X-bone like the bubonic plague (and the PS4 as well, if it tries to do something similar, as the rumors seem to be indicating) regardless. Unapologetically.

Yeah, TotalBiscuit may make a few decent points there, I'll give him that, but one of the problems with his arguments is that he seems to be making the same mistake that a whole lot of people make when it comes to used games. That problem is simply that "used games" =/= "GameStop." It seems like everyone who talks about used games thinks that this necessarily means GameStop, and only GameStop (or its overseas equivalents in this case, I guess). Yes, GameStop is part of the whole Used Games Thing™, a big, huge part of it. I, personally, don't give a single crap about GameStop. I wouldn't lose a wink of sleep if GameStop and its ilk all went completely out of business tomorrow.

As for me, I freely admit that I don't actually buy used games at all anymore, at least not from GameStop/EB Games/whatever. I got burned too many times in the past, which is part of the reason I dislike GameStop so much (though there are plenty of other reasons as well, such as their policy of "gutting" new games, for instance, which is why I don't even buy new games from GameStop anymore, let alone used ones). Also, I am a hoarder and I do not sell my games. The very few times in the distant past that I did sell games (in order to help pay for a Dreamcast, for example), I regretted getting rid of them, and ended up rebuying some of them years later (Silent Hill, for example). These days I simply don't sell games, even if there's almost no chance that I'll ever play them again. Will I never sell any of my games in the future? Who knows. But if I do ever sell old games in the future, it certainly won't be to GameStop. (EDIT) And when I did eventually sell all of my shit, it wasn't to fucking GameStop. (/EDIT)

What I have done in the past, however, is to give away/sell for very cheap some of my games to friends and family, usually when I buy replacement versions for a different system (e.g. Okami PS2 vs Okami Wii, Jade Empire Xbox vs Jade Empire SE PC, etc.) or get an upgraded version (e.g. Persona 3 vs Persona 3 FES). Likewise, I have gotten games from others for similar reasons that I otherwise would not have bought myself. If consoles are built to lock out these kinds of games, though, I wouldn't be able to do that any more, at least not without having to arbitrarily pay out the ass to Microsoft or whatever (which I simply won't be doing), and that's one reason I'm still pissed off about this, even though I don't otherwise buy/sell/trade used games myself. This, of course, is either a disincentive for me to buy the upgraded (or "complete") version of the game when it comes out, or, as the case actually is, it is a (further) disincentive for me to buy any new games when they first come out at all (in addition to the other reasons already stated in that post there). Also, as another example, the other day a co-worker let me borrow his Xbox 360 copy of the new Tomb Raider game for a few days, and I played through it. Had this been on the X-bone, however, this would not have been possible, without me having to pay full price for Tomb Raider, which I simply wasn't going to do.

Now, if you're one of those who thinks that this sort of thing makes me a bad person, scum of the earth or whatever, because I'm not fully "supporting the industry" by buying incomplete (and usually horribly broken) games the day they come out at the full $60 or whatever, and because I'm not buying the DLC as soon as it drops at the full $10-$20 a pop and am instead waiting until the GotY (aka the actually "complete" in my eyes) version of the game is inevitably released, then all I can say to you is that I'll drop my pants, turn around, bend over, and let you take a big bite out of my ass. I'll even let you pick the cheek from which to tear a chunk. And then, while you're chewing on my ass meat, I'll give you a bit of time to swish it around and really experience the flavor of my ass in your mouth. Then, once I'm sure you've had a chance to really ponder it, I will finally ask you if it even remotely tastes like I have any fucks whatsoever to give about that shit. Here's a spoiler: the answer, of course, will be no, no it doesn't taste like that at all.

But anyway, to get back to TotalBiscuit's rant about GameStop and the like, he talks about how they are apparently in a position of power and how they can make demands of and threats to publishers/developers... well, if the publishers and developers would just straight up tell GameStop to go take a long walk off a short pier, GameStop wouldn't be able to do that. GameStop threatens not to stock their games? Fine, tell GameStop to fuck right the hell off. If every developer and publisher would just take this stance toward GameStop and its like, rather than bending over and taking it from them (or, even worse, actively working with them for some inexplicable, dumbass reason), and especially rather than incorporating blatantly consumer-hating bullshit directly into their games/consoles which makes me not want to touch them with a 100-foot pole no matter where I could buy them from, then this would be better for everyone involved. With the exception of GameStop, of course. And like I already said, if I passed by a GameStop that was on fire and burning to the ground, I wouldn't stop to piss on it to put it out. I wouldn't even slow down.

Comments

[owsf2000.livejournal.com]

Geh. He sure was willing to shoot a lot of blanks into his little article regardless. Didn't make so much holes as he'd like to think.

Just to point out one of his little shots, he mentioned game servers and how used copies are not benefiting them etc. Thing is, those servers are paid for based on the new copies sold, Yes. But to get a used copy on that server, it was original a new copy. And the person that was connecting from that original copy is NO LONGER connecting to it. This assumes no piracy etc, but if you're going to bitch about that, then you really have to stop targeting the wrong strawman.

Companies, especially EA, are regularly removing servers for games within a year or two of release regardless of how well or poor it sold. Even if you were buying the games used and were being forced to pay the online pass fee, you were not going to be enjoying that copy for long if at all.

In short, the used copies did not have any effect on the servers beyond making them stay more attractive to other players longer up until the company was going to arbitrarily kill it anyway. They simply would have killed it earlier claiming "lack of interest" if the initial buyers just moved on to other games with nobody to fill up the ranks by buying their copies off of them. And people would have left all the faster with fewer people online to begin with.

[kane-magus.livejournal.com]

His argument regarding the servers was even more inane. What he said, if I recall correctly, was something along the lines of that ideally (at least from the perspective of the pubs/devs maintaining the servers, anyway), people would just buy a new game, play it for a little bit and then, I guess, just sit on it and never play it again. But because people are selling their used games and other people are buying and playing them, this is supposedly putting more strain on the servers than was intended had the original buyer just stopped playing after a little while, which is, according to TotalBiscuit, apparently a good reason to do away with used games altogether. ಠ_ಠ How would that have been any different or more stressful on the servers than if the first guy who bought the game new just played the game himself for a longer amount of time than they expected? That's not unheard of at all. A lot of people only buy one or two big multiplayer games and then they just play that all the time to the exclusion of anything else. I personally know some people who do exactly that, and plenty more claim to do so on forums and the like.

Besides that, not all games are multiplayer or require servers in the first place, so that kind of "shoots that argument full of holes" as he was fond of saying. Well, not until everyone jumps on board the asinine "always online" bandwagon, anyway, or the EA bullshit about all games requiring at least some form of online interaction, even single player games.

Also, on a different point, his statement about video game physical media not degrading over time and how that makes it different from books or cars or whatever is just straight up full of shit entirely. I know from personal experience (http://kane-magus.livejournal.com/488101.html) that older cartridge based games will most definitely degrade, but even the newer disc based stuff will degrade (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bit_rot) as well (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disc_rot). So I'm not sure exactly what the hell he was smoking when he pulled that one out of his ass.

[owsf2000.livejournal.com]

Additionally, I would guess that his entire venomous hatred of used games is primarily fueled by his former employment at Game (UK's equivalent to Gamestop) which left a rather narrow view on how the used game market works and what defines a used game sale.

This of course is based on exactly what you said. He spends most of his time bitching about them and how used games seem to be all about them. And where he comes from an industry that has effectively castrated all used sales already it's not surprising.