Calax

Ahhhhfugtardatjlker'ajeta! Friggin reload screw up, DELETE MEH!

Funny thing greylord. You're saying that the second hand market is capitalism at it's finest. And yet so is THQ doing it's damndest to kill said market. You're telling them to get into the market as a retailer of their own products... ok, you explain to them exactly where they're supposed to come up with the funding for this, and the infrastructure to support said venture. They are a publisher. It's like asking 3m to start setting up 3m stores for post its.

You know, just once I'd like to see a jedi use their force powers well in combat (think TFU but more integrated) JUST ONCE!

My mother was a rutgers alum... She told me a story where they'd cheer the basketball team as parts of the stadium fell on the court from the noise/vibrations. She was lucky in that she didn't have to pay tuition because her dad was the first Environmental Science teacher (according to her anyway). Yeah my dad was pretty lucky too, he saved for my college fund with the thought of me going out-of-state but I wound up staying in Jersey so he has about 1/2 of my college fund to do whatever he wants with. Tell him to get a mustang.

My mother was a rutgers alum... She told me a story where they'd cheer the basketball team as parts of the stadium fell on the court from the noise/vibrations. She was lucky in that she didn't have to pay tuition because her dad was the first Environmental Science teacher (according to her anyway).

What's the industry worried about? That kids won't be able to buy games the industry itself (dishonestly) says they shouldn't play? It's not just the games industry, but entertainment in general given that they are bringing in TV as a demonstration of double standard between violence and sex.

http://spoonyexperiment.com/2010/03/18/tse...training-video/ That has some overwrite but they make a point about the fact that gamecrazy/gamestop make large amounts of money off used.

Also there may be a half life movie But valve will only do it themselves rather than allow some production company to make a mockery of it. In fact the "Meet the Team "shorts that they're doing are sort of prototypes to see if they can

It'd be interesting to see the ripple effect through the industry if Cali wins.

http://kotaku.com/5624390/supreme-court-he...game-case-nov-2 On Nov 2 the Supreme Court will be hearing a case that, should california win, will end up with stupid amounts of ability for censorship of games and tv.

I just finished my first week of college. The internet here is awesome. I approve this statement from ISU. And on my way here I got an earfull from my teaching mother about how awesome it is to go to school and how tuition was when she was a kid (and why she didn't have to pay any)... It sucks having college professors as a parent and grandparent. Also, my calc class is taught by the "Cool black guy"

No. When I reinstall WoW I no longer need my CD Key because I already have an account. YOu need a CD Key in order to create a new account. But couldn't you give the entire account over to someone? Or is your personal information locked into the account in a way that makes it, essentially, something you could never "blank out" and give away? No, Actually I know there are rumors of a few people who scam by "selling" their account, and then having the info reset and reselling it. And others who don't have the info in (they put in jibberish) and thus cannot recover their account if they're hacked. They also request a phone number just in case you're COMPLETELY boned online you can still call and retain your stuff. And greylord... you just are wayyy off base. True, property is property but then food is food and by your comparison, we should be hailing dog food as the best most economic way to survive.

Sure, but I don't really see that as the same thing, particularly given that Live and a MMORPG require subscriptions to cover the maintanence of the servers (I have no clue how STEAM works). And I have no problem with that kind of fee. My problem is player A buying something with access to content that is - to him - free for the life of the product, but player B who buys the game from player A now has to pay for that same content. This wouldn't apply to additional content bought by player A, profiles and subscriptions bought by player A, etc. In a WoW scenario, player A could uninstall the game and sell the discs to player B, but player B would still have to subscribe to play the game. Makes sense to me. Ok, steam works as online distribution. It's just a platform that houses and runs the games and keeps track of what you have purchased. However, if you have been found cheating (severely) or pirating games you are liable to have your account banned and all your games inaccessible. As to Warcraft, one thing to look at with that is that your specific game (and keycode) are specifically tied to your battle.net account (which don't die from inactivity anymore). Meaning that for everyone who wants to own an account, they are required to purchase a retail copy of the game and keep it up to date via expansions. For steam, you do not have to pay an amount of money for the service, Valve gets paid as retailer (I think) to maintain the system. Warcraft you can't just give the disks away because you need that keycode to make an account.

Isn't that what we are discussing. Vendors who sell new property...and then are unhappy when the buyers resell it, but the original Vendors don't get any of the money even though the original Vendors didn't lift a finger to do anything more to add or even earn any more money from it? Houses are an investment, games are not. Houses actually appreciate over time rather than depreciate like games or 90% of the other things that are mentioned in this thread. Thus you're using quite possibly the absolute WORST analogy for this particular discussion. Why do houses increase in value? I have some star trek games people for some odd reason were willing to pay MORE then what I got them for...they apparantly appreciated in value. Was it the same reason? Both are property. Both are designed before being created. Both are then built on a framework and developed. Then both are sold to a buyer. It's the sellers and buyers that determine the market. I'd like you to meet the Used madden series on the PS2 between the years of 01 and 06. They cost less than five bucks a pop at gamestop. Very Very VERY few games ever appriciate in value and usually only if there are like 100 copies of the game in total (Marvel Vs. Capcom 2 was a stunning example that promptly has dropped in price because of it's release on XBLA). Compare this to houses, where almost all houses rise in price over time due to a need for space. Games are not space, nor are they part of the survival necessity in our current society. Also a house still has an after construction market based around it's maintenance and improvement, while games have jack squat after market. Are they both property? Yes, but that's like saying that a can of compressed air is fantastic as a thermos, they're both containers!

They were one of the last with an actual HP meter rather than just a regen system. Also the narrative feels like you're in a traffic jam with the cutscenes having you stand there doing nothing while your partners argue about how the other is a complete bitch. This was fine the first time you played it, but when you had to keep doing it... urgh. Also the physics puzzles as has been mentioned have also been kinda done (in the time of HL2 clones) but have mostly moved on while Valve has done their best to keep it going saying "IT'S STILL AWESOME DAMNIT!" like Monolith did for FEAR2.

Isn't that what we are discussing. Vendors who sell new property...and then are unhappy when the buyers resell it, but the original Vendors don't get any of the money even though the original Vendors didn't lift a finger to do anything more to add or even earn any more money from it? Houses are an investment, games are not. Houses actually appreciate over time rather than depreciate like games or 90% of the other things that are mentioned in this thread. Thus you're using quite possibly the absolute WORST analogy for this particular discussion.

Honestly, Half Life two was a fantastic game... for when it came out, design wise, games have moved so much farther from that that it can be painful to go back. And the constant rehashing of the same thing in the episodes is not helping valve.

Because they're not selling a transferrable license. Most people will not utilize the servers 100%. If the game keeps getting transferred, that means much higher utilization of the servers in reality, something the publisher is not compensated for. Thus they have a right to charge extra for the transfers. I see what you're saying; I'm not actually sure it really means higher utilization of the servers though unless the companies are only looking at a very short shelf life for the game (ie not like Diablo 2 was with Battlenet) but its a valid enough point. There's no reason a publisher should be obligated to sell a transferrable license to their game. They could very well sell a single user license (as is commonly done with other software) and they'd be on solid legal and ethical ground. Hmmm...an interesting point, but I'd think it'd be impossible to enforce a Single-User License for console game as long as the games are on physical media (eventually they'll go to a totally digital distribution and much of this will be a moot point, I suspect). It'd also pretty much ensure that once a game was bought, if the player didn't like it they were stuck with it (using the game as a coaster) which has been my concern about this policy all along. I'll buy a lot less games in general if I have to live with them or toss them as my only options. As an example I buy a lot more console games than I do PC games because I've got no real recourse to unload PC games I don't like. Certainly the publishers can do what they want - just as Gamestop can as long as they have customers. But it doesn't mean I have to be happy about it (heck as I pointed out none of my consoles are connected online so at the moment this doesn't even effect me). Just gonna point out that you can't trade or sell your Steam account, or your Xbox Live account, or world of warcraft account because of EULA. Locking online stuff to a specific person is pretty standard these days.

And that may well be...but...so what? It seems to me that the "solution" the publishers want is to punish the retail stores (who carry their games) by passing on certain extra fees to the consumer. Except that there is little way to punish the retailer without the costs passing on to the consumer anyway. If they raise prices, that hits the gamers. If they refuse to send their product to the retailer, then gamers will gnash their teeth and rage like they are now. This is a free market, and gamers seem to think that that means it's a static market in reference to their particular industry. If a publisher is going to start adding incentives to purchasing a game brand new, that's great for them, and I honestly think that they should be pissed at the trade in system because it makes SOOOO much money that they never get to see for their product.

The two big factors at gamestop is that A) you can get the 10% off with their membership and B) if you don't like it within 7 days you can take it back if you bought it used. So ultimately it's the safer deal overall if you are unsure. But Best Buy and Target I don't know.

You can't have more used games than you sell new; If retail stores buy 30,000 copies of a game across the country, the most used games that could exist is 30,000 (ie every game sold and is now in the position to be bought back) Even in your example, the "other 8" they buy back/sell used had to have been bought previously somewhere (and thus the publisher was paid for them already). True, if there is only 30k copies across the US there can't be more than that, but you can resell that item via gamestop 20 times, compared to the publishers solitary sale. So one game could be owned by many people earning Gamestop (or other retailers) a huge amount of money compared to what they paid for it. Right, but the publisher has still been paid for the copies bought. It doesn't matter if the copy is in the hands of 20 different people (one at a time), the publisher has already been paid (when the retail store it was bought at ordered it from the publisher) and someone has already paid that retailer for that copy. I don't believe if the 20 people who bought it used did not have the option to buy it used it would magically become +20 orders from the retailer to the publisher for the item new. Sure it *might* lead to an increase in orders. It might not as well. Well I've seen cases when I worked at gamestop where people bought a game, beat it, and returned it inside a day, and then it happened again and again. So day 1 sales were significantly lessened because of the trade in system. Admittedly this is just pure greed on the publishers part, but still, you've got to see the point that Gamestop can make upwards of a grand on a single disk while the publisher gets less than 100 for that disk, which the publisher views as unfair.

You can't have more used games than you sell new; If retail stores buy 30,000 copies of a game across the country, the most used games that could exist is 30,000 (ie every game sold and is now in the position to be bought back) Even in your example, the "other 8" they buy back/sell used had to have been bought previously somewhere (and thus the publisher was paid for them already). True, if there is only 30k copies across the US there can't be more than that, but you can resell that item via gamestop 20 times, compared to the publishers solitary sale. So one game could be owned by many people earning Gamestop (or other retailers) a huge amount of money compared to what they paid for it.

Don't you know? the free market is, like, only what each person looking at it wants it to be!

Just gonna point out, the trade in system and used games are SOOOO profitable that both BestBuy and Target are starting up systems to provide that service within their stores.

I am pretty sure libraries, as well as video-rental-shops have to buy more for their copy. Games rental still doesn't do this though, so there's an additional loss post right there. Actually from people I know who work in Libraries for books they pay the price set by the vendor, which is typically the MSRP. Right now, I'm told, the big money is making Libraries pay for online databases which seem to be the popular resource for research at least and for which the companies charge more for. Actually for college there's big money in textbooks; the textbook companies don't try to put the used textbook stores out of business, but what they do is release new books every 2-3 years and hope the universities follow suit of adopting the book, ensuring that there's a limited shelf-life in a particular edition. It seems that this was the approach that had been used in the past, updating Madden or Smackdown vs Raw every year, but now for some reason that's not enough for the game publishers. That was probably the idea until it became just clear how much money GameStop is making out of this. I am sure if libraries make millions of bucks a year booksellers would want a slice too. But I don't think libraries do financially *that* well... I'm not sure what GameStop making money has to do with this - I don't see Ford, Chevrolet, GM, etc trying to shut down CarMax. And its not like Used Games is an easy money-making proposition; I remember the late box-store Media Play had great failure with their used game initiative. Well A) not every game runs with SvR or Maddens formula, nor can they. B) As I mentioned before, Ford, Chevy, and GM all have a parts market that the used cars play into so they still get a profit return from the movement of used cars even if they don't get any money from the sale itself. And I don't know Media Play's model, but Gamestop at least gets almost a 50% return for reselling a game (buying it brand new from a customer for like 25 bucks, and then selling it for 55)