Fellow Paradoxians, are you a bit surprised by the outcry at E3 ?

[1alexey]

Well, the question the OP asks was directly adressed by Jimquisition, so i`ll just post a link, the video is very well explaining why PC get`s away with digital distribution.
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/jimquisition/7586-Why-PC-Gaming-Gets-Away-With-It

That was a feature on the X-box one if the game company allows it then it is not piracy any way you look at it. That how ever has been changed so that is no longer a feature. From the gaming industries view point the second hand market might as well be piracy in that they never see a dime out of it. Another counter point for those that make the used car analogy. Cars are not intellectual property Games are. The laws are different.
someone somewhere wrote the music for the game made the art and programed the AI. None of those people will ever see a dime from you selling your game. Same with the music industry yet no one says anything when they sue someone for violating their intellectual property. The EULA in most every game makes it pretty clear the game does not belong to you. Yet people continue to pirate and steal games. Thus to a point game companies at some point are forced to put controls in place to combat the practice. Is why so many problems in the gaming industry are self inflicted. I will miss the days of not always having to be online to play but I know those days are coming. Because so many people can't wait for a sale to buy a game ,or figure that everyone is doing it so why not.

Well, you`re largely incorect. We set the law. ELUA`s are not even well legaly tested for conflicts with consumer protection laws, since it benefits companies more to have a scary contract, then to actually try enforcing it, and find themselves in position where court strikes down parts of ELUA as illegal and having a cry-out about it.

The better market requires sacrifices not only from consumers, but also from "property holders". Just look at 20century:
companies had the ability to put people in whatever safety counitions, but now, we have safety regulations.
companies had the ability to pay whatever wage they wanted, but now there is minimal wage.
companies had the ability to form monopolies, trusts, and other structures to force consumers into higher prices. Now just about any country has a decent anti-trust regulations.
companies had the ability to polute enviroment with anything. Now, there are enviromental regulations.
....

The list can go on. However, i think the conclusion is pretty clear. With the new age of technology, it is absolutely right and proper to require sacrifices of some of the property rigts and profit margins of "intelectual property" holders, if it will convenience customers, and will give them better deals.

Hell we do it in any other industry, and it works fine. It is long past the time we hold IT industry to standards that other industries have for half a century, at least in western world.

The 2nd hand market is detrimental to the gaming industry making great single player experience games in the same way as piracy is tbh.

Yes, indeed, piracy&second hand market killed every Bioware and Betesda single player game.
Not to mention that Paradox Interactive with their DRM-free, mostly single-payed games should`ve been dead for a decade at least. Right?

Well, you know the answer. If 2d hand market kills off 60dolars worth single player games with less than 20 hours of gameplay and nearly zero replayability value, i can only say good ridance.

 

[Crater122]

This idea that you are simply "loaning" the game license is what is wrong with the current gaming market. What's even more disturbing is that some of you are actually defending it. But this:

The 2nd hand market is detrimental to the gaming industry making great single player experience games in the same way as piracy is tbh.

This is just disgusting. I have a lot of respect for the Paradox staff, and I sincerely hope podcat is alone in this viewpoint. Because I can't support a company who believes this.

 

[the.ront]

The 2nd hand market is detrimental to the gaming industry making great single player experience games in the same way as piracy is tbh.

Please tell me that your meant:
The 2nd hand market is as detrimental to the gaming industry making great single player experience games in the same way as piracy is tbh.

Which is rightfully true. However I think that should be a challenge to game companies to make a game so replayable that I don't want to sell it (which Paradox currently does. )

 

[djconklin]

Despite being unable to update my profil, I purchase a lot of Paradox games online, on STEAM, because they are pretty hard to find in stores in Canada.

No eBay in Canada?!?

 

[podcat]

Please tell me that your meant:
The 2nd hand market is as detrimental to the gaming industry making great single player experience games in the same way as piracy is tbh.

Which is rightfully true. However I think that should be a challenge to game companies to make a game so replayable that I don't want to sell it (which Paradox currently does. )

By being forced to aim for replayability you limit creativity. It doesnt really impact us because we dont make games like that and aiming for replayability works for us, but there are plenty of game types that are basically extinct because of this. Single player games with a really immersive story for example. Games you play for the same reason you go see a neat movie and are happy only watching it once (say 6th sense. good movie, not very rewatchable).

Its plain common sense.

 

[GreatSlayer]

By being forced to aim for replayability you limit creativity. It doesnt really impact us because we dont make games like that and aiming for replayability works for us, but there are plenty of game types that are basically extinct because of this. Single player games with a really immersive story for example. Games you play for the same reason you go see a neat movie and are happy only watching it once (say 6th sense. good movie, not very rewatchable).

Its plain common sense.

Technically, that makes no sense at all. If you go to the theater, you pay for the show, sticky floors, and a big screen experience too. Not only the movie. If you buy the DvD or blu-ray, you can trade it in second hand, or burn it in a fire should you so please.

If you'd like to blame something, you should blame developers who make games that focuses on replayability, like Paradox. Not the customers that actually follows the law and exercises their customer rights.
There's plenty of SP games doing more than enough profits with, or without, the second hand markets.

 

[1alexey]

By being forced to aim for replayability you limit creativity. It doesnt really impact us because we dont make games like that and aiming for replayability works for us, but there are plenty of game types that are basically extinct because of this. Single player games with a really immersive story for example. Games you play for the same reason you go see a neat movie and are happy only watching it once (say 6th sense. good movie, not very rewatchable).

Its plain common sense.

But good movies are easilly rewatchable dosens of time. Also, some story focused games, like Mass effect series, are doing good storry mostly, and you can play again and again with same character class and ations, it is just nice even if you know every word that will be said in next 20 hours or so.

Besides, games are not movies. It`s normal to have different expectations, in particular in replayability. Even without second hand market, it is doubtfull such games would make dicent profit, due to audience size they would get after hearing the review. Average movie theater ticket costs 5-15$ depending on country. Game, 30-60$. Why would I buy game that is similar to movie?

Blaming second hand market is very short sited.

 

[LodovicoAriosto]

podcat just advocates one industry at the cost of another. seriously, what do you expect from a publisher to say about its competitors? of course that the argument that second-hand market kills games with good story is nonsensical. plus nobody has proved that there is a general negative correlation between piracy and sales in the first place.

guys from publishing industry are generally good at talking about hypothetical profits in a hypothetical environment where there is no competition and no piracy. It is their wet dream but its connection to reality is lacking.

 

[Alex_brunius]

By being forced to aim for replayability you limit creativity. It doesnt really impact us because we dont make games like that and aiming for replayability works for us, but there are plenty of game types that are basically extinct because of this. Single player games with a really immersive story for example. Games you play for the same reason you go see a neat movie and are happy only watching it once (say 6th sense. good movie, not very rewatchable).

Its plain common sense.

The reason singleplayer games with little replayability went extinct was because big publishers only were interested in selling millions of full feature games that they can charge 59.99€ for. Anything not fitting this concept was not funded. There are still a few examples of really long AAA games with immersive story like Biowares Mass Effect/Dragon Age series but they are the exception.

But your wrong that all such shorter games are still extinct, currently such games are flourishing thanks to Indie developers embracing the lower production costs of making a game that just lasts 2-10 hours but has a fun and immersive story. Thanks to Kickstarter, Steam and Humble bundle there are loads of options for you if this is the game you want.

Also replayability is not just another feature. Just like with anything if you can get 500 hours of enjoyment out of it your ready to pay vastly more for the product then if you can only get 5 hours, THAT is plain common sense.

How much would you be ready to pay for a TV if you could only use it for a few weeks?

 

[Orko80]

*snip* Average movie theater ticket costs 5-15$ depending on country. Game, 30-60$. Why would I buy game that is similar to movie?

Blaming second hand market is very short sited.

Sorry for OT but

wow there are countrys out there where you pay 5$ a ticket? Cheapest ticket here in my City in germany is 8€ ~10$ and that's without any extra expenses on the cheapest seats. 3D= +4€, overlenght 1-2€ netting you about 16$ for the cheapest seat in the average blockbuster, better seat another 3$ ontop.

 

[podcat]

But good movies are easilly rewatchable dosens of time.

Sure, but all movies? Something relying on story twists? Surely Mass Effect is less enjoyable the second time through when you know all the stuff that is going to happen? The story branching is fairly limited (although efficient and well done). If it had been a pure PC game on release I think it would have gotten a very high piracy percentage. That said the very fixed pricing model of games is probably just as detrimental to developer freedom, but this has gotten much better these days anyway when games actually have different prices.

As for movie prices, in sweden they are like 15-20$ these days. For a 2 hour experience. I don't think its unreasonable to charge 60$ for a 15-20h single player game you only play once.

podcat just advocates one industry at the cost of another. seriously, what do you expect from a publisher to publicly claim? of course that the argument that second-hand market kills games with good story is nonsensical. plus nobody has proved that there is a general negative correlation between piracy and sales in the first place.

I'm not a publisher and this is just my personal opinions I'm arguing because its fun. I'm pretty sure a lot of people at paradox disagrees with me

The piracy situation is better these days, which I attribute a lot to steam combined with the average gamer growing up. I honestly dont know how much of an impact 2nd hand sales has on console titles, I'v only ever bought 2nd hand once or twice so I dont know how common it is. Anyways, no matter the percentage it is lost money to whoever made the game. Same as pirated copies. Claiming piracy has no impact on game sales is pure fairytale make believe so I am not going to even try arguing with you.

How about we put it this way - if we can't blame piracy etc how do we explain:
- Why did the classic RPGs like Baldurs Gate, Planescape Torment etc die out, so many played them, but so so many more pirated them. They are only really returning now that kickstarter is about and can pre-fund things (also steam saving general PC gaming from piracy death).
- Same as above with point & click adventure games. Another very single player focused genre. They are on the way back now of course thanks to Telltale.
- Why do games like say, SpecOps: The Line spend so much time on developing a multiplayer deathmatch part despite being a deeply story focused game?.

I am convinced physical media for games is definitely on the way out anyway so the discussion was more relevant 5 years ago. Give it 3-5 years more and almost nobody is going to be buying game discs.

 

[LodovicoAriosto]

Sure, but all movies? Something relying on story twists? Surely Mass Effect is less enjoyable the second time through when you know all the stuff that is going to happen? The story branching is fairly limited (although efficient and well done). If it had been a pure PC game on release I think it would have gotten a very high piracy percentage. That said the very fixed pricing model of games is probably just as detrimental to developer freedom, but this has gotten much better these days anyway when games actually have different prices.

a statement that existence of second hand market has a relation to game genre is far fetched. I think that the overall size of the market and its demographics is much more important to that. I will return to that in a while.

The piracy situation is better these days, which I attribute a lot to steam combined with the average gamer growing up.

yes. again, size of the market and its demographics.

I honestly dont know how much of an impact 2nd hand sales has on console titles, I'v only ever bought 2nd hand once or twice so I dont know how common it is. Anyways, no matter the percentage it is lost money to whoever made the game. Same as pirated copies. Claiming piracy has no impact on game sales is pure fairytale make believe so I am not going to even try arguing with you.

1. second hand market is important. that is why publishers fight hard to get rid of it. instead of trying to expand the base of possible customers they fight over profit which is already in the pool. a typical monopolistic strategy which plagues gaming industry. if you say it hurts publishers then you are probably right. so what? Should publishers be somehow privileged in access to market?

2. nobody has proven there is a general negative correlation between piracy and sales. so what part of that is a fairytale? IMO a fairy tale is your conjecture that there is such a link. In specific cases there may be, but that is why I wrote "general". Some studies, including March 2013 EU commission study, even claim it could be another way around - that is - piracy helps sales.

- Why did the classic RPGs like Baldurs Gate, Planescape Torment etc die out, so many played them, but so so many more pirated them. They are only really returning now that kickstarter is about and can pre-fund things (also steam saving general PC gaming from piracy death).
- Same as above with point & click adventure games. Another very single player focused genre. They are on the way back now of course thanks to Telltale.

it is wrong to think that an important cause of the classic rpg genre decline is second hard market or piracy. again, you fall victim to the wet dream of publishers I wrote about earlier - hypothetical profits within a hypothetical market. there are numerous factors but IMO the primary reason is market structure combined with diminishing returns law. Hardcore rpgs simply are no more that profitable because they cost too much considering how many people want to play them so they often must get cheaper to produce (thus leaving business mainstream). You cannot use baldurs gate here because those games were cheaper to produce and average customer was more hardcore at the time. Also, the gaming market was much less saturated than today. If you look for analogies, go to early 80s, not 90s.

While in current crisis many companies do everything to grab as much of the market share they can because as dinosaurs they believe market is saturated -so they use different insidious tactics to tie customers to them as closely as possible - e. g. by making sharing games harder, by predatory marketing procedures and they also try to cowardly knock out competition in the form of second-hand market. They are worried they could go bankrupt because top 10 game companies think there is not enough space for all of them to expand and behave according to that. A normal situation in a saturated, monopolistic industry. Though there are examples which suggest that market is actually far from being saturated, more probably their business model is not able to get more customers, that is it. It is a shame to see PI follow dinosaurs. short-sighted too.

Comparing this situation with the the 90s and older games is a common misconception of hardcore gamers. they think they are still bulk of the customers and that everybody must remember the good old days of Baldur's gate etc. Wrong, it is only a minority fraction of all gamers who remember Baldurs gate. If you accept a consensus that these games are moving outside of mainstream (which is another story in itself) then you should undestand it is natural process. Or do you believe that the reason why flight simulators are no longer in mainstream is second hand market as well? you could apply the same to point-and-click. You are wrong if you think that point and click is no more. It is there but not in mainstream because it is hard to find 5 million people to buy a hardcore AAA point-and-click adventure.

At one point you say that the point-and-click story driven genre is doomed because of second hand sales (wtf?) and in the same sentence you contradict yourself by saying that actually it is possible to sell millions of copies of story-driven point-and-click adventure. the answers lie in technology and demographics but of course the publishing industry continues to use silly arguments to justify their attempts to knock out competition by non-market means because they are desperate - they feel they cannot expand so they squeeze more from existing markets and customers. and say that people should be happy about their care. But it is a care of a latifundist who labels his slaves and prevents them from moving elsewhere. the industry feels the market size is limited (i say - mostly because their own limited business models) so they want to secure the herd, not risk losing it while venturing somewhere to get additional sheep.

And by the way, it is possible to sell millions of single player only hardcore RPG with AAA standards, no DRM, no paid DLC, no third-party spyware - and PROFIT. Yeah, there is probably one or 2 spots on the global market for this. So what? Let companies compete for that sweet spot. This is exactly a solution and an answer of a publisher which has managed to thrive in an environment engulfed by second-hand sales and piracy. And now the bandwagon of companies based in countries with high income per capita and little piracy which constantly whine about second hand sales and piracy and blame their declining profit margin on anyone else than themselves was joined by PI. Wonderful.


Also the primary reason for games being more multiplayer oriented is simply because it is much easier to play multiplayer than 15 years ago, thus much more people spend time in multiplayer.

 

[1alexey]

Sorry for OT but

wow there are countrys out there where you pay 5$ a ticket? Cheapest ticket here in my City in germany is 8€ ~10$ and that's without any extra expenses on the cheapest seats. 3D= +4€, overlenght 1-2€ netting you about 16$ for the cheapest seat in the average blockbuster, better seat another 3$ ontop.

Ukraine. Man of Steel 3D tickets are arround 40UAH, which is 5$.
However, average wage is way lower than Germany, and i would gladly trade our prices for your wages.

Sure, but all movies? Something relying on story twists?

A good example would be old soviet comedy films, they didn`t get any worse after 20ish time watching.
Or Home Alone for that metter. IDK how in your country, but arround cristmass/new year, most of the films aired are same for dacades.

Surely Mass Effect is less enjoyable the second time through when you know all the stuff that is going to happen?

No. The story is relativly obvious. Execution is what really matters.
Hell i played most of the time as Paragon Soldier.

As for movie prices, in sweden they are like 15-20$ these days. For a 2 hour experience. I don't think its unreasonable to charge 60$ for a 15-20h single player game you only play once.

But as other mentioned, movie theatres have a lot of infrastructure needed. Games don`t. Besides, movies and games are different media.
Movies do not compet with the likes of Skyrim, Fallout, PI games, or free to play like Dota 2, World of tanks, ex. Single player games do. Hence, the expectation of what is reasonable price for an hour of gameplay is quite different.

*

How about we put it this way - if we can't blame piracy etc how do we explain:
- Why did the classic RPGs like Baldurs Gate, Planescape Torment etc die out, so many played them, but so so many more pirated them. They are only really returning now that kickstarter is about and can pre-fund things (also steam saving general PC gaming from piracy death).
- Same as above with point & click adventure games. Another very single player focused genre. They are on the way back now of course thanks to Telltale.
- Why do games like say, SpecOps: The Line spend so much time on developing a multiplayer deathmatch part despite being a deeply story focused game?.

I have an easy explaination.
Why does games like Tomb Rider that slod 3millions or Resident Evel 6 that sold over 5 million copies are a failure from publisher perspective?
Why does EA claims it needed 5 million of sales to break even on Dead Space?

That is your answer. Games that do not sell millions of copies are not interesting to mainstream publishers. And, for clasic RPGs, look at Project Eternity, where devs go to kickstarter, and outright say, nobody is bloody interested in funding such game.
Then, fans came in, and kick in 4million for devs.
That is not because of piracy. That is because of publishers desire to only make games that can rival sales of COD, and each CEO want`s to have a wage of Bobby Kotic.

The piracy situation is better these days, which I attribute a lot to steam combined with the average gamer growing up. I honestly dont know how much of an impact 2nd hand sales has on console titles, I'v only ever bought 2nd hand once or twice so I dont know how common it is. Anyways, no matter the percentage it is lost money to whoever made the game. Same as pirated copies. Claiming piracy has no impact on game sales is pure fairytale make believe so I am not going to even try arguing with you.

However, you can not just think that pirated game is a game not sold.

Steam itself proves the point, that piracy is about service, since steam games are as easy to pirate as any other, however, it`s sales grow. Why would you bother buying game from steam, if you can as easilly download steam rip copy? Well, aperently, people bother.

1. second hand market is important. that is why publishers fight hard to get rid of it. instead of trying to expand the base of possible customers they fight over profit which is already in the pool. a typical monopolistic strategy which plagues gaming industry. if you say it hurts publishers then you are probably right. so what? Should publishers be somehow privileged in access to market?

That is the general problem on "intelectual property" industry. Unlike other industries, it is mopolistic in it`s nature due to the monopoly of ownership of content.

It is so profitable exactly because it takes in all the profits form all it can grab, anti-trust laws do not apply to it, thanks to fancy lobbying, and it refuses to pass benefits of lower distribution cost and larger market volume to customers, racking in profits for investors, under the premise of "protecting" the "poor" artists.

Not to mention varous bull it continually tries to showe down out troats. It loves it`s monopolistic position, it wants to erect huge initial investment barriers to insulate it`self from competition, and lobby really hard to prevent new technology from istorting it`s postion and market practises.

It also creates pre-orders and fancy marketing to sell you the content purely based on marketing and insulate any reviev of content, untill it is too late already.

In a way, piracy is the only power consumer has in this legal system.

 

[Swazi]

you know what else costs publishes or bosses money, every time you go on vacation or you are off work for national holiday, should we stop going on vacations? also you yourself cost money to the boss, u know who doesn't cost money? slaves, slavers don't cost money... saying used games market costs money is like saying consumer rights cost money, and fighting that is like acting upon a discomfort some persons existence has on you, like amerika ''freeing'' people with ''democracy''. it's wrong to thinking like that period! sorry stupid rant, can't think but it just gets me when someone believes money is worth more than peoples rights...

now as for games stopped being poplar, well.. it's like music you have two things:
1. people change or new generations come
2. artists or developers in our case try to be hip and create ''new'' things

further on 2. point, in general there is nothing wrong in trying something new, but in gaming world one thing is very popular, reusing ip's like what is happening with thief ip. original thief is about sneaking and hiding, new thief is about cool killing and being cowa dody type of thing.... and you know what will happen? thief will sold poor, piracy and used games market will be blamed instead of poor vision of publishers and perhaps even incompetents of developers...

 

[the.ront]

I'm not a publisher and this is just my personal opinions I'm arguing because its fun. I'm pretty sure a lot of people at paradox disagrees with me

One of the many reasons I love this forum. It's nice to hear from people inside the company that are not speaking with the heavily moderated corporate voice

How about we put it this way - if we can't blame piracy etc how do we explain:
- Why did the classic RPGs like Baldurs Gate, Planescape Torment etc die out, so many played them, but so so many more pirated them. They are only really returning now that kickstarter is about and can pre-fund things (also steam saving general PC gaming from piracy death).

I feel comfortable blaming WoW for this one. So many lost RPGers there.

 

[Mikebloke]

If it wasn't for second hand games in the 1990's, I wouldn't be pre-ordering games in the 2010's. I was a minor, my family disposable income was virtually nill, I could get a SNES or mega drive game for a £1 at a boot sale, when N64/PS1 was around. Now I'm spending £30+ on games before they even release, its a long term investment but I'll probably be a gamer for life, and assuming my financial income continues to increase, I'll probably spend more and more on games quicker, sooner, and for more money. Now, bundle deals online have almost kind of replaced that second hand feeling, the developers presumably get a very small cut for it, but its still something compared to a boot sale purchase where they would have got zilch.

If it wasn't for that easy availability of old stuff before, I would have moved onto a different hobby and turn out as a totally different person. Of course, times have changed, those £1 boot sale deals was because once played, people just chucked it out, it wasn't considered valuable, and some people just threw it in the bin. Now, its all £££, you try to buy a second hand PS3 game that came out at the consoles release and they are still expecting £10.

I've bought all CKII DLC bar 1 either on or before release, and pre-ordered CKII (my first ever pre order) and I haven't regretted it, I will likely do the same with EUIV.

 

[JNSPDX]

Sorry for OT but

wow there are countrys out there where you pay 5$ a ticket? Cheapest ticket here in my City in germany is 8€ ~10$ and that's without any extra expenses on the cheapest seats. 3D= +4€, overlenght 1-2€ netting you about 16$ for the cheapest seat in the average blockbuster, better seat another 3$ ontop.

I'm in Finland and (albeit in a small town atm) and the CHEAPEST seat is 15 EUROS + if you are going to the movies you have to bring a female with you so 30 € min...