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the "cost" this guy attributes to used games has nothing to do with used games, and everything to do with a culture so controlled by money that making games fun
by MarkPNeyer 15y ago
the "cost" this guy attributes to used games has nothing to do with used games, and everything to do with a culture so controlled by money that making games fun isn't the point - making money is.
i watched a talk by the head of analytics at zynga, talking about how awesome their analytics system is, and how much they learned from it. for example, after a lot of research, they found out that people don't like clicking for no reason. thanks to that promethian leap of insight, there is now at least a little bit of attention being paid to how to get people to want to click things.
most of the internet is funded by advertisement. we use the massive computing resources at our disposal to learn everything we can about people, not to help them out, but to find out the best way of convincing them they'll be happier if they had the New Thing - which is clearly superior to the Old Thing, and (unlike Old Thing, Older Thing, and Thing Beta) will make them happy.
of course, this is a better use of computing resources than, say, wall street, which is computing, to fractions of a cent, just how much of other people's money a room full of wildly shouting cocaine-fueled neanderthals will become convinced that other rooms of testosterone-addled meatheads will be convinced that the entire assortment of powerful computers, suit-wearing sociopaths, and useful idiot politicians that control the world economy will become convinced about its collective conviction about the upper limit any of its members is willing exchange for an agreement to exchange three thousand pounds of pork for $2.25 a pound, in three months time.
oh yeah, and all of them make about 100 times as much as the guy who actually grows the pigs for a living, who is almost as naive as the guy who wants to make the game fun, regardless of how much money it makes him.
- CJefferson 15y ago> the "cost" this guy attributes to used games has nothing to do with used games, and everything to do with a culture so controlled by money that making games fun isn't the point - making money is. Unfortunately making good games is a full-time job, and people who don't make money don't eat. Your viewpoint seems too simplistic.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- Tloewald 15y agoNo one is stopping them from making money. They want to sell goods that are _artificially_ prevented from being resold. I can resell DVDs but Hollywood staggers on. If the games industry switches to DRMed electronic delivery (as per the App store) then we'll probably end unable to resell, but I won't be like you're selling me a physical object specifically sabotaged to prevent being passed on.
- astrodust 15y agoThere's "making money" as in making a decent living on a respectable game, and there's "making money" like pulling down $500M in sales in the first month. Too many game studios are looking for one thing and one thing only: Blockbusters. They don't care about things that are merely profitable. This criticism of the used game overlooks a lot of other factors. One is that games have a vanishingly short shelf-life because the producers want to clear the deck for another title. If the studios don't value the games three months out, why should the consumers? It's stale. Either sell it or throw it out, that's what they're telegraphing here.
- MarkPNeyer 15y ago> people who don't make money don't eat this is very true - and it's a completely absurd relic of a time when only a tiny fraction of a civilization's resources could be used for anything other than agriculture. most of our economic systems were developed to deal with scarcity that no longer exists - to insist that people must work if they are to be allowed to eat is just as silly as insisting that people must work if they are to be allowed to breathe.
- mostlyListening 15y agoI am sure that most designers and programmers working on games are driven by passion to make great games. But they will be hired, paid, and managed by another bunch who need to pay at least partial attention to making money. It is like the partnership between the start-up founders and venture capitalists: the fact that the latters are driven by desire to make money does not negate the passion of the former to make great apps. And the point of the article is that if the incentives of money guys get subverted, their decisions will get subverted and that subversion which will trickle down the entire production chain.