Games as a Service

During my lunch at work, like most of you, I like to browse the web - WSJ, Yahoo! Finance, Motley Fool and DBO. Unfortunately, a lot of gaming sites are blocked. I'm not really sure how DBO makes it past our filters, frankly. Regardless, Forbes has offered some interesting gaming news lately. I stumbled upon this article today. It describes a shift in gaming from the traditional stand alone purchase to a service based model. What are your thoughts on this, and how important do you think Destiny's performance and player engagement are to this shift?

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The entire technology industry is moving this way. Software As A Service for example, where you used to buy Office for $250 now MS can sell you Office365 for $20 monthly. Adobe Creative Suites are another example, all SaaS and in the cloud with a payment subscription model.

Same thing for infrastructure as well, instead of buying physical servers/storage/networking people buy cloud infrastructure or platforms that they pay monthly. It's conceivable that in the future if the average internet connectivity and latency are good enough that hardware consoles will be a thing of the past. Instead you'll buy access to a game and the quality of the games themselves will just improve over time.

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Instead you'll buy access to a game and the quality of the games themselves will just improve over time.

Haha. HAHAHAHAHAHAH. No.

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I don't mean you buy x game and it gets better over time. I mean you buy x game and it's Xbone quality and in a few years when y game comes out it's xbone 2 quality because the back-end infrastructure improved over that course of time which allowed greater fidelity. If this were to happen, then buying new consoles every so many years would be a thing of the past.

This is the idea obviously, like I said in practice who knows but at the very least you need very fast internet connectivity for the average person.

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I don't mean you buy x game and it gets better over time. I mean you buy x game and it's Xbone quality and in a few years when y game comes out it's xbone 2 quality because the back-end infrastructure improved over that course of time which allowed greater fidelity. If this were to happen, then buying new consoles every so many years would be a thing of the past.

This is correct in theory, but the idea of 'games as a service' is ultimately detrimental to the quality of games.

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There is nothing inherent to GaaS that would make a game worse. Simply look to PlayStation's attempts at it so far. They used existing PS games and therefore the quality didn't change. Networking issues did, but if GaaS becomes popular then there will be a huge effort to mitigate these.
Hell even PS Vita's remote play service has similarities to GaaS.

It is very possible that publishers/developers will continue down the path of pay to play, early access, or releasing small chunks of games for money, but that isn't a result of GaaS it is just possible with GaaS.

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I don't mean you buy x game and it gets better over time. I mean you buy x game and it's Xbone quality and in a few years when y game comes out it's xbone 2 quality because the back-end infrastructure improved over that course of time which allowed greater fidelity. If this were to happen, then buying new consoles every so many years would be a thing of the past.

This is correct in theory, but the idea of 'games as a service' is ultimately detrimental to the quality of games.

I don't think you have the data to back this up.

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Instead you'll buy access to a game and the quality of the games themselves will just improve over time.

Haha. HAHAHAHAHAHAH. No.

Why not? In a single large purchase sale, a software company has little incentive to upgrade their software "for free", even when it comes to bug fixes. Most of that is done out of pride and in hopes that it won't be such a crappy experience that you won't buy their next product. In a SaS, the customer hasn't fully paid for the product yet, so the company need to improve things to keep customers paying until they have AT LEAST paid for it.

Take Destiny for Example. If they had said Destiny was free with a $10 a month subscription fee, you and many others could have gotten away with only paying $10 once, and if they wanted another $10 out of you they'd have to give you content worth coming back for. In the current model you've already forked over $60. I can hear you say "but Earendil, if I play Destiny for a year I'll have paid $120 for this game!". To that I would say that if you could guarantee a game that would hold my interest for an entire year, I'd gladly pay $120. The problem is you can't, and so I end up paying $60 for a lot of games that interest me for not even a week. Titan Fall can die in a horrible firing pit.

The only problem I see with SaS and Games, is where the service is over a period of time SaS is usually measured in months, but Games are usually measured in hours of playtime. It's a rare game that keeps me coming back month after month for say an entire year on a consistent basis.

Maybe it's because I grew up in the Shareware model of software era, but I really miss it and see "DLC" as a reincarnation of that model. The model allows for two things:
1. I don't have to pay up front for a product I may not like.
2. If your product is good, there is a method by which I can pay you to create more content.

Compare that to the traditional model where you pay everything up front, and to get "more content" is to pay for SuperAwesomeGame 2, assuming you hand over another $60.

Where DLC falls apart for me (and I hope for the company) is when they charge too much. What Blizzard did (is doing) with Starcraft 2 where the next story campaign cost a full game price, when it's a shit story and adds two vehicle models. Big whoop.

If Bungie put out new DLC every couple months and charged a modest amount, I'd be all for it. I can buy it if I want, or skip it if I don't. What they can't do is break the game world or backwards compatibility.

I see my 3 sentence response turned into a few paragraphs, so I'll stop now :)

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Take Destiny for Example. If they had said Destiny was free with a $10 a month subscription fee, you and many others could have gotten away with only paying $10 once, and if they wanted another $10 out of you they'd have to give you content worth coming back for.

But that can't happen. Game development is hugely time consuming and costly. Making actual new content is expensive. Either you have 9000 people working as a staggered assembly line so new content comes out every day, or you do what MMO games and Destiny do and try to string out content for as long as possible. That's why you have things like RNG, recycling of content, and grinding, because these things suck up time, and players think they are still playing the game and getting a good value.

That's why for the most part subscription based games are bad. I'm convinced only two economic models exist that don't ruin games: one time fee, or pay per play.

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How is pay-per-play different than subscription. And which do you consider to be Games as a Service?

I sort of lumped all of those together as the same thing, because in each case you are paying a smaller amount for current content, instead of paying a large amount up front with the expectation of content. Even if nothing is ever added later, paying $60 is paying for content that you really don't understand yet.

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How is pay-per-play different than subscription. And which do you consider to be Games as a Service?

I sort of lumped all of those together as the same thing, because in each case you are paying a smaller amount for current content, instead of paying a large amount up front with the expectation of content. Even if nothing is ever added later, paying $60 is paying for content that you really don't understand yet.

Subscription: they don't care if you don't play as long as you keep your subscription
Pay-per-play: they want you to play as much as possible because that's how they make the most money.

Jumping to another industry, Spotify has been running into trouble with it's Subscription-based model: their most lucrative customers are the ones that have the subscription but don't really listen much. So their costs are kept low. While the ones that listen loads and loads cost more to supply and drive down the 'royalties-per-play' for the Record Companies. And low royalties-per-play makes Record Companies very uneasy about keeping their records on the service.

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How is pay-per-play different than subscription. And which do you consider to be Games as a Service?

I sort of lumped all of those together as the same thing, because in each case you are paying a smaller amount for current content, instead of paying a large amount up front with the expectation of content. Even if nothing is ever added later, paying $60 is paying for content that you really don't understand yet.

Subscription: they don't care if you don't play as long as you keep your subscription
Pay-per-play: they want you to play as much as possible because that's how they make the most money.

I'll buy off on that definition, but has pay-to-play exist in the gaming world outside of coin operated arcades? And wouldn't Gaming as a Service (GaaS) be a subscription model not a pay-to-play model? At least in a lot of industries the service is offered based on a contract of time, and less on a contract of effort.

Jumping to another industry, Spotify has been running into trouble with it's Subscription-based model: their most lucrative customers are the ones that have the subscription but don't really listen much. So their costs are kept low. While the ones that listen loads and loads cost more to supply and drive down the 'royalties-per-play' for the Record Companies. And low royalties-per-play makes Record Companies very uneasy about keeping their records on the service.

That's an entirely different business. They have a subscription model but their costs are directly proportional to play time. In a game, the playtime does not increase developer cost. Cost is rather fixed since most people are salary in that industry. Sure, servers get hammered harder and need to be replaced, but I doubt even the top 100 Destiny players are costing Bungie anything but fractions of a penny more than the rest of us.

Given that play time does not increase Bungie's cost, it would be best for Bungie's community to encourage lots of play time, and only charge people the amount they need to recover or maintain businesses. They know exactly what their operational costs are, and they are probably rather steady.

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Instead you'll buy access to a game and the quality of the games themselves will just improve over time.

Haha. HAHAHAHAHAHAH. No.

Why not? In a single large purchase sale, a software company has little incentive to upgrade their software "for free", even when it comes to bug fixes. Most of that is done out of pride and in hopes that it won't be such a crappy experience that you won't buy their next product. In a SaS, the customer hasn't fully paid for the product yet, so the company need to improve things to keep customers paying until they have AT LEAST paid for it.

I was going to point out Mass Effect 3. It had an extended ending for free, and a TON (We're talking weapons, characters, maps, mutations, enemies) of free updates and free DLC... But it also had a microtransaction system that was apparently very successful, though countless players could reap the rewards without paying a cent beyond their initial game purchase... I dunno. That multiplayer was great, and who knows how much has changed since I last played it...

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I'm unfamiliar with Mass Effect 3 and how it made money. I am familiar with DOTA2 and how it's a free to play game that also has micro transactions that have zero effect on gameplay and provide no advantage.

The systems I hate are when people are allowed to pay to get ahead. Of course, for every one of those people that pays to get ahead, someone not willing to do so should have to pay less...

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Isn't it, at least partially, formalizing behaviors we've adopted already? We upgrade to the latest edition of whateverthehell ever few months, years, whatever it is. Madden and Call of Duty do this most clearly with video games.

It's already weird to think of software as some kind of solid object you buy, like a kitchen appliance, since it can be so heavily modified after it's "complete."

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Developers have been talking about doing this for almost a decade. It's just that they're actually doing it now and consumers have finally taken notice.

Does anyone remember Peter Moore talking about this before the Xbox 360 came out? I do.

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It's conceivable that in the future if the average internet connectivity and latency are good enough that hardware consoles will be a thing of the past.

For action, racing games and anything VR, this will never happen on a meaningful scale.

Physics and economics says so.

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It's conceivable that in the future if the average internet connectivity and latency are good enough that hardware consoles will be a thing of the past.

For action, racing games and anything VR, this will never happen on a meaningful scale.

Physics and economics says so.

This is an incredibly bold proclamation. Accurately estimating what we will be able to do 10 years from now is incredibly difficult.

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It's like renting a house instead of buying. Ultimately which would you prefer?

Something to keep in mind is that any shifts in the business model, whether its DLC, games as a service, forced internet connectivity etc. are done to help the businesses bottom line. Any benefit to the consumer is either completely incidental or cynically motivated. Corporations exist to increase profits for shareholders, you better believe the people at the top only have that in mind, and they're always going to be searching for new ways to separate our money from our wallets.

Bobby Kotick is an Activision executive who has worked closely with Bungie during Destiny's development (he was on site when the journalists were first invited to preview Destiny, where they showed up and were not allowed to play the game and left wondering why they were there at all). Read up on Kotick's thoughts on monetizing the games industry and you'll have a better idea of why some of us are so leery of Destiny's incredibly expensive DLC plan (no subscription though right? lol).

Some would call me cynical when I say I am absolutely certain that Destiny was chopped up and intentionally subdivided to maximize DLC profits, but if you look at the mindset of the people in charge I believe its actually naive to think they wouldn't do it.

Ultimately Activision is a bed of snakes and I was very disappointed when I found out Bungie had gotten into bed with them. They sure know how to market though, the amount of money they spent to get people hyped for the game was insane. All targeted at the bottom line though.

Sorry for the tangential post, but its all connected by the profit motive that dominates the industry. Just remember, they don't care about us beyond our purchasing power.

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The profit motive exists in every industry, and while corporations exist to increase value for their shareholders, corporations won't exist long unless they're consistently producing a product at a sustainable rate that consumers will pay for. You post seems to imply that corporations try to snake money form people in a some sort of scheme, when that is not the case. Consumers drive the profits, and if they aren't buying, the shareholders aren't profiting.

The exception to this lies in TARP, but that is outside the scope of this thread. Though, I'd b ehappy to discuss it elsewhere.

Activision can hype a game all they want, but if Destiny doesn't deliver on that hype, the franchise will eventually fail. When Activision tries to hype the next title, it will eventually be seen as crying wolf and consumers will take their money elsewhere. Why do you think research analysts downgraded their outlook for Activision's stock after Destiny's launch?

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You post seems to imply that corporations try to snake money form people in a some sort of scheme, when that is not the case.

It totally is, though.

Yes, corporations have to provide a product that customers buy at a sustainable rate, but they will cut that product down to its absolute thinnest bare-bones value to snake as much money out of their customers as they possibly can. Coca-Cola uses HFCS in their sodas when they didn't always do this. Why? To reduce the costs of production, even though consumers have demonstrated that they prefer cane or beet sugar over HFCS. People are just willing to let the companies do this to them, and so over time the quality of the products worsens.

Full disclosure: I have a significant anti-corporate bias. I love capitalism, but I hate corporatism. I voted for Ron Paul.

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I kind of assumed that having this discussion in a gaming forum would initiate a conversation that is biased toward anti-capitalism or anti-corporate sentiments. Yes, that is a broad and unqualified generalization.

I work in an industry that raises capital for the corporations that sustain capitalism, so I'm very strongly opinionated against anti-capitalism stances because I see it work every day. People may say they have strong convictions against a certain idea (in this case cane sugar vs. HFCS), but until they start consuming that way, it's just something they like to say, but not take action on. This applies to every industry. If you put your money where your mouth is, you will see market shifts. Music is consumed digitally, Blu-Rays and DVDs dominates home entertainment. When was the last time you bought a CD or a VHS? How about a tube TV? Corporations and capitalism did that. They were strengthened by people consuming those technologies.

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I'm not anti-capitalist.

Corporations force sub-par products on their customers and nobody complains because they do it a little bit at a time. Pretty soon, it becomes the norm and then it's too late to change it.

It's not about the customers. It's about the shareholders.

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Full disclosure: I edited my previous post right before your response refreshed to correct my first sentence.

This is where you and I come to an irreconcilable disagreement. Corporations are amoral and they act in a way that the market signals them to, they do not slowly change things and sneak them past unwitting consumers. They do things that the market dictates are profitable and they do it as long and as fast as they can until the market signals a change and something else is more profitable, or their competitors can produce the same product for a greater profit than they can.

It is all about the shareholders, that's finance 101. First sentence of the textbook. However, the consumers fuel the wealth of shareholders. So, their interests are prioritized.

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In my view, the problem is that corporations are amoral. I don't believe that they're evil per se, but they end up treating the customer as poorly as they can get away with in order to maximize their profits. They have no obligation to their customers, only to their shareholders. Non-corporations are more beholden to their customers and are forced to behave in a more "moral" fashion in order to survive. They can't grow to the gargantuan levels of power that a corporation can, at least not without earning that power by treating their customers well.

I suppose it's still an irreconcilable difference between us either way. I respect your point of view.

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Yea. I've had this conversation with Libertarians (at the very least Ron Paul supporters) frequently. We usually end up getting really drunk and informing one another of our mutual love for eachother until we forget what we were originally talking about. That's when the whiskey happens. Oh, the whiskey.

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Same here. My grandfather is intensely pro-corporation (he earned most of his fortune through stock trading) and we get into arguments about this all the time. Then we shoot rifles in his backyard and we're friends again.

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One more thing, I don't work for a corporation. I work for a large, privately held partnership. However, I still stand by my thoughts on corporations. Doesn't really change the discussion, but I feel like it's something you should know based on your opinion of corporations. So, yea, it's mostly for me.

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I mean, even if you did work for a corporation, it wouldn't really have any bearing on your opinion. Lots of people work for corporations in our corporate-driven society. I'd be willing to bet some of them hate corporations. I'm sure others love corporations.

I've never worked for a major corporation, but I used to work for KPMG, so I've had some exposure to the corporate world.

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Isn't KPMG a partnership?

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Yes, but they work almost exclusively with large corporate clients, at least at my old branch.

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When was the last time you bought a CD or a VHS?

CD sales still account for 50% of the global recorded music industry by value. I bought a CD earlier this year.

The CD is NOT dead by a long shot.

Hell, vinyl has seen a resurgence: you can't replicate it's physicality with iTunes.

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You can't argue that CD sales gave fallen off a cliff though. While vinyl has gone through a bit of a renaissance, when hipsters grow up, vinyl will die with their youth. :)

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You post seems to imply that corporations try to snake money form people in a some sort of scheme, when that is not the case.

It totally is, though.

Yes, corporations have to provide a product that customers buy at a sustainable rate, but they will cut that product down to its absolute thinnest bare-bones value to snake as much money out of their customers as they possibly can. Coca-Cola uses HFCS in their sodas when they didn't always do this. Why? To reduce the costs of production, even though consumers have demonstrated that they prefer cane or beet sugar over HFCS. People are just willing to let the companies do this to them, and so over time the quality of the products worsens.

Full disclosure: I have a significant anti-corporate bias. I love capitalism, but I hate corporatism. I voted for Ron Paul.

Yes, but consumers are happy to continue paying for Coke despite the fact that it's not as good as it used to be. All that proved is that in the capitalist market that Coke was giving away value.

I could sell you a house in Manhattan for a cent. I could then sell you a shack in Kansas for a cent. Yes, your cent didn't get you as much, but you'd still pay it because it's worth more than a cent to you.

The firsty secret of most good games is that I'm willing to pay a lot more money for them as long as I don't have to pay for shit games. The way the market is today, I have to throw out a few $60 nets to find a game I'm really interested in. Back in the golden years of shareware software you got to try before you bought. This allowed you to only pay for things that you KNEW you'd get value out of, instead of plunking down cash and hoping you got value out of the purchase.

In general I like corporations but don't like capitalism in it's purest form. Corporations are not living things, they only do what capitalism dictates they do within the law, and sometimes humans break the law.

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Why on earth would you think that on average human beings spend money in a way that reflects what is best for them? The entire marketing industry exists to convince us that we're flawed in some way and we need to spend money on X product to feel ok about ourselves, whether its for social status, mating potential, role competency, etc. Ever seen an Axe commercial? People spend money on all kinds of shit that they don't need, is of poor quality, or isn't good for them.

Why do you think Call of Duty sells like bananas every year? Do you think it's because the market has spoken or whatever? Because X-teen million people just think every new installment is just the belle of the ball? Game of the year material?

Drug dealers are wonderfully capitalistic but I don't see anyone rushing to extol the virtues of the meth industry, or the psychological dependencies which keep people coming back for more.

If you genuinely believe that corporations don't routinely deploy manipulative or coercive strategies then I suppose there's really nothing more to discuss.

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I genuinely believe that. Marketing is all sales tactics, if consumers can't be wise enough to make a decision for themselves, then they are making irrational decisions that the market will punish them for. Case in point: the recession. Consumers that bought too much house, got foreclosed on. I do not have sympathy for consumers who did that. I do have sympathy for consumers who lost their job in said recession, and lost a home they could afford.

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I genuinely believe that. Marketing is all sales tactics, if consumers can't be wise enough to make a decision for themselves, then they are making irrational decisions that the market will punish them for. Case in point: the recession. Consumers that bought too much house, got foreclosed on. I do not have sympathy for consumers who did that. I do have sympathy for consumers who lost their job in said recession, and lost a home they could afford.

I'm going to try not to go too far afield, but there is such a thing as "predatory lending" and my understanding is a lot of folks who ended up under water on their mortgages were given "subprime" offers that (IMO) should have been illegal. (They are illegal up here in the Great White North, and were before bank deregulation in the US.)

-- Steve is dolefully cognizant that rules get gamed. (Hello, gamer...) That does not mean that rules should be discarded.

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I spent 5 years in that industry, and I'm sensitive to that. But, I believe the real issue isn't necessarily the predatory lending (which did happen, but not in as large a scale as you would believe by the media), but the lack of education by the consumer. If consumers, in that instance, were more informed, they wouldn't have been put in the position that they were putin. I'm not releasing the lenders from blame by any means, but I there is a lot more blame to place than just the lenders. Public policy, regulations, FNMA, FHLMC, and, yes, consumers! The list goes on. The blame on lenders and large lawsuits sell headlines, though.

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I think you're underestimating predatory lenders' role in causing the crisis. Why did they sell subprime mortgages to people who they knew (or could be reasonably expected to have known) would not be able to pay them off?

Yes, buyers were uneducated, but is it really fair to blame them for causing the crisis, or should we instead blame the people who exploited them?

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There's also the amazingly perverse incentive of "tranching" that meant lenders didn't have to hold the loans they offered and therefor wouldn't face the consequences of defaults. In the modern parlance, they had "no skin in the game"; every reason to make loans hither-and-yon to resell and no reason to worry about borrowers' ability to repay.

-- Steve thinks it's a bit much to expect home buyers (particularly first-time buyers) to be able to decypher those amazingly complex instruments. (And it didn't help that a lot of the brokers had no incentive to wave 'em off of sub-primes.)

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There are a lot of investment products that utilize tranches, and there are a lot of products that use strategies that are more complicated than tranches. It is a way to diversify risk, which is the basis of modern investing - including your 401k plans.

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Why did every public servant in the history of the country place home ownership as a cornerstone of their platform? Why do taxes favor home owners? Why does the government back mortgages and not any other investment aside from their own issues? You're focused on one part of my argument about uneducated investors, when I'm bringing many, many more arguments to the discussion. I'm not absolving the lenders. I'm arguing that their part of the blame is inflated. Which it is.

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Their part of the blame is most definitely not inflated, although as you say, there are other social and political factors at play. In any case, it's not fair to "blame the victims", especially when said victims were often totally uneducated about the nature of the mortgage they were buying. It is totally irresponsible to sell to those types of people.

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Again, focusing on one point. It is fair, as they were part of the larger problem. Ignoring their part is as unfair as absolving the lenders for their part.

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I did not say that they were not part of a larger problem.

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Marketing is all sales tactics, if consumers can't be wise enough to make a decision for themselves, then they are making irrational decisions that the market will punish them for.

"If consumers do stupid things, it was stupid."

Yes.

That consumers can make poor decisions has little to do with whether marketing manipulates them against their best interests, though. (Actually, it could be argued that it makes it a bigger problem.)

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Isn't that what sales is? Convincing people that something is in their best interest? If it's not, and you are convinced that it is, it doesn't mean it was manipulative, it means the salesman was good at his job and you thought the value warranted the price.

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Isn't that what sales is? Convincing people that something is in their best interest? If it's not, and you are convinced that it is, it doesn't mean it was manipulative, it means the salesman was good at his job and you thought the value warranted the price.

~~You seem to be drawing an equivalence between "the consumer has been made to believe that {thing} is in their best interest" and "{thing} is in the consumer's best interest."~~

~~While at the same time recognizing that it sometimes isn't.~~

~~Whatever.~~

//======================

edit:

Whether good or bad, marketing is a process of manipulation. The only real question here is whether the manipulation is against the consumer's best interest. If it is, then the consumer was manipulated against their best interest. I don't see that there's any other way of looking at that, regardless of whether the salesperson was good at their job or not.

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Whether good or bad, marketing is a process of manipulation. The only real question here is whether the manipulation is against the consumer's best interest. If it is, then the consumer was manipulated against their best interest. I don't see that there's any other way of looking at that, regardless of whether the salesperson was good at their job or not.

Now that we've established this, the only question left is whether you believe the manipulation of people against their best interests is a good thing or not. Unsurprisingly, the people who profit from this tend not to have a problem with it.

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One man's manipulation is another man's explanation.

I contend that convincing someone that something is in their best interest doesn't mean you have to lie to them, it means you need to explain how it benefits their situation.

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That is true.

But how often is that actually the case?

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Really? I'll say more often than not. You'll disagree. Is there a way to prove the righteousness of the world's sales force?

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No. So does that mean we should just stop talking about it then?

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Isn't that what sales is? Convincing people that something is in their best interest? If it's not, and you are convinced that it is, it doesn't mean it was manipulative, it means the salesman was good at his job and you thought the value warranted the price.

Exactly. Part of sales is simply educating the customer on the product in question, or the circumstances of life. For example an Insurance salesmen need not "manipulate" a person so much as explain to them the chances of X happening, and what happens if X happens. The customer, having not known either of those things before, can now make an informed decision about whether they will handle it themselves, go with the product in front of them, or go with a competing product.

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lol, victim blaming? seriously? If people aren't wise enough they deserve it? How disgusting.

I realize nothing I or anyone else is going to dissuade you because you've got your whole career wrapped up in this idealogy, but really all you've got is the righteousness of the dollar bill.

Long story short, we agree to disagree, life goes on, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer and half the people believe that that's just swell, because the rich totally earned it.

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I chose my career because of my convictions, not the other way around. In any event, you can go sit in a park with a sign until something works out for you. Let me know how that goes.

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Isn't this exactly his point? The people have no power. The corporations control the markets.

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Yeah, that was one more the more self defeating statements I've faced in a while. He believes that the people have power through their purchasing habits (go go free market!) yet at the same time acknowledges that the people have no real power to change anything at all and can go fuck themselves.

My work here is done, I guess.

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I acknowledge that people not doing anything (sitting in a park) have no power, which I doubt either of you can argue. However, people that consume based on their beliefs or opinions have a large amount of power. It's a fairly basic concept.

EDIT: To further clarify, do you see a lot of horse and buggy manufacturers? Maybe if all the "pro-horse and buggy drivers" got together in Central Park, they could bring about a revolution in the way we commute. Yea, I didn't think so. Corporations didn't force people to drive cars. Consumers saw value in the automobile and bought them. Guess who went out of business because of that?

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People sit in parks with signs because they are frustrated by their total lack of power in our economic system. Of course it doesn't work, because as you say, they're sitting around doing nothing, but they do it anyway to raise awareness. They do it because they don't know what else to do. Nothing works. The corporations control the markets.

Ah, the classic "horse and buggy" example from B-school... I haven't seen it in years. (Do you teach on the side?)

That scenario doesn't have anything to do with what I'm discussing.

I'm saying that when corporations control the markets, they (slowly) remove high-quality products from circulation and replace them with cheaper variants that boost their bottom line. It's all done for the benefit of the shareholders. It has absolutely nothing to do with serving the customers. They only do what is necessary to keep their business sustainable.

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We've already established that point as a fundamental disagreement between us.

By the way, did anything come about from the park thing? In the meantime, who's been "winning" the console war because consumers acted on their convictions?

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By the way, did anything come about from the park thing?

No, but I addressed that. Those types of protests are seldom actually effective, but they are born out of frustration and desperation, and that's kind of the whole point.

In the meantime, who's been "winning" the console war because consumers acted on their convictions?

I haven't kept up with it, to be honest with you. I don't really care about that sort of thing. Last I heard, the Wii U's sales were beginning to improve tremendously, but I don't know where that ranks it alongside the other two consoles.

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You're missing the point of both statements.

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Explain.

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Yea... I think I'm done. We disagree. You can have the last word.

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No, seriously. Explain. We're not having a spat, I just want to understand your side of the issue.

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Sorry for the tangential post, but its all connected by the profit motive that dominates the industry. Just remember, they don't care about us beyond our purchasing power.

Right, don't forget that they care about our purchasing power. Any sort of subscription service strikes me as a bet on the part of the company that
A: Their content is worth paying for over time
B: Their content is better than others

If either one of those is not true, than we stop paying. Period. In a subscription model you will pay more for your favorite game, but you will pay significantly less for games you personally have no interest in after the first few hours.

Take this fake example:
Pay $60 up front, or
Pay $15 a month.

Let's say I buy 4 games, and only one of them interests me for 12 months, and the others are only worth a month or two.

With the up front model, I'll pay $240 dollars, and my money is given equally to games I like and games I don't like.

In the subscription model, we'd have:
12 x $15 = $180
1 x $15 = $15
1 x $15 = $15
1 x $15 = $15
= $225

Not only do I spend less, but my money goes to developers that I think truly deserve it. And after the company breaks even, they will have the cash flow to continue to produce content if they choose to. If they DON'T choose to, I'll stop paying my subscription fee, if they DO choose to, I still have the choice to say whether it's worth it or not.

You can of course twist my numbers however you want and make subscription worse. But the general idea is that gamers only have a set budget for a year. They aren't going to get MORE money out of the Customer, so much as get you to spend more of your budget on them than on that other gaming company.

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Tell me with a strait face that you believe that all people who play World of Warcraft will stop paying the subscription when they believe it no longer has the correct money to value ratio for them.

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Tell me with a strait face that you believe that all people who play World of Warcraft will stop paying the subscription when they believe it no longer has the correct money to value ratio for them.

Certainly not all, or even most. But I did when it stopped providing me sufficient value for my dollar, which was mostly through loss of interest over time.

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Tell me with a strait face that you believe that all people who play World of Warcraft will stop paying the subscription when they believe it no longer has the correct money to value ratio for them.

*puts on straight face*

If they start charging $100 a month to play WoW, they will lose players.
If they suddenly make playing WoW a shit experience, they will lose players.
Those players they lose will be those that don't consider it a good money to value ratio, even if they don't think of it using those words. This seems rather obvious to me, but I'm open to further discussion :)

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*replaces usual silly face*

You're welcome.

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I don't think Destiny's performance is all that important, though I do hope the lack of a monthly fee or microtransactions will have an impact on other AAA developers. However, there is a huge trend, especially in PC games, towards continuing to support projects after release, in concert with the whole early access thing. It's starting to become more expected that a game will continue to change after sale. I suppose the ease of content updates has a lot to do with it.

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I believe very strongly in being able to actually own physical property. A house, a car, clothing, furniture, electronics, and other durable goods, including video games. According to U.S. law, physical copies of books, movies, records, and console games are my property and I can keep them forever or I can dispose of them in any manner I see fit, either by selling, lending, gifting, or using them as clay pigeon substitutes. Of course, when video games (and the other aforementioned forms of entertainment) are not in a physical format, we run into trouble. Now, the problem with digital copies is that in current American jurisprudence, digital copies are not considered the property of the purchaser and thus are not subject to the first-sale rule. The fixed, tangible nature of a physical copy is what in U.S. law makes them subject to ownership and what confers first-sale rights to the owner of said copy. In other words, physical copies are considered "sold, not licensed" while digital copies are "licensed, not sold."

In addition to ownership issues, there are some very worrying concerns about the permanence of digital content. What guarantee is there that this digital content will still be accessible to me once the servers are finally shut down? Let's just say hypothetically that next generation is all-digital and someone's digital library of PS5 games gets lost because their hard drive crashes, but this is in 2030, a couple of years after the PS5 is supported (assuming it launches in 2018 and is supported for a decade). They can't re-download their games again. All that money spent and they have nothing to show for it. All those games lost forever. Also, there is some very worrying precedent for companies removing digital content from people's machines after they had purchased it, for games and other media. See here, here, and here.

The situation with streaming is even worse as you don't even have a digital copy that could outlast the shutdown of the servers. If the servers go down, forget being able to watch or play anything. And when the servers inevitably get shut down for good for whatever reason, that's the end of that. You ever have a video you like on Youtube get pulled, or a show or movie you like get pulled from Netflix or Hulu? Imagine if that were Grand Theft Auto IX or Halo 7 or Uncharted 6 or Mario Kart 9. I hope you got your money's worth.

Meanwhile, a disc is permanent barring its physical destruction and is not dependent on bits stored on a hard drive and downloaded or streamed from some server, and even if the disc does get destroyed, another copy can in principle be obtained because there are many others like it that exist in the world. The physical copy is not hindered by hard drive crashes or server shut downs; the data still exists on the physical copy and it doesn't simply vanish into the aether because a server gets shut down or the company that made it goes out of business.

Destiny exists in some shadowy area just on the outskirts of packaged physical media. My copy of Destiny that currently resides in the disc drive of my PS4 is mine. I paid my $60, and if I ever get sick of it and want to get rid of it I can because it belongs to me. I don't have to pay a subscription fee, either, unlike you have to do with, say, Final Fantasy XIV. However, it has already demonstrated to me on three occasions that my concerns over anything completely dependent on someone else's hardware are completely justified. I got the game at the midnight launch at GameStop. I brought it home, stuck it in my PS4, and I couldn't connect to the server at all at any point that night. I couldn't even create a character. I went to bed and tried again. There was some other time at some point last week where I had trouble getting online again (I don't know if it was something on my end, on Sony's end, or on Bungie's end), and then there were intermittent server issues yesterday that kept kicking me out of the game. So, if I can't do anything at all with a game I spent $60 on if my internet goes out, or PSN goes on the fritz, or Bungie's servers are unavailable, what's going to happen when the Destiny servers inevitably get shut down? Will I have a disc that has no resale value because it has been permanently rendered useless to anybody and everybody? The fact that there's no offline mode at all worries me about my ability to keep playing this game indefinitely like I've been able to with every other game I own. When Halo 2's servers were shut down, it didn't keep me from playing Campaign or local MP. Same for when the 360's servers get shut down (likely by the end of this decade).

The idea that the video game industry as a whole could transition from a "games as product" to "games as service" model, a model that will likely be devoid of physical media, and that as a consequence of this model I not only forfeit any ownership rights and become dependent on a server owned by someone else, is quite frankly a frightening prospect. I've been a gamer for 30 years. It's been my primary hobby since I was old enough to pick up a controller. I can still crank up my NES and play Super Mario Bros. or Contra or Mega Man any time I choose. When that model of doing things goes away, well, that's the day gaming dies for me. I'll still have my older games and systems to keep me busy, but the industry cannot expect any further support from me if they ever stop treating games as an actual product.

EDIT: And this is to say nothing about the technical obstacles facing an all-digital, always-on, games-as-service model. Not only is it not desirable, but it's not feasible at this point and may not be for quite some time, but that's for another post at another time.

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I hope to never buy physical media ever again.

I don't care about selling any of my games.

I do really enjoy having whatever games I want no matter where I am, what country I'm in. It's also been awesome having digital music and movies.

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I hope to never buy physical media ever again.

Same. Looking back on it, avoiding physical compies of games would have saved me a LOT of money. Buy something once, and have the ability to download it anywhere and have it safely available...

Buy physical, and the disk is only good until it gets scratched, lost, broken, etc...

I don't care about selling any of my games.

Same. I have never sold a used game back to a game store, and though I have regretted some purchases (Buying two copies of Crysis 2, for example), ultimately, it's nice to be able to go back and play those games if I feel like it.

In fact, because of how the PS4 works, games pretty much now cost HALF of what they used to, since we get two copies of every digital game we purchase. Sammy has every single game that I have and PS+, and she's never paid a cent.

I do really enjoy having whatever games I want no matter where I am, what country I'm in. It's also been awesome having digital music and movies.

This generation, we've only bought one physical copy of a game (Battlefield 4), and I somewhat regret not having gotten it digital. It's never removed from the console, since it's our only physical, but it still would have been nice to not have to worry about it...

Also, lending games is much EASIER with Digital, assuming you trust whoever you're lending games to.

The whole backwards-minded DEMAND that things always have physical versions around because people are so paranoid about the concept of ownership baffles me. But as technology marches on, those people will become like those who DEMANDED that VHS tapes still be around, because they didn't want to upgrade...

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I hope to never buy physical media ever again.

Same. Looking back on it, avoiding physical compies of games would have saved me a LOT of money. Buy something once, and have the ability to download it anywhere and have it safely available...

Buy physical, and the disk is only good until it gets scratched, lost, broken, etc...

I can't see how I'd have been able to save a single red cent by going digital. Of course, I take good care of my stuff, and all my games (and CDs and DVDs) are still in perfect working order.

Same. I have never sold a used game back to a game store, and though I have regretted some purchases (Buying two copies of Crysis 2, for example), ultimately, it's nice to be able to go back and play those games if I feel like it.

I've benefited from the First-sale Doctrine on many occasions. I've sold off movies I didn't like before (though only a couple of games), I've sold others off to upgrade to Blu-ray, and I've bought plenty of second-hand product from GameStop, Second & Charles, Play & Trade, and Amazon. One of the many good things about physical is that you can still obtain a copy after it goes out of print. You can't do that with digital. If digital content gets pulled for any reason, it's completely and indefinitely unavailable.

Also, lending games is much EASIER with Digital, assuming you trust whoever you're lending games to.

And they don't have to let you do that. They may allow you — yes, "allow," as if you're the child and they're the parent who controls your TV privileges — to do so as a courtesy, but that's it. With physical copies I am guaranteed by law the right to lend my games, books, records, etc., because I actually own the copy (it's also why MS's original vision for the Xbox One was technically illegal).

The whole backwards-minded DEMAND that things always have physical versions around because people are so paranoid about the concept of ownership baffles me. But as technology marches on, those people will become like those who DEMANDED that VHS tapes still be around, because they didn't want to upgrade...

"Backwards," huh? I get sick of all the tech-savvy hipsters out there who throw meaningless slurs like "backwards" or "Luddites" or comparing us to the Amish at anyone who isn't hip to all the newest cool gadgets and technologies. Yes. Laugh at us primitive cavemen with our barbaric discs. How very droll. And by droll I mean condescending and snooty. Does the phrase "Appeal to novelty" mean anything to you? Newer is not necessarily better.

Comparing a transition to digital with the transition from VHS to DVD is apples & oranges. The transition to DVD carried with it significant benefits. DVD was qualitatively better than VHS, including far better picture quality (I was blown away by DVD when I first saw it) and prices that (once DVD became ubiquitous) were far lower than your typical VHS cassette. There wasn't a single way VHS was better. I can't think of any real ways besides some trivial level of convenience that digital is better than physical. Music CDs still have price parity with digital albums and usually sound better. A Blu-ray disc looks amazing on my 1080p plasma screen, far better than any stream I've seen and without hogging any bandwidth. AAA games still cost $60 digital. And nothing beats the feel, the smell, and the experience of thumbing through a paper-and-ink book.

But the main reason why comparing the VHS-DVD and physical-digital transitions are apples and oranges is because the leap to DVD did not fundamentally change the relationship between the consumer and what he/she spends their money on. DVD was still product, with the copies owned by the purchaser. If all you do is stream from Netflix or buy mp3s from iTunes, well, simply apply everything from my previous posts about ownership and the nature of digital.

So you like digital and find it more convenient and secure. Fine. Good for you. You have that option. But the key word here is "option." The advent of the Kindle did not result in the printing presses getting shut down, nor did iTunes and Netflix did not result in the disc manufacturing plants getting shut down. I still have the option to buy CDs, DVDs, Blu-rays, and print books. If console manufacturers decide to drop discs next generation or the generation after that, I won't have the option to buy physical. It will have been taken away. That fundamental relationship between consumer and what is being consumed that I spoke of will have irrevocably changed. And it will be a future I want no part of. If that makes me "backwards," well so be it, and to the game industry and anyone who continues to support it I would say "kiss my ass."

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After 12 years of hard service. I now no longer have a copy. :(

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Same for all my PS1, PS2, and GameCube games, as well as all my CDs from the 90s.

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The experience, the memories, the time you spent, the joy, the pain, the frustration, the elation, the sense of challenge, the skills you gained, the friends you made, all while playing games - no one can ever, ever take those away from you. Those are the things with real value.

Tickets to the cinema, to sports fixtures, concert tickets, TV subscriptions etc. When those end - under your way of thinking - people walk away with 'nothing' as well. Obviously that's not true. Obviously those experiences still have value in and of themselves.

So when it comes to games you need not freak out about other business models that are not product-based.

Now, I like products. I like having things I can look it in the real world. Thinks I can touch. Smell. Even taste if I'm so inclined. I hope Games-As-A-Product never goes away. And I really, really, wish someone would revive the lost art of The Game Manual.

That said, you just need to re-assess the value proposition from a Games-As-A-Service or Subscription-Based or Reliant-On-3rd-Party-Services games: "Will I get an experience of sufficient quality and length to justify the asking price before it is no longer accessible to me?"

In a lot of cases, I think the answer to that question is still going to be yes.

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The words "a lot of cases" jumped out at me. Thats what I have/want. Shelves upon shelves of cases.

If I could buy a physical copy with a digital one thrown in for convenience (at an added cost if nevessary) I'd go for that. But as it stands the only way to satisfy my hoarders tendecies is to buy physical.

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The experience, the memories, the time you spent, the joy, the pain, the frustration, the elation, the sense of challenge, the skills you gained, the friends you made, all while playing games - no one can ever, ever take those away from you. Those are the things with real value.

Yes, those memories have value, but they fade over time. There's lots of things I remember enjoying from my youth, but I can't even begin to tell you why, or what happened in the show I watched or the game I rented. When you have something that's yours that you can keep forever, you can keep making new memories with it, just like I can with my old consoles.

Tickets to the cinema, to sports fixtures, concert tickets, TV subscriptions etc. When those end - under your way of thinking - people walk away with 'nothing' as well. Obviously that's not true. Obviously those experiences still have value in and of themselves.

I'm not much of a sports person, and I've only been to a single concert (Aerosmith, Oct. 1, 1993). With movies and most scripted TV shows, those can be bought on a physical format. TV on DVD has been a thing for a good while. I have that option available to me. If console gaming ditches discs and goes the Steam route, I won't have that option.

That said, you just need to re-assess the value proposition from a Games-As-A-Service or Subscription-Based or Reliant-On-3rd-Party-Services games: "Will I get an experience of sufficient quality and length to justify the asking price before it is no longer accessible to me?"

In a lot of cases, I think the answer to that question is still going to be yes.

My answer will still be "no." The idea of spending a non-trivial amount of money on something that doesn't belong to me and can be taken away at a moment's notice does not jibe well with me, especially with consoles since they're so transient. They're released in intervals of 4-6 years and are rarely supported for more than ten years. Would I have been satisfied with my older consoles being rendered unplayable after Nintendo, Sega, or Sony dropped support? Not a chance.

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