Capps: “We really need to make strides against the secondhand market”

Here’s a wacky outdated notion: why not, form a union, get every dev/publisher to sign up, and say “we collectively quit if our pay doesn’t reflect sales. Fuck your games, fuck your crunch times and fuck you.”

Crazy I know.

It’s always everyone else’s fault isn’t it? I guess there are other jobs out there with less injustice to them. Try that, maybe?

There is case law on this if anyone fancies getting down into the nitty gritty of it.

Nah, that’s ok.

“Here’s a wacky outdated notion: why not, form a union, get every dev/publisher to sign up, and say “we collectively quit if our pay doesn’t reflect sales. Fuck your games, fuck your crunch times and fuck you.””

Aiieee! Don’t open that box!

If there’s one thing that’s guaranteed to get developers arguing it’s unions.

“How come I am allowed to sell books, or music or films?”

Speak to the people that make publish and develop those materials (not the people that want to buy them from you) before you run off with that assumption.

Everyone here, apart from one person, is assuring each other by quoting urban myth that they’re doing the right thing and that everything’s fine and dandy.

Sure, so long as you ask a biased audience with limited understanding of the full picture the same questions they’ll back you up on whatever you want to hear.

As I mentioned ages back: SPEAK TO DEVELOPERS AND PUBLISHERS

Oh, you’re not doing that, you’re just speaking to people who like to profit from second hand goods. Oh wow! Look at that, they’re really determined to show how that’s a good thing! What’s that? You’re not speaking to developers and publishers? Yeah! Why’d you want to do that. They won’t give you the sort of answer you want to hear so I guess it’s not worth hearing.

And people seem to have chosen to ignore this common sense question so let me repeat it:

Do you really thing someone like Epic will spend MILLIONS of dollars making software and give the entirety of that millions of dollars of work to you for £30?

Obviously, it’s far easier to dismiss the question as being retarded than give it any thought. I mean, if you gave it some thought what sort of answers might you be presented with?

Nah. Best to pretend it’s silly and dismiss or ignore it instead.

There’s a lot of heads being pushed deep into a lot of sand here.

I guess so long as you ignore all the common sense you don’t like the sound of and ensure you only speak to people that’ll say what you LIKE to hear then you can keep convincing yourselves that everything is fine and dandy.

I guess all my crazy talk and flagrant ignorance of the law will be manifested when game developers and publishers are prohibited from developing and publishing games in such as way as to cut out the parastic retail second hand trade. Right? Yes! That’ll show me!

Also, nobody seems keen to accept 47% of their salary – that’s odd. Expecting anything more than a fraction of what you’re owed is GREEDY. You guys have already said so.

Seriously folks, quote me as much urban myth as you like but you’re fighting an argument you simply aren’t qualified to win.

Have fun

I honestly couldn’t be arsed to read all of that (i’ll come back to it in a bit), but this tickled me:

“As I mentioned ages back: SPEAK TO DEVELOPERS AND PUBLISHERS”

You mean, like myself? I can get some consensus from around the office, if you like.

Do devs have contracts with their wages stipulated on it? Or is it commission based?

YOU’RE NOT QUALIFIED TO WIN TRUK! NOT QUALIFIEEEEEEDDDDDD!!!!1one

Umm… Shatner, is the law urban myth? As the owner of a development studio myself there’s all sorts of trickery I’d love to try and use to get more money out of my customers… that doesn’t mean I could get away with it.

I assume your company has access to solicitors. Go and speak to them and ask them how you would go about filing a suit against people reselling their licences or maybe the companies reselling said licences (going after the companies is easier). Whilst you are there, ask them to look up the relevant proceedings initiated by Sun, Microsoft, Novell, Sage, IBM and Oracle.

You may find them enlightening.

Shut up PSYCHO. YOU’RE NOT QUALIFIED.

This is the first vg247 meme.

“Do you really thing someone like Epic will spend MILLIONS of dollars making software and give the entirety of that millions of dollars of work to you for £30?”

Yes. That’s how business works. One gains capital to research, develop and eventually produce something saleable. One then determines a price for a unit of that product based on various factors. One then sells it and, assuming one sells enough of it for the amount one invested, you make a profit from it.

Once you’ve sold it, though, that copy of the product is no longer yours. The rights to production are, but not that copy.

Shatner, the second-hand retail business *is* a travesty but, unfortunately, there is nothing that can be done to force the retailers to stop it. It is up to the publishers to change their business practices. It sucks. I hate second hand sales because I know it’s likely damaging the industry, but my emotions are not taken into account by the law and nor should they be. Boo hoo hoo. Poor me. So it goes.

Morriss: This is one of the few things on VG247 I am technically qualified to comment on.

But…but…Shatner said you’re not, and he’s never wrong. So I’m confused: you either know what you’re talking about and Shatner’s full of it, or as usual there’s some technicality in the argument that will allow Shatner to be right.

I reckon it’s the latter. Let’s all hang around and see how much he types next.

@Ugh the Boot
“I see stupid comments from DrDamn too….make the game longer to ‘ensure’ people will buy it?!? Wtf?!! Oh look, Oblivion can take over 100 hours to complete yet people bought that second hand! Seriously what a ridiculous comment! Even GOTY’s and 100% scoring games will get pirated/sold second hand.”

Way to take a side issue out of context and make look like that was the whole point. If a game can be finished in 7 hours and offers nothing more to the customer then you make the problem worse for yourself – I’m not talking about the rights or wrongs of it just some simple logic within the current situation.

“Also only $40 games being allowed second hand sales? Do you seriously think people are all gonna play by the rules here”

Again out of context. This was assuming there was a way of delivering games where it was not possible to sell them on. Hmmm, maybe if the in store price was more expensive than the download price … could someone have mentioned this before? Oh yeah it was me!

Then again I can understand how my points may have been twisted and misconstrued as someone here has it as his speciality.

“Seriously folks, quote me as much urban myth as you like but you’re fighting an argument you simply aren’t qualified to win.”

Awesome.

“I reckon it’s the latter. Let’s all hang around and see how much he types next.”

And I was having a bad day…

“You’re not qualified”. That should go under the VG247 logo instead of This is the news.

VG247: You’re not qualified!

Truk:

Man’s insane innit. Won’t take a hint either.

There is a way around all of this by the way… sell a service and not the software licence. It’s the business model most of the bigger software vendors are moving towards.

I don’t have a clue how well you’d pull it off with relation to gaming though.

@Psychotext
Isn’t that the WoW model?

Easy. Take the last boss off the disk and make it download only for first time users.

Incidentally, you folks are far too keen to jump on the first distraction you can find. If you

a) genuinely gave a shit
b) knew your subject

You wouldn’t jump at the first and most obvious carrot to be dangled in front of you.

@Truk
“You mean, like myself?”
Yes, but you already agreed with me in principle so you’ve only strengthened my argument. Thanks

Hoho

Dr Damn: Sort of… I guess if you were to do it for normal games you’d have to buy the licence to the game engine and pay for the levels as a service.

Like I said, I don’t really have a clue how you could get it to work. At least not until internet access is ubiquitous. We’re on our way with PSN / Wiiware / XBL / Steam as you don’t own anything there… simply the right to play the game on the service (oversimplification). That’s a slightly different scenario though.

Mike Capps you’re so clever.

Or perhaps we could generate a gaming culture phenomenon which involves dousing our purchases in bodily fluids/wastes (poop, pee, jizz etc.) so as to prevent anyone other than ourselves (and soem times not even ourselves) picking it up ever again.

No?

“Yes, but you already agreed with me in principle so you’ve only strengthened my argument. Thanks”
Christ.

Right. One last time for our hard-of-thinking friend:

(1) I agree that the situation with retail is shit.

(2) I do not agree that they’re doing anything illegal or that it is up to retail to change.

There.

Oh and: “Easy. Take the last boss off the disk and make it download only for first time users and lose a shit-load of customers in the process”. Fixed.

Great business brain there. Amusingly, that wasn’t the developer’s plan, if you actually parse the comment correctly. They’re saying that first time buyers get the full game on the disc and second-time buyers have to pay for and download the end. It’s a stupid idea, frankly.

@Chad
Do you not realise what sort of craziness you are suggesting with this …

“You see, having a standard price point of $59.99 sucks, because most games out these days are not worth that.”

You obviously don’t have the great in depth knowledge of Shatner and couldn’t possibly have insights like he has being involved in the industry unlike us simple consumers. Oh wait …

Gears of War 3 will be download only.

Morriss won’t buy it as he won’t be able to sell it to some chav down the pub when “Shoot the man in the head with your gun 4: Your Mum Edition” comes out.

Even though Gears 3′ll have a full on Marcus and Felix butsecks minigame.

What a dilema!

“Amusingly, that wasn’t the developer’s plan, if you actually parse the comment correctly.”

It’s been pretty thoroughly misinterpreted in about 60 other posts before mine, but hey, it’s good to know you’re not trying to single one person out or anything. Great eye for detail you’ve got. Do you work in QA?

DrDamn
I’ve never made any such claims about myself (if you check you’ll notice that I don’t really talk about myself here, everyone else tends to do it instead), you – like many others, have made assumptions about me and just decided that whatever you guess about must be right purely on the basis that you can criticise it for me.

Wait. Gamers going off on a direction on assumed knowledge about something they couldn’t possibly know?

Nah. That’d be completely out of character for the culture!

I think it boils down to being a man and either a) accepting that this is how life is i.e. not fair and getting on with it b) forming a union(s) c) getting another fucking job.

What it doesn’t boil to is being a condescending, belligerent ass on the internet, every. bloody. day.

And no-one’s qualified to respond, btw. So don’t even bother.

I would buy it Gears 3 if it was DL only. And if I could sell when I was bored with it I would. If I couldn’t I wouldn’t.

I love downloadable games. Especially given I don’t need to mess around with discs and whatnot.

Can you tell us some more about Gamer Culture please Shatner? I’d be very interested to see your research and subsequent empirical data to back up your continual derogatory remarks towards what is such a wide and varied range of people. To quantify them as you so often do simply as “gamer” as though there is some previously agreed-upon criteria as to their nature and disposition would be a highly interesting piece of work indeed.

“It’s been pretty thoroughly misinterpreted in about 60 other posts before mine, but hey, it’s good to know you’re not trying to single one person out or anything. Great eye for detail you’ve got. Do you work in QA?”

No. I don’t. I’ve not read the whole thread. I only joined in today and I couldn’t be bothered to read the reams of text prior to today’s comments. More to the point, I was replying to you as you’ve been replying to me.

Everyone else who made the same silly mistake: my comment was intended for you too. Silly people.

Some criminal, probably more than likely in the sorting office, stole my pre-ordered copy of COD5 today.

The parcel was ripped open and taped down and I got some budget DVD in there instead.

He’ll probably try and trade it in for a fiver less than the RRP, so the second hand market gets the thumbs down from me today!

However I’d just like to give a bit of credit to GAME, who have very nicely offered to send me another copy for free.

Thank you GAME.

I knew it. I knew morriss’d pay full whack for a chance to witness Marcus and Dom buttsecks!

You’re so easily distracted :O

Oh dear. How tragic.

That’s some serious split personality going on there.

Nutter.

I’ll deal with that in a minute Psycho, I’m just writing Cliffy B an email

“Subject: Gears 3 – Bigger, Badder, a whole lot more ass”

I think they’re going to need to reposition the camera for the sequel.

How does it feel, I wonder?

What, buttseks?

To be lonely.

Who needs to be lonely when a load of internet folk are obsessed with you and never stop talking about you?

C’mon morriss, you can do better than that.

What’s it like?

morrissbot needs a reboot again.

Not obsessed with you Shatner… just with the lack of an ignore option, and wanting to continue reading the site we really have no option but to deal with your attention seeking nature.

I can assure you, if I knew the first thing about firefox extensions I would be writing an addon which hides any div with http://www.spacegiraffeisbetterthangearsofwar.com as the opening link.

I’m being serious. It must be really hard. What happened? Car crash? I mean, have you got an excuse or…?

I don’t talk about myself, you guys never seem to shut up about me. You’re giving me the attention, I never asked for it and certainly don’t need it.

You don’t need an ignore option to ignore people. Just ignore them if you want to. Don’t speak to them directly and then chastise that person for speaking back to you.

Oh, and get the greasemonkey script and you can do that div thing. Or, you know, you can just IGNORE people all on your own without complaining that you’re unable to ignore people without the necessary technology to help you!

For a supposedly smart guy you can make yourself seem pretty slow witted sometimes.

Ignore me by all means. You’ll notice that I usually stay on topic until everyone decided they’d rather attack me than talk about the article. (Usually because they’re not qualified to do so).

morriss, for all Shatner enquiries please email shatner@spacegiraffeisbetterthangearsofwar.com

Greasemonkey. Thank you.

…and Shatner, when someone posts things as batshit mental as you do it’s very, very hard to ignore them. Especially when they start attacking people using falsifications as fact.

Hopefully that script will work and that’ll will be the end of having to read your posts though.

“Ignore me by all means. You’ll notice that I usually stay on topic until everyone decided they’d rather attack me than talk about the article. (Usually because they’re not qualified to do so)”

It’s a script enabler, not a script in itself. You’ll need to go to userscripts.org and see if there’s anything there you can rejig to get your desired result.

And thanks for another insult! Way to go! You’re so much better than those you accuse!

That’s the spirit Truk. At least someone here isn’t stuck so far up their own ass they haven’t lost all perspective!

Ok… I’ve got rid of all the comments. That’s a good start. I think I’m going to have to do some reading.