Braben: pre-owned is "damaging" market Comments by Robert Purchese

In my Local retailer Halo 3 is £11.99 and Assassins Creed is £8.99 - if I bought them both now it would mean I had actually bought them and owned them for less than I initially paid (having got much more on trade in for either game).

I can not foresee the retailers changing if they don't have to. Why would they stop trading second hand goods? Probably half of them base their survival upon it.

Something I am sure that retailers could do with little effort though is release the resale figures - giving a clearer picture of actual sales figures which could help all concerned for future planning.

Although my guess would be that they are quite happy to withhold those from their distributors .

"Console gaming is dead."
As opposed to PC gaming which corpse is already stinking.

Second hand books are usually grubby and tatty. Second hand games play the same as a new game. That's the difference.

No, sorry, there's no difference.

A second hand book can be in perfect condition - there's nothing preventing that from happening.

Similarly, you'll find that second hand CDs, DVDs and such will play in exactly the same manner as their new counterpart.

However, concentrating on the condition of the things being sold is missing the entire point. The entire point is that once you buy something, it's yours - and you can sell it, and the original seller does not in fact maintain any further distribution rights over it. If you sell it, you get the money - not the publisher who has already been paid for that copy.

As sympathetic as I am to developers and as cynical as the second hand market is, that's the way it works, and that's the way it's meant to work. If the games industry wants an exemption from capitalism, then it's not "oh poor developers" or "boo, evil retailers", it is, as the first comment nicely sums up, "tough shit".

The doctrine of first sale applies to them as well. If publishers want to cut down on second hand sales, then they have to change something at their end.

I would gladly see a good rental system. It would even make me play more kinds of different games. But second hand or budget is the only place I'm ever going to touch a game liek Too Human or Assassins Creed again. 60 Euro's is just way overpriced for something which isn't A grade.

@killcrazy
"I can see a system wherein when you first load a new game on your console it will only allow it to be played on that console unless you pay an unlocking fee to the makers."

I was thinking this while reading the command and conquer DRM thread - it would need net access to work I think. But just a matter of time ...

Surely if publishers were *that* pissed off they could just refuse to supply shops that sold 2nd hand ? Or is the real target ebay ?

Overall - it seems that "the industry" wants it both ways. Public perception of software as just another product you pick up in Tesco - but a licensing model more appropriate to buying Oracle or similar.

When you buy a game you don't pay for the code, the engine and the art assets. The cost of the physical disc and case are negligable. What you pay your money for is the license to use the software, the right to use the product on your PC or console.

From a legal perspective, games publishers could quite easily enforce that the end-user license is non-transferable and lay rest to the entire second-hand games market in one fell swoop. They won't do that, because it's completely draconian and unnecessary.

@ccfb

Well I’m sorry but this guy is defending games that don’t have enough replay value and effectively blaming the second hand market and the choices consumers have made! This is incredibly stupid! I wonder what CEX would have to say about all this!

As game content gets smaller and game length gets shorter, it makes less and less sense to buy the game at full price. Consumers want value for their money.

@ Eoin

As sympathetic as I am to developers and as cynical as the second hand market is, that's the way it works, and that's the way it's meant to work. If the games industry wants an exemption from capitalism, then it's not "oh poor developers" or "boo, evil retailers", it is, as the first comment nicely sums up, "tough shit".

It's not 'tough shit' - end of story though. It just means devs will sell their software using electronic distribution instead. Braid is a good example of this - a cracking little game which would sell a storm at £14.99 in GAME. It'll never be on the shop shelf though, which I think is a shame.

A little bit of compromise from the likes of GAME over this issue would give their current business model more of a future.

Stop asking 40 pounds for 6-8 hours long games and people will buy them.

Here is the perfect solution to the problem described by Mr Braben to avoid most of the second-hand market woes.

Keep releasing a reason to keep the disc and/or create brilliant multi-player.

This is the reason why CoD 4 seems to have done so stonkingly well compared to other games - because hardly anyone has ever traded it in!

The lack of FREE content is one of the things MS have got badly wrong on the 360 - much to the annoyance of EPIC who realise probably more than any other developer the benefit or constantly releasing free content.

You could then factor it into the business model - man hour cost against second-hand resale prevention.

As an aside but on the same thread - I wish Rockstar would invest sometime and effort into updating GTA IV multiplayer - as the amount of times both players end up shooting each other (at the same time) really saps the fun/skill out of it.

i think the biggest issue is retailers keeping new prices artificially high then pricing preowned just slightly lower.

We all know that these shops make a much larger profit on preowned than on new and they seem to be milking it.

I buy a lot of second hand books, but mainly from charity shops and noramally for about a 3rd of the new cost.

I've seen second hand copies of x360 games going for £30+

I can sympathize with Braben on this issue. You can't really compare games with other second-hand media. Movies have another primary source of revenue - the cinema. When the movie hits DVD, it's often already paid for, so the second-hand DVD market isn't hurting it. Same thing with music, they have concerts, merchandising and broadcasting. As for books, I guess most people like them new.

Modern games on the other hand have huge production budgets. Retail sales are the only source of reclaiming that, and the sales window is rather short. Most games probably only sell in volume for a few months. So of course, second-hand is heavily eating into that, and it is a problem for not-so-wealthy studios/publishers.

I guess the draconian DRM with 3-install limits that's so popular nowadays is the publisher's answer to that, more than against piracy. Maybe it would be better to change the EULA to forbid resale for a year after purchase. That way, customers could still trade in their games, and producers would better capitalize on the best sales window. The middle man - the stores - would of course suffer. Tough luck for them, I suppose.

SEVQA:

CEX are parasites. They deny games developers, film makers and hardware manufacturers the money they rightfully deserve. I welcome any means to hamper their trade that don't harm the consumer.

And for second hand! Don’t GAME have a habit of removing the plastic wrapping form the game boxes and removing the disc’s only to put it back in the boxes when you purchase them! On a few occasions I recall the plastic being unwrapped in front of me and I protested, much to the amazement of the staff when I explained that item you are now selling me is effectively second hand and I refused to buy it as the game was a gift and didn’t what to look as if it was a second hand purchase!

Also on another occasion I remember a customer who was in front of me was undecided as to which colour DS they should buy, so the attendant kindly went and got all colour sku’s and opened them all and gave them to the customer to touch! I also informed the sales person that you have effectively rendered all those DS’s that you’ve opened second hand!

I could be completely wrong with this and not fully understand the law!

boo hoo, I'm sick of hearing devs/publishers moaning that people don't buy their game because of piracy, second hand market, pigeons swooping down and flying off with the disks, bla bla bla. Make a good game people want to play and they will buy it.

Why is there a second hand market, because people can't afford to buy dozens of games a month at £40 each just to support all the devs out there. Perhaps Mr Braben your games would sell even less if people couldn't trade in old games to buy them.

And this nonsense about devs not getting money, do you think Jeff the graphics artist gets a shiny new £1 coin every time the game he worked on sells a copy? of course not, he has already been paid his wage, and is already off working on something else. I have no sympathy for rich publishers wanting to be richer, or devs who make crap games crying that nobody buys them.

If GAME / Gamestation / Blockbuster were a bit more transparent/upfront with how much they will give for trade and how much they'll resell (ie an online up-to-date database with cash/trade/resell amounts) it might force them to be a bit more competitive and give a better deal.
Also - trade-in figures should be sent back to chart companies so that devs can see what gets traded, how long after release, and how often - i'm sure some copies of games go through the trade cycle more than once.

"Stop asking 40 pounds for 6-8 hours long games and people will buy them."

Stop buying 6-8 hour long games, and people will cease to make them. ;-)

Games are more expensive than other media because, although perhaps cheaper to make than a blockbuster movie, they don't have the broad revenue streams other media do. Films have a potentially unlimited shelf life after leaving the cinema and can easily migrate from format to format (VHS to DVD to download). Music similarly and there are also licensing options there (see advertising). Games age very quickly as the hardware that can support them matures and is replaced. Console games are entirely dependant on the hardware they're made for.

So don't go moaning about fat cat publishers, who obviously want to sell as much product as they can.

"I have no sympathy for rich publishers wanting to be richer, or devs who make crap games crying that nobody buys them."
Me neither, but I have even less a sympathy for retail owners.

well, to be true I do buy preowned games. But I tend to only buy games preowned that I wouldn't buy at the high pricetag new games have. Harming games market? geeez, get out of here. If anything it streghtens the games market (ofcourse mostly the gameshops), since every game is making more profit than ever, being sold again and again.

Think again, Braben....

@ SEVQA

I purchased a new game in GAME the other week and I too was surprised when they took the box I'd got off the shelf, opened it, put the disk in and then put their own GAME labelled seal on it. I like my brand new games to be sealed by the publisher. Very odd the way they do this.

GAME make a fucking mint out of the second-hand market. I've often brought brand new games off Play.com - or even from other highstreet retailers - for less than a second hand copy at GAME.

I have been taking advantage of the Gamestation 2 for £20 2 for £30 and so on and half the games i bought i would never have bought at full price but at them prices good deal.
Yea the game shops initialy make a killing but a bit of patience comes good in the end.

"Games are more expensive than other media because, although perhaps cheaper to make than a blockbuster movie, they don't have the broad revenue streams other media do. Films have a potentially unlimited shelf life after leaving the cinema and can easily migrate from format to format (VHS to DVD to download). Music similarly and there are also licensing options there (see advertising). Games age very quickly as the hardware that can support them matures and is replaced. Console games are entirely dependant on the hardware they're made for. "

Except thats not totally true is it. How much money has Nintendo made from rereleasing old mario games countless times, Sega with sonic etc. Downloads, compilations, handheld remakes, theres plenty of potential to make money from old games. Except they have to be GOOD games for this to happen. As is always the case, the people that moan the most are the ones who have made bad games, or just misjudged the market and released something that people are bored of.

@ playgen

I concur,

The money from royalty’s are usually wrapped up by a very few people within dev’s and publishers and the artist , producers, quality testers are as Playgen said are paid a wage and move on to something else! Therefore it is financial greedy non creative individuals who are making a lot of money of the backs of hard working and creative people then blaming and bitching about the consumer! And as far as I’m concerned is the real cancer in games industry and why no young game designer winning awards and general innovation within the medium is stagnant!

If you buy second hands games you're actively harming the industry who creates the products you enjoy. Its as simple as that. You're not exclusively the problem, but you're part of it.

@ SEVQA and Playgen

And where did the money come from to pay 'Jeff the graphics artist' in the first place. The money tree in the developers car park?

playgen:

Good point actually. But avenues like Virtual Console on the Wii are fairly new occurances. And for every re-release of a classic title, you've probably got a few people downloading a ROM to play on a free emulator.

"How much money has Nintendo made from rereleasing old mario games countless times, Sega with sonic etc."

True but only a tiny handful of games get that kind of rerun release.

Anything that siphons off cash between the producer and the consumer (in this case retail in all its forms) should be seen as a neccessary evil, but an evil still. A direct download situation for all software scares a lot of people, because they think the publishers wil hike prices and take the piss. But at the end of the day, the publishers set the prices under any model, and getting rid of the retailers would be no bad thing I think.

If a book is good enough I will keep it so that I can read it again. If a game is good enough I will keep it so I can play it again.

If he doesn't want a pre-owned market as big as the current one, then put some replayibility into the game. Create some downloadable content to keep it fresh, have some discernible goal to playing through a second or third time. It's his product, so it's up to him to come up with the goods.

moggsy:

If you're a new developer trying to prove a concept to a big publisher than probably by the studio head taking out another mortgage on his family home.

"@ SEVQA and Playgen

And where did the money come from to pay 'Jeff the graphics artist' in the first place. The money tree in the developers car park?"

Presumably from profit from the sales of a good game. A game sold from shops like Game, where second hand games are also sold. The developers wern't moaning then, because the good game sold because it was good.

There simply aren't enough players with limitless spending ability for every average game to sell well enough for everyone to be happy. This isn't a mystery its the way it has always been. If devs choose to work on a game that isn't great thats their choice, this idea (mainly found on forums) that every game developer deserves to have a well paid job forever, no matter how good or bad they are at that job is just ridiculous.

For these people bleating on about poor old developers, why not buy just terrible games from now on, none of these 8/10 and higher rated games, those devs are doing well, what about those poor starving devs of utter shit games?, what about them!

However much a developer adds extra content to a single player, story-based game, I'm very unlikely to play through it again. The amount of time it takes is just too long when there are so many other decent products out there to play instead from fresh.

I don't share his worries over the future ofsingle player plot-based games though, as such titles are perfect for episodic download distribution.

@Arbiter

You are talking out of your ass!
Development costs have nothing to do with the price of games!

Halo 3 costs millions to make.
Ass creed cost alot less

Why were they both the same RRP on release?

i don't see the problem. sales figures have never rung true. how many hundreds of thousands of gamers borrow games off their friends etc...? sounds like the industry is just bitter others have cornered a market for themselves. genuine sales exceed far and above figures of titles 10 or 15 years ago. the market is so much bigger than just hardcore gamers now and more than enough consumers will buy titles new. you give an inch, they take a mile. blatant greed.

If you buy second hands games you're actively harming the industry who creates the products you enjoy. Its as simple as that.

It is not our job to be protecting the games business from potential lost profits. We are consumers, not employees or shareholders.

If their business model is not working (which is a big stretch - the video game industry is actually very healthy and growing rapidly). then it is up to them to change it, not up to the customer to somehow base their purchasing decisions on pity for publishers.

Boo hoo.

Nobody wants you habing anything at a reasonable price.

@moggsy

No I’m certainly not saying developers don’t have right to make money, or retailers for that matter! It’s just a very cooperate attitude, and even more so in these financially difficult times for a system where monopoly’s are what is the goal and control is the outcome, restricting choice and eventually the rights of the consumer!

Company’s have a habit of making out as if our consumer choices are damaging the artist and so forth! Yes it is damaging to them because they invariable get a very small cut if anything at all! Hence I return if the creative people who made the game where getting the royalty’s they deserved then maybe those would be the ones with the financial clout to be able to make the financial decisions! This goes for the music and film industry too!

@jacl klugman

bullshit

I only buy second hand games I wouldn't have bought on full price, because I didn't think they were worth the entry fee from the start. If you buy all your games that way maybe, but buying second hand doesn't mean robbing the game industry by default. It's not fucking charity. I buy what I think is worth 60 bucks, If I don't I will never buy it at that price.

Not all games can be re-playable. Some games inherently, as someone else pointed out, are short but high-quality experiences. That shouldn't preclude them from making a decent profit.

One partial solution is to release games on the cheap quicker. There are console games, for example, that I wouldn't pay full price for but I'd be happy to wait 6 months for a platinum release. If there's no platinum release for 2 years though, I'll buy it second hand instead. How many console games are really selling in numbers, at full price, 6 months after their release?

This happens with PC games; last week I bought Mass Effect, new, for £13. Not exactly a dated game...

@ SEVQA

Is your full stop key mapped to your exclamation mark key? ;-)

Yeah sorry! I love em!

If developers were to release games on PSN for £30 and at the same time released the same game on disc format for £40 I would buy the one off PSN every time. They would have then saved the cost of the box, disc, manual and distribution plus I then wouldn't be able to trade it in. Trouble is they want digital distribution but don't want to lower the cost. I sure as well by cutting out the retail stores and their high mark-up the developers would make more money per title as well.

If you cannot make enough profit from selling games at the cost they retail for, make simpler games.

If simpler games won't sell, find a job in a less screwed up market.

Any questions?

@skillian - absolutely agreed. I hate it when people stand around going "My business model isn't working, you fix it!"

@practically everyone else - Game development is expensive, and INCREDIBLY UNREWARDING. Sure, a few high profile devs get fast cars and all these things out of it, but your average game developer is underpaid and overworked. The only thing holding the entire industry together is people deluding themselves that spending most of their lives chained to a computer writing games is "fun" and worth the low salaries.

I'm fed up of developers standing around complaining how bad things are, without doing something about it. Guys, there are better paid jobs out there, stand up, tell the market you've had enough, leave. Shake things up a bit, lets see if we can find a business model that works. Standing around complaining but not doing anything CHANGES NOTHING.

Maybe if companies didn't charge so fucking much for games in the first place people wouldn't buy used games so much.

I've not been in many book or record shops where I've tried to buy a new item and the assistant has offered me a second hand version of the same item for less cash and thus converted a new sale into a second hand one, and ensuring all the money goes to the retailer and none to the dev/publisher.

This is the main point of this whole second-hand game selling for me. Woolworths and HMV don't have racks of traded in books, DVDs and CDs (or games for that matter) because they are not allowed to. Now I don't know exactly who it is that doesn't allow them - whether it's individual music/dvd companies, or some overarching industry group, or whether there is some general agreement that they won't do it (I'm sure someone more knowledgeable than me can insert info here). So my question is why does nothing like this exist for videogames? Is it a 'specialist store' exemption, or has the games industry just not got its act together on this matter?

And for those whingeing about "it's mine I can sell it on if you want to" - well, "yes you can"! No-one is stopping you making a private sale to friends, in a car boot sale, in the paper or on eBay. This is specifically about being able to trade-in at a retailer and that retailer being able to then resell the item.

Maybe if companies didn't plow years and piles of cash into blatantly shit, uninspired projects, people wouldn't wait around until they appeared in the second hand pile before committing their money to them. If a game is great, and to my liking, I'll buy it right away. If it's considered below-par, loads will turn up in the second hand bin, and I'll try it out then if it appeals.

Braben - Ronaldo ...

Slaves in their own worlds....