In my first post in this two-part article, I discussed What I Learned About Used Games from A Misguided Pizza Guy who is fighting the changes brought on by online tools like Yelp. As comments noted, maybe the Pizza Guy wasn't so misguided because his pizza place got a lot of PR out of the stunt.
But there's a difference between stunts that work once and strategies that work all the time.
So What About the Losses from Used Games?
In recent weeks the used-game business grew from its base on ebay and GameStop and spread to most of the major retailers. Whatever illusions anyone may have harbored about creating an ASCAP-like world where game creators got a return on the $2 billion-plus used games market have been dispelled.
No publishers, public opinion or principles are going to change the strategic plans of an unapologetic GameStop or its competitors. I hear a lot of people at conferences talk about somehow organizing our industry to strike back at the practice. Print T-shirts like the Pizza Guy and wear them everywhere we go.
I disagree.
It is seldom useful to fanatically defend the status quo against changes in technology or culture. Both the fun and the money lie in doing something new to take advantage of those changes.
Gabe Newell role-modeled this attitude in his DICE keynote (see Chris Remo's excellent Gamasutra article here). He said the best response to piracy was for game developers to stop building big canned experiences that people go to the store and buy for $60. We should instead start providing the "service" of entertainment. We sell a downloadable game at a fair price, listen to user feedback and then steadily enhance the title over time to provide continuing value and earn an ongoing revenue stream.
I'd take that concept one step farther. How would you pick an ideal birthday present for a friend of a friend of a friend?
You can't, because you don't have a real relationship.
We've lived in a world in which retailers had relationships with consumers, publishers had relationships with retailers and developers had relationships with publishers. This served the retailers and publishers well, since they needed each other. But it has never served developers, since we have been walled away from building relationships with the very people whom we want to serve.
The ultimate goal of the downloadable world Gabe describes – and which Valve’s Steam service pioneered – is a more direct relationship between creators and audience. The best developers must also be relationship builders. Alex and Mark of Media Molecule come to mind, people who are out to involve players rather than merely serve them.
Creating downloadable games does not automatically create a relationship with our players.
In fact, the walls between developers and players are being re-erected as we speak. We’ve already seen a long list of these problems in the mobile and casual games spaces. But we’re going to get a lot farther pursuing these player relationships than we are by printing T—shirts and complaining.
I think we’ll actually produce better games.
What kind of game would you build if you had these requirements:
a) Version 1.0 has to be out in six months
b) It’s a game you’d love to build and play
c) Version 1.1 ships 30 days after 1.0 and has to be worth a small additional charge – it’s not just a patch.
d) Version 1.2 ships 30 days after that and has to be worth… [REPEAT}
Copyright © 2009, Don Daglow. All Rights Reserved.
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