The Business of Gaming (Your E-mails)
More e-mail on the business of gaming columns.First, from DQ reader and frequent contributor Matt Kreuch.:
Something that hasn't come up is the license agreement that ships with each box. You may not be able to regulate resale at the user level (which is obviously a "scouts honor" type system when you accept the agreement and install the software), but game publishers could easily focus on restricting the user license as a means to cut off the supply.
If game companies are not making anything from the purchase of a used game, what's to stop them from adding the legal verbiage that prevents resale of the software? With Best Buy and other giants to follow, I would absolutely make it airtight that the original purchase is the final purchase and hold the retailers responsible for any illegal distribution of my games.
That's a good point, and I don't have an answer. For some online games, I believe the user license is already non-transferrable. For the vast majority of PC games, though, there's no such limitation.
However, since video games are not "installed" and thus don't have a EULA, I wonder if that legally makes them a separate case. There is no EULA for video games, just a product warranty.
I know one of you guys will advise me on this, and I'll post the information.
Then there's a very interesting e-mail I received from a long-time DQ reader (who this time wishes to remain anonymous) about software buyers at the retail level.
Something just popped into my head while reading some of the email you posted. A couple of years ago, a member of my family was promoted to entertainment software purchaser for a rather large region of the eastern US. I don't want to disclose the name of the company, so let's just call it Circuit Pity. Her duties were to select and buy all the console and computer games for all the Circuit Pity stores in her region.
She didn't play games, she knew nothing about games, and in fact she HATED games. She got the job simply because she was really good at her old job (which was in another department entirely). Here's how she made decisions about what games to buy:
1. She'd ask "What game is it like?" and then look it up to see how that game sold (I saw that you had an e-mailer say the exact same thing, and he was correct).
2. She'd look to see how much other games from the same company had sold
(She always buys an assload of EA games, but rarely buys games from publishers she can't find in her little database).
3. She'd call me and ask if I'd heard anything about the game. If I'd heard a lot (like before Neverwinter Night came out) she'd buy a ton. If I asked "what's that?" she probably wouldn't buy many, if any at all.
4. She'd decide how many to buy based on what the box looked like, or what the floor display looked like (The Sims is a perfect example of how a big floor display made her buy a lot, Silent Storm is an example where the box made her buy less..... dammit).
Now, keep in mind that this Circuit Pity store is one of the national chains. (No, I'm not telling you which one!) She regularly placed orders in the thousands for a single title, and I'm certain that she's not the only unqualified buyer around. Just something to keep in mind when discussing the problems with the retail aspect of gaming. It's not always economics and exclusive licenses and marketing that keeps new ideas from entering the retail gaming world. I'd be willing to bet it's often people that have control over the market, that have no business being there.
That's a terrific e-mail (with the title of the chain oh-so-cleverly concealed). One significant issue with giant chain stores: gaming might be very important to all of us, but it's just another product category for them. If EB and Gamestop still focused on new games, their buyers would distinguish them. Too bad they don't.
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