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Visiting the Village: Episode 39

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We shimmy deftly into view to have a big argument about Microsoft Points, and talk about utterly contemporary stuff like Tiger Woods, the Apple iPad, game endings and retail vs. digital.  JOIN US!
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This entry was posted on Friday, January 29th, 2010 at 6:34 pm and is filed under Podcast. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

15 Responses to “Visiting the Village: Episode 39”

  1. Mellzor:

    § January 29th, 2010 at 8:34 pm

    Brilliant! Leisure Suit Tiger, I approve!!

  2. Paul:

    § January 29th, 2010 at 8:49 pm

    The marketing department kindly requests that you use the correct form of the trademark “Tiger’s Woods (TM)” when referring to this title.

    The marketing department would like to assert that there are no similarities between Tiger’s Woods TM)and any other electronic entertainment product.

  3. Herr_Alien:

    § January 30th, 2010 at 4:57 pm

    @retail software:
    People just like to have a physical representation of their purchase. I like having

    @computer cloud holding saved games:
    Hell no! You’ll end up depending on that service to play the game from your last save. What will happen when the cloud owner decides to ramp up prices? Will you be able to carry over your file to another computer cloud operator?
    It just doesn’t work, and not from an implementation POV.

    I can get by without having acheivements. But not being able to load up a save game because my connection is down, that’s a bummer.

    @pre-owned digital distributed games?!
    Well, I don’t see Valve agreeing to this.
    Nope, Paul, Steam doesn’t have this kind of system. My take on that is because Steams wants the customer to pay more for the ‘new’ game, for the sake of money.

    @open ending games:
    Not all games work well with open endings. STALKER is hailed as being open ended. Still, 95% of the game path is the same for all its ends.
    Further more, CoD4 had a clear ending. And it was fairly recent.

    I guess it all has to do with the type of game. A sandbox game favors more an open end approach, while a linear one (CoD) goes better with a clear ending.

  4. Paul:

    § January 30th, 2010 at 10:53 pm

    @retail

    Yes. And there will always be people around to capitalise on that. The question is, how important will it be to actually go to a shop to get that?

    @cloud saving

    I don’t agree that this is particularly difficult to implement [all technical people probably will shout me down]. I do agree that it’s concerning that a publisher can have full control of people’s saves.

    @pre-owned

    I predict that we’ll see an expansion of gifting on Steam at some point soon.

    @open endings

    I agree that open endings in sandbox games are good…because sandbox games shouldn’t have endings…SHOULD THEY, BETHESDA?

  5. Alex:

    § January 31st, 2010 at 7:36 pm

    I really think that the retail doom prophecies are just headline grabbing. Every gaming friend i have IRL buys retail games a lot, I personally do a lot, and the shops i go to are always full. I just don’t see how it can be declining to such a catastrophic degree. Also i think you have to keep it in the context of the market share it could gain…A lot of gamers are kids who wont want to ask their parents for x amount of gamer points or 19.99 on the parental credit card…They’ll want to unwrap the game they’ve asked for on their birthday or w/e.

    Cloud saving is the WORST IDEA EVER. That is all.

  6. Herr_Alien:

    § February 1st, 2010 at 11:31 am

    “an expansion of gifting on Steam”
    - for a game you bought, yes
    - for a game you already played, no. It would definitely affect their sales. Plus, something tells me that not even some of the developers would agree with gifting/selling pre-owned games, be it digitally distributed or retail.
    That may be cynical, but I’m sticking to it.

  7. Faxmachinen:

    § February 2nd, 2010 at 8:23 pm

    About having to be online to play my games, I have to tavel around 14 hours by train and bus to visit my parents. While the trains do have power outlets, internet costs extra and is flaky at best. Yes, life without internet is painful, so let’s not make it any worse.

    Regarding Microsoft Points, I hate buying fake currencies in general, and not being able to buy the exact amount is not going to help. It’s like going to a store where you can only buy things with gift cards, and you can’t even tell if the gift card gives you a 10% discount for your troubles or not.

  8. Paul:

    § February 2nd, 2010 at 8:58 pm

    Do people really play AAA games on laptops on trains/planes/in airports PROPERLY? Is that reality? It could well be, I’m just totally surprised by that. This was a point made by John Walker on RPS as well.

    I do have a suspicion that this might be a worry about the restriction of potential. “Oh, IF I WANTED TO, I couldn’t do this”. But we’re not talking about Peggle here – I don’t think Ubisoft are going to make a game that anyone can sanely play on a laptop on a train – maybe I’m completely wrong about that.

    I think my point on this MS points thing has been lost somewhat and I’d like to make it again.

    I think these four things about it…

    1.) The vast majority of people tolerate this system
    2.) It makes a LOT more money for Microsoft than if they didn’t have it
    3.) It’s mildly deceptive
    4.) Some people REALLY like the system, a lot of people don’t care

    I think the people who hate it don’t do anything about it apart from continue to use it and whinge. I think it’s like bundling, or loyalty cards, or decoy pricing, or upsell, or even SIMPLE MARKUP or any of the other millions of legitimate psychological manipulations that companies perform on customers.

    I guess I approach this differently to other people. When I’m in a shop, I know that I’m going to be manipulated when I make a purchase decision – I know I could probably get the same thing cheaper etc. etc. etc. – I know that the pricing and the advertising aren’t FAIR. I feel that all being pushed at me at once and I’m used to that feeling. I think a lot of people don’t like that feeling being FOREGROUNDED, and maybe that’s how they respond to the MS points categories – maybe they don’t like experiencing that sensation. I think they need to just get used to it, because it’s all around if you look for it.

  9. Ian:

    § February 2nd, 2010 at 9:07 pm

    And I still disagree. No-one “REALLY likes” not having the option of paying an exact amount.

    I’m sorry, I don’t think I have to get used to having to spend more at a store than the thing I’m buying from it – I don’t think that’s going to become more common. I think it’s fine for me to continue disliking it, and for that to have a very mild impact on my behavour towards the store in question.

    There are lots of things corporations can do which are mildly rude and make them loads of money. The public decides how much they dislike something, and if it’s over a certain level then it changes – often because a competitor has a different system and makes enough noise about it that it forces a change. The idea that we have to accept things like this is just clearly wrong – we all change our behavour in different ways, and sometimes that causes a sea change and sometimes it doesn’t. You personally are happy to turn off some critical functions when buying stuff – we ALL have some areas we enjoy turning off critical functions for. But what those things are are different for everyone.

  10. Paul:

    § February 3rd, 2010 at 12:50 am

    “No-one “REALLY likes” not having the option of paying an exact amount.”

    Untrue. I’ve seen comments from people who enjoy having points left over – I think this group of people is significant – I think it’s clever psychology analogous to decoy pricing.

    “I’m sorry, I don’t think I have to get used to having to spend more at a store than the thing I’m buying from it”

    That’s pretty much what you do every time you buy anything, if I’m parsing your sentence corrently. You’re paying more than the true value – that’s just contained within the price in most instances.

    “There are lots of things corporations can do which are mildly rude and make them loads of money. The public decides how much they dislike something, and if it’s over a certain level then it changes”

    Exactly. I think this is, demonstrably, one thing which has not offended and will not ever seriously offend people who buy games on a large enough scale for it to matter.

    I think this supports my belief that this just throws the “I FEEL THIS IS UNFAIR” switch in some people, when really, it’s just another card in the deck of things that retailers can legitimately do.

    I think this impotent criticism of it makes me like it more.

  11. paul:

    § February 3rd, 2010 at 1:25 pm

    I was thinking about this more last night…we may not be actually arguing about the same thing here.

    Do we both agree on this:

    1.) It’s not IMMORAL
    2.) We don’t ACTUALLY know the reaction of users to it?

    I think we seem to be arguing the toss of 2.) when we both properly don’t know. You think the group of people who hate the system is very large and that there is no significant group who like it; I think the “neutral” group is in the ascendancy and there is a small group who likes it. Neither of us have any information about that, so we could easily both be wrong.

    One thing I did think is that indie games are probably major beneficiaries of the “points left over” phenomenon, so maybe this is actually a good thing for *developers*.

  12. Faxmachinen:

    § February 4th, 2010 at 9:27 pm

    “That’s pretty much what you do every time you buy anything, if I’m parsing your sentence corrently. You’re paying more than the true value – that’s just contained within the price in most instances.”
    And in this instance it’s safe to assume it’s not?

    With a set price, it basically comes down to how much you’re willing to pay for a product. Microsoft’s system just makes the whole thing rather arbitrary, and not necessarily in favour of indie games.
    It no longer comes down to how much a game is actually worth to the consumer. Even hardcore and niche gamers would get a 100 point tetris clone instead of a 200 point Determiwinia game if all they had left was 100 points.
    And that’s not even mentioning that nobody would pay for 500 points just to get that single 100 or 200 point indie game they fancied.

  13. Paul:

    § February 5th, 2010 at 12:48 pm

    I never want to see the word Determiwinia again ;-)

    “And in this instance it’s safe to assume it’s not?”

    I don’t really understand this point – I think you mean “With MS Points, the value isn’t contained within the price”, but that’s clearly wrong, so maybe you mean, “With MS points, the value is further obfuscated by the pricing mechanism” and I disagree with this.

    I think that the genuine value of a product is often MASSIVELY obscured by the retail price and the way the product is positioned. I think most people don’t know the actual value of MANY things that they buy on a daily basis. I do not know how much it costs to make a box of cereal, put it in a supermarket and market it to me. I have to accept that a company is playing ridiculous games with me when it sets a price when I buy *anything* new.

    I think this debate partially comes from the fact that people think they know the value of products behind their prices, and I would utterly challenge that. Like I say, I think this system just foregrounds that FEELING of having value hidden away inside layers of bullshit and people don’t like it.

    I don’t see MS Points prices as being more or less arbitrary than regular prices to be honest.

    “And that’s not even mentioning that nobody would pay for 500 points just to get that single 100 or 200 point indie game they fancied.”

    I’m totally not sure about that one. Really, absolutely unsure. I don’t know if the “oh no I have to buy more points” friction factor outweighs the “I have points left over: I’ll buy an indie game factor” as well.

  14. Ian:

    § February 5th, 2010 at 1:11 pm

    I don’t want to get too far back into this, but I do think there’s a point I want to make here.

    I have to admit, that I really *honestly* don’t understand what the “genuine value of the product” has to do with this argument. It doesn’t matter to me how much something cost to make, only how much I can buy it for and how useful it will be to me.

    I completely agree that you have no control over the price-to-cost ratio of anything you buy.

    My problem my microsoft points is about clarity of pricing. I want to know that when I see a price then I can make a decision there and then about whether to buy the thing, based on that price. To make that decision and then come to the point of buying and find that I have to pay more is vastly annoying.

    Just to finalise my point: your “genuine value of a product” has no relevence for the consumer whatsoever. At all. In no way does it matter. What matters to the consumer is how much the thing costs, whether it’s going to work, and how much value they will get out of it.

    So your core hypothesis, that pricing is already massively obscuring the true value of a product, is what I disagree with.

  15. Paul:

    § February 8th, 2010 at 10:22 pm

    This is how you buy something:

    Total Value to Ian = “Utility value” / Price

    What I’m saying is that neither utility value or price are clear from a SINGLE INVITATION TO TENDER (e.g. a price in a shop). The total Value to Ian isn’t *ever* clear. If you believe it is, you’ve been taken in by the retailer.

    Unless, of course, you know the value of the game to the retailer, THEN you can decide on how fair the price might be. Costs aren’t the entirety of value (of course) but they play a large part. I find it mildly concerning that you never even think about them.

    Let’s take the Total Value to Ian of buying a game from a shop as an example.

    To know that, you’d have to know factors like:

    1.) If I wait a week, will the game be on sale and thus cheaper?

    2.) Could I buy a working copy of the game from Ebay for cheaper? What would be the cost of the time involved, and the risk of the game not working?

    3.) Is the game available from an online retailer cheaper?

    etc.

    What are those things determined by? THE COST OF THE GAME TO MAKE AND SELL AT RETAIL.

    Saying that you don’t care about costs but you do care about value is like saying that you do care about your fitness but you don’t care about your lung capacity.

    Saying the cost of production is not a component of intrinsic value is therefore completely absurd. It necessarily is – it determines the range of possible prices or invitations to tender that you might get in different situations. The situations are a big part of the utilty value to you (impulse-buying in a shop vs. shopping for a bargain for ages etc.)

    A lot of people always believe they are receiving information from an invitation to tender: in reality you are receiving very little.

    I think you receive A BIT less information from a points price than a currency price, but actually not much less in the grand scheme of things.

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