I read a very interesting article on Cracked.com this morning that presented an idea I've been toying with for some time now.The concept is FARTS - an amusing acronym if I ever saw one - that stands for Forced ARTifical Scarcity. We see this active in every day life; digitial goods. Essentially, a product in unlimited supply has no value, and digitial products have an unlimited supply. The problem is that the work put into those digitial goods deserves to be rewarded, such as an Author or Game Developer, however the "old system" developed around physical products doesn't quite work in the digitial realm. How much do we charge? How do we handle the "Digital Rights" of the end user? These are the kinds of questions that the industry is trying to answer.Companies like Activision Blizzard and EA Games are trying to simply transition the models and prices, with added protection for themselves while removing the rights of their customers, of the current physical model into cyber-space. Why does a Digitial Download of Starcraft II cost the same as the physical copy when there is no 'limited supply' to justify the cost?Part of this is because they've become aware of their own irrelevance; in a strictly digitial world, a Publisher's role is minimal in comparison to the physical world, and their duties could foreseeably be incorporated into a Developer's role instead of requiring an entirely third party company. By getting in early, so to speak, they'll have set the precedent for the future - less rights for customers, same cost as the physical product, significantly more profit for the Publisher.My idea was that Advertisers - the bane of the civilised world - play a part in the correction of this; it's their job to sell us crap we don't need, so what if they were used to sell us stuff we actually want, like Video Games? Instead of Big Breasted women on posters for no apparent reason trying to convince us that the out-of-focus pair of jeans in the background are worth a 4000% retail mark-up, the Advertising Campaign could simply promote the idea of a handmade, polished experience that is simply worth the money.The Article explains the basic concept better than I can, the example used in the Article is Bottled Water and eBooks, I believe. With the rise of Piracy - and make no mistake, Digital Piracy is a big issue - Advertisers can actually be used to drive home the concept of value and worth for a product that, by currently market dynamics, doens't have any. It's something weird that, in today's world, I had to sit and think about how many ad campaigns I've seen that simply say "Hey, this is a good game, it's great value, you'll enjoy it". Most advertising campaigns use Screen Shots, rock music and shots of brutual death scenes or "fake party fun" to sell their game.I think Torchlight was the last game I saw where the point of the advertisements was simply saying "Hey, it's great value and a fun game for people who like this" and it worked a treat because the game was $15.00 and worth at least twice that in my opinion. This, to me, is the way the digitial space should work, where a product's quality and craftsmenship has to be emphasised in order to justify the price because there is no "market forces" to determine the AU$120.00 retail price of the lastest Call of Duty Title.Am I simply dreaming a dream, or is there some shred of hope in all of this?
As a note, if it is like the book publishing industry (and from what I can tell it is to some extent) then even if they no longer create the physical product there are still services they currently render that they can do for less. For books, it is things like paying for advertising and providing editors to check the work before distribution. For games it could be things like advertising and localizing the text for other langauges. These kinds of services can be done more effeciantly when doing it on a large scale.
(Yes, book authors do get perks from publishers other that distribution so they are not made irrelavent by eBooks. I was told about it by an author, but I do not remember the exact details of what he got from a publisher besides the distribution are.)
AFAIK, that is not actually the case. IIRC, there's a post by Frogboy buried somewhere on the forums that talks a bit about this. The pricing is for the most part determined by the brick&mortar stores. Up until very recently, physical boxes counted for most sales of PC games, so if you did anything to piss off someone like Wal-Mart (by selling the digital version cheaper and undercutting them) they would refuse to stock your game and you'd be screwed.
As digital sales overtake retail, loosing out on companies like Wal-Mart will matter less, so the situation could change. But as the publishers already know PC gamers are willing to pay the full $50, they won't have much of an incentive to lower the prices on digital.
Some PC gamers will pay full price on launch. Some of them will wait until there's a bargain to be had. Some will wait until the game has two expansions and there's a bundle deal, and then buy. You could say that they're being frugal, or you could say they're getting used to to getting a discount just because a game is six months old, a year old, two years old.
Not sure about the advertising thing. Advertisers choose the tactics they do because they believe that they are the most effective way to convince people that the game (or other product) is worth owning. That is their job, and while I doubt they are perfect, I'm still inclined to trust their judgement about what is effective more then that of the average person.
In relation to Elemental, Frogboy has said that most games make most of their revenue in the first month or so, and then it dribbles off. Most people are willing to pay full price at launch, especially if you look at, say, Starcraft 2's 3 million sales in the first month
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