Stateside
Gimme Gimme! by Corey Schon
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ou might have heard that Americans have grown fat and lazy on top of a society which is built to cater entirely to our need to have gratification absolutely as quickly as possible. This is actually pretty much spot-on. You should really try it some time! There’s an unusual kind of pleasure in bringing friends over, buying a new game, renting a couple movies, and setting up your stereo system – while on your game console. To clarify, the technologies I had in mind were: Facebook, Games on Demand, Netflix, and Windows Media Extender (or Zune, if you’ve got one of those). I know that these aren’t all exclusive to US audiences, and I’m glad for that. We’re definitely the main audience for direct-distribution and social-networking technologies. It’s definitely a blessing and a curse. Really, it’s a study in practice on the extent to which we are willing to trade money for convenience. The results aren’t especially encouraging. In the last year, three of the four video/game rental stores near me shut their doors. The fourth isn’t doing especially well. It’s like that everywhere here – the “video store on the corner” doesn’t exist. Sales, and rentals especially, have been segregated into two very different markets over the last few years: you either buy straight from another consumer, putting your trust in other people, the post, and any other intermediaries to get you the product you want at the best possible price, or you go to a retail store and pay full price (plus taxes, if applicable) for a known quantity (that is, making sure you get what you want, the way you want it).
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More recently, a third option has emerged. Most popularized by Steam, direct download/distribution is an enhanced version of that second option. Users have their upsides – you know exactly what you’re getting, how much you’ll pay for it – and you can have it without having to leave the house! (I thought about saying “you can have it immediately!”, but it’s hardly immediate, even on modern internet connections.) Distributors and developers get their upside, too – they get their say as to how it’s advertised through the service, they get to set their own price, and best of all the product never depreciates in value unless they say it does! Practically a license to print money, assuming it worked! All they had to was get users to go for it. And really, they didn’t have to do that work themselves at all. Companies like Netflix – who
originally only sent DVDs through the mail – slowly helped foster in the notion that convenience was king in the home entertainment industry. Now developers are upping their costs on PC titles, especially through direct distribution – because they know they can put them higher, and keep them there longer. We continue to show our willingness to put up with it. Now game developers – and even retail outlets – have opened their own direct download methods, all in the interest of “giving the users the greatest possible convenience”… and keeping their pockets fuller than ever. I kind of feel like the whole model is a golden goose that lays rotten eggs: a great idea that invites a whole mess of problems that, on the whole, change the market for the worse. When you get some of these for yourselves, remember: with great convenience comes significantly lighter wallets. g
gamecca column • issue 14 • August 2010