The Source
March 28th, 2012
It’s okay guys, I’ve found the source! We can cut it off at the root!
Awww, Poor Game
March 27th, 2012
Game‘s gone into administration.
PwC, who are leading the process, have blamed this on:
“[...] a very ambitious overseas expansion into seven territories in addition to the UK. On top of that the UK store portfolio is very extensive. Before we made the closures GAME had 610 stores in the UK. That footprint and that high fixed cost is very difficult to maintain.” (Sky News, via Eurogamer)
And:
[...] there was a lot of proximity between GAME and Gamestation stores, so one store was cannibalising the sales at the other store. (Sky News, via Eurogamer)
So, it turns out that in the process of buying out the entire non-independent dedicated computer game shop sector of the retail market, they ended up canabalising sales from their own stores.
Faced with the oncoming march of digital distribution, Game used its retail muscle to demand that games not be released for any cheaper on digital download, and then (allegedly) that they not be released for pre-order and/or sale online at all, especially if they use Steam for cloud saving or achievements.
Plus, with the second hand game scam (Where you can resell first-week release games back to Game for store credit, after which they resell them at almost-full-price and don’t have to give a single penny to the publisher. I can see the argument for second-hand sales of older games, but brand new ones they can resell for nearly-full-price cannibalises full-price sales at direct detriment to the developer and publisher, and massive profit to the retailer), publishers already had good reason not to like continually being held to ransom by the retailers. I’m not surprised they weren’t able to negotiate all that hard.
The value of Game hasn’t been for gamers in quite a while, especially not for PC gamers. Not since Amazon undercut their prices and Steam undercut their convenience, and in turn they reduced their shelving for PC games to single-slots of the current and past Top 10, while still making the demands above. It’s been more important for console games where there’s less way around the physical media issues, but for most gamers buying games migrated online a long time ago.
Game’s value has been in the browsing, the hardware it’s too bulky to ship cheaply, the non-gaming adult who wants to buy a game for their kids/nephew/cousin/partner. A polished plastic, fluorescent tubed front door to gaming that presents a better visual than the sweaty gloom of a LAN party or bedroom gaming, more focused than the piled high racks in Asda or Tesco that only sell the gaming equivalent of Avatar.
The loss of that is a shame, and the potential loss of six thousand jobs as the company winds up is terrible, and while losing the high-street specialist game shops is a shame, the loss of the bully in the playground isn’t one I’m going to grieve over.
Related articles
- GAME Go into Administration, Some Stores Already Shut (godisageek.com)
- Nearly half of Game stores to close (independent.co.uk)
- High Street Blues: GAME Enters Administration (rockpapershotgun.com)
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07:55 on March 27th, 2012I think it’s a bit odd that you seem to be backing the publishers’ disapproval of second hand games. If nothing else, the value of being able to sell a game back (and/or share it with friends) is already included in the market price. Take that away and the game isn’t worth as much.
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09:01 on March 27th, 2012Sharing it with friends is different, I think. Game sells (sold) Second hand sales of new-release console games at something like £5 off RRP, and does it right next to the full price games which directly means consumers buy the second hand game as well, so Game gets the margins of selling the game twice, and the developer (I care less about the publisher) only gets the first one.
For games after the first few weeks, and for sharing with friends, I’ve got no problem with it.
In addition, if the second-hand sale was included in the price, I’d expect PC games to be significantly cheaper than console games at release, since there’s no retail second-hand market for them.
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11:52 on March 28th, 2012Huh, I am completely out of touch with games, clearly. I had no idea that pre-owned games had become such a massive thing. So much so that it’s ended up creating a model that looks a lot like rental. And video rental stores are going to the wall too… If you’re encouraging people to (effectively) rent videos or games then they’ll quickly reaslise there’s no need to cart around atoms to do that.
How much do retailers offer for used games, do you know?
Worth Saving
March 26th, 2012Now, last week, was bright.
Now, this week, its dark again.
I preferred last week.
Why Daylight Savings?
If we save enough daylight
We get a plush sun?
Dungeon Sieged
March 25th, 2012
Dungeon Siege (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
So it turns out that when I imported “All” the content from K3 to Epistula, and from there to WordPress, over the last ten years, some stuff didn’t actually make it though. Specifically, it appears that the content of the Reviews system has gone. Now, since I have a backup of the KLIND/KLIDE/KEWL database you’d think it would be there somewhere, but apparently not. Archive.org has it, though. So, my review of Dungeon Siege from 10 years ago. Today, I finally completed it.
I know, ten years is a long time to finish a game. I wrote the original review about halfway though the game, and I agree with almost everything it says. It’s a multi-party Diablo-style dungeon RPG. You click things, they die. This is the evolution from Diablo with nicer graphics, the ability to hire a dedicated pack-mule into a character slot, and a button to fetch all the loot around you. Torchlight took the game a step further later on. (DS2 might have, too. I bought that on Steam this weekend, so soon I get to find out).
Anyway, in nine hours spread over 30 hours, I went though the main campaign of DS1. The plot, as 10-years-ago-me noted, isn’t the shining beacon of narrative you might hope for, but it drives the player and her band of mute misfits though forest, snow, desert, jungle, industrial, castle and hell zones to the final encounter with the big bad. So far, so hoopy.
A thing I didn’t mention then, but noted at the time: As in all these games, your character is defined by you, be it a brown-haired unshaven early thirties action hero or a kick-ass redheaded girl. However, in almost all of these games the “canon” version (see Mass Effect, Neverwinters, etc.) are all male. For DS and the expansion pack, the girl option gets the spotlight. It shouldn’t be notable, and it shouldn’t be unusual. But I do, because it is.
Oh, the expansion pack. The “complete Dungeon Siege” pack currently on sale on Steam doesn’t have it. Doesn’t have the one for DS2 either. Also the co-op campaign for DS1 doesn’t work. But most of all, the biggest disappointment, and the thing that turned this from an enjoyable romp though an old game to a frustrating exercise in retro-gaming is:
The game crashes at the end, before the final cut scene.
Now, the story isn’t going to win the game any originality awards. The resolution isn’t exactly a sudden surprise, and the final twist ending is so subtle and careful that it’s not there, but the amount of narrative frustration that this sudden crash brought was exceptional. I play for stories, a lot of the time, so the final crash was so surprising that my jaw literally dropped as I was presented with the faux-mechanical animation of Dungeon Siege’s menu system instead of some kind of resolution. I was so surprised that I played though the final battle again, although when the crash came I was less shocked.
Fortunately, the ending’s up on Youtube, so I got to watch it as I would have done ten years ago. With pixels the size of lego bricks.
So, no ending, no expansion. A half-arsed conversion just enough to generate the cash for a “complete” trilogy edition.
Play it, but get an old copy from Amazon or something instead.
Changing of the guard
March 14th, 2012After 244 years, the Encyclopaedia Britannica is going out of print.
Those coolly authoritative, gold-lettered reference books that were once sold door-to-door by a fleet of traveling salesmen and displayed as proud fixtures in American homes will be discontinued, company executives said.
via After 244 Years, Encyclopaedia Britannica Stops the Presses – NYTimes.com.
Perhaps inevitable, but still quite sad.
In many of the more relaxed civilizations on the Outer Eastern Rim of the Galaxy, the Hitchhiker’s Guide has already supplanted the great Encyclopaedia Galactica as the standard repository of all knowledge and wisdom, for though it has many omissions and contains much that is apocryphal, or at least wildly inaccurate, it scores over the older, more pedestrian work in two important respects. First, it is slightly cheaper; and second, it has the words “DON’T PANIC” inscribed in large friendly letters on its cover.
—Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
10:14 on March 28th, 2012
Kill it, kill it with fire :D