A couple of days have passed since your initial call for e-mails on this subject which may as well be a couple of years in internet time, but I thought I’d drop a line and weigh in all the same.

The problem I have with the quote from Cory Ledesma, and similar quotes from folks before him, is that in effect he’s lashing out at his potential customers because of his frustration with the way the game market works. Cory’s words are actually pretty tame compared to some that have come before, which equate buying used games to pirating them, but the same scorn is there, and it strikes me as fairly boneheaded from a PR standpoint since, valid point or no, it comes across as the whining of an overprivileged child.

Education is one thing. When you buy a game used, you’re not giving any money to the people who created said game. Valid. However, the fact remains that whether or not there’s so palpable a villain as GameStop in the picture, people are going to buy used games; it’s just like any other commodity, and to expect consumers to eschew a habit that is both their wont and their right is ludicrous. I don’t buy the “you’re picking my pocket” mentality because, to be honest, every other form of media that you can buy at a store, you can also buy used, and those industries are still thriving despite it. Now, some folks rightly point out that movies make their money in the box office, musicians make their money on tours, and that books don’t take hundreds of people millions of dollars to create, but that argument rings hollow because at the end of the day, it’s just sour grapes over businesses that have different advantages than they do. It still doesn’t give them the right to change the rules because it’s harder for them to make a buck.

They do, however, have plenty of tools at their disposal to make buying a game new, and holding onto it, more attractive to the consumer, and a lot of companies do just this.

Option 1: Make sure your game has content to keep people coming back. Of course the feasibility of this option depends drastically on the type of game. For some, it’s as easy as keeping up a reasonable schedule of DLC. Popular shooters do this with map packs, and the Rock Bands of the world do it with songs and constantly updated challenges. Some games have long-life built into them. Animal Crossing and its ilk keep you coming back if only because there’s only so much you can do on a given day, and to fully experience it, you need to log time all year round. Probably the best recent example is Dragon Quest IX, where they dole out post-game quests for a year past the game’s initial release. While none of these tactics would stop you from buying a game used, it does at least give you a very compelling incentive not to sell the game back to GameStop in the first place.

Option 2: Keep your costs low so that you don’t need to sell as much to recoup them. This is a fundamental problem with the industry as it exists today. Master Chief and Nathan Drake have misled developers into believing that they need to be bleeding edge in order to compete. While those games are absolutely selling gangbusters, and there will always be a place for them, perhaps the takeaway is that if your game isn’t selling well enough to offset its exorbitant production cost, maybe there’s not enough room in the AAA space for it! There are lots of developers, Atlus is the first example that springs to mind, that are extremely successful despite not producing any mega-million sellers simply because they are realistic about how much return they’re going to get on their investment. If developer A wants to sell a new property to us, and that new property happens to share a lot in common with God of War, they shouldn’t be surprised when God of War blows it out of the water! Okay, so not everyone has a desire to produce the equivalent of a Persona or a Half Minute Hero on a (comparatively) shoestring budget, but I think there’s a middle ground to be found.

Option 3: Digital distribution. This one is a no-brainer, and it certainly doesn’t apply to everyone, so I’ll just put it out there and leave it at that.

Option 4: New purchase incentives. One-time DLC, pre-order bonuses, special editions, these things all fit the bill, and I don’t have a problem with them. Normally though, these things will be mostly aesthetic rather than functional upgrades in nature and don’t effect the actual gameplay itself. Something like the DLC code-only multiplayer strikes me as a bit harder to defend. There you’re taking what is a core game mechanic, and one where, if you’re playing on an Xbox, you’re already paying a monthly fee for the privilege of, and tying it to new purchases only. Sure, it’s well within the publisher’s rights to do this, but then it also sends the same message as overly intrusive DRM: We Don’t Trust Our Customers. Whether or not they have a valid gripe, the face they’re showing their potential customers here isn’t a favorable one. A person who buys the latest WWE game used, while not technically a customer of THQ’s, is at the very least showing that they’re willing to put down money on one of their games. If they aren’t hip to the politics of gaming on the internet (and what percentage of people at a game store are?), they’re going to see this kind of maneuver as a cheap offense that will likely color any future purchases. Quotes like Ledesma’s may as well be saying “I don’t care whether or not you like my game. Just whether or not I’m getting paid.” Again, that’s his right. I just don’t think it’s a very productive attitude.

Another point that doesn’t get brought up much is that, unless a game is having an extremely successful multi-print run (in which case, you’re making your money! Shut up already!), if I buy it NEW, but do so six months after its release, I’m probably just as useless to its creators than if I bought it used. The problem isn’t as simple as ‘the ignorant consumer’ or the ‘heartless distributor’; it runs to the very core of an industry where sales have to be frontloaded to have any meaning. In the fast paced, cutthroat race to the top of the heap, a lamentable small percentage of publishers have any way of implementing the slow burn strategy that so many other industries have been able to benefit from. The blame for this doesn’t lie on them solely — the entire industry is going to have to evolve or face the music at a certain point, and I’m not sure how it’s going to come about.

But to have a game that took hundreds of people years to produce at the cost of millions of dollars made or broken by its first month or two of sales isn’t exactly a model that can sustain itself forever. My heart goes out to the hardworking people who’s blood and sweat goes into making the electronic amusements I so enjoy, and I do try to go out of my way to support those who I feel do a good job of it. However, that doesn’t make it my responsibility. I’ve got my own family to feed.

It’s sad, yes, and when I heard the news I had a whole speech prepared in my head along the lines of how networks won’t be able to survive much longer if they don’t start taking the digital domain seriously… and so on and so forth. As these things are often wont to happen however, after reading a bit more about what led to the schism, it became all too clear that Viacom takes online television quite seriously; they just don’t think that Hulu provides them with a model that’s financially appealing to them.

All of the ad-hoc news blogs have been ablaze with gossip and rumors, chief among them that Viacom was trying to use the fact that those two shows are among the more popular on Hulu’s service to demand a bigger cut of revenue. If true, it certainly sounds like your run-of-the-mill story of corporate avarice (and really, what doesn’t?) or even sour grapes (their CBS affiliate is the odd man out, as NBC, ABC and FOX all have a stake in Hulu), but whether or not it’s “right” or “wrong”, I just don’t think it’s particularly smart.

PR spokespeople have been quick to point out, amid suspiciously gratuitous displays of congeniality towards their former partners, that the content will remain available on Comedy Central’s website, where you can view full episodes at your leisure. “Ah!”, you say, “But there are a non-trivial number of people who would have tuned in to watch on Hulu that simply won’t be willing to go directly to your site.” I’m sure they know this, but the fact of the matter is that both shows are popular enough that they are still likely to see a jump in viewership through their channels — ones that they control entirely and where they can work directly with advertisers to make the most advantageous deals for them. It might even turn out that they actually produce more revenue this way, even with a smaller viewership. It’s just as believable that they don’t care, and just aren’t comfortable distributing through a channel they don’t directly oversee.

In any event, the real problem here is the idea that you can create any kind of sustainable environment through de-centralized, separate mini-networks online. The way I see it, like it or not, the only way you’re going to be able to keep people’s attention online is by allowing yourself to be part of a larger distribution network — the Hulu model if you will.

Putting aside the fact that most networks’ own webpages are atrocious to navigate (Comedy Central’s was no exception last I checked — which has admittedly been a while; I have Hulu!), the fact of the matter is that you don’t have to worry about keeping people coming back to your site if your content is already available somewhere they already go. It’s easy to make power plays when you’ve got the hot-property du jour, but these things don’t last forever. When ratings flag, and that big ugly hubris train comes back to bite you in the ass, everyone else will already have gotten in on the ground floor.

Who knows, maybe Viacom knows something (many things) that I don’t. It just strikes me as an odd maneuver, considering how mutually beneficial their arrangement seemed to be. Maybe I’m just sad that I’ll have to jump through a few more hoops if I want to watch my favorite shows.