April 29th, 2011 by The Grey Ghost
Whenever I rant on about the terrible trend of digital distribution, I risk being stamped a kook. Then events like the recent PlayStation Network outage emerges and I feel vindicated. My rhetoric isn’t of issues that could arise; they’re consequences that are happening.
Ultimately, the outage was Sony’s reaction to hackers breaking into the network and pillaging private user information. I’ll likely expand on this, the true catastrophe of this event, in a later blog post or the podcast since it’s relevant to my religion (of sorts). But for the meantime, I’d like to begin by fortifying my previous points.
My basic position is that consumers are being duped into accepting it’s more favorable to pay admission for access than to trade for property. If digital distribution becomes the standard for media, consumers lose all their power in the market.
One of the bullet points in my case is that consumers will be completely dependent on the distributor to access the products they buy. Third party services like Hulu Plus and Netflix are reportedly included in the outage, which means that their subscribers have paid for services that they now cannot use. Video games that include multiplayer are now reduced to less than half of a full product. And thanks to DRM, some games are now effectively dead.
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Posted in Games, Rants | 5 Comments »
November 25th, 2010 by The Grey Ghost
Run Time: 13min 37sec
[ DOWNLOAD MP3 ]
Here’s an extra holiday bonus… This is a rant that I put together on some topics that have been a popcorn kernel, long wedged in the gum of my molar.
For months, I’d outline rough articles on the harbingers of digital distribution and the abuse of Godwin’s Law against chimerical censorship. Mid-draft, some new report would spring up from the media, putting the SEAN SMASH! on yet another helpless keyboard and leaving the written article in wait.
The pen is mightier than the sword, yet impotent to the power of the microphone.
Posted in Anime, Games, Podcast, Rants | 3 Comments »
September 10th, 2010 by The Grey Ghost
Last week, I took part in the Twitter discussion ignited by a recent Penny Arcade strip. The strip stems from a recent article perpetuating the ongoing, exhausting controversy of used video games. Publishers feel robbed. Consumers are bearing the blame. GameStop is the devil. By now, you know this song by heart.
Below, I revisit points brought up in this conversation…
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Posted in Games, Rants | 8 Comments »
August 29th, 2010 by The Grey Ghost
For years, I’ve adamantly opposed the idea of completely replacing tangible media with digital distribution for video games and other forms of entertainment. It’s a fantastic alternative, but could spell disaster for consumers if it becomes the standard.
This resistance on my part stems from an age where products that you purchase (like video games) became your property. Media publishers have begun adopting digital distribution as a lucrative business model, now that they’ve realized that they can use it to destroy the secondhand market and overthrow consumer ownership.
I don’t know about you, but this idea scares me.
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Posted in Games, Rants | 7 Comments »
September 27th, 2009 by The Grey Ghost
This past Friday, an article of mine was published on GotGame.com, expressing some of my views on consumer ownership in the video game industry. I’d placed Scribblenauts in center spotlight for the piece, since it’s not only the hottest new title but also because it has one of the most offensive end user license agreements I’ve ever read.
Within hours of its publication, a reader posted a comment suggesting I’d plagiarized a similar article in the October 2009 issue of Game Informer, which had hit shelves just days before.
I wasn’t offended–I get my video game industry news almost exclusively online and I can prove that I’d written the article weeks ago, should the gauntlet be thrown down. Though it did spark my curiosity to pick up said issue of Game Informer, in the relief that I might have a kindred spirit.
Lo and behold, on page 38, there’s an article about consumer ownership rights by Hal Halpin, president of the Entertainment Consumers Association. The ECA is an organization devoted to spreading awareness about consumer rights and the dangers of industry trends that threaten them.
While drafting my “You Don’t Own Scribblenauts“ article, I’d searched around for such an organization to give my audience further reading options (and to provide credence to my otherwise ravings from a paranoid lunatic). Unfortunately I could not find a group in time for publishing, having exhausted all the variations of “consumer”, “ownership”, and “rights” I could imagine into a search engine.
The organization sounds good and I support any other group cut from the same cloth. You can sign up for membership at the ECA website, but there is a catch. In order to claim independence from corporate influence, the organization requires annual dues paid by its members. If that turns you off, the article in Game Informer does offer a coupon code good for one year’s membership for free.
At the time of this writing, I’ve had difficulty establishing my own membership with the ECA, due to security red flags triggered in my web browser. I get the feeling that this is due to poor website design, but I’ve contacted their tech support for clarification.
I will offer my hunch… At first, it made sense to me that this type of article was published in Game Informer, GameStop’s proprietary video game rag. After all, GameStop’s entire business model depends on the secondhand market providing more than half of their revenue. Of course their publication is going to spotlight an article forewarning the dangers of digital distribution over tangible media. Nevertheless, I was happy that someone is covering this topic and that there’s an organization devoted to the cause.
As I investigate further, I’m beginning to suspect that the ECA may have even been founded, if not heavily backed by GameStop as an unofficial branch of their corporation. This implies that the ECA (who, by the way, also controls GamePolitics.com) is a subversive public relations device whose true priorities are geared toward sustaining the interests of retailers, rather than consumers.
What’s worse, if this is true, that means that the organization is a facade, with its membership fees being just another channel of income for GameStop.
Whatever your political view regarding GameStop, you may want to seek out an alternative organization with similar goals. Count on me providing updates regarding the ECA, as they come to me.
Posted in Games | 1 Comment »
September 24th, 2009 by The Grey Ghost
Good news, Disgaea fans! There’s a new Disgaea game being released in Japan this November.
The bad news: It’s a visual novel, so it will probably never be translated into English.
Visual novels have been a popular genre of video games in Japan for many years, yet they’ve never quite caught on in the Western world. My theory as to why: Americans don’t like to read. Those that do are satisfied with traditional books to quench their literary appetite. The addition of imagery and occasional multiple-choice plot direction doesn’t keep our attention in the video game platform. Video games are more regarded for interactive entertainment and as soon as we pick up the controller, we’re ready to start punching and shooting.
It also hasn’t helped matters that many visual novels contain mature (often erotic) situations. Unlike Japan, sexually explicit entertainment hasn’t been fully accepted into mainstream culture and is nearly impossible to gain support by Western video game publishers.
Personally, I hope that “Infinite” makes the cut for localization.
Disgaea: Infinite focuses mostly on the characters from the original title of the series, with appearances of characters from its sequels. It will be released via the PlayStation Network for the PSP, with the unconfirmed possibility for PS3 playability.
Check out the trailer below:
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September 10th, 2009 by The Grey Ghost
Just in time for the launch of the PSP Go, several Nippon Ichi Software of America titles will be available for download via PlayStation Network. These titles include fan-favorites Disgaea: Afternoon of Darkness, Prinny: Can I really be the hero?, with other titles hinted to join them. As a special promotion, the games will be priced for “half off” (that is, $12.99 and under) starting October 1st and extending through that week.
Hold on a second.
This means that once the promotion ends, these games return to their normal price of about $25.99, correct? As I write this, I can buy hard copies of those games for the same price at retail. As I asked in my Secondhand Rant, isn’t the main selling point of digital distribution passing the savings of production costs on to the consumers? If the digital copy is priced the same as the physical copy, where’s the incentive? What am I missing?
Of course PSP Go owners aren’t able to play the UMD versions of the games, but then that’s the whole idea. If the entertainment industries can transition digital distribution from a low-cost alternative to the standard, they can go back to charging whatever they want. Worse, they’ll be able to justify it if they can eliminate the secondhand market, since they’ll then gain a monopoly over access to multimedia.
I do give big props to NIS America and Sony for finally having some kind of sale on the PlayStation Store. I can only hope that they learn the same lesson as Valve–that being if you discount the price, sales will greatly increase. Weekly sales would be welcomed by their consumer base and God knows I might just use the service myself more often.
Posted in Games, Rants, RPGs | No Comments »
August 26th, 2009 by The Grey Ghost
There’s an item of controversy that’s infected the video game industry: The idea that buying used games somehow steals bread from the mouths of starving developers. This, of course, is lunacy.
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Posted in Games, Rants | 2 Comments »
