Let’s say that a retailer, on a US$60 copy of Halo 3, earns about $12. That’s actually more than they usually get, but it’ll make the math easier. Let’s also say that this retailer buys used copies of Halo 3 for US$14, and sells them for $50. That’s actually less than they usually offer to buy it for, but again, easy math is good.

Like GameStop, this retailer makes about half of their gross profit on used games. So for every $36 they make on used game sales (one copy of Halo 3), they will also make $36 on new game sales (three copies of Halo 3). As a check, let’s figure up the total profit for the retailer under this scenario: US$72 total on 3 $60 new games and one $50 game adds up to a gross profit margin of 31.5%, which is actually a little higher (but then, I made the math easy) than the actual gross margin GameStop enjoys of 27% or so. All those old sports games from 3 years ago and lackluster shooters nobody cares about anymore actually bring the profit down a bit.

This isn’t about retailers sucking up 2.5 million of the 3 million potential sales on a title by cutting the developer out of 80% of their profit. We’re talking about the retailer pocketing US$72 rather than $48 of the $230 that has been spent in toto on four pieces of software, and developer revenues dropping by 25%. It’s still a significant chunk, but I’ve got got a saying I like to use to describe the book business: a new bookstore can stock the 30,000 best selling books on the market. A used bookstore can stock the 30,000 best books of which the public would rather have two dollars than own.

If the games industry really wants to make up that “extra” 10% of the gross the retailer is taking (and that is keeping it afloat), maybe it should stop making games people are going to want to trade for $14 after a couple weeks.

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Ahh, I see. So I did miss something. Thanks.

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JRPG fanboys/fangirls are the reason the genre is so stagnant.

Look at FFXII, a game that actually tried to push the genre forward, and is reviled by said genre’s fans for “not being a real RPG.” Hell, the only reason the obligatory bishonen exists, is because they realized they could hope to sell a single copy to their fans without one. Early versions of the story centered completely around Basch. They threw Vaan in, and pushed him out of the way as soon as possible, to make room for the *actual* main characters.

As for the amnesia in FF8, the guardian forces slowly cause you to lose your memories. It’s never implied that they lost them all at once.

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But what made me really actively dislike it was all the glaring plot holes. Mind you it was almost 9 years since I played it, and maybe I missed something, but this is what I remember. (Obvously, *SPOILERS*)
- Protagonists supposed to be a world elite military force, but act like whiny spoiled arguing 13 year olds, with discipline that wouldn’t be acceptable in junior scouts.
- They can “draw” power from enemies by hopping forward one step and frowning at them. How does this drawing ability work metaphysically? Why can’t anyone else do this? Is no-one freaked out by these kids who draw life force remotely from everyone like vampires? Never explained, never mentioned again and taken for granted after the initial tutorial battle.
- Everyone suffers from collective amnesia, just so they can go “Oh so we all knew each other as kids, even the evil sorceress queen we have been fighting! How profound!” Why did they all get amnesia all at once?
- There is a mythological country, which turns out to be slightly more technologically advanced than other countries and takes up half the area of the planet, yet they remain a myth and have no contact with anyone else. Why? How? (a power shield that protects against being detected by everyone and everything apparently).
- Protagonists all dream about 3 soldiers in enemy army. Then you meet them in the game on the other continent where they have become the rulers and everyone goes “Yay! The people we dreamed about! Cool!” Why did they dream about them? What was the point?
- A flying fortress. Who built it like that? Why? If you can make it levitate, why not put some bloody cannons on it?

… to me it felt like the writers just sat down with some nifty concept arts and a checklist of the “musts have things” in a Final Fantasy title – “a strange flying vehicle, going into space and under the sea at some point, mecha enemies, emo kids with self-esteem and other emotional issues relevant to 13-year olds, a big disaster wiping out someones home town at some point, etc” and then wrote a thin story around it.

One of the three soldiers (was his name Laguna?) where in early press releases described as an investigative journalist, and was hinted at being an occasional transvestite, possibly a bisexual, and mystically linked to the hero somehow, but the ear-piercing shriek of puritan outrage from fans seemed to have made the developers scrap a large part of that plot, which may be why the subplot of the three soldiers you dream of are so pointless.

I also didn’t like how the girls who, even though one of them is a senior instructor at a military academy, immediately lets the boys, especially Squall, take charge. They are passive, shy and chaste, so they are good girls. Independent women are evil tyrants who dress in clothes that show their boobs. I got this vibe of, if not mysogany then at least fear of adult sexuality.

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For future use:
http://savygamer.co.uk/2009/04/hmv-do-not-get-pc-gamers.html

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(and again, I wouldn’t want it to. I feel like shit if I try to keep up with too much so this is the only game blog I read because it doesn’t keep up with every little thing that comes out of the industry like I’m training to be a gaming historian. I wouldn’t want to have 10 news posts every day. I already have that problem when I don’t check for a few days.)

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Not to mention that ’80 hours of gameplay’ is a pretty liquid number, not to mention different to different people. Some would say the goddamn Mario 1/2/3 series of games is 80+ hours, because it often took that to master it. I’ve put 80+ into Fallout 3 and Mass Effect, but I’m willing to bet you could power through it in 6-8 hours.

I think what people DO want is QUALITY gameplay that lends itself to replayability. I don’t need a game that takes 90 hours to beat. I need (want) a game that I WILL spend 90 hours playing.

Queue the value of TF2 vs. Call of Duty 4 (for me.) I disliked the multiplayer (I had a series of screenshots showing me dying four deaths in a row to the same strafing run on my spawn), and I absolutely HATED the walk to ‘x’ and enemies stop clown-car-exiting the 10×12 room singleplayer. So to me, it’s about a game that brings me back.

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