Old Games and New Names

Two things to talk about, today! Yeah, I said I was gonna tackle "sequelitis" in this installment, but a couple things have come up which I want to address, so that will have to wait for next time.

First up, it's time for ACTION ON-THE-SPOT VIDEO GAME INDUSTRY NEWS! There's been a lot of ruckus recently regarding the business, ethics, and business ethics of selling pre-owned video games. Basically, game companies don't make money on used game sales, and are now doing everything in their power to dissuade people from buying used. As developers lock players out of more and more used-game content with one-time codes and the like, tensions are rising, and people are starting to wonder what the solution to the problem is. Is there a way to encourage people to buy new without coming off as a massive jackass?

I don't know the solution...because frankly, I don't think there is a solution. Game developers may not like the used game market, but I think they're fighting a battle they cannot win. Developers can not and will not stop used game sales. How do I know this? Because used game retailers have been doing their damndest to put people off of used games and it still hasn't worked!

Seriously, the used game business was incredibly repugnant even before this. Putting aside the issues I already covered with regards to the constant upselling one experiences in these establishments, buying used is always a huge gamble. There's no quality control in these places. Store clerks can't test EVERY GAME that comes in to see if it runs. The best that happens is that someone checks the back of the disc, confirms there are no obvious toothmarks, and slips it into a little paper cover to get jostled around a bazillion times before it actually reaches you. Then you get a disc with no instruction manual and (sometimes) no freaking box,instead getting a generic box with the words "HAYLOW THREE" scribbled in crayon on the front. You put it in your system and, assuming it boots at all, it plays decently or at the very least never fails in a repeatable way so you could get a refund bringing it in.

And despite all this, people...still...do it. Saving ten bucks is so important to some people that they will actually put up with that crap. Do you developers out there really think you can do anything to these people that Gamestop and God haven't already done ten times over? All this "project ten-dollar" nonsense is like putting a 5% tax on crystal meth. You're not going to put people off it by doing that.

If you want people to buy new, all you can do is make something worth buying new. Use the hype machine. Make me want your game on day one. You know when I'm going to consider buying a game used? If it was a game I wasn't excited for so I waited a month to see what the reviews were like before picking it up. If I'm super-hyped about a game, I will run out and buy it at launch (assuming you ship enough for me to do so, of course). Excluding the people for whom used games are an addiction (or economic necessity) I think a lot of gamers operate the same way. So, surprise I guess, the secret to selling games is...making and marketing good games.

I...I hope that helps?

So that's the first item on the agenda, and the second is with regards to my blog itself. As you may have noticed, my recent posts have all started centering around video games, and in light of that I'm considering biting the bullet and converting this into a video games news-and-theory blog. That said, as part of the change, I've decided my blog will need a new name in order to get peoples' attention. There are a few directions I could take this.

I could go the "nonsensical but catchy" route and call my blog something like Flaguzzle or Zimboing. Y'know, one of those titles that betrays absolutely nothing about the content, but is intriguing nonetheless, and is spelled exactly as it sounds so it's easy to enter into a websearch. This tends to be the naming convention used by newsblogs like Kotaku, Destructoid, and all those other places you keep hearing a news story originally broke even though you never actually visit them.

I could also just make the title some random phrase from video game pop culture. I mean it worked for 1up.com, or webcomics like PvP. I could call my blog something like Full Clear or Assisted Aim or...um...Crafting System. Something like that. There's tons of phrases out there, and they all sound about equally like titles. Why, I bet I could just randomly point to a phrase on the back of a video game box and it would work as a blog title. Let's try it...

"A Persistent Internet Connection is Required to Play This Game"

Sounds like a winner to me!

And if I was feeling less creative I could go with one of those lame "informative" titles, like A Gamer's Thoughts or Game Story Discussions. Where's the fun in that, though? The point of a good blog title is to make your content seem more interesting and more important than it actually is. I may be some random nerd on the internet who thinks his outsider opinions on video games are valuable, but ideally my title should leave the impression that I'm a random nerd on the internet who knows his outsider opinions on video games are valuable. Going out there with a blog called "Hey Guys I'm A Gamer, Read This" is not going to get you the obsessive cult of personality which should come with amateur video game journalism. No one's gonna write a creepy Fandom!Secrets post about that mess.

Plus, I have the problem that my blog basically already has the best title ever. It's called "Atomic Chainsaw Apocalypse," a name specifically chosen because it was the most awesome title I could think of. How do you come up with a title cooler than that?

Clearly I will need to think on that. For now...man, I still need to buy Little King's Story. I wonder how much it goes for used.