Gamestop hasn’t been the target of much ire lately, but that’s not indicative of anything really.
I would like to start this week’s column by announcing that I have an active pre-order at my local Gamestop. It is for the console version of the next Smash Bros. game but I did not intentionally place it. When last I stepped into the store my very friendly clerk informed me that I had a lapsed pre-order “from a long time ago” and that I could put that five bucks toward something I might want that is coming down the line. Since I was buying Mario 3D World he suggested Smash and I blinked dumbly for a moment before agreeing and wondering what pre-order I could have possibly placed that I forgot about. Thanks to events like this it has become abundantly apparent to me that pre-orders are so unnecessary and meaningless that I could not manage to keep track of a single one.
At some point, a long time ago in fact, I stopped regularly pre-ordering things when it became clear to a younger me that the process avoids no great risk of low stock. New games, especially in recent years from bigger publishers, are released in such quantities to so many outlets that running out of any title upon release day is a rarity at worst. But as the usefulness of a pre-order has become apparently null to more and more consumers, something terrible has cropped up around the practice to keep buyers in the habit of agreeing to a pressured clerk’s up-selling. Pre-order exclusivity often in the form of timed exclusive retailer specific DLC has become a common parasite for most major releases. When in the past retailer specific content was limited to very expensive often absurd collector’s editions that might feature some ugly bust of Master Chief or dinky art book, today the content includes increasingly gameplay-relevant DLC pieces. While many of these features remain cosmetic additions or early access to equipment normally obtainable later, recent talks have surfaced that Gamestop wants to get in on the development process of games to, presumably, coordinate exclusive content more substantial than cosmetic or inventory changes.
Am I missing something here? Does that sign make any sense?
This potentially chilling notion of an increasingly close connection between retailer and creator comes at a point in this industry where moves are continually being made to singularize the process of production, distribution, promotion and even consumption all often to the detriment of the consumer. These attempts operate to pare down options and eliminate pressure for competitive pricing and trade-value in an environment where game pricing and trade-value are already prohibitive for the average consumer. This is not to say that all options have been removed, indeed the many alternatives speak to me more of an industry populated by businesses desperately attempting to wrest control back from the end-user. Thankfully the right choices remain clear, resale of games can be done online without the need to settle for a retailer’s low trade offers, for example. As well, some digital distribution platforms such as GOG and, to a lesser degree these days, Steam offer regular discounts and generally unhindered access to games purchased.
The sadder part of this remains the deeper involvement of game distributors and game promoters, that is to say of games journalists in bed with AAA devs and pubs. The expense of website management, especially for the bigger feature rich sites like IGN, can at least theoretically if not necessarily lead to less than scrupulous arrangements that few people involved in games journalism ever outright deny as an occurrence at large. However this is nothing if not a insular industry that likes to echo its habits and problems all down the spectrum of those involved, and to that end the issues the big AAA developers have in managing their massive game dev budgets are the same ones massive gaming sites have with resisting pressures to accept deals from publishers to help keep a post-ad-block website up and running. But again, the right choices for the ones affected do remain quite evident as IGN and Kotaku’s successes belie a vicious skepticism across the internet whereas smaller outlets remain a source of more likely integrity.
On the console versions of Minecraft trivial mods like texture packs and skins cost money. In no way are these things worth a damn penny.
Pre-order exclusivity is also another example of game content being cut up in an attempt to raise game prices while not actually increasing the price tag another ten dollars like they did at the start of the previous generation. Along with infamous free to play examples of obnoxious pay gates, day one DLC, the continued frustration of on disc DLC, and the outright gamble of season passes for completely unknown content at a minimal discount, the games industry has grown only too fond of the kind of retail hoop-jumping forced on many consumers in any retail environment in lieu of a straight discount or product offer. So while hardly endemic to gaming, retail shenanigans like pre-ordering in a way help to highlight the the pitfalls of this industry that a savvy consumer would do well to avoid. And more than just save time and money today, a continued resistance to practices like these can only help delay or diffuse the onset of still-worse practices the likes of which Microsoft has recently been loathe to be inelegant about.
Much and more has been learned, in the positive, about this industry regarding MS’s debacle launch and that is the lightning fast overturns pressured onto the industry players for things not even yet released. While a double edged sword, as this same dialed in enthusiasm has helped produce soft baked ideas like the Ouya, it tells me that though gaming and the people who enjoy it are beset by dubious industry practices, these same practices are often easily identifiable and readily avoided with a little education. An odd kind of hope springs from the industry titans also being out of touch laggards that leave plenty of room for smaller more agile content creators who might know, for instance, that survival horror is not a dead genre or that difficulty in games is not a problem to be solved.
Do you pre-order games from retailers, or have you in the past? What are your thoughts on retail exclusive content? Any other major consumer pitfalls you would like to mention? Please address any and all comments a to a couple inches down the screen in the comment section. Do it now and you will receive an exclusive extra paragraph in next week’s column that I have not even thought about writing yet!
