Are Video Game Publishers Entitled to Money After First Sale?

This is becoming a bigger and bigger issue as of late.  Sony's SOCOM: U.S. Navy SEALs Fireteam Bravo 3 for the PSP ships with a voucher that enables online play.  Once the voucher is redeemed, that game cannot be played online on anyone else's PSP.  This means you can't trade the game, lend it to a friend, or buy it used and still have access to the online mode.  UNLESS you pay another $20 to Sony for a new voucher.

This is only the latest report.  Publishers have been trying to figure out a way to make money off used game sales for a while now.  EA also took this tactic with their sports games and only made roster updates available for new copies of the game.  No voucher, no roster updates, unless you paid EA money to get access to the updates.

Why do video game publishers feel they are entitled to additional revenue after the first sale when that's not the case for other industries?  Movie and music companies aren't getting a cut on used sales.  I'm pretty sure Nike isn't getting any extra money from the shirt I gave to Goodwill.

Let me quote you something from the Wikipedia article on first-sale doctrine:

The first-sale doctrine is a limitation on copyright that was recognized by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1908 (see Bobbs-Merrill Co. v. Straus) and subsequently codified in the Copyright Act of 1976, 17 U.S.C. § 109. The doctrine allows the purchaser to transfer (i.e., sell or give away) a particular lawfully made copy of the copyrighted work without permission once it has been obtained. This means that the copyright holder's rights to control the change of ownership of a particular copy end once that copy is sold, as long as no additional copies are made. This doctrine is also referred to as the "first sale rule" or "exhaustion rule."

Game publishers are obviously fighting this, but they don't have my support.  Some are rationalizing it as digital rights management (DRM), as in Sony's SOCOM case, but the $20 charge reeks of money grubbing, not piracy prevention.  Punishing the honest consumer for the action of pirates is wrong.  I don't have the answer for illegally downloaded games, but it's not to charge every new user of a legitimate game an extra fee.

We all know where this is headed, digital distribution.  The publishers want to cut out Gamestop and the used game sales, as well as keep a tighter grip over legit copies.  Ubisoft has gone so far as to make Assassin's Creed II (PC) unplayable without an internet connection, a constant connection.  As in, it will actually boot you out of the game if it detects network loss.  Then what do we get for our troubles?  We get no physical copies of games, manuals, and boxes.  We get the inability to loan games to friends, rent them from the store, or sell them when we are done.  And, if there's no plan for the publisher going out of business, possibly the loss of the game forever.  Sign me up! </sarcasm>

Last Remnant Fell Into Middleware Trap

As reported on 1up, Square Enix CTO, Julien Merceron, admitted the traps they fell into with using the Unreal Engine as middleware for The Last Remnant.

One of the traps with middleware is that some game teams believe that, because they got this middleware, maybe they need less programmers on their team, or maybe they don't need that many skilled programmers. Sometimes middleware is just something that a studio or a game team is going to use because they don't find the right people.

A lot of press was pretty hard on the game for poor performance and framerate, but nothing could have saved the game from the technical mess that was its combat system.  I honestly wasn't distracted by the technical issues.  The randomness of the combat is what killed it for me.  You could never count on what battle choices were going to be available from one round to the next, and most importantly, even though you could see a tactical view of the engagements, you could never count on actions being taken in any particular order.  This completely stripped the game of strategy.  You couldn't make the smart decisions about which group to attack because you didn't know if they were going to be locked in engagement or not by the time their arbitrary turned rolled around.

Playing Titan Quest Again

My local group of friends and I love co-op games.  We used to have a standing night to play Xbox games together (like Unreal, Crimson Skies, and Mech Assault).  Now we've all got families and other excuses, so outside of the occasional MMO, we just don't game much together.

I think we've found a common ground this week though, Titan Quest.  It's a game type we all love, has simple support for multiplayer online, and it's cheap.  Not to mention it's a great game with a huge depth of classes and abilities.  Solo, I've never finished the campaign, much less taken on the higher difficulties.  I plan on testing out the multiplayer server tonight, figure out which mods to use, and try to narrow in on the class I want.

Bayonetta Contest T-Shirt Get!

Yes, I am one of the lucky (skilled?) 500 people to get the Scarborough Fair t-shirt that Penny Arcade had made up to support their old school contest.  In a nod to 80's Atari high score competitions, where people would snap Polaroids of their high scores and send them to magazines, the goal was to complete Bayonetta on hard and snap a pic of the ending screen.  Of course nowadays that has to be confirmed with checking your achievements as well.  Awesome game and shirt (I'm wearing it today!).  Thanks to Penny Arcade for the contest.

White Knight Chronicles Progress

White Knight Chronicles is still soaking up all my game time since I'm on deck for the review.  It's been a bit of a disappointment.  My expectations were rightfully high since the first time we were shown the gameplay trailer before the launch of the PS3.


The character models and environments are comparable, but that's about it.  The gameplay is not nearly as engaging as it looks in that video.  The animation is way dumbed down as well.  It's not that it's a bad game, it's just completely average.  The online portions offer some hope to the dragging single player, but you have to play through the story to unlock the online quests.  If I wasn't constantly and completely starved to play RPGs (and reviewing it), I probably wouldn't bother.

Plants Vs. Zombies Already #1 in iPhone App Store

There's an incredible amount of hype behind this game.  The gaming world collectively groaned when the delay was announced, and much rejoicing has been had since it's release a couple of days ago.  Having played the first quarter of the game myself, I have to wonder what all the hullabaloo is about.  It's a good game for sure, but it's still just a nicely made tower defense game, of which there are many.  If you all want to make a stink over an iPhone game, at least make it over Sword & Poker.

Final Fantasy XIII Director on Western Reviewers' Slant

This bit of news hit particularly close to home since I'm handling the FFXIII review for Gaming Age.  While Final Fantasy XIII is still receiving very good review scores across the globe, a CVG article points to this quote by director Motomu Toriyama:

 "We think many reviewers are looking at Final Fantasy XIII from a western point of view. When you look at most Western RPGs, they just dump you in a big open world, and let you do whatever you like... [It] becomes very difficult to tell a compelling story when you're given that much freedom."

So, first let me say that I agree.  Perhaps I'm in the minority of westerners that like linearity in my RPGs, but I hate thinking that I may have missed something in an open world game.  Covering every square inch of the world to make sure that doesn't happen ins't exactly the best use of my time either.

What's more of an issue for me is the implication that the concern is that high for reviewers over how linear an RPG may be.  I think back to the press as a whole as they reviewed Mass Effect.  I remember multiple outlets making remarks along the lines of, "The story and atmosphere are amazing.  The combat...meh, but the atmosphere and writing!"  Sure enough after two attempts at playing through the game myself, I just can't get past the "first person shooter wrapped with a few RPG elements" type of gameplay.  Why wasn't that more important?

If anything, the combat in FFXIII sounds like a total step in the wrong direction, and I'd expect that's what the complaints would be about (they certainly were on NeoGAF).  We're playing games here, right?  We're not watching movies or reading books.  Maybe I'm wrong.  Maybe there are a number of people that don't care that much about the combat system and character development systems in RPGs.  Reviews scores over the last few years would confirm that.