fobwashed

@Crash_Happy said:

Seems to me the OP can be summed up as "I'm a cheap-skate".

I prefer frugal. Or price conscious =P I suppose cheapskate could also fit the bill. Fulfilling unlimited wants with limited resources. Getting the best product at the cheapest price or in this case the same product at less cost to myself. Also, I'd like to pay more if I could, just not as much as they're asking for a product I won't be using fully. If it's a choice between a cheapskate and a sucker, I'll go cheapskate any day of the week and twice on tuesdays.

@Little_Socrates: It's almost the opposite of piracy I'm advocating -_-;; I want to get more money to the people who make the games I play possible and while I agree with you that they are getting money for the games the rental companies purchase, it's still less than they'd get if I were able to pay them directly somehow. Resistance 3 I beat in a single day with a $2 red box rental. $2. . .

@Taefarinas: Fixed and thanks for the catch =)

@NeVeRMoRe666: I understand where you're coming from but I have to disagree. While it's true you don't have sort of physical thing that remains in your possession, you are essentially paying for the experiences (which you mentioned). It's like going to a movie theater, taking in a play, going to a theme park, taking a trip somewhere etc. (I could discuss the benefits of renting over buying a condo with you as well but that's an entirely different topic =P) I do feel for you on the time limitation thing. It's a shame that you can only rent for a week chunk at a time. I wonder if you'd change your tune if you had a readily available redbox nearby. You can rent from any redbox, and return to any redbox and you get charged by the day as opposed to some random chunk of time. I drive by at least 5 of them on my way to work and back as well so it's always on my way. Finance isn't exactly an issue with me neither, and for a while, I was doing the same thing you were doing. Buying games, not opening them and just hoping to play them sometime down the line. While I could afford to do that, I stopped because it just didn't make sense to drop that kind of money when I had an alternative for a fraction of the price. Also, over the years, I've moved a couple times and in the process, went ahead and sold all my old games since they were just taking up space and I was never going to play them again so even with games I purchase, I only keep for the duration I'm going to play them. Shadows of the Damned for instance, I bought to support the dev, beat it within a week then sold it back. It amounted to a $25 week rental. Also, I'm with you on the "on the clock" thing. When I used to rent from a local shop, I'd feel that pressure too but now I redbox things I plan on playing immediately while gameflying games I know I'll play over a longer period of time.

@PrivateIronTFU: I've actually rented games from gamefly, had them come to my place, and have returned them without even putting it in the system. We're polar opposites =P

@Devoid: Same here. Blockbuster priced themselves out of what I felt comfortable paying. Even when they started doing that no late fees thing, I didn't like paying the premium price for the same service.

@supermike6: On average, I finish rented games way more frequently than games I purchase. Maybe it's because the games I rent are shorter? I dunno.

This is great. Do more. I enjoy reliving the best parts of quick looks!

I want to buy Gears of War 3. After reading some reviews and hearing a bunch of great things about it, I'd really like to support the devs behind the game. But I won't.

The games I buy

These days, I can categorize the games I buy neatly into three piles.

Games I can't rent

This one is pretty obvious since if there's a game I want to play, that isn't available for rental anywhere, I'll buy the damn thing. This consists of PC only titles, XBLA, PSN and mobile games.

Games that need support

Games that are doing something interesting that I feel need my support. Usually these are games by smaller developers or games that will probably not do gangbusters. Pretty much, games put out by people I want to continue making games such as Shadows of the Damned, 9 Hours 9 Persons 9 Doors, Child of Eden, etc.

Games with a strong focus on the single player

And here lies the seeds for the reasons I rent games. I'll buy games that have enough content to justify my hard earned cash. Titles like Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Mass Effect, eventually Skyrm and whatnot.

Turning point

I used to play an amazing amount of multiplayer. Starcraft, Counter-Strike, Halo, Call of Duty, DotA. I'd spend all my free time doing it and damned if it wasn't fun. Nowadays though, I've got way more responsibilities and things vying for my time. It's not to say that I think multiplayer gaming is any less fun because if I had the extra time, I'd totally just sit around doing it more. The problem is that as I began to have less and less free time, the opportunity cost of playing online multiplayer was too great to continue doing it.

Opportunity Cost

Opportunity cost is the cost of any activity measured in terms of the value of the best alternative that is not chosen. The best alternative in this case, when speaking on gaming, would be playing new, other games. I have friends that play MMORPGs and even back when I still had the time to play new games while also enjoying a lot of multiplayer gaming, I would ask them why continue playing the same one game and not play any of this other great stuff that was coming out? I played some WoW myself, and found it quite entertaining but made a conscious decision not to play it because of the amount of time I'd have to invest and because it'd prevent me from doing other things. It was fun, but it just wasn't fun enough to be worth my precious time. Eventually, with my gaming time becoming more and more limited, I had to make the choice. Continue playing multiplayer on a few select games, or play new single player games. I could play a little of both, and I tried that with League of Legends, but I found that unless I put in a lot of time, I wouldn't be really good at it. And winning and being good at a game is what makes it fun for me personally, so I dropped LoL and just went full hog single player experiences. (aside from co-op. I love co-op)

Why I won't buy games I want to play

I don't want to pay full price for something if I'm not going to use all of it. As much as I'd love to support the devs behind games I enjoy, I refuse to drop $60 on a game that has any emphasis on a multiplayer component that I'm not going to even touch. Recently this includes games like Resistance 3, Warhammer 40k: Space Marine, Infamous 2 and in the near future will encompass Gears of War 3, Modern Warfare 3, Battlefield 3 etc.

The solution?

Currently, the solution is renting games. Most non-rpg games can be finished in roughly 5 to 7 hours and I appreciate this because I can get a good full experience without having to invest too much of my time. Because of the short amount of time required to finish these things, I've been using gamefly and/or RedBox. I beat both Resistance 3 and Space Marine in two sittings each. It cost me around 7 bucks to do so total. On one hand, I found this to be an incredible value for me, while on the other, I wish I could have supported the devs that made the game more. I think the solution is already in place, just being worked improperly.

Online Pass

Right now, there's this thing that's been going on that keeps used games, which devs don't see a dime of (unless you begin to determine that the money from selling games is going towards buying new games), from going online. If you want to do so, you'll need to buy an online pass to unlock the multiplayer component of the game. I'm thinking, why not take this a step further? Sell your games for a cheaper price, and value price the multiplayer and single player portion of the game separately. Say for a game like Call of Duty, sell the game for $30 and a separate online pass for another $30. This'd keep down used game sales considerably and cause people like me to purchase the game when normally I wouldn't. It might hurt relations with brick and mortar stores but you could always have bundle deals where you get both portions for a slightly reduced price for sale in store.

My question to you

I dunno, I want to buy games rather than rent, but as it stands now. I refuse. Is anyone else in the same boat as me? How many of you rent games and how many buy? If you do both, what determines which way you go? If you do currently rent, what would developers/publishers have to do to get you to buy instead?

I get what you're saying, and mostly I just feel sorry for you.

This doesn't read like the preachings of an elitist, because it doesn't seem like you're putting down anyone who enjoys the things you don't. At least not directly or harshly. It's too bad you can't enjoy playing games like a lot of us here do. There are some games I play through for the story despite faulty gameplay, and others I play for the entertaining gameplay despite its awful story. On occasion, they are both awesome and it's just that much better but generally I play to have fun. Lots of things people do for entertainment are repetetive. Take any sport for example. Every game, same rules. Less variety than even your hated FPS games. Movies? They for the most part all seem to boil down to telling the same story as do books. I dunno. Sucks to be you.

@Enigma777:

There are trolls that bother me, and then there's you. I think the difference is that your everyday common house troll always tries to garner responses using the minimal amount of effort. I've seen you take this route a number of times in this thread or that, but it's these types of all out intentional but somewhat rationalized trolling that puts you above the rest. I'm a strong supporter of the idea that if you're going to do something, you should do it right. Sometimes, you do it right. And I appreciate the effort on your part.

A. Your "Plus I'm lazy." pretty much negates all the upsides of PC gaming.

B. Maybe KBM is less preferable than a dual stick controller for some specific games where your movement speed is critical to gameplay (splinter cell and. . . i dunno. Splinter cell.) but in most cases, the increased precision you get with a mouse is much better than a right analog stick. Also, there's the added benefit of not having to stop aiming to hit a face button like you do on a gamepad. Also, while you may not play them because you're against PCs, rts, strategy, mmorpg and anything where you're moving an on screen cursor is better controlled on a PC.

C. The majority of those games that are AAA do come out on PC, and generally can run at a much higher resolution and frame rate. (which you don't care about but since you're mentioning that you'd rather play a game that a lot of people put a lot of time into, it doesn't make sense that you don't want to see the full fruits of their labor when it comes to visual fidelity. Which is what I'd guess the bulk of their resources are spent on. Also, you posted a screen of an old, low res game. Which is sort of what console games look like when put side by side to a proper PC game with higher res textures, AA and especially in motion) Another case of you get what you pay for, but there it is. This is of course excluding console exclusives but that's the case with AAA PC titles that just can't work on a console such as the games mentioned in B. Oh, and sometimes I like playing my multiplayer shooters with player counts higher than 16.

D. You always get what you pay for. You could buy a computer that is roughly to spec with current gen consoles (which are running on pretty old hardware) for dirt cheap. That is, if you can still even find computers running that slow. Or, if you already have a desktop, you could just buy a new vid card in the $100 range and still get more power than a console. Also, you need a decent sized TV to get the full benefit of even 720p while due to your proximity to your computer screen, you could get those nice visuals on a much cheaper monitor.

I'm figuring most of these points have already been made, but I'm too lazy to read through what will prolly be a lot of hating on each other from both camps. I love gaming and I don't discriminate. I'm currently playing Warhammer: Space Marine on the 360, Deux Ex: Human Rev on PC, Dead Island on PC w/a controller and just beat Resistance 3 on PS3. Games is games yo, who cares what's better. Oh. . . I remember. Trolls and fanboys. =D

This exact thing is a pretty huge problem in the XBLI section on XBL as well. It seems like any game that reaches the top 60 gets a surge of 1 star ratings almost without fail. Whether this is the work of a small group of individuals trying to bring down the ratings of specific games or a rival dev going out of his/her way to try to bring their own game back into the spotlight is as of yet unknown but Microsoft doesn't plan on doing anything about it. Maybe ever.

It's sad.

It's just incredible.

*EDIT* Requesting this get moved to the proper Tekken 3D Prime board -_-;; sorry folks

@SeriouslyNowsaid:

@Fobwashed said:

I'm currently mid developing an XNA title myself and my two cents is that I don't really care whether or not the game I'm making will play nice with the new boxy Windows. I'm not sure that I'd want to release it in Microsoft's app store over hopefully releasing on Steam anyway.

Pretty much, everything will still run, it's just not going to be integrated into the super boxy touchy feely format.

I wonder if you'd feel that way if the same was true on the 360.

If things were different, then I'd feel differently about it. What's to wonder? =P

@Enigma777: I'm hoping that coming back to the levels later on with additional combat options would allow the player to get considerable boosts to the amount of exp they could get from a level. Hopefully the marginal amount of extra exp would only be on subsequent replays with no additional combat abilities unlocked. I'm also hoping that the combat would be enjoyable to where the player would want to replay areas even without the added bonus but that may be wishful thinking on my part.