*Used Games?*

[dunno001]

mirgro said:

ZenfoldorVGI said:

mirgro said:

So the studies done by governments and anti-piracy groups, which paint piracy in a non-negative light are always half-assedly done. Yet your oh so worldly personal experience, observations and infallible logic, on which you base your argument of pirates being bad, are somehow less half-assed than the above enities' efforts?

As for your point about industry. I guess using your definitions we can also say that the grocery stores are also part of the video game industry, since they feed the developers and all. The farmers as well because they get the food which the stores buy which they use. In fact everyone is part of the video game industry by linkage.

First to get this out of the way, the people who pay for the making of a video game are a subset of the creators of a video game. I don't how you decided to not count them as part of the creators. An industry is the people or companies engaged in a particular kind of commercial enterprise, language courtesy of google. As such, the industry is in fact just the creators of the video games ad it has its customers, which are us. Meanwhile Gamestop is part of the retailer industry and websites like these are part of the print/news industry. They just happen to be specialized in video games, but it does not make them part of the video game industry since they are in no way involved in the making. I hate to break it to you, and your so overinflated ego, but you are just a customer to an industry, not part of it. If you want to take offense, the go right ahead.

As for the whole used sales thing. I wan to stop you right here before you start using por analogies of cars or pants wor w/e other physical good you can think of, because games are digital and not physical goods. That's a very big difference. When Gamestop sells you the used game, it's nothing like buying a used car, you have to think of digital goods. It's more along the lines of Gamestop going to the dealership, stealing the car, and then selling it to you for cheaper, but not by much, than the dealership.

I didn't say they're "always" half-assedly done, I said they are more often than not half-assedly done. That's just my opinion. While I'm sure your studies exist, and are valid, I can't really comment on their validity becuase I haven't seen them.

What I can say is this, studies are a dime a dozen, and when it comes to piracy, I bet I can point to several that come to the opposite conclusions you claim yours do. Point is, studies don't an argument make. Especially when you don't even bother to present them, and your argument is nonexistant without them....Try to argue your point, and draw conclusions and maybe people will listen to you, don't just point to some insignificant study, and claim that everyone who contradicts it is full of shit. If you're trying to sell me that piracy is good for the industry, then you're argument is full of shit imo, and I don't care who agrees with you.

No study thusfar has accurately compiled the results piracy has had on the PSP(and none ever will), and by its very nature any study like this would be a prediction, estimation, or an extrapolation. There is no absolute proof, and thus, your study is theory, and it always shall be. You can form an argument on your on, or you can lazily cling  your study, but in practice, your study will not hold up to scrutiny, while your logic might.

As for your ignorance that gamestop and VGChartz are not a part of the videogame industry, you are simply and provably wrong.

Industry: the people or companies engaged in a particular kind of commercial enterprise;

A publisher and a developer is not the same thing.

As for your implication that I would claim grocery stores are part of the videogame industry because they feed developers, you are wrong. The only way grocerystores would be part of the videogame industry is if they sold videogames. Walmart is a small part of the videogame industry, as is amazon, as are gamers who purchase and sell games, as are journalists who report on games, as are analists who predict games. All of these people are involved in an economy driven by videogame and marketing sales, where they either profit from or contribute directly to said industries economy. The grocery store would profit from those developers if they were developers or car salesmen. It has nothing  to do with the industry.

Just think of it like this. If your job depends on the existance of videogames, then your in the goddamn industry like it or not.

As for my epeenesque statement, I was doing 2 things at once. I was having a laugh at your use of the word "argumenter" and I was letting you know that I am not a rediculious and unintelligable poster as you would have implied, but rather I'm raising some very valid points and you are doing a terrible job at contradicting then. I wasn't bragging. I sincerely apologize for the way I acted in my first response to you. I think I did go a little too far and there was no call for the way I spoke to you, but I'm not wrong here. Piracy stagnates where used games arguably stimulate. It's all about the money. When money moves within an economy that is good, when no money moves, that is bad. If you can present a study to the contrary, then that study would be wrong, because it's economic law, not theory.

You should get together with Vlad, now that's a piracy lobbiest I can respect, hehe!!

WEll that is how you implied the studies are. It was the very reason you dismissed them. Do't pull the "didn't read them" part because even if I do provide the links o the studies, you still won't read them and just dismiss them if they fly in the face of your logical scrutiny. I'd love to hear your reasons for saying that piracy just stagnates and is all around bad for the industy.

As for the whole industry argument, you are still wrong. I never said publishers and developers are the same, I said that publishers are a subset of creators, which include the developers, the publishers, and the guys who copy the CD, the guys who make the boxes and manuals. That is the industry of video games, and that's where it ends. Everything else is something that just revolves around the given industry. Video game magazines are in no way involved in the video game creation, nor are retailers. They just revolve around the industry without being a part of it. In fact they are parts of their own industries, retail and news.

As for your "economic law," I hate to break it to you but at one point in time mercantalism was also an "economic law" and so was being tied to gold. In fact I can list many economic laws which have been replaced with better ones throughout history.

Nonetheless, the point remains. Some of us would be interested in looking at said studies to examine their validity. If you can't even post a single link when you said there were several prior, then you're talking hot air.

As for the industry, what that is will depend on where you draw the line. For me, it would be defined as gaming being your primary source of income. Thus, publishers, developers, and gaming stores like Gamestop are in fact, part of the industry. If something were to happen to gaming, they would require a radical change to their business to adapt. Thus, this is also why I do not see places like Best Buy (general electronics) and Wal-Mart (clothing) as part of the gaming industry.

This leaves us, the consumer, out of the picture, or so it seems. Our role in this position, is to financially support the industries we feel are worthy of support. Buying used games, while not ideal in comparison to new, does continue to keep money flowing into the gaming industry. And it is this used game revenue that lets Gamestop perhaps order a few more copies of a game to have on the shelf new at release. The rest of things have already been covered in this thread, and thus, I shant rehash.

Finally, you try shooting down the economic law. The way things like that work, is that it is seen as an explainable explanation for something, and is accepted as fact, until something comes along that can concretely disprove it. So, we're back to square one again: proof. If it's wrong, what's right? Can you get economists to agree to this new "right"? If not, then this remains as the current fact.