Because I actually bought this piece of garbage.
DJ Hero, Activision’s latest entry in it’s music/rhythm game series, currently has a 8.5 average critic score on gamespot.com and out of the 6 or so reviews I’ve seen so far, none of them are lower than 8. Upon buying it and finding out how incredibly unfun it is, I tried returning it to a horribly, horribly evil store known as Gamestop. For the 130 I initially paid for it, only 40 dollars was refunded. Essentially I paid 90 dollars to rent a game.
So that’s it. No more video games. Ever.
If I can’t trust the all-knowing, all-powerful, infallible final-authority of the Internet to differentiate between good games and bad games FOR me, then knowing which video game to purchase becomes a process no more blind than pin the tail on the donkey. And since refunds obviously aren’t an option, the only way buying a video game is ever worth it is if I’m paying for an effing 10 out of 10.
Frankly I don’t understand how anyone who enjoys the “hobby” of video gaming could actually think they’re getting an adequate amount of enjoyment out of their games considering how much they pay for them. They say that you shouldn’t compare the video game industry with the film industry because they’re just too different to draw an adequate juxtaposition, but honestly I think the reason people say that is because doing so makes the video game industry look bad. I saw Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs and I didn’t like it, but ultimately I didn’t care because I only spent 9 dollars on that ticket. Even if I had bought it on DVD, that would still only come to 25 dollars TOPS. Video games cost a minimum of 50, which makes zero sense because even the most high-profile video games costs millions less to produce than high-budget hollywood blockbusters. It doesn’t make sense no matter which way you slice it.
I’ve always wanted to quit video gaming just so it would stop sucking up my time and money, but a part of me always secretly hoped that the games themselves would suddenly become more enjoyable, justifying their outrages prices. This obviously isn’t going to happen, and now it looks like I have to add video games to my long long list of things to boycott simply out of principle.
So that’s it, video games! You had a good run but you got cocky so now you’re dead. All you gamers out there can continue to flush your money down the crapper but not me!!!!
<3 Max
I agree.
Thank you so much. I thought I was the only one out there who felt this way. I’ve felt this way for awhile and resorted to modifying all my systems to download games for free, only buying ones I believe truly deserve to be bought. My friends are mad at me because they say it’s people like me that are causing games to be shitty because they aren’t making enough money. What bullshit. The gaming industry has one of the highest returns of any other industry and it’s only growing now that click and point game engines are being made. The only thing they even really pay for are graphics which in my opinion aren’t that great (I like a more simplistic approach). Also, I thought as new systems came out we would get LESS LOAD TIME! A new system comes out and people decide to max it out rather than minimize load time! -kicks baby-
why the hell did you kick a baby… sick bastard
I agree, I’m going to boycott video games as well.
I agree i hate when big gaming company always ripping people off for money. They gave you a decent looking Trailer that makes you think its cool. In the end it couldnt live up for its name. But theres one game thats actually lives up its name. COD4 (call of duty 4)
Go play Braid and Bioshock
I’ll be the first to disagree. You make valid points but I don’t know how you treat your video games. I always use my games for good times with friends. So the times playing it can be priceless. Thats my 2 cents.
Its called trying before buying. Rent games, and if they’re shit dont buy them. Try demos or play at a friends house.
Gamefly, anyone? At least you feel like you’re saving money, and it’s a good way to test a game out. >_> 10/10 review is still an opinion, you never know till yah’ play it yourself. HA…HAHA!
As much as I hate this game, I had to buy it because I am a Daft Punk whore.
maybe you’re just bad at video games. of course it’s not enjoyable when you’re failing all the songs on beginner or just failing to beat a boss in a particular game without using a guide.
You can’t simply dismiss an opinion of a game with “Well, you must just suck at it” especially when he didn’t even say how good he was, or even how much he didn’t like it.
I don’t buy video games much anymore for the same reason.
Sounds like you’re one of the kids who considers themselves a “gamer,” (or an ex-gamer now, i guess) yet only know of mainstream titles. Of course you’re gonna get garbage if you buy games just because others say it’s good. For example, every single review says the gta series is great, but i think otherwise. There are great games out there. It’s a shame alot of people don’t bother looking for them and just depend on what others say.
have you played cave story? if not im going to go to your home and make cigarettes kill your father and rape your mother
Yeah, that happened to me a lot until I started pirating games. A few years ago I even bought a game for the wrong system, and Best Buy wouldn’t let me return it, they just suggested I give it to a friend.
If you have a conscience, buy it if you like it, and if you don’t, you don’t waste your money and they don’t get incentive to make more crap like that.
If you don’t, just play through the Yarr version.
That’s also why I don’t play consoles anymore. The best VGs are the ones with good multiplayer and you cant beat the PC at that. For instance, my favorite game at the moment is a multiplayer-only Half-Life 2 mod called Neotokyo, and it’s free to begin with.
I totally agree with you, Video games now adays are nowhere near as fun or entertaining as they used to be. The price is also one hell of a setback, Remembering my old NES and SNES, games were long and lasted a more than a few weeks and were replayable over and over. Prices at the most where 25 dollars, Then the N64 came out and i noticed a significant difference in the price, up to 40 dollars however the games were still really fun and 4 player multiplayer!? who the hell could beat that? Sadly the decline of good games is clearly obvious and I fear that the prices will only become steeper and steeper, so long as people are still willing to pay for the crap they put out there. I havent seen a single game in the past year or two that ive actually been like- “I MUST HAVE IT OR I WILL EXPLODE” I must say ive actually found time to read, now that i havent played any games in awhile and working out.. and partying, and found a gf, who cheated on me like the whore she is, but i digress. Go outside and enjoy real graphics! or go to school and make a game thats actually worth buying.
Dude, first of all, GUITAR HERO wasn’t all that much fun, especially if you play it by yourself. So why would you think that a crappy hip hop spin off called DJ HERO was going to be better?
Second of all, why did you not keep the receit? If your buying ANYTHING over five bucks, you keep the receit. Why? because if and when the the video game industry fails you (as they so often tend to do habitually, because the misery of others is what gets their multimillion dollar, pill enhance Johnsons hard), you can get your money back. And not just part of your money, but all of your money.
Now, if the game sucked so much that, in a fit of rage, you used a small three year old toddler to bludgeon and damage it beyond repair, that I can understand (because seriously, who hasen’t done that, right?), but simply losing the receit isn’t the video game industry’s fault, it’s yours, unless of course they at some point lobotomized you, but I highly doubt such is the case.
And yes, Gamestop is very evil, everyone was taught that lesson way back when they were consciously selling “Peter Jackson’s King Kong: The Videogame” at fifty bucks a pop. You’re just now coming ’round to this conclusion? I mean if that’s the case, then I wouldn’t be too sure those wooden nickels you got would be worth much. And whoever sold you the deed to the Brooklyn bridge just might be fibbing as well. And I’m no expert, but I wouldn’t buy that ocean front property in Arizona just yet. And don’t count on those magic beans working out just yet either.
Anywhosits, I’m a big fan of your work, unfortunately not so big that I can acctually afford to buy your merchandise, but I do hope you continue it, because frankly, it’s quite spot on.
Sincerely, your adoring public member
–John C. Sayles
I know that your post here is mostly a rant (and an interesting one at that), and that it’s based on this bad experience you had with DJ Hero (which looked like a boring, overpriced game to me–your ordeal seems to confirm this).
suffice it to say, any attempt to debate the issue might be inappropriate given the circumstances. however, despite the fact that it probably isn’t in any way worth doing, I thought it could be interesting to address your argument, if only for the sake of civil discourse.
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a quote from your post:
“I saw Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs and I didn’t like it, but ultimately I didn’t care because I only spent 9 dollars on that ticket. Even if I had bought it on DVD, that would still only come to 25 dollars TOPS. Video games cost a minimum of 50, which makes zero sense because even the most high-profile video games costs millions less to produce than high-budget hollywood blockbusters.”
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now, indeed, the amount of enjoyment someone gets from a movie or a game is completely in the eye of the beholder. also, transcribing that enjoyment into a monetary value is difficult. but just as a simple thought-experiment, I will take your example as a starting point:
“Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs” has a 90 minute runtime. you said that the ticket cost was $9. this works out to *$6* per hour.
I know that some are obviously shorter, but I’d say most decent console games have at least 10 hours of game-play, give or take. so for a $50 game, this comes to *$5* an hour–slightly less than the movie. however, many games have a lot more game-play. for example, 40 hours is generally the benchmark for longer games like RPG’s and so forth. if you buy a game like that for $50, you’d be paying *80 cents* an hour.
now I’d be the first to say that this is an imperfect way of judging the worth of a piece of entertainment. obviously the true “value” you get out of something is related to more factors than just the actual amount of time you spend with it, and not everyone likes the same kinds of games and movies. you could also say that the interactive nature of games means that they are a more “active” experience, and that movies are more “passive.” and on the other hand, good movies may pack more “richness” into every minute of their content than a game, especially when you factor in repetetive game-play. these are hard to quantify, but noteworthy points.
also, there are different reasons why people do these things, whether it be just passing time, getting involved with a story, taking on a challenge, or what have you. from this viewpoint, I suppose games and movies seem to be competing in roughly the same space: vying to take your hard-earned money in exchange for entertainment. but are they actually competing on an even playing field?
when you get down to it, even though the game industry is doing relatively well these days, it is a very competitive and risky business–much more so than the movie industry. like you said, people are far more willing to part with $9 for a ticket than $50 for a game. but there’s a reason for the price difference–it’s just pure supply and demand at work. it’s a fact of life that more people see movies at the theater than play games (although that’s starting to change with the Wii and the casual game market). anyone can walk into a theater and see a movie with virtually no overhead investment, but playing a game requires so much more: you need to own a gaming platform, you need to be familiar with gaming technology, depending on the game you might need certain skills to play it…the list goes on. all this overhead means that fewer people are “gamers” to begin with. games have to charge more than movies because they just don’t sell as many units.
your average console games today generally have a budget of around $15-$20 million, not including advertising, but most of those would be lucky to sell 1 million copies. I mean, even 500,000 units is a hard sell for most games. when you look at movies, though, “Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs” had a $100 million budget and netted about $130 million so far, which means around 13 million tickets were sold. for the big block-buster movies, the numbers are even larger. for example, “Transformers 2″ made around $400 million just in the U.S.–so about 40 million tickets–and over $800 million worldwide.
this just goes to show the cross-demographic appeal that movies enjoy, while games are still kind of a niche market. “Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs” is a cartoony comedy based on a children’s book. the Transformers franchise is rooted in a melodramatic sci-fi story based on a line of toys and cartoons from the 80’s. even with the best gameplay in the world, an unrelated game with similar content to either of these movies might have a chance of being successful in gaming market terms, but would have little hope of even touching the kinds of sales figures of most big-budget movies.
if you want to compare apples to apples as far as budgets, you could say “Grand Theft Auto IV,” one of the most profitable games of all time, might be considered the blockbuster video game equivalent of a movie like “Transformers 2.” in fact, the GTA franchise has been lauded for being among the first to show sales figures that are at least on par with what you see in the movie industry. “GTAIV” had a budget of around $100 million, and “Tranformers 2″ had a budget of around $200 million–both very large in their respective fields. like I said before, “Transformers 2″ made $800 million. with movie ticket prices varying around the world, it’s possible that as many as 100 million tickets were sold for that movie. “GTAIV” had roughly half the budget of “Transformers 2,” and believe it or not, it made roughly half the revenues of that movie, with over $500 million in sales. but even with it’s prodigious success, this probably translates to something like 10-15 million game units sold (it’s hard to get exact sales numbers for games). so although the profitability was similar in this case, you’re looking at 100 million units versus 15 million. and the “GTAIV” profit margin is an exceedingly rare case. I don’t think such a thing has occurred before or since (but it could well happen again in the future).
on top of all this, comparing movie ticket sales to game sales is an imperfect analogy because the point-of-sale model is different. like I was saying before, the whole concept of seeing a movie at a theater is distinct from how one consumes games. maybe comparing game rentals to theater tickets would be more appropriate. but then again, you can rent movies, too. speaking of which, the movie industry has the added benefit of the home video market–even movies that don’t do well in theaters can at least hope to break even once DVD/Blu-ray sales roll in. sometimes games get re-packaged in special editions and bargain deals, and DLC is making way for new revenue models, but for the most part the value chain for games ends on the store shelf (or the download page) with its initial offering.
just the sheer volume you are dealing with in the movie industry is very different from games. both are very competitive, don’t get me wrong, and the people that put up big budgets for either type of media are very risk-averse. but with movies, even if you have only $1 million for a low-budget slasher flick, with a good distributor you can at least break even in the direct-to-video market.
just look at the recent movie, “Paranormal Activity”: with just a $15,000 budget, they have already raked in more that $80 million. an unusual case to be sure, but even with all the interesting things happening in the indie game market, that kind of success is almost impossible for a low-budget game. even the highly-acclaimed indie game “Braid,” which has been called the “Citizen Kane” of puzzle platformers, had a very hard time just breaking even at $15 a download.
so what am I saying, here? well, I guess what caught my attention in your post was the logic you used to say that games are not a good value for the money, and especially the comparisons between the game industry and the movie industry. sure, there are overpriced games out there (*cough* DJ Hero *cough*), and games that probably should have never been made in the first place. it’s the same as with anything else. but I, personally, would rather spend $50 on a good, polished game than $9 on a terrible movie. I mean, $9 is a fair amount of money for two-hours worth of entertainment–especially bad entertainment–even if you just want a little escapism.
at the end of the day, you’re right: it’s far better to lose just $9 than $50 (or $90). so if you blow your money on a movie that turns out to suck, not a huge deal. but since games require a bigger investment of both time and money, maybe they require a little more research before buying, as well? I guess if you like playing games in the first place (which I’m assuming you might, if you own a console), great games that you will like do exist. it all just depends on what you are looking for, and how much time you are willing to spend looking for them. and of course how you choose to spend your money is totally up to you. I’m not saying that you ought to be buying games with your money, but I’m not sure it’s accurate to say that everyone who has a gaming “hobby” isn’t getting their money’s worth and that the gaming industry as a whole is ripping people off. I’m not sure if what I’m trying to say is coming across, but hopefully that makes sense.
anyway, I can’t believe how long this comment is. I apologize if it seems like I have met your rant with a counter-rant–I didn’t mean for it to sound that way at all. I was mostly just thinking out loud (well, in writing, anyway), and I guess I just got carried away. to be honest, I don’t even buy that many video games, so it’s not like I am trying to represent or defend the “gamers” of the world in the comments section of your blog. if you actually read this whole thing, again, I am sorry for the rambling, and I can only hope you realize I’m not trying to start an argument or anything. I just thought in the spirit of random strangers talking about stuff on the internet, I would add my piece to the discussion. I hope that I haven’t overstepped the bounds of proper etiquette, here. well, that’s all I got. peace.
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P.S. the Jerry series is great! all your movies are great! seriously talented you are–that’s all I can say.
tl:dr dawg
That’s why I play “free to play” mmo’s instead…
hope you tried expert before making that decision.
I totally agree with you kind sir. People who do gaming as a hobby and think there getting there monies worth, or even a fair deal, are being played like a fiddle.
Comparing games to movies on a price per hour thing is bogus. (Not that anyone who uses it here is being ranted at. I’m bashing the industry itself for using it as a free pass, and deceiving the public into believing it.) The length of a film doesn’t make it great. The longer the film, doesn’t mean you get more quality from it. a 1 hour good or bad movie costs the same as a 3 and a half hour good or bad movie. In theaters, as well as the cost DVD wise.(Comparing a one disc set to another one disc set.)
Game Publishers DO make a shitload of money. The issue with cost is connected to the inefficient system of game production Which leads to high overhead costs and not enough money to go around at movie equivalent prices. This is due to the industry not keeping up with the change in needs. Your not producing a countless number of games made my outside house developers with small crews. Games have become like the Blockbuster movie industry. Big titles made in a production line by the production house itself in most cases. But as apposed to blockbuster films: Where there are maybe 2 or 3 made per studio, per year. With all there other films mostly made for less money out of house, with the studio simply become a licensing distribution house. The game industry makes ALL there games this way. And there just simply isn’t enough money to go around in such a production method.
The problem with the game industry matches that of the film industry at the fall of Hollywood’s golden era (1920’s-1950’s) The classic Hollywood Studio Production method simply became to expensive to be profitable with the amount of films being released by the late 50’s. Thus the system collapsed, and the New Hollywood era began in the 60’s. Which lead to even better ways to make films. Including opening the doors to some of the greatest filmmakers, and films, in American history. Which would of been over looked by the old method. And these changes still happen to this day with the creation of the New Hollywood system. Hollywood constantly changes the way it makes films to stay immensely profitable at the cheapest price to the consumer.
The game industry needs to do this, especially in this economy. I’d even have the gall to say the Game Industry needs to have another complete collapse (Which based on what I have seen this gaming gen…It isn’t far off.) This will force the industry to make the changes needed to be more affordable to the consumer, yet just as profitable.
Franko.
Max! For godssake! Don’t tell me you fell for it too! That game sux so hard, you could even tell by the title!
You are free to criticize, but you should remember that the more options for entertainment the more people ‘win.’
Personally I cannot understand listening to music as a hobby. People spending crazy amounts of money for music players, speakers, cds, mp3s. But people enjoy it so who am I to judge.
The games industry has never been so diverse. There are so many games you can play for free on top of games that exist though various independent sources such as one of you outlets, newgrounds.com
Some people can be satisfied by watching, but others would rather be doing.
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Oh yeah, just watched your commentary Max and you kinda sound like Coach McGuirk from Home Movies =P
Apparently Hot Diggedy does not realize that EVERY Activision game fucking blows and yet they still get decent ratings.
You really shouldn’t give up on video games just because of crappy games.
Have you tried Nintendo Wii?
I’m afraid the numbers speak differently.
Buying a movie: $20
Amount of time spent watching movie: 1 1/2-2 hours
Time/money: $10 an hour
Buying a game: $50-$60
Amount of time playing game: easily 10+
$5-$6 an hour
I recently got Borderlands, and my friends and I together have spent hours playing it already, and we’re not even through the storyline. Since we got it as a buy 3 get 4 deal, we spent $37 each on the game.
Take a look at gameplay before buying. Judge for yourself if you want it, and even then if you’re not sure rent.
Games are really a larger risk kind of movie. If you get a bad movie, you don’t lose as much, and you don’t get as much time spent from the amount of money spent. With a game, if it’s bad you wasted a lot more money but if it’s good you got a lot more for your money. Not to mention games are more enjoyable for friends and for when you have nothing to do.
Don’t waste your money on video games! rent them to see if you like them or wait to buy them second hand. pay your mom rent!
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[...] …Mickey is essentially the Anti-Jerry. Like all my protagonists, Mickey is essentially an extension of myself. He’s a hyperbolized version of one factor of my personality. Specifically, the part that does not much care for video games. [...]
One must have something to waste one’s life on, and you made a good choice. What you decided to do about is ironic, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. – I laughed at you for buying that game though, do you actually have any friends in the real world? If not, why didn’t you at least ask your fanbase? Those reviews were written by children or robots, and I can’t imagine which of em’ is more malleable these days. Any way you slice it, someone wasn’t doing their job for you, unless it got you those $40 bucks back at the very least.
hodiggedydogdiggetydemon, if you honestly listen to reviewers to buy games you DESERVE to lose your money, a lot of people hate the games I play, but I buy them because I LIKE THEM! dante’s inferno is an example, a lot of people call it a god of war clone, but at least it is fun to me, kratos can suck my shaft, anyway I like that a cartoon came out of it, sorry you feel the way ya do about games, and buy the way, I am by far the bigger asshole
>buying games