My Views On The Used Games Trade

by danielkempster

Or, 'A Blog In Desperate Need Of A Snappier Title' One previous owner. Respectable mileage. Today, I picked up a copy of XIII . It's a game I remember playing a smidgen of way back in my mid-teens and being impressed by the overall look and feel of, but for some reason never bothered to follow up in any way. Fast forward to 2010 and I'm wondering through my local CeX store, perusing the shelves...

Or, 'A Blog In Desperate Need Of A Snappier Title'

One previous owner. Respectable mileage. Today, I picked up a copy of XIII. It's a game I remember playing a smidgen of way back in my mid-teens and being impressed by the overall look and feel of, but for some reason never bothered to follow up in any way. Fast forward to 2010 and I'm wondering through my local CeX store, perusing the shelves, when I spot this oft-overlooked comic-book FPS looking back at me from one stand. Picking it up to examine the price tag, I was shocked to see that the game is retailing for a minuscule 75p. That's right, folks - seventy five British pennies. Let's think about that for a second. I just bought a reasonably well-received game with a proposed playtime of eight to twelve hours of single player content, plus an entire multiplayer component (which, let's be honest, I'll probably never use, but I'll mention for the sake of making my point) for less than the price of a McDonald's cheeseburger.

This is one of the reasons why I'm a supporter of the used games trade. Yes, that's right - this game was second-hand. Before you all reach for the torches and pitchforks and shouting "Burn the heretic!", please hear me out. I own quite a lot of games that have been bought second-hand from stores like CeX and places like Amazon, and with good reason. First off, it's incredibly easy to find bargains that are practically steals if you dig deep enough. My recent acquisition of XIII is a good example, as was the copy of Canis Canem Edit that was on the shelf next to it (if £4 for what is arguably Rockstar's best PS2 title isn't a steal, I don't know what is). Second, it's an amazing way of picking up and experiencing titles that are no longer in production, and that you'd otherwise have to miss out on. Looking through my collection, some of the games I've had most fun with have been out-of-production titles that I've picked up second-hand years later at bargain bin prices - Morrowind, Metal Gear Solid, Ocarina of Time and even Final Fantasy VII were all used purchases. The upside of this is that because these games are no longer in production, as well as being so old and so cheap, buying them second-hand doesn't unfairly cut the developers out of the picture, allowing you to play great games with a clear conscience.

Saw this second-hand with a price of £29.99 today That's not to say that I'm entirely in favour of the used games trade. In fact, there are a few issues it possesses that I strongly disagree with. The primary gripe I have with the concept is what I understand is referred to in the U.S. as "Gamestop policy" - buying back newer releases from customers for a pittance, and selling them on for around 90% of their standard retail price. That's not a healthy policy for developers, who see the vast majority of their income from a game come from sales in its earliest months. I know a lot of defenders of the used game trade argue that the same thing happens with movies, CDs and books, so why should games be treated any differently? My response to this is that games are almost certainly the mediium that suffers from this most in the short term. Say you walk into a used book store. I think you'll agree that you'd be more likely to find well-read copies of Robinson Crusoe and Treasure Island than volumes of the latest Dan Brown or Stephenie Meyer. Similarly, if you go to a music shop, the second-hand section is more likely to contain mountains of old vinyl LPs than it is the most recent chart-topping CDs. Conversely, check out the pre-owned stands in your local game store, and you're almost guaranteed to see a predominance of the latest titles like Mass Effect 2, God of War III and Super Mario Galaxy 2, all bearing prices only slightly lower than their brand-spanking-new brethren. To put it bluntly, the problem with the used game trade is that it's not viewed as a way of providing easy access to dated content that would otherwise be hard to track down - it's just a bit of a discount for the people buying, and a quick buck for the stores that employ it. This is why, when it comes to the latest titles, I'll always opt to buy a new copy over a pre-owned one.

As a final point for this blog, I'd like to briefly talk about the position of PlayStation 2, Xbox and GameCube titles in 2010. I'm not sure why, but with the current generation of consoles well into its lifespan, there seems to be a stigma attached to the purchasing and playing of these titles, both in-store and in online communities like this one. I get the vibe that people believe this current generation of consoles has somehow made the previous ones completely obsolete, but from where I'm standing this simply isn't true. As somebody who still owns (and still plays) a lot of PlayStation 2 and GameCube titles, I've come to the conclusion that it can't be a question of gameplay, because a significant number of titles from the previous generation introduced the gameplay innovations that have become standard in this one. The Wii's motion control aside, the only major difference I can see between the video games of the previous generation and the games of this one is a graphical one. Are we gamers, as a collective, really that shallow? Are we really willing to write off these incredible games without playing them, just because they don't have HD graphics and 5.1 surround sound? Perhaps if more of us were to recognise that the previous generation still has a lot to offer to gamers today, for a fraction of the price, we might start to see more people treating their local game store's pre-owned sections not as an automatic five-dollar discount on the latest titles, but as a treasure trove filled with incredible bargains and experiences that they might otherwise have missed out on completely.

Thanks very much for reading, guys. I'm sorry if my rant got a little incoherent towards the end there, but I think I managed to articulate my point, just about. If anybody else is like me, and likes to get stuck into the bargain bins in search of older titles, please let me know about your latest purchases in the comments section below. In the meantime, I'll see you around.

Dan

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Currently playing - Mass Effect (X360)