Is the "Food Court Gangster" a THQ Customer?

I'm doing something a little unusual with this post. I still plan to write about The God Delusion this week, but today I want to write about a recent Penny Arcade strip and the controversy it generated.

Recently, the video-game developer THQ decided to include some extra features that would only be available to first time buyers. They announced that they don't care about upsetting people who buy used games. The webcomic Penny Arcade made a hilarious comic and wrote a news-post commenting on the situation. (For those who don't follow the comic The "Food Court Gangster" is the name of the character in the comic who buys his games used).

In both the comic and the news-post, the author makes the point that THQ has no problem upsetting people who buy used games because those people aren't their customers. They are customers of Gamestop, a retail outlet that, in addition to selling new games, buys and sells a large volume of used games.

Now there's a lot of truth to this. Game publishers and developers don't make any money from the sale of used games. If that was all that they had said, I probably wouldn't have felt the need to comment, but in the news-post Tycho goes further than that. He writes that buying used games is equivalent to piracy. "From the the perspective of a developer," he writes, "They are almost certainly synonymous."

That statement is problematic for two reasons. One, because it equates the legal act of buying a used game with the illegal act of downloading that game from a file sharing network. Two, because it ignores the economic impact of buying and selling used games.

While it is true that the "Food Court Gangster" isn't a THQ customer, Gamestop is. In fact, if I had to guess, I would say that Gamestop is probably one of THQ's biggest customers. If Gamestop makes money buying and selling used games, that's money they can use to stay in business and buy more games. Remember, without the sale of new games, there is no used game market for them to make money on.

Additionally, the sale of used games has an indirect effect of selling more games. Let's say Bob is thinking about buying a game, but isn't sure that it's worth the $60 price tag. If Bob knows that he can resell the game later for five or ten bucks, he's more likely to go ahead and spend the money. Plus, the money Bob makes selling used games can be used to buy more new games.

Let's put it this way, suppose video game companies could stop Gamestop from selling used games altogether. How many Gamestops would be able to stay in business after one of their primary revenue streams is cut off? Let's say that half of the Gamestops are able to stay in business. Would this be a good thing for the game industry?

I know that game developers and game publishers would like to make money on the sale of used games. The recording industry would like to make money on the sale of used CDs, and the publishing industry would like to make money on the sale of used books, but that's not the way copyright works.

If you own the copyright on a particular work you get to control who gets to make copies of that work. You don't get to control what a person does with their copy after it's been made. We might feel bad that Gamestop makes a lot of money on the sale of used games, but that doesn't make it wrong or illegal.

Going back to the original event that sparked the discussion, I don't think THQ's decision to make some content available only to first time buyers is so bad. However, I think game companies need to be careful. If they punish people who buy their games used too much, they might find out that those people are their customers after all.

Scott Pilgrim

I realize that I haven't been terribly consistent with my posting lately. This post and last week's post were both late, and I haven't done a post on The God Delusion in the past two weeks. I'm sorry about the delays. My life has been a little bit crazy lately. Hopefully I should be back on schedule next week with a post on Monday and another post on The God Delusion by next Friday. In the meantime, I hope you'll be patient with me.

Short Version: Scott Pilgrim vs. The World is the best movie to come out in a long time. If you have any interest in video games, offbeat romantic comedies, or highly original movies, you should go see it right now.

Longer version: This Friday I went with a group of friends to see Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. A few weeks prior I got the chance to borrow the graphic novels from a friend. I enjoyed the books, but I was skeptical that the movie would be able to condense the story enough while still preserving the spirit of the comics. In fact, the movie did an even better job than I had dared to hope.

The movie takes all the weirdness of Scott Pilgrim's world and puts it on the screen, without trying to rationalize it or explain it away. It adopts the conventions of comic books and video games in new and interesting ways. I feel like this movie is pointing the way forward for comic book and video game adaptations.

More importantly though, the movie has excellent writing and a great story. Beneath all the silliness and absurdity the movie has a surprising amount of depth. The fights may seem unrealistic, but the way the characters interact and grow and change is very authentic.

Scott Pilgrim is a great movie. It's also a movie that groks contemporary geek culture. I honestly didn't expect to see a movie like this for at least another five or ten years, if ever. I'm so used to mainstream culture demonizing gamers that I'm surprised that a movie like this, which celebrates gaming culture, got made.

Of course, getting a movie like that made is one thing. Getting it to be successful is something else entirely. Although it got great reviews (excluding a few people who decided to review the audience instead of the movie) the movie isn't doing that well in the box office.

I'm hopeful that the movie will end up being successful. Once word of mouth gets around, I expect a lot more people will come and see it, and in any case it's pretty much destined to become a cult classic. So I think that in the long run the film will definitely be a success.

Still, I would like to see the movie do well in the short term. For one ting, the people who made it deserve a solid return on investment. For another thing, I'd like to see how the reviewers who panned the film react when it becomes a much loved classic.

We will see what happens. Only time will tell.

Are Videogames Art?

Instead of doing my usual rant about God or religion or politics I'm going to write something fun and lighthearted. I hope you enjoy.

There's been a lot of conversation recently about whether or not videogames are, or can ever be, art. I happen to believe that videogames should be considered art, but I understand why some people disagree. Today I'm going to talk about some of the more common reasons why videogames aren't considered art.

1) It's interactive, so it can't be art.

This is one of the most basic objections. I like it because it cuts right to the underlying question: How do we define art? For some people, anything that requires interaction beyond just passive observation is, by definition, not art.

Of course, not all artists agree to this definition. A quick video search for "interactive art" on google turns up some interesting results. I don't know if they truly are "art" but they certainly are interesting.

I've seen a lot of people argue that it's obvious that games are art. Great games have well written stories, beautiful scenery, interesting characters, an engaging plot and beautiful animation. How can they not be art?

The answer usually has something to do with interactivity. Those qualities I mentioned above, writing, scenery, characters, they are nice, but they're not interactive.

Interactivity is what makes a game a game. Without interactivity that's designed to challenge the player, it isn't a game. If the interactivity doesn't have some artistic value, then the game isn't really art. It's an artistic movie that won't play correctly until the user presses the right button sequences.

So in order for games to be art, the interactivity has to heighten the artistic experience somehow.

2) I don't appreciate what's going on, so it's not art.

The fact that games are interactive is also the main reason why a lot of people, like Roger Ebert, will never accept that games can be art. In order to grok how games can be art, they have to play the darn things.

As I said above, it's not just that games are interactive, they're interactive in a way that's meant to challenge the player. Most games require a considerable amount of skill in order to be fully appreciated. Someone who's new to videogames can't just sit down and play, let's say, half-life and become immersed in the story. They're going to need a few hours to get used to using the wasd keys to move and the mouse to look around.

For this reason, it's hard for outsiders to get into games. They don't know how to interface with the medium, so they can't appreciate it.

This challenge is not unique to games, but it is more severe with videogames than with other mediums. Plays and movies require a certain amount of suspension of disbelief in order to be appreciated, but they don't require a whole new skill set.

3) Games and Art are two different things.

This is also related to the issue of interactivity. Part of the difficulty games face in being accepted as a legitimate medium is that they're trying to be two things at once.

Multiplayer games like Starcraft or Modern Warfare provide an opportunity for players to compete with one another to test their skills. They're similar to traditional games like chess or football. Most people don't consider chess to be a work of art, despite the fact that it is an elegantly simple game that is extremely challenging to master.

To make matters worse, we can't neatly sort games into those two categories. Starcraft and Modern Warfare both have single player portions that tell a story. They're trying to be "art" while at the same time still trying to be a "game".

These are the major reasons why videogames often aren't considered art. At some point in the future I'll write some more about why I think games can and should be considered art. In the meantime, can you think of any arguments I missed? Or maybe you just want to share your own opinion on whether or not games are art.