Games need to cater for the hardcore, young hardcore gamers are the game-makers/game industry of the future. The hardcore ensure game-makers make games with depth and detail. Its the hardcore that keep up an interest in games during their development and provide ample ideas on forums for sequels. Game reviewers are all hardcore gamers by default how are AAA games going to sell if all games become shallower to maximise revenue for the game industry.

Uncharted 2 is amazing game, but is actually quite shallow and doesn’t really provide a novel gaming challenge. There is no such thing as a good Uncharted 2 player really (I’m dismissing the multi-player content, as much better experience are found elsewhere even for the average gamer) maybe that explains why game of the year got battered by MW2 in terms of sales.

Jason: “If we let people play our games…enter our games more inexpensively and charge them based on how much they use them, i think the industry will make more overall, i think the industry will be healthier overall and i think that we’ll be able to get people to look at more unique and individual games”
No matter the purpose or intent, that still sounds like pay to play to me.

Jason: “They don’t have to work as hard in the game to earn the cash to buy, rather they could put in real cash”

Shane: “Right, you’re allowing people to pay to become better at the game”

Jason:”No not actually, you’re allowing people to pay to take away from the time they will have to take to get to that position”

From this part of the conversation, it seems to me Mr Rubin that you’re suggesting that people should be able to buy their advancement in a game either by purchasing things to make it much easier or buying the advancement directly. This doesn’t sound like a balanced game to me.

Regarding the “fair” topic,
Jason:”you’re not buying a prestiged character, you’re buying the goods somebody else could earn with more time, you’re just getting there faster. Is that fair? By nature, economies are not fair. Is it fair that i drove here in a different car than somebody else drives?No…”
It doesn’t sound like people paying $60 had anything to do with it like you claimed in your response. Even Fox news doesn’t spin that good on some stuff. And besides games don’t stay $60, you know?

All in all, you’re speaking from your perspective which i totally understand. From your perspective, you care about your pockets so you can keep driving your fancy car. From my perspective, as a consumer, things are good as it is. I don’t need to be forced into new experiences. I like to buy games and own it so that i can use it as i please.
I’ld really advise people to watch the video again as most of the claims in this response are just not true.

As far as I can tell the issues are twofold, and no one has really hit the nail on the head with either. It’s not (necessarily) about different pricing methods or economic “fairness” as much as it is the perceived value of achievement in games, and grandiose notions of economic progress and stability. To briefly illuminate the former, the very idea of “earning” anything (guns, loot, gold, etc.) within a game environment is in itself peculiar to the medium and ultimately its purpose. Ordinarily, The concept of purchasing goes hand in hand with the expectation of entitlement to that purchase, and when it is denied in any way it is seen as a slight, even a theft. With a videogame, the concept of a purchase goes hand in hand with the expectation of denied entitlement, but also with the provision of opportunity to achieve complete entitlement.

To use a simple example, when most people buy a shovel they expect to be able to dig with it at no extra cost. When a person buys a videogame they expect to be entertained by that game at no extra cost. The difference between the two is that digging is not entertaining, while playing through a game is. The purpose of digging with a shovel is to make a hole, the purpose of playing a videogame is to be confronted with a hole that needs to be dug, provided with the tools to do so, and ensured that the hole can be dug. To simply pay for earned goods within a game misses the point, because the earning process is what’s enjoyable about the game. It would be like buying a hole so as to avoid digging, if digging was something enjoyable to do. There is no personal achievement. The end result (the hole, or a leveled up character) is not what the gamer purchases. The gamer buys the process. The gamer does not want either a shovel or a hole, metaphorically speaking. The gamer wants to dig.

But they still want to purchase it the same way they purchase the shovel, because until now that hasn’t been a problem. And the only reason it is a problem now is the second issue: incorrect assumptions about economic progress and stability.

There is an underlying presumption in all of this discussion that the games industry, under current pricing structures, is becoming unsustainable. This is true, but it’s an issue of unsustainable for whom, and it’s certainly not unsustainable for game players. The belief that there must be a way to convince gamers to spend more money on games is absurd. There’s nothing wrong with current pricing models, but there is something wrong with the expectations of game makers on how much money their games ought to be making. If the audience is not there to support the amount of games available then the answer is to stop making so many games. Inaccurate revenue expectations are the problem, not the amount of money people are spending on games. So finding ways of getting people to spend more money on games will only exacerbate the problem by unreasonably raising expectations even higher. People are still buying and playing games, and some statistics even show that more people are spending more money on games now than they ever have before. Just because there are developers who aren’t getting a piece of that pie under the current business model doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with the industry’s pricing structure, but it does mean there’s something wrong with the industry; there are too many developers. And as for whether or not this “separation of the chaff” with result in less innovation…

“If [developers] spent as much time being creative with business models as they are with content then I think that they would find solutions that made gamers and game makers happier”

It appears your suggestion is directly aimed at stifling creativity. Instead of forcing intelligent, creative, talented game developers to become accountants, why not let the current business model allow the most intelligent, creative, and talented game developers compete for the (substantial) audience that already exists?

A developer’s philosophy should not be to find ways of selling someone a shovel in different pieces, it should be to find ways of making digging more fun that it’s ever been. Otherwise, it might be time to get out of the shovel business entirely.

I think you misunderstood his point in that paragraph. He was talking specifically with online gaming. For many companies to support their online game they have to set up servers to run the game on a regular basis. Those servers cost money on a monthly basis. If it costs X amount of money per month to run the servers but one player plays so much he’s only really payed Y amount per month, then the company lost money on the sale. To offset that they charge more for the Box meaning those that played less are paying for the other guys play time. If the company didn’t offset it enough, then they might in the long run lose money on the game.

Think of it like a Toll Bridge. Do you feel wronged when you cross a bridge and are asked to hand over a dollar? Probably not. Why does that Toll exist? Because the bridge costs the city a bunch of money to build and maintain. They could have just taxed all the citizens of the Town for that cost or they can charge a toll so that only those that use the bridge pay for the cost. This is a much more fair (and more popular) system than a flat tax and that’s why most large bridges have tolls.

This is not the same scenario for offline games or games that rely on peer to peer networking so his example wouldn’t apply to those types of games.