Regardless if you believe, as I do, that the middle-class is finding itself with an income that is worth less each year, or are in cahoots with Alaric and believe the opposite, it’s apparent that the gaming industry is in a scramble to increase profits – more-so than ever. Most gamers seem to think this is all over a made up notion that the profit of the industry is taking hits from external forces (whereas an internal force would be the production of low-quality titles).

Our discussion/argument over the middle-class has turned into a “we’re the victims” vs. “we are to blame” debate, and I would say most of the evidence points to this being the issue with the gaming industry debate. Except in the case of us gamers, casual gamers like myself are probably more to blame than hardcore gamers like Alaric. We both vote with our money in two contradicting ways. I support companies he dislikes, but I suspect there is even a lower category of gamer than “casual”.

We should name them “consumption gamers” and instead of attacking each other, we need to blame them. I rarely purchase a new game because I will most likely avoid disappointment with a sub $30 game (I’m easily entertained). However, a “consumption gamer” is one that frequently buys new titles just because that’s what everyone on Steam, PSN or Xbox Live are playing. It is because of the spending habits of these consumption gamers that a game like F3AR – on PC – is shipped to me in a case with a download code for Steam, even though I expected a disk. And it’s because of these consumption gamers that PC games have the strictly-programmed-for-a-console “press a button to continue” (when did PC games ever need that message!?). These consumption gamers have directed the industry’s profit to games like Rockband, Guitar Hero, COD, MOH, Halo and other mass produced video game.

But I still think the combined forces of GameFly and GameStop hurt the industry. Why else is Best Buy getting into the “used game” business? They see an area to make more money than dealing with strictly new titles. I fail to see how that has NO impact on developers/publishers.

The corporations are not just created by the people, they are also fully dependent on the people. Only in bad movies can there exist a corporation that is in the business of brutally murdering their customer base. Corporations are created to turn a profit for their shareholders, and there is no need to be shocked when they take whatever steps necessary. Even the most odious of incorporated entities have full de facto support of the population. Do you have a 401K plan? Do you invest int he stock market? If so then chances are you own shares of all of the big players.

This may sound unpleasant, but if the people actually truly despised some company – it wouldn’t last a day. Sell-off of shares, dissolution of contracts, refusal to buy goods and services and the corporation disappears into thin air. That will NEVER happen of course. Why? Because of the people. Because they will never stand for it. So next time you are outraged by corporate conduct – take a good, hard look at those who enable it. You’ll find that the majority of the enablers are private, Middle class people.

Same holds true for the government. All populations deserve their government. We could argue about semantics and cases such as dictatorships and monarchies (although I still maintain that it still holds true) but there is no question that a constitutional republic with democratically elected, representative government is an absolute poster child for this axiom. We do fully and thoroughly deserve our government. Every single elected official is elected by the people, so we don’t have an excuse. Every single harmful law, every idiotic spending decision, every crime, every bit of buffoonery lays squarely on us. We did it.

I can even tell you why. Because “we the people” are evil, stupid, greedy and corrupt. Because “we the people” vote for whoever promises us the biggest cut of the public treasury. “Squatting” has become a national sport, did you know? And it makes sense. Why pay money back to the bank that gave you a mortgage, when you can just stay in the house for a few years (while the lender goes through courts to evict you) pocket the money, and suffer no consequences. Yea, sure, your credit will be bad for four years. Not that big of a deal, honestly. So now is it at all surprising that our country is on the same course. This is who we are, this is what we do, and this is whom we elect – our true representatives. Contrary to the popular opinion they represent us VERY well.

It’s not the greed of the corporations, it’s the irresponsibility of the people that lead us to where we are today. And it will only get worse, because when presented with a choice such as cutting services vs. spending money we don’t have, we (almost) unanimously borrow. On a personal level and on the federal level alike. We’ll pay for it dearly as a country. and we fully deserve it as individuals.

Well, I suppose corporations are just collections of people, and it was the boundless greed of those people on Wall Street and in Washington, DC who created this mess. Certainly there is a large minority of the population that will take any freebie it can get its hands on, but did you or I demand that Fanny and Freddy loan money to those who would never pay it back? No, that was the federal government being lobbied by the ACLU, ACORN and other carpetbaggers. Did we demand that all those high-risks stock traders, fund managers and other scam artists create an endless Ponzi scheme? No, they did that all on their own to boost their obscene bonuses. Did regular Joes working at the local bakery, gas station, grocery store or Walmart repeal the Glass-Steagall act? Nope, that was the result of the financial sector buying off senators. Did the middle class get any kind of “bailout”? We all know the answer to that: how’s that 401K doing these days? Whenever someone talks about “the people” they are invariably referring to primarily middle class taxpayers. Unlike the government, us regular folks actually have to pay back what we borrow or face a litany of penalties and headaches. The idea that “the people” played any significant role in the financial meltdown is so absurd I find it somewhat offensive. Likewise the suggestion that most of us prefer more debt to cutbacks in services is a huge and largely inaccurate generalization. First off, the vast majority of Americans have no say in these matters: any semblance of popular influence is political smoke and mirrors. Self-serving “leaders”, special interests and the rich control the agenda and always have. Average citizens have virtually zero say in matters of taxation and spending with the notable exception of levies placed on ballots. In recent years there has been a distinct national trend towards rejecting tax levies in most states, even for critical infrastructure upgrades and human services. As a result, states and the fed have increasingly resorted to stealth tax hikes. They’ll get the money to keep buying votes from the the groups they curry favor with (unions, public sector workers, the dependency class, etc) any way they can.

The bottom line is that, yes, a lot of people have been carrying far too much personal debt in the last two decades. However, unlike our politicians who can forestall dealing with those problems by rewriting the rules, normal people can’t. We MUST pay the price one way or the other. How does General Electric, one of the largest companies on Earth, pay no taxes on its sizable profits? How do financial institutions who abuse the public trust get rescued with our tax dollars while rewarding themselves for their cleverness? For about half of what TARP cost you could have paid off every bad mortgage in the country and reset the whole economic playing field..started fresh, if you will, hopefully with a complete overhaul of lending rules to prevent another Wall Street disaster. Instead we got a enough extra debt that it is mathematically impossible to ever pay it off. If our political and industry leaders had to play by the same rules as the rest of us, we would never have gotten into this mess to begin with. As it stands now there’s virtually no hope of ever getting out.

Forgive me, but I find it a wee bit odd that first you decry something as a meaningless statistic, and then immediately provide numbers. If it is in fact meaningless, then your figures are meaningless as well and prove nothing. If it’s not meaningless, why did you dismiss it when I used it?

Also, I’d be very curious to see your sources. I used the officially published US Census data, and since our results do not match I am assuming you used something else. What might it be?

Now so far as what Middle class is – I do not accept your definition. Middle class is not “a hope for a better tomorrow,” it is a social class, a reasonably concrete group that can be defined without resorting to vague (and therefore meaningless) concepts.

You seem to believe that people are owed something by the very virtue of their existence. Maybe I’m wrong but the “solidarity” you call for seems like a euphemism for redistribution of wealth. “How dare anyone charge me money? I want a house and a car, and a TV and everything else, and I don’t want to be in debt, so everything should just cost less!” How about trying to live within one’s means? It sounds almost ridiculous in today’s society where everyone fully expects to be bailed out regardless of what they do.

It’s not the greed of the corporations, it’s the irresponsibility of the people that lead us to where we are today. And it will only get worse, because when presented with a choice such as cutting services vs. spending money we don’t have, we (almost) unanimously borrow. On a personal level and on the federal level alike. We’ll pay for it dearly as a country. and we fully deserve it as individuals.

So in essence, instead of blaming “evil corporations” for your misfortunes, how about you take a look at yourself, abandon the idea that you are owed something, and adjust your spending to fit your means? (Or not, but then don’t complain.)

First of all, Alaric, i’ve studied philosophy at a local university for years and i can tell you that that concepts are neither owned nor fixed in stone by dictionnaries but created by the common usage people make of them through langage. Secondly the ‘median household income’ doesn’t give any of us a sense of the ‘distribution’ of income, nor of the impoverishment of the restless many for the profit of the joyful few in the past 30 years. Thirdly, the ‘median household income’, since you like that nonsense statistic so much, was $31,000 in 2007 for the US, far away from the $49,000 you claim. $31,000 for the accumulated revenues of working families, couples for most, plus kids sometimes… wow i’m impressed.

In the past 30 years we have witnessed an increased of productivity of around 50% and, at the same time, absolutely 0 (zero) increase in revenues for workers. The concentration of wealth in the hands of the joyful few has reached proportions bordering on indecency while the restless many got more working hours and more pressure to compete with cheap labor in poor countries.

Now for middle class i’ll tell you what middle class is. Middle class is the hope of people of getting out of misery, of having enough to feed their family and be able to live in something else than a cardboard box, of being able to afford health care and not run into debts if someone close becomes ill, to live decently, have some extra if possible and a little security about the future. Well that middle class is dead and the hope of it is also dead. It died with all the unionized jobs transfered to the third world.

And since you like statistics let me tell you about infant mortality rate wich tell us a lot about the quality of life in a country. You do realize, don’t you, that in the US it is at the level of poor third world countries? That the great US is between Lithuana and Belarus? Even Cuba takes a much better care of its citizen! (wich is no surprise to me btw)

As for Matthew since you don’t mind moving between cities to look after your career i think it is fair to assume you don’t have any wife with a job, family and friends, kids going to school who also have friends, friends and family you love and you want to stay close by, a place where you have memories, a house in wich you put some sweat. Good for you and good luck. If some day what you do in life can be done by a machine, by some software or by someone in India working for a quarter of what you get you’ll understand. You seem to be young so until then enjoy life while you can.

As for games the used game market doesn’t translate in loss of sales of full priced new games because when someone buys used games it is *because* he doesn’t want to pay full price for that game (or any game in some cases). Like piracy, the stop of piracy wouldn’t necessarily translate in higher sales if it could be achieved (and it can’t). But if it did i suspect it would translate in lower sales of new games for reasons i could discuss another time.

Now a little solidarity with fellow human beings would be in order, i would say.

Middle class is one of the socio-economic groups as defined by Maximilian Weber. It falls between the Upper class and the Working class. Middle class is consists of white-collar salaried workers and other educated professionals.

Those who earn in excess of $100,000 per household are considered Upper Middle class. Those who earn anywhere between $35,000 and $75,000 are considered Lower Middle class. Just as the distinctions between classes themselves, these divisions are not set in stone and vary somewhat depending on many factors such as location. The above, however, gives an acceptable heuristic for understanding what Middle class is.

Upper Middle class makes up for approximately 15 per cent of the US population, while Lower Middle class is closer to 32 per cent. Together they are the single largest social class with 47 per cent of the overall population.

Median household income in the US has been steadily increasing. In 1967 it was $40,000 and in 2009 it was $49,777. Naturally the graph is not a linear one, with dips and spikes, but the overall trend is to increase.

Recent economic troubles have chipped at incomes, moving some of the Middle class bottom earners into the Working class. This, however, DOES NOT constitute a “disappearance” of any kind. The Middle class had decreased in a statistically insignificant way, over a statistically insignificant amount of time. Anyone who says otherwise is selling you something or enticing you to act in a certain way.

And “factually false” means untrue, against the facts, not so.

But I’ve been poor all my life, and I work more hours in a week than most people I know so that I can stay out of debt and have security in my future. I worked for $8.25 right out of college so that I could get enough experience to work where I do now, making a respectable living.

I refuse to hold it against any game publisher for wanting to be the biggest or the highest grossing company in the business. If that means they trim the fat and isolate some gamers, that’s their decision to make and I have no right or claim to how they choose to release games or what titles they focus on our abandon.

As it has been said multiple times, I spend my money how I want. No company has control over that. I can be disappointed in a company, but that doesn’t make what they do inherently evil or corrupt.

$2 billion for the used market might seems like a small number compared to the NPD for new games, but that leaves me with two questions. The article you link to says the business is worth $2billion, so how much money is actually being spent on used games? That $2billion could be profit, which doesn’t account for what is actually being spend on a game after a company like Game Stop purchases a used game, then turns around and sells it. In the end, all of that money exchanging hands is still money not making it to publishers and developers (the people who make/publish the game should be profiting from them).

My second question is more of a critique of the linked news article. A $2 billion worth is not the actual amount of money publishers are missing out on. The true loss would be a much higher number since it would include the missed opportunity of the publisher selling the game at their price-point and seeing revenue from that sale. When I was a console gamer and bought used games, not only was Game Stop making profit of a game the paid very little for, I would purposefully not buy new games and wait until a game was less than $30. So it’s not $2 billion vs. $20 billion, an accurate figure would be, if all those used titles were being bought new, how much more revenue would a Publisher be seeing? Used games exchange hands many times in their life spans, each exchange is a lost sale for the publisher/developer.

One thing you are right about is the fact that game publisher (specifically console ones) are working hard at eliminating the used games market. Such a thing never existed on the PC due to DRM, but if they get their way it will soon disappear from the console world as well.

http://gamepolitics.com/2010/07/22/jjgames-used-games-market-worth-2-billion

As for your irony concerning revenues, Matthew, most people would be happy just keeping a good job, if such a thing still exist. Maybe you haven’t been following the news lately. Let me refresh things a bit. In case you haven’t noticed the middle class has almost disapeared in North America. All the manufacturing facilities have been moved to third world countries. The last stronghold that is under attack is the unionized public workers and their rights for collective bargaining is being fired upon from the right as we speak. This is the world we live in and not some fantasy island.

‘They just want money’ is still as true now as it was before. 2 billion dollars in used game market *is* something they will try to get their hands on, trust me on that!

In the end I like your approach Jason. There seems to be no absolute truth with any of these business models or decisions since they are all based on what the market (or sections of the market) will tolerate.

I was a vegetarian for a while but missed eating steak. Now I try to purchase meat that was treated humanely while it was part of a living animal. I can see validity in being vegan and vegetarian, but I also agree with a lot of decisions made by carnivores.

In the end it comes down to what you as a consumer want to support, whether that’s based on moral decisions, convenience, income or whatever. If I want to pay to be abused there’s nothing wrong with that, ask a sadomasochist, they’ll agree.