Annoyances II – YouTube Slideshows

What on Earth is the point?

I’d almost make an exception if it was a video of a song, but really, you only need a single picture.

But videos that are just a selection of pictures of a sporting event? It’s easy to find pictures online. They are widely available; seemingly many websites decided a while ago that pictures were a good thing. And they also decided to make them of much higher resolution than your crappy slideshow. And, for some reason, they decided against using every single rubbish transition in existence.

I’m sure there are better uses of your time than making these, hopefully uses that i’m not likely to click on when searching for a video of something.

A picture is worth a thousand words...

which is a lot for a blog post really.

So, don't expect many pictures.

Annoyances I - Steam

I mean the hot games one, not the hot air one.

In theory, digital distribution is awesome. Quick and easy access to whatever you want, whenever you want, tiny distribution costs resulting in lower prices for the consumer and more flexibility for the developer. And it's one of those things that is obviously 'the future', and you feel a bit trendy for using.

It’s a shame it doesn’t work like that, isn’t it.

The ability to downloaded content is considered a convenience and therefore priced as such.

The bane of the publisher is pre-owned games. They get nothing from their sale, the entire profit margin (which is HUGE) goes to the retailer.

To be honest, it’s not as bad as they make it out to be. The retailers use the revenue to discount new games, and the customer often exchanges the game instead of getting cash, resulting in another sale. The resale potential makes a £35 game appear better value, and is a way to introduce new customers to a series. Despite all this, they ignore it and just think of the margin.

Let’s take Steam as an example, easily the most popular game distribution service there is, with somewhere around 75% of the market.

I’m strictly limited as to how I can use the games i’ve paid for in comparison to boxed games - I can’t lend the game to a mate for a week and I can’t sell it once i’ve finished. However, these are roughly comparable to the convenience provided.

But biggest problem, by far, is that in the vast majority of cases, it costs more to buy a game on Steam than to get a physical copy.

In the end, all things come down to money. While Steam competes favourably with the RRP, few games are ever actually sold at anywhere near that price. Physical copies are subject to strong retailer discounting and competition. Steam isn't.

For example, Football Manager 2010. I paid £17.95 for a boxed retail copy. A boxed copy that has a code in the manual, allowing you to link it to your Steam account, making it the same as the Steam version, and leaving you with a spare unneeded copy. Steam sell the game at £29.99 (with the RRP apparently being £39.99).

Admittedly, there are often limited time offers on Steam (like the one on now), bringing the price down to favourably compete with retail for a limited period... however there goes the benefit of availability if you can only buy games cheaply in a limited window of opportunity.

Publishers need to be wary, in that digital distribution reduces the difference between buying games and piracy. They need to make it cheap and convenient enough, or people will jump for the free option.

The current pricing model for computer games is obviously broken. 80% of games released don’t make a profit, being subsidised by the ones that do. And people wonder why there are so many sequels.

So, maybe it's time to think about volume rather than profit margin?

The end of a decade is a good time to look back...

and realise how crap most of the things in it were.

'The Noughties' is such an awful, awful term. Hope it dies a sudden and painful death.

About the blog

Assuming I put the effort into maintaining it, this blog is intended to be an insight into the swirling miasma that is my mind. Aside from the blatant self-delusion, half-truths and hype, the blog is likely to consist of a few key areas:

-  Me – It’s hard not to include this in here. Expect this to effectively be my overflow carpark.
-  Annoyances – The little things that annoy me a lot more than they should do (expect a lot of these).
-  Good Stuff – The little things that please me a lot more than they should do (expect much fewer of these).
-  Lists – I like lists.
-  Computer Games – I like these too.
-  F1/MotoGP – i’m known to watch these and have opinions on them.

Sound rather dull, doesn't it?