![]() ![]() Just like there is a real limit to how much you would be willing to pay for lunch, even a very good lunch. Games like most forms of entertainment have completely lost their exchange-value- their value as commodities- so consumers will no longer pay so much for them anymore. Even RPG books could be traded, gifted or resold!įor me this is the best explanation why games today can't be sold for the value they used to sell for before the internet. ![]() These days content is consumed, you are spending your money on pure consumption, but back 25 years ago, your games were actually commodities that could be resold or traded. If you bought a computer game, you would swap it with your friend's computer game disks when you were done playing it. When you used to buy a video game cartridge or even a computer game, you could resell it later for $5-$15. Yes, games still have use-value, but games no longer have exchange-value. Nowadays, purchasing a game almost feels like charity- you're "supporting" or "backing" the developers or the gaming industry, but you're not actually "buying" anything that has exchange-value. People used to *rent* games, movies, and porn! Ownership still had meaning. So people thought it was normal to pay for games, movies, books and even porn. My meaning was that growing up in the late 80's and early 90's, we didn't expect our entertainment to be free, the way we do now due to all the free pirated content on the internet. Shops couldn't order them in fast enough.īut I do wonder with prices not going up that much but costs (wages, rent, electricity, etc) have. I was seeing Amiga's (not so much Atari ST) flying off the shelves around early 1990. Maybe it wasn't the case in the States, but definitely in Australia. It seemed everyone and their dog had either a C64, Atari XL/XE or something similar and most of my friends at school had one. I'd bring blank disks to give to people and they'd come back the next day full of games. Word got out (mostly by visiting stores and talking with other people) where to meet and recall State and Federal police officers would be there to copy games. I lived in a remote area but even travelling to Sydney every few months on school holidays I was able to meet people who had copies of games. Eventually, after a couple of years the major stores caught onto this and wouldn't refund or exchange unless the game wouldn't work. What was usually done is you buy a game, copy or crack it, return it for a refund and give copies to your friends. The prices were way too high for me to buy and keep games so I copied them. There were some niche shops that sold copy cartridges (eg. I had hundreds of games for the C64 and Atari XL/XE and eventually the Amiga but only purchased and kept maybe 10. As Unkillable Cat mentioned, piracy was definitely a thing and widespread back in the early 80s. ![]()
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