Do Gamers Need a Bill of Rights?

How to Best Protect Gamers From Big GameDev and Corrupt Games `Journalism`

A lot of talk has gone on during the past few years about ‘gamers bill of rights’. In fact there is an entire site started up by Stardock’s Brad Wardell (who is a developer I admire a lot) dedicated to that topic. Why the fuss?

Gamers are treated as profit generating cattle by big game developers and despised by many who call themselves games journalists. Gamers need the protection that a bill of rights would offer and should demand that company’s honor those rights before buying from them.

Let’s look at the issues gamers face from large game development companies:

• Big GameDev has made it clear they care most about short-term quarterly profits instead of making great games
• They focus on graphics at the expense of gameplay
• They rush unfinished games to market to hide management / planning mistakes
• They ram ideology down the throats of those who just want to be entertained
• They provide horrible support
• They offer horrible value for money spent
• They continuously cater to the lowest common denominator

Now let’s consider what most `games journalists` bring to the table:

• A lot of them don’t like gamers and look down on them
• Many do not finish or even play the game before reviewing it
• Some publications rank games based on whether the game’s creator follows their politics
• Many in the industry are easily bought by BigGameDev

With all the above taken into account it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise that gamers are searching for extra protections.

Before looking at this issue from a gamers perspective I think it is helpful if we first consider rights from a general, philosophical perspective.

What Are Rights? Do We Even Have Them?

Yes Virginia, there are rights. Everyone has innate rights, they are real and they are spectacular.

Rights by nature are things that cannot be taken away from you. Governments and other people or groups do not have the authority to take them away from you.

For example you have the:

1. Right to life
2. Right to believe and think what you want
3. Right to say what you want

People can kill you or force you not to say things, but they do so by violating your innate rights. You still have those rights even if they are violated.

So it seems to me that rights by nature cannot be positive.

For example you do not have rights to happiness, wealth, clean water or health. Those are all very good things but you are not entitled to them.

How do we then take this framework and apply it to gamers and game developers?

What About Gamers?

Do gamers have rights?

In capitalistic free market societies we enter into contracts with each other when we buy and sell products in services.

If I buy something from someone and they don’t deliver on the goods I can:

• Ask for a refund
• Complain about them (especially on social media where many others can read about my experience)
• Not buy from them again
• If they violate something specific in a contract we’ve signed I may be able to seek financial damages from them through the legal system

But I do not have any buyer’s rights in general, or specifically as a gamer a right to have a certain kind of game.

I am not entitled to a 10/10 experience when playing a game, I hope I will get that and will be disappointed if I don’t but companies are not legally bound to produce a happiness or experience that is subjective in nature. What may be a 7/10 game for me is a 3/10 game for you and a 9.5/10 game for someone else.

So trying to makeup fake rights won’t succeed even though the quality of games offered by Big GameDev certainly makes that look like a good idea when looked at on a superficial level.

The US Declaration of Independance summarizes this perfectly:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

Note the last few words – the pursuit of happiness, not happiness.

So What Then Can We Do?

While I certainly sympathize with those who think gamers need a bill of rights, I don’t think it is needed and I don’t think that it is a good idea.

Ernest Adams had an article in Gamsutra on the topic back in 2005. While each of the elements he presented is important, they are more elements of great design as opposed to innate rights that players have.

Certainly Big GameDev will keep releasing mass market, dumbed down games with lots of bugs and poor support. That probably won’t change.

But we always have a choice of how we spend our gaming dollars. That is the best thing about living in a free market system – the freedom to not support those who do us wrong or violate what is important to us.

We should vote with our wallets by supporting the developers that actually care about making good games.

Make sure you buy games from those who:

• Aren’t mega-corps that care only about this quarter’s profits.
• Don’t use DRM.
• Support their games.
• Make games not just to pay the bills, but because they have a passion for it.
• Release real demos or trials so you can try before you pay and know what you are getting for your hard earned money.

As well we gamers have an incredibly powerful tool in social media. We as gamers can police developers much better than journalists, associations or the government can. You only need to look to Gamergate to see how consumers can apply great pressure on those who produce and cover video games to modify their behaviour.

What do you think?

Is my solution of building up quality developers while allowing market forces to work and consumer watchdog groups to provide public pressure on developers feasible?

Is there something wrong in my argument? Should we just keep giving Big GameDev our time and money even though they do not care about gamers? Or are there better solutions that I have completely left off the table and not thought about?

Let me know in the comments below. I would really love to hear from anyone who has great ideas on this important subject.