Video Games: Goods Or Services? [Slashdot]

[DP ServBot]

silentbrad points out an article about the gradual shift of video games from being 'goods' to being 'services.' They spoke with games lawyer Jas Purewal, who says the legal interpretation is murky: "If we're talking about boxed-product games, there's a good argument the physical boxed product is a 'good,' but we don't know definitively if the software on it, or more generally software which is digitally distributed, is a good or a service. In the absence of a definitive legal answer, software and games companies have generally treated software itself as a service – which means treating games like World of Warcraft as well as platforms like Steam or Xbox LIVE as a service." The article continues, "The free-to-play business model is particularly interesting, because the providers of the game willingly relinquish direct profits in exchange for greater control over how players receive the game, play it, and eventually pay for it. This control isn't necessarily a bad thing either. It can help companies to better understand what gamers want from their games, and done properly such services can benefit both gamers and publishers. Of course, the emphasis here is on the phrase 'done properly.' Such control can easily be abused."

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[calthaer]

Let's see...according to common business definitions (not sure about legal) the attributes of a service are:

Intangibility - you can't directly perceive a service with the five senses before you purchase it. Example: a haircut - you can't see your haircut before you purchase your haircut. Maybe you can see someone else's being cut, but you can't see yours.

Inseparability - services are produced and consumed at the same time. If you're taking a cruise (service), then the people producing the cruise are doing so as you are consuming the cruise.

Variability - each service-experience is different. Every time someone does your lawn for you, it's different in some way. Your lawn might be wet, or they might have to fill up gas in the middle of it, etc.

Perishability - you can't store / package / ship services. You can't put "someone doing my taxes for me" in a can and ship it across the country, for people to open up and use whenever they wish.

Games - in general - are not services. You can perceive them with the five senses before you buy it (demos). They are definitely not produced and consumed simultaneously. Variability because someone makes a bad guy go left instead of right isn't quite the same thing - this one MIGHT be somewhat iffy. And it's definitely not true that games are perishable.

Now...the online stuff? You might be able to argue that the online experience(s) is / are a service. MMOGs might be services - they have more in common with a theme park (long lines and all) than they do with a book, piece of fruit, or other tangible. But single-player games - even if they're digitally distributed via Steam - are not services.

If, and ONLY if, single-player games become server-driven types of things, where enemy AI and level design is generated on-the-fly by server software dynamically, and it changes every week depending on all sorts of content-generating systems - THEN it could become a service. But games have the same canned dialogue every time you go through it. Once AIs start writing their own scripts - then we can talk. Even so, I don't think that this software is a service - it's still a product.

Games, like most software, are automated gadgets that produce some sort of service. It's like a clock, or a dishwasher. Your clock (product) produces a service (telling time); your dishwasher (product) produces a service (doing dishes). But nobody is silly enough to call your clock or your dishwasher a "service" - except maybe the people over at Slashdot and the person who wrote the article to which they linked.