Wal-Mart Controls Modern Game Design?

An anonymous reader writes "That Wal-Mart smiley face is looking pretty evil now that Allen Varney has explained how much influence they have on virtually every modern game: 'Publisher sales reps inform Wal-Mart buyers of games in development; the games' subjects, titles, artwork and packaging are vetted and sometimes vetoed by Wal-Mart. If Wal-Mart tells a top-end publisher it won't carry a certain game, the publisher kills that game. In short, every triple-A game sold at retail in North America is managed start to finish, top to bottom, with the publisher's gaze fixed squarely on Wal-Mart, and no other.'"

Raise your hand...

[XorNand]

Raise your hand if you've ever bought a PC game from WalMart.



Me neither.

Does this suprise anyone?

[Frenchman113]

If a major top end retailer won't carry your goods, the customers who buy from those retailers (guess where kids' mommies go to pick up that new game they want?) won't ever have the chance to buy them, so why bother making them?

Supply and demand

[truthsearch]

If you're biggest destributor isn't going to sell one of your products you're going to care. Welcome to capitalism.

Of course the morals of how Wal-Mart became such a big distributor are debatable. But this outcome is quite obvious. If this article is a surprise your head's in the sand.

Why Stop With Game Design?

[American AC in Paris]

1. Pitch your idea to Wal-Mart/get approached by Wal-Mart.
2. Get a good deal--if you can supply enough product for Wal-Mart.
3. Grow your company in leaps and bounds to meet the demand of your newest and most important sales outlet: Wal-Mart.
4. Have it good for a year or two.
5. Cringe when Wal-Mart tells you just how much less you're going to start getting per unit next year.
6. Quail when Wal-Mart tells you just how much less you're going to be getting per unit the year after that.
7. Whimper when Wal-Mart tells you just how much less you're going to be getting per unit the year after that.
8. Cower when Wal-Mart tells you exactly what's wrong with your product how it is, and how very beneficial it would be to your continued business arrangement if you'd just make the following changes.
9. Wake up one morning and realize that your company is barely scraping by--and can't afford to ditch Wal-Mart without massive layoffs and restructuring, which you can't afford to do anyhow.

That's the circle of life with Wal-Mart. You'll get a huge boost at first, but Wal-Mart always gets the last laugh. Always.

That's not evil

[NitsujTPU]

That's called the free market. Game design studios could choose other retail outlets if they chose to do so. Wal*Mart doesn't have to carry anything that they don't like.

There are probably lots better reasons to hate Wal*Mart than for having buyers and communicating their intentions to vendors.

Re:Not forever.

[badmammajamma]

Game publishers (and most companies for that matter) really only care about profits. Quality is a distant second to profit. The executives that run these publishing companies don't even play games. They couldn't give a rats ass if they are good or not so long as they make a lot of money. They only care about quality to the extent that it effects their ability to make a profit.

Geek minority

[Spy der Mann]

Raise your hand if you've ever bought a PC game from WalMart.
Me neither.


Raise your hand if you're NOT a geek minority.

Ah-hah, I supposed.

Re:Not forever.

[HardCase]

Better make that "a company". Also, reading the article gives an interesting view on the value of Wal-Mart, particularly the last few paragraphs:

Wier had determined to lead Snapper to focus on quality, and through quality, on cachet. Not every car is a Honda Accord or a Toyota Camry; there is more than enough business to support Audi and BMW and Lexus. And so it is with lawn mowers, Wier hoped. Still, perhaps the most remarkable thing is that the Wal-Mart effect is so pervasive that it sets the metabolism even of companies that purposefully do no business with Wal-Mart.

-h-

Re:Why Stop With Game Design?

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank God. For years and years, product manufacturers were raking consumers over the coals, acting as if there was no limit to the prices they could charge. It's a welcome change for someone powerful to be on the customer's side.

And what does the customer want? They have made that clear in a loud voice -- lower prices. Provide it or lose; don't complain that you don't like the game.

Sorry, no

[argStyopa]

And you know what? If you could predict whether a game would be hugely successful or not, you might be right. But firstly, the fact is that it's an art, not a science, and nobody knows FOR SURE which titles are going to be hits and which are going to suck.

"We're not going to carry any game with nudity."
Gee, because before Wal-Mart became big, there was a HUGE market for computer-porn games?

Are some games modified because of the tremendous buying power of Wal Mart? Sure, that's logical. But that's a big step from claiming that "every AAA game is managed start to finish, top to bottom" with WalMart in mind.

Yes, for crapware like Deer Hunter and Barbie Fashion designer, I'm sure WalMart's giant demographic is part of their calculus "Say 0.001% of the WalMart electronics browsers buy our game? That's like....a gajillion dollars!".

But AAA titles? I doubt it. How much did WalMart come into the design of World of Warcraft? Oblivion? GalCiv2? Peripherally, if at all.

As usual, reality is somewhere beneath The Escapist's flashy hyperbolic copy.

Re:Raise your hand...

[b0m8ad1l]

Wal-Mart is much too slow when it comes to game releases. When a game that we want is released, the vast majority of gamers will purchase within the first few weeks of the release (I'm one of the people that get it the first day). In my experience, Wal-Mart does not even get new games until weeks after the release. I would consider buying games from Wal-Mart, if I could get the games when I wanted them and if they offered some advantage over other stores (such as lower price). But until that happens Wal-Mart will not be the place that gamers buy their games.

Admiration...

[MBraynard]

Am I the only one who read the brief and sensed some admiration for Wal-Mart's achievement? (Though I don't think I've ever bought a PC game ther e- maybe some console games).

Wal-Mart isn't strong because of it's buying power - it is strong because of it's selling power.

Anyway, please feel free to resume your Wal-Mart hating now and label me flamebait/troll/whatever.

Re:Not forever.

[hal2814]

"Unfortunately, companies don't make the rules here. Consumers do."

You mispelled "fortunately" by putting an "un" in front of it. I sure don't want anyone else telling me where to shop or what to buy. If Wal-Mart has what I want at a good price, then I'll buy it there. If not, I'll get it somewhere else. Wal-Mart is on top of this game for a reason. The only thing they are dictating is what their customers will buy.

Re:The corrupted capitalist lifestyle

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, but many of those poor Walmart shoppers are poor because they lost their decent job when a manufactorer who supplied WalMart had to move things overseas in order to meet the prices WalMart demanded, so now the WalMart shopper is on unemployment, or working for McDs, or worse, WalMart itself. And now that they have no and/or shitty jobs, all they can afford to buy from is WalMart.

Re:The corrupted capitalist lifestyle

[iocat]

You forget the extra $600 in taxes he's paying thanks to all the health-care free Wal-Mart employees having to take their kids to the emergency room every time they get the flu. Or the fact that his kid had to wait in the eRoom for six hours with a broken leg, keeping him out of work, while he waited for the same aforementioned Wal-Mart employees' kids. Or the fact that the cheap $60 [object] he got a great deal on at Wal Mart breaks 5 times more frequently than the $200 [object] he could have purchased elsewhere, before 100% of its production was outsourced to China.

By focusing only on the price, you are ignoring the total cost , and that can be a very short-sighted thing to do when considering Wal-Mart's overall impact.

Re:Why Stop With Game Design?

[MindStalker]

Very true. Though some consumers want higher quality and medium prices.. And you know what.. They go somewhere else than walmart. Believe it or not, its not entirly walmarts fault that the average consumer has only a short supply of cash (blame that on the credit card companies :) Sadly many consumers are fooled into believing they will get a high quality product that will last them many years from walmart. But that is a matter of consumer education. Sure one would hope that consumers were provided with clear indications as to the quality and comparitive prices of all products. But we don't live in a perfect capitolistic utopia...

Re:The corrupted capitalist lifestyle

[aussersterne]

They save $2500 a year by shopping at Wal-Mart, and by shopping at Wal-Mart they lose $10000 a year in their own salary levels, local community services, and lost quality of goods. But they think they're richer.

Meanwhile, the megainvestors and fund billionaires actually are richer, having skimmed all of that wealth right off the family's coffers. The family's own mutual fund invests in the megaretailers too, of coure, but their investment is so small and working-family-sized it doesn't even come close to making up the loss. It does, however, convince them that they out to support Wal-Mart, which they continue to do, losing thousands a year alongside all of their neighbords until the community's a ghost town, the remaining people are all working at Wal-Mart (there are no other jobs in the community) until Wal-Mart leaves next year (their sales have dried up in the area as surrounding communities have become impoverished, they've sucked the area dry and it's time to go), and in the meantime everyone left is on welfare and still having trouble making ends meet.

And once Wal-Mart does leave, there will be nothing left to hold the town together, since the entire downtown area was decimated to make space for one more multi-hundred-thousand-square-food building that once empty no-one will be able to justify renting in a small town, and there's no interest or capital anywhere to reconstruct the area as it once was before they gave Wal-Mart the incentives to come an build and destroy all of the sanely-sized space and properties that might sustain small, local businesses.

In short, saved a few dollars on groceries, lost a lot of wealth in income and savings, plus an entire community and its neighbords. And at the end of the story, everyone is jobless, no-one has savings left, the area is abandoned, a massive warehouse-sized space stands empty in the middle of nowhere for the rest of time, and megaivestors smile all the way to the bank.

Wal-Mart is a giant purple community eater whose bait is to make unsophisticated people like yourself think that they are saving money. And yes, it does make capitalism look bad.

It really isn't a free market

[plopez]

If there were 1/2 dozen large retailers competing on an approximate eqaul footing for your product you can pick and choose. How ever, Mall-Wart is so huge it can make or break a game company. They have, in some cases, a de facto monopoly on the shelf space needed for a gaming company to succeed. When there is a monopoly, in this case in terms of shelf space and customers, the rules of free markets do not apply.

HTH

Re:Editors: please retitle:

[Tom]

Whoever modded parent "Funny", I hope you get meta-modded into oblivion, and I don't mean the game.

Missing mod option: "Sad, but true".

Re:Too much buying power...

[cyngus]

Wal-Mart doesn't get "their" power from some magical source, it gets it from us, the consumers, exercising our choice of where to shop. If you don't like how much Wal-Mart influences what producers produce, DON'T SHOP THERE. If you're willing to trade their influence over certain products for lower prices on them, then do. The world's victim mentality really pisses me off. If you don't like the values that Wal-Mart promotes, stop giving them the ability to advance them by not giving them your money. Capitalism only works if you vote with your dollars/pesos/euros/yuan (okay, I'm not going to list currencies of all the countries where Wal-Mart operates).

Re:Not forever.

[Rayin]

"Game publishers (and most companies for that matter) really only care about profits. Quality is a distant second to profit."

One important thing to note here is that this has been the case long since Wal Mart became this supposed driving force in gaming. The problems with the gaming industry kowtowing to Wal Mart play a very distant second to the erosion of the industry itself due to its OWN massive corporations, i.e. Sony and EA, that stifle innovation in what are, quite literally, game building sweatshops.

Re:Too much buying power...

[Anonymous Coward]

That is a good idea unless you live in a rural or low density suburb where the local Wal-Mart has created a monopoly on retail access. If you don't shop there where do you go? Drive 20 miles for everything? And don't say "Buy everything online". Capitalism has an Archilles heel.

Re:Too much buying power...

[J-Doggqx]

"Anyone remember how Wing Commander included Blueprints, a manual, offers, etc? Good luck finding that stuff in a modern game."

I remember those extras. Sure it didn't always help play the game, but it helped to set the mood and give the universe a little bit of depth. The last games I saw that had extras like that were Warcraft III and Tachyon: The Fringe.

Re:true, but..

[TopShelf]

Ethical license? WTF?

If anything, WalMart is doing game companies a favor by working with them during the development stage to let them know what titles they may or may not be interested in carrying. Far better to hear early on that your "Sim Crack Whore" idea isn't going to fly, than to have blown zillion$ producing something that isn't going to get onto WalMart shelves.

By and large, when people bitch about WalMart, they are really complaining about WalMart consumers - who demonstrate time and time again what they prefer. From there, if you want to create a big-selling game, then take those preferences into consideration. If you want to create your own piece of work for your own reasons, and commercial success is a secondary concern, then fine, go right ahead - but don't expect anyone to champion it for you.

Re:Too much buying power...

[Henry V .009]

If you don't like how much Wal-Mart influences what producers produce, DON'T SHOP THERE."

No. If you don't like how Wal-Mart influences what producers produce, your shopping there or not doesn't matter. Instead you have change the habits of the entire buying public. A vastly different thing.

I like that you make the comparison with voting. You probably subscribe to the "your vote matters" fallacy. Nothing is more silly. Only votes in mass matter. Single votes do not. (Interestingly though, for popular figures, saying that peoples votes matter, does matter. Because that moves the masses.)

Re:The corrupted capitalist lifestyle

[hsmith]

Oh, walmart is the reason the middle class is being erroded? Right.

The reason the middle class is being destroyed is over taxation by the government. Taxing the rich reduces their level of income little, not taxing the poor does nothing to their income. Yet, the middle class has their effective income destroyed because they are too poor to not be bothered by 35% of their income being eaten up, but too rich to not get taxed at all. People like myself can't get a head because I am stuck there in the middle. It isn't walmart that is destroying my income, it is the government and its programs, from the military to social security.

if providing the lower income americans with cheap food to eat is evil, well fuck.

Re:Cheap household goods, maybe, but not games.

[Anonymous Coward]

But guess what?

You still end up buying the Walmart version of the game.

That's what all the people in this discussion talking about their freedom of choice miss.

Re:Too much buying power...

[gstoddart]

On the flip side of this, Walmart has done some good. The smaller packaging of games has made them easier to store, produced less waste, and has generally been good for consumers as a whole.

That may be the only good Wal-Mart has ever accomplished.

They've dirven their competitors out of business with unfair practices. They've reamed North American manufacuring as they insisted on cheaper products until they had to go off shore, causing a replacement of manufacturing jobs with low-end retail jobs. They've made something greater than 50% of supply-chain for retail in North America become beholden to them.

I'm not at all surprised to hear that Wal-Mart has the gaming industry by the short-hairs.

Wal-Mart is EVIL, aggressive, and far too powerful for anyone's good.

Re:Too much buying power...

[cyngus]

Instead you have change the habits of the entire buying public

I can not control you, I can not control the masses. I do not wish to control you, I do not wish to control the "buying public". They should be free to do as they wish, just as I am. I have no desire to waste my resources on the uneducated or illogical. Saying that I need to change the habits of the buying public somehow implies that I must make people act against their will. I have no desire to do this. I may think that they are stupid and lack the ability to think, but that does not give me the right, ability, or desire to compel or trick them into acting against their will. Exactly that section of the public that believes what Wal-Mart believes should shop there, and give Wal-Mart their buying power.

You probably subscribe to the "your vote matters" fallacy. Nothing is more silly. Only votes in mass matter. Single votes do not.

To believe that your opinion does not matter and that you can not control your life is the first realization one makes on the path to self destruction because you believe you lack control in a general sense. First you believe you hold no control over politics, then you believe you hold no control over whether you are hired or fired, then you believe you have no control over what choices you make, then you believe you have no control over your anything, and finally you cease to be, either literally or you exist as walking death unable to muster the courage to get rid of the walking. You have exactly as much control over the world as your resources (money, talent, and intelligence) will buy you.

Of course...

[pestilence669]

Wal-Mart's policies also bear a large influence on movies and music. Artists that refuse to release a "clean" version of a CD have long been banned in retail chains like Wal-Mart and even Target.

Video game manufacturers will simply have to deal with it. I wouldn't want to sell potentially obscene material at my store either (if I owned one). There are plenty of others that will.

When will the media industries grow some balls and produce what they want? If Wal-Mart stops carrying most titles, people will learn to shop elsewhere. If only American business was daring enough.

Re:Not forever.

[pizzaman100]

Does anyone know of a list of companies that don't supply Wal-Mart (like Snapper)? I would like to give such companies more of my business.

Re:Too much buying power...

[TheWizardOfCheese]

If you don't like how much Wal-Mart influences what producers produce, DON'T SHOP THERE.

Right. Oh, and try to get millions of other people to stop shopping there too. Oh, but wait ... that would mean sharing your opinion with other people, maybe on a blog - that's what they're for. Gosh, will capitalism survive?

Maybe the guy is wrong, but if you think so why don't you STATE YOUR CASE? Trying to censor him in order to make the world safe for capitalism is both pernicious and futile.

The world's victim mentality really pisses me off.

Well you have created your own misfortune there - setting up Wal-Mart as the victim.

Re:Too much buying power...

[BubbleSparkxx]

+1 insightful for the above post.

Its the same tired story about how big box retailers come in and destroy small town mom and pop businesses. Altough I do feel bad that businesses that have serviced the community for years are being forced to close, there is no one to blame but the antiquated business model that it continues to cling to.

In our capitalist market, its the consumer that decides where they're going to buy that bottle of shampoo, or the jar of honey, or the newest Grand Theft Auto game. Stop putting the blame on the retailers when its clearly the consumers in the driver's seat.

Topical?

[tepples]

You left out the step where Wal Mart takes your product to China, comes back with a knock-off of it produced by slave labor

When has this happened in the case of development of copyrighted computer software, especially console games that need to be approved by the console maker?

Re:The corrupted capitalist lifestyle

[gameforge]

Yeah, they are destroying America by allowing the poorer people in society to buy more goods to improve their lifestyle. How dare they! So what if a family can save $2500+ dollars a year shopping at wal-mart! cheaper groceries is just a horrible thing!

The inherent reply here is that a lot of families are poor because Wal-Mart came to town and drove their family-owned business to shambles... I don't know how accurate that is, but that's the impression most Wal-Mart boycotters would like us to believe.

I'm sorry, but this article is at least making a bigger deal out of this than it really is. Wal-Mart seems to admit plenty of blood and guts given that they sell Doom 3, San Andreas, Far Cry, etc. So that leaves some extraneous sex scenes and tits. Who cares? I've never once bought a game "simply because" it had some boobs in it. I've never played a game with boobs in it where the boobs made the difference between a fun game or a crappy game. There were a lot of "underground" NES cartridges that featured sexual themes in all of a handful of colors; and guess why Nintendo wouldn't license them? But I never saw anybody complaining that Nintendo was dictating modern game design, even in the late 80s or early 90s. I believe 3D Realms took it to mainstream with Duke3d; I still didn't buy Duke3d for the really lame 2-frame animated breast flashing. I actually thought it was done in poor taste; you could tell they didn't want to push it.

I never knew about the hidden sex in GTA:SA until it surfaced in the media; I still thought it was one of the coolest (and raciest!) games I have ever played.

Wal-Mart, if anything, has minimal standards for games; I see a lot of games with epic cut scenes all over the box and no real screenshots... the game play ends up being mediocre. The CEOs seem to work these half-assed game formulas more than Wal-Mart does; if a game is actually fun and creative, it's more power to the developer. That certainly wouldn't discount it from being sold at Wal-Mart... I doubt Wal-Mart tells them to "leave the fun and creativity out of it; just have some sparkly water and some glitzy looking cut scenes mmkay?" or "we need another boring RTS with some 3D stuff and maybe some terrorists, if you don't mind".

Anyone play C&C/Generals? Did you really think it was clever that the resource-snatching unit is also the transport unit? Or did anyone take that as a clear indicator that the game was rushed, and no wonder it's not as cool as Red Alert or Total Annihilation? Games today answer to money with or without Wal-Mart. If your game doesn't ship before Christmas, your profits get cut to like a third; some really great and heavily anticipated games like Gran Turismo 4 still succeed after missing a Christmas deadline, but ultimately, most get scrapped if they can't be finished in time. Even Quake 2 was criticized for being "rushed" in time for the holidays, way back when. It still succeeded wildly.

Here's some guidelines:

• If your game has a lot to market, and doesn't have nudity, and is possibly fun to play, it probably has some leverage with Wal-Mart's executives.
• If you want to make a boring game that even looks boring, Wal-Mart (and myself for that matter) probably won't buy it.
• If you're looking for a game with nudity, go to a porn shop or something; Wal-Mart (nor mass America, nor hardcore gamers, nor me, etc.) are probably going to buy it.
• And therefore, if you want to make a game with nudity as a central theme AND want the success of a game like GTA or Doom 3, dream on, Wal-Mart or not.

Incidentally, if Wal-Mart controls anything (along with Best Buy and Circuit City) it's probably music, since those three brands are responsible for something like 90% of CD retail sales. I don't even like Wal-Mart, mainly because of their historical mistreatment of their staff and their ability to wipe out a town full of hard working, family owned businesses with one store.

Re:Too much buying power...

[mrchaotica]

And I hate Steam because it places undue restrictions on the games I own. For example, there's no guarantee that games that require Steam will be playable if Valve goes out of business (or gets bought out by some company that doesn't care about the user base). Because of this, I'm boycotting Valve -- I refuse to buy Half-Life 2, even though I'd certainly like to play it.

Odd that I couldn't find the word "steam" anywhere on this first page.

Maybe more Slashdotters are like me rather than you.

Re:Too much buying power...

[twofidyKidd]

If you've ever lived, or at least spent enough time in a small town, you'd know that Wal-Mart comes in like a monster (Super Wal-Marts) and disrupts the local economy to such a degree that they manage to wipe out all other businesses, including most mom and pop shops, grocery stores, mechanics, furniture stores, florists, gardening shops, day care facilities, etc. The problem is this: small-town economies, such as they are, rarely generate income beyond a level of sustenance for small businesses. These businesses goods and services are priced so that they sell to the local consumers at a profit enough to keep the shop open, and provide their owners with some income. Wal-Mart comes in, and undercuts these businesses with greater inventory, larger selection and considerably lower prices, taking the local shop's customers and their owner's income with them. These shop owners sometimes leave town, or sometimes they look for work, finding it at the Super Wal-Mart. In fact, a large percentage of the town becomes employees of the Super Wal-Mart, who are generally low paid. Their low pay is usually spent at the Super Wal-Mart since it's all they can afford (plus they get a discount) much like the company stores of the mining and industrial era. Soon, the whole town is in some way dependent on Super Wal-Mart for everything from employment and benefits, to groceries, clothing, medicine (pharmacies are driven out of business), eyeglasses, you name it. Wal-Mart understands how this works, and essentially exploits these small-town economies.

Now, I don't really know where you live, but if you've ever had the distinct displeasure of driving across the United States, you'd discover that most of the middle of the country consists of a lot of small towns. What do you suggest all those people do, stop shopping at Wal-Mart? You might as well tell them to pack up, leave town and head for the coast, or at least a large metropolitan area like Dallas, or something. If you're not living in a small town, then you might have the good fortune of having a choice of where you shop, but for lots of people across the U.S., there isn't many options.

Lastly, don't underestimate the buying power of the low-end of the market. The Median household income for 2004 was around $44,000 with the poverty rate ringing in around 13% [source: ESRB-Income [whitehouse.gov]] You can bet those people aren't spending their money at Sak's and Banana Republic. Wal-Mart's huge margins are created by buying product at dirt prices, and selling them at rock prices to the lowest end of the market, which also happens to be a very LARGE market base in the United States. And for that market, Wal-Mart is about all they've got.

Re:Too much buying power...

[GigG]

If you replace "Wal-Mart" with "people that shop at Wal-Mart" I'd mod you up for insightful.

Re:Too much buying power...

[RexRhino]

Wal-Mart is EVIL, aggressive, and far too powerful for anyone's good.

I would agree, but unfortunatly people's solution to the problem... i.e. get the government involved... is worse than the problem.

If Wal-Mart is EVIL, agressive, and far too powerful for anyone's good, because it lowers prices on Rubbermaid trash cans, then what does that make the government?

Re:Too much buying power...

[cyngus]

Defeatism is a great policy. That way you never claim responsibility for failure.

Re:The corrupted capitalist lifestyle

[iocat]

I love how you people characterize other people as "you people" without stopping to think. Let's look at my post again: I'm against wasting tax dollars. I'm against outsourcing our manufacturing capability to a communist country. I'm opposed to the the state being forced to subsidize a company, or its workers.

Granted, when it comes to social programs, I am against hospitals turning away people without the proven ability to pay, which does make me a little bit of a bleeding heart, I guess, but there's really nothing else in my post which could identify me, based on my opinion about this issue, as anything but a small "c" conservative.

Of course, I don't particualry identify as one, because that would make many people group me in with retards like you. According to this site [ufcw.org], Wal-Mart only has about 47% health care coverage among its workers, vs. 67% as the national average, and 80% of those who are in retail unions.

You may want to read this pdf [walmartwatch.com] on outsourcing to a communist country.

I didn't, in my original post, get into the harmfulness of Wal-Mart sucking money from local economies and reinvesting it in China, but you can (I'd hope) be able to figure out that our for yourself.

And nothing in your personal attack addresses the base point of my post: You cannot judge Wal-Mart soley by the prices on the goods. You have to look at the actual societal cost to shopping there.

Re:Too much buying power...

[drsquare]

Surely the only reason they have a monopoly is because people were going to Walmart rather than smaller shops? In that case, the PEOPLE have decided they want Walmart to have a monopoly. This is a great example of democracy and freedom.

Maybe you'd prefer the government to mandate that people shop at locally-owned shops to stop them going out of business?

Re:Voting Power

[Henry V .009]

I've taken more mathematics than you, Asperger's reject. The chance of your vote making a difference (being the deciding vote) is 1 in (x=0 to n-2 ||| sum 2^x) where n is the number of voters total. Yes, that number does asymptotically approach zero with increasing n.

Not only does the limit approach zero (of course I don't know why you brought up the limit when we are talking about voting populations that never reach above several hundred million -- you probably never got beyond calculus in school and are still impressed by it) but the probability of being the deciding vote is a number so low that it zero for all practical purposes.

Re:Too much buying power...

[geekoid]

That statment shows your ignorance of the market, market forces, and perception.

What choice do you ahve when a monopoly buys ot inventory from a company and the local shops are suddenly have delay in getting orders?
What do you do when Wal-Mart dictates to there vendor that they will sell cheaper to Wall-mart then anyone else?
WHere is the chioce.

Your statement assumes a level playing field on the product wholesale.

Re:Too much buying power...

[rilister]

The government is elected by the people, for the people.
Remember?
This makes it somewhat different to frickin' Walmart.

Re:Too much buying power...

[Anonymous Coward]

I would agree, but unfortunatly people's solution to the problem... i.e. get the government involved... is worse than the problem.

Yeah, it's not like the government's ever had a positive effect on the market before. Surely it's never increased competition, right?

Oh, I probably shouldn't mention the amount of innovation spurred by the breakup of Ma Bell and the subsequent loosening of restrictions on telecom carriers.

Re:Too much buying power...

[t-twisted]

Surely the only reason they have a monopoly is because people were going to Walmart rather than smaller shops? In that case, the PEOPLE have decided they want Walmart to have a monopoly. This is a great example of democracy and freedom.

This isn't an example of democracy and freedom, it's an example of capitalism. And Capitalism is what happens when people buy with their wallets, not their conscience. An example of this would be regular copy paper vs. recycled copy paper. The recycled is environmentally-friendly but more expensive, which is why it's not the dominant paper being sold today.

Effective capitalism has no conscience or morals, but plenty of victims. Blaming the democracy and freedom of the people living in America for the victims of capitalism is just plain ridiculous.

In addition, patronizing a store does NOT translate into advocating it to have a monopoly.

And now the more I get into this response the more I realize I am responding to a troll marked +5 insightful.

Re:Too much buying power...

[RexRhino]

When has the government had a positive effect on competition? And I am not talking about the government breaking up the monopoly it helped create in the first place ("Bell"), or doing something like deregulate the airline industry (which is government getting rid of its intervention into the market).

Perhaps you can argue the whole Standard Oil thing, but by the time the government got to breaking up Standard Oil, Standard Oil was already losing market share. There is speculation that the breakup of Standard Oil was masterminded by J.D. Rockefeller.

Re:Too much buying power...

[RexRhino]

The government is elected by the people, for the people. Remember?

And a sucker is born every minute!

Re:Too much buying power...

[Anonymous Coward]

" The government is elected by the people, for the people.
Remember?
This makes it somewhat different to frickin' Walmart."

Wal-Mart is in business (and subsequently only able to force other stores out of business and wield so much economic power) because "the people" decided saving a few bucks, regardless of the cost, was all that mattered to them in the end. They elected Wal-Mart with the all mighty dollar, and it's pretty disgusting to see the results.

Re:Too much buying power...

[Pharmboy]

Of course for all this added convenience and direct profit to the developer I get the chance to pay the exact same price as I would at retail.

Simply not true. You can buy Half Life 2 for $29.99, and most of their upgrade packages are $10 to $20 (completely different games are the same price).

You also don't have to authenticate to play, except multiplayer. What about with 360 and other consoles that support multiplayer? You have to authenticate, just the same. Its no different.

I bought HL back in 1998, and when I activated my steam account, I just punched in the code off the cd, and havent used the cd since. I bought HL2, and now they just GAVE me all the extra games that I would have paid for for HL1, including Opposing Force and Blue Shift, neither of which I paid for with the original. Of course, counter strike and tfc are also included free.

So I hear a lot of people complaint about Steam, but I'm as rabid about privacy and DRM as anyone, but as an actual USER of the system, I can say it has been 10x more pleasant than anything else. I installed everything at work, at home and on my laptop from the same account, no problems. If I am offline, I play any single player game without authentication. I can NOT play from two machines in multiplayer at the same time, but you couldn't with CD keys before (the whole idea behind authentication). There is nothing to prevent me from playing single player on two machines at once.

Steam isn't perfect, but it is an extremely affordable ($10 to $30 per game) system that offers reasonable authentication for multiple player games, fast updates. NO more going to freaking fileplanet and "waiting in line for 40 minutes, or pay $5 per month" crap either. Hell, I will pay twice the price to avoid that mess.

Everytime I do log on (I have is so I only do that manually, a simple toggle in setup) it automatically starts downloading any patches, shows their "news" (ad for games, can be disabled but I don't mind since I want to know) and has a built in program for finding game servers that is better than Gamespy.

And since 1998, all this has cost me about $100, and has many games I play, and they have never sent me spam. What a freaking bargain!

The only guys I see bitch about Steam, are the ones who have never TRIED it because of (fill in lame excuse here) reasons.

Re:Too much buying power...

[aussersterne]

You have exactly as much control over the world as your resources (money, talent, and intelligence) will buy you.

I don't even know where to begin. Your claim is that there is no:

- government
- finance
- laws of physics
- political reality
- social reality

In short, your argument is that everyone is Superman with X-Ray vision, unless he/she sucks far too much not to be. You blame the Jews for their time in the camps because they were simply too lacking in talent to dominate the Nazis?

What exactly are you trying to say, other than that you want what you want when you want it and if other people try to interfere with that based on their own ideas of justice, you resent it?

Well, too bad. You are as subject to the whims of others as they are subject to your whims, and we are all subject to Wal-Mart's whims. Interconnectivity is a fact of life. Unless you make your own laws, provide your own law enforcement, fabricate all of your own goods, protect your own little sphere of the environment, deliver your own wife's babies, etc., etc., etc. then it is NOT entirely up to your "talent" to manufacture (or fail to manufacture) reality.

99.5% of your life is dependent on what other people do. The problem with Americans is that you all think that 100.0% percent of everyone's lives are completely independent and solo acts, and thus, anyone who has a problem has fucked themselves, and anyone who sits atop a pile of billions has earned it.

In short, you smoke crack and cry "foul" when anyone calls you on bad behavior or selfishness, and in the meantime you commit crimes, exploit everyone, and implement destrucive policies because you assume that it's "kill or be killed" out there.

It's only "kill or be killed" if you're willing to kill, and people like you are determined to kill because you think that all success and leverage is individual. People like you who are willing to exploit anything and blame any crime on the victim are manufacturing the abortion of human rights and common decency that is capitalist modernity.

Re:Too much buying power...

[rilister]

I'm amazed that there seems to be a generation that seem to think that capitalism is equivalent, or even in some way superior to democracy.

Here's the difference: a company is *bound by law* to maximise it's profit for the benefit of it's shareholders. It 'cares' about it's customers and doesn't giving a flying crap for society in any wider sense. tis true. This is why Walmart screws its employees and the communities it works in without blinking.

Democracy is a system by which you have 1/230millionth of a say in which your country is run. I hate to break this to you, but that's all you're entitled to, unless you wish to stand for election and other people happen to agree with you.

Your government doesn't have a *vested interest* in screwing you. For a moment imagine you didn't live in the world's most dysfunctional democracy, and take a look around the world for other examples: say Sweden, Canada, Switzerland.

Democracy and capitalism are compatible and, arguably, complimentary. But quit talking about 'government' being a worse problem. Save me your fashionable contempt for the Democrats/Republicans. Government is fine, necessary and totally desirable.

If you disagree, give me one vaguely plausible alternate and *an example of it working well*.

Re:Too much buying power...

[ScrewMaster]

freedom-loving Bible Belt types

One of the great non-sequiturs of our age.

Re:Too much buying power...

[ClamIAm]

Surely the only reason they have a monopoly is because people were going to Walmart rather than smaller shops?

People generally don't "decide" to shop at Wal-Mart. In the US, most of the wealth is held by a few people. The large majority of people have to live paycheck to paycheck and watch their budget. Any opportunity to save a few dollars is gladly taken.

Of course, saving 20 cents on a screwdriver seems like a good idea, until you look at the aggregate picture, which is that of smaller hardware stores going out of business, and this creates less competition. This repeats itself in nearly every sector Wal-Mart deals in.

Also, your concept of democracy is complete bullshit. The aim of democracy is to prevent one person or group from gaining too much power. Wal-Mart and the Walton clan definitely have too much power.

Re:Too much buying power...

[CoderJoe]

Wow. You make such a convincing rebuttal to your parent post. You MUST be right. There is no other option. Everyone but you is completely wrong on the subject. Keep up the good work.

(everyone's sarcasm meters should have just gone off the scale.)

The effect a new Wal-Mart store has on the local economy all depends on the size of the local economy to begin with. I live in the second largest metropolitan area in my state. The largest one dwarfs my area. We have three Wal-Mart stores in this metropolitan area. The larger stores are managing to stay competitive to these stores, but a number of smaller stores have gone out of business. Since we don't (yet) have a "superstore", the grocery stores have managed to survive. A number of those larger stores that are still in business happen to sell groceries in addition to "hard line" (electronics, toys, furniture, etc) and "soft line" (clothing, etc) items. Wal-Mart is attempting to replace their first local store with a "superstore". The community around that store is fighting against it, but mostly because they don't want to have to deal with the increase in traffic. (Wal-Mart wants to put a back exit onto a residential street. This probably is not a good idea.) The local economy here was strong enough to survive Wal-Mart's arrival, but they are still trying to put their competition out of business.

Smaller towns are not as lucky. They generally wind up exactly like you described. The effects also depend on if they come in with general merchanise store, or with a "superstore". The latter would have a much more profound effect on the local economy of a small town than a general merchandise store would, simply because they have more businesses they compete with.

Additionally, I have heard many people say that Wal-Mart comes in and is willing to take a loss at their new stores just to be able to undercut the competition. They make up for it in their many other stores. Once they undercut the competition by enough for long enough, the competition gives up and closes. And when the competition is gone, Wal-Mart is able to bring the prices back up to where they are making a profit again.

Then there is how they bully their suppliers into lowering prices until they hemmorage. As an example, Levi Jeans used to operate entirely within the United States. Then, they wound up having to get into Wal-Mart stores, simply because the stores that carried their products were going out of business. Wal-Mart demanded lower prices. Levi Jeans couldn't deliver a lower price with their current operation, and as a result had to close their US plants and move production to other countries with cheap labor. Additionally, their jeans are made from a much more lightweight denim than they used to be. Wal-Mart goes by the philosophy that if your product remains the same after a year, you WILL lower the price or they'll drop your product. Look at Toothpaste. New varieties of toothpaste come out much more frequently now than they did 10 to 15 years ago. Hmm, I wonder why...

Unfair Practices?

[mosb1000]

"They've dirven their competitors out of business with unfair practices."

Like what? Selling stuff for less. Last I checked that was called competition.

"They've reamed North American manufacuring as they insisted on cheaper products until they had to go off shore"

Because it's really evil to switch to a lower cost provider.

"causing a replacement of manufacturing jobs with low-end retail jobs"

No, walmart has reduced the number of retail jobs, not made more. There is no such "replacment" taking place. And who ever said manufacturing jobs were so great? Arent they the jobs where you're exposed to toxic chemicals, work wierd hours, and are in constant danger of debilitating injury. Yeah, we're really loosing some great jobs.

"Wal-Mart has the gaming industry by the short-hairs"

Yes, how evil of walmart to let game companies know beforehand what titles they will stock. Wal-Mart should wait until the games are released, and suprise the game companies. Wouldn't that be fun!

Re:Too much buying power...

[RexRhino]

The regular people don't have a say in government. Government regulation is the last thing that is going to address the concerns of "working stiffs" or "small buisness". Government "regulation" just means that the government is selling "protection", like the mafia, to the big corporations. The corporations will have to work with the people in power to make the deal suitable to the political elite, but the little guy will never have any real say in the deal.

Once the people who are in power decide who is elegible for election, once they decide how funds for campaigning are going to be distributed, once they decide how groups are going to be gerimandered together to give certain parties advantage, and once the laws become so complicated they have almost endless regulatory power to punish non-supporters, and vast resources to give to reward their supporters, then there is no real Democracy. Democracy works on the small scale, but once you get to the size and power of the modern state, it becomes a meaningless abstraction.

More often then not, the regulation is designed to help the big corporations (in fact, the modern day mega-corporation couldn't exist without the government)... the regulation is used to make the cost of doing buisness too high for the little guy to afford the initial investment, or the liability too high that the little guy can't afford the insurance, or the fixed regulatory cost that doesn't scale for company size. The government takes land with eminent domain in order to give to the chain store.

If you look at markets that aren't regulated by the government (such as the drug trade), or under regulated by the government (computer software), you will see that the small guy has a huge advantage over the big guy. In the software industry, Microsofts biggest competitor is a product that doesn't cost anything and began as a hobby. Microsoft has such institutional entrophy that it is hard for them to compete on the merits of their product (and so now they compete using the government to enforce "intellectual property"). In the drug trade, no-one ever dominates for long before someone smaller comes along and starts shaking things up. It is not natural for large monopoly style corporations to exist, unless the government creates the regulatory infrastructure for it.

My alternative? Don't shop at Walmart. I have never walked into a Walmart, EVER, in my life... let alone purchased anything at a Walmart. I wouldn't be able to find the closest Walmart without looking it up online. And that is entirely accidental, without me trying to not shop at a Walmart. The vast majority of Walmart shoppers are suburbanites or urbanites who have plenty of other choices to shop besides Walmart. The overwelming vast majority of Americans live in urban or suburban areas and have access to plenty of other places to shop. Even if the people living in rural areas who are "forced" to shop at Walmart really mean that they would have to drive an extra 20 miles to a larger town - or would have to spend a little more money somewhere else - they are not forced, so much as can't be bothered.

Walmart has to be the easiest company in the world to boycott! They have a razor thin profit margin, so that it only takes a boycott of a small group of people in order to cut into their bottom line. (that is why religious groups, who actually take the time to boycott once in a while, are always getting Walmart to do whatever they want). Walmarts are only profitable if built where land values are low, and where there is lots of wide open space, which means for most American consumers, it is actually a bit of a drive to get to Walmart. And they have a reputation for being "low-class", which means that any affluent Americans, or middle-class Americans pretending to be affluent, are not going to be caught dead in anything as declasse as a Walmart.

In the Revolutionary War, a bunch of poorly armed and untrained American farmers managed to defeat the elite armies of the most powerful empire in history. And now American

Re:Unfair Practices?

[BVis]

Like what? Selling stuff for less. Last I checked that was called competition.

"Competition" implies that the playing field is level. It's not even close in Wal-Mart's case. Wal-Mart has manipulated the system to such a degree that local business cannot possibly compete, as everyone knows that the only important thing is how much something costs, not its quality, durability, or who made it. It's also commonly known that Wal-Mart only sells products for lower prices until the competition is destroyed, then raises them to increase their profits.

Because it's really evil to switch to a lower cost provider.

Not "evil" per se. "Short-sighted", "Irresponsible", "Penny wise and pound foolish" would be the terms I'd be more likely to use.

And who ever said manufacturing jobs were so great? Arent they the jobs where you're exposed to toxic chemicals, work wierd hours, and are in constant danger of debilitating injury. Yeah, we're really loosing some great jobs.

Those jobs are how a lot of people feed their families. Manufacturing represents a large percentage of American jobs, and therefore are a significant factor in the American economy. Leaving alone the fact that it's taking food off the table, the drop in buying power has a measurable effect. (Not to mention increasing our trade deficit with China and the inherent lower quality of the goods produced as a result of limitations of materials and unskilled labor. If this keeps up, China will own the USA outright.)IMHO the inevitable argument that Wal-Mart compensates for that through lower prices is specious at best; the fact that something now costs $7.50 instead of $10 is pretty meaningless when you don't have any money to begin with.

Yes, how evil of walmart to let game companies know beforehand what titles they will stock. Wal-Mart should wait until the games are released, and suprise the game companies. Wouldn't that be fun!

You've missed the entire point of this article. It's not that Wal-Mart is choosing not to carry titles it considers objectionable (which is certianly their right), it's that Wal-Mart is controlling what games enter the market as a whole. They're forcing their values on the American public with their 800-pound gorilla status in the retail space. I don't share their values, and despite what some people would like to think, lots of other people don't share them either. They're restricting consumer choice based on what they consider "right" and "wrong". While it is true that feedback from a retailer indicating they will or won't carry a title isn't inherently a bad thing (the idea, after all, is to make money), Wal-Mart takes it too far.

Let ME make the choice regarding what is morally objectionable for myself (and my children). It's not right for that choice to be taken away from me. If a game comes out with rampant nudity, extreme violence, or bashes Wal-Mart (any of which, I'm sure, would keep it off Wally world's shelves) I might want to play it anyway. That's my choice, not theirs.