Exclusivity: A Play in One Act
Unscrupulous Video Game Developer: Hey you. Would you like to play an action-adventure video game based on the Marvel’s Avengers franchise?
Mildly Interested Gamer: Sure. Sound’s cool. What platform will it be available on?
Unscrupulous Video Game Developer: All of them!
Mildly Interested Gamer: Great.
Unscrupulous Video Game Developer: It gets better. After the launch, there'll be free DLC of additional playable characters.
Mildly Interested Gamer: No way!
Unscrupulous Video Game Developer: Yes away. First up we got Hawkeye.
Mildly Interested Gamer: Oh okay…
Unscrupulous Video Game Developer: And then we got Spider-Man
Mildly Interested Gamer: Outstanding. I’ll go pre-order my Xbox copy now and get me some of that Spider-Man action.
Unscrupulous Video Game Developer: Oh, sorry. Spider-Man is a Playstation exclusive.
Mildly Interested Gamer: Say what?
Unscrupulous Video Game Developer: Yeah. Spider-Man is only going to be available to owners of the Playstation version of the game.
Mildly Interested Gamer: Well that fucking sucks. How do you justify this shit?
Unscrupulous Video Game Developer: It says here in my “Marketing Guide to Tough Questions” that the standard answer is “that’s capitalism, bitch”. Plus Sony owns the rights to Spider-Man and Marvel were happy to go along with this “arrangement”.
Mildly Interested Gamer: But that’s so unfair. It’s like you’re punishing gamers that didn’t buy a Playstation.
Unscrupulous Video Game Developer: Not at all. We’re offering exclusivity and creating value. Admittedly we’re doing this by devaluing the product on competing platforms but we’re pretty sure we can get away with this. We’re even hoping that some gamers will buy a second console just so they can play as Spider-Man.
Mildly Interested Gamer: What makes you think that will happen?
Unscrupulous Video Game Developer: Because gamers such as you have a track record of being what we call in the business “fucking gullible”. You buy into all our “promises”, give us your money upfront before we’ve even finished a game and then you happily keep paying for baubles and trinkets while we pretend to fix the problems we created.
Mildly Interested Gamer: You sonofabitch…
Unscrupulous Video Game Developer: And for all your posturing and complaining, you keep coming back like a Golden Retriever that’s desperate to please its owner after shitting on the carpet.
Mildly Interested Gamer: Fuck you. Not this time.
Unscrupulous Video Game Developer: Oh you will. You always do. It never ceases to amaze us as we sit around at night in our volcano lair, counting all our money, that the only reason we get away with so much is because you let us. You pathetic fools.
Mildly Interested Gamer: That’s it, I’m done.I’m quitting games. I’m going to keep bees.
Unscrupulous Video Game Developer: Really? Would you like to pre-order a Marvel themed virtual hive?
