Marketing People are Retarded

This subject is near and dear to my heart: Suits and ties and marketing people.

These people are the scum of the universe. They go out, get degrees in whatever, feel self-important, learn a vocabulary of impressive-sounding words, then weasel their way into positions of power

People like the guys in PBS's early 2000's Frontline, Merchants of Cool. They talk like they know what's going on, labeling behaviors, both group and individual, with semi-scientific sounding words, but their actions say that they don't. Their actions say that they don't have a fucking clue.

Why do these marketing people fail? Why do they not understand people? Well, because they're stupid. The merchants of cool have no idea what cool is because they themselves were NOT COOL when they were young. They were the freaks and geeks. That's the reason why they've become so obsessed with what is cool. They've dedicated their lives to trying to quantify the nebulous qualities that they so sorely lacked when they were younger.

Do you want to know what cool is? I'll tell you right now, and you don't even have to pay me. It's confidence and sexiness. That's it. You're selling them what they don't have. They aren't confident with themselves and they don't feel sexy. If you market like that and have a quality product, you're golden. It's that simple. Any marketing guy who says otherwise is saying so because he doesn't want to lose his job.

This isn't directly connected other than being the brainchild of retarded business people. Video game companies are raising prices and using tricks associated with online content to try and force more money out of people. Why would they be doing this? Why wouldn't they be using the wonder of the always-on digital age to try and create even more value for users? Why wouldn't they expand into services that the old paradigm of physical media didn't allow?

Because they're retarded, that's why. Books written ten years, reworked, edited, and finally published two years ago, don't have answers for the problems of today, and no matter how much time you spent in MBA school, that reality is inescapable.

For example, Dragon Age: Origins and Mass Effect 2 are two games with downloadable content that is unavailable if you buy the game used. Game companies hate the used game industry, so they're trying to step over it.

Instead of, I dunno', raising value or decreasing prices, they're trying to squeeze more money from the balls of consumers with downloadable content that costs extra or by raising the prices, thus making used games even more attractive.

What will the $15 extra, to access the online content, mentioned in this recent lawsuit do?

Well, it will immediately drop the value of the used games a further $15. This on top of the $5 discount from buying used. So $20 off. Instead of $60-$70, the game is $40-$50. And even worse, the reduced value of the used copy will reduce the value of the new copy for hard-core gamers who frequently sell back games to buy new ones, just like cars. You pay more than a Kia for a Honda, but you can later sell it for more than the Kia, either equalizing the equation or, frequently, making the Honda actually cost less.

This is not a difficult concept! This is Econ 101 at a community college taught by Sloth from The Goonies! What the fuck!