I buy games on sale because I feel that's what they are really worth. (See : Orion)
maybe your 2 hour game isn't worth 15 dollars
stop expecting people to buy your game at full price, if people thought it was worth it, they'd buy it at that price
If the game is worth the price it's at on launch people will buy it. If it's shit on a stick people won't. It's not a difficult concept to grasp.
Stop blaming sales and discounts for your games not doing well!
To be fair, he's got a point. I know I buy games on sale sometimes because they're on sale, and they looked interesting, but I had ignored them when they launched.
It's why I've got thirty-odd games with less than an hour of playtime, totaling at a cool $200.
Wasted. Because it was on sale.
Rust has never been on sale. 1.4 million copies sold.
Sales don't devalue games, shit games devalue games.
The more shit games get released, the more people don't feel like it's a good idea to pre-order or buy games on release.
Just look at the clusterfuck that was SimCity.
[quote]Cliff reckons that is causes games to be ignored until they are on sale for 50 or 75 percent off. “You don’t get that ‘water cooler moment’ where everyone talks about a game. That means some multiplayer games launch without the proper size of players, and the company isn’t making enough to retain support staff to patch and improve the game at launch.”[/quote]
Ever thought that maybe all of that is because the game was shit and not because it wasn't on sale?
Titanfall is a pretty good example of an expensive game that isn't shit and I don't see it suffering any of that for not being on sale.
I'd like him to give an example of a game that suffered any of what he said for not being on sale. There's lot's of reasons games can fail like that, either they're shit, didn't get good advertisement or whatever, I seriously doubt not being on sale is such a big factor that can affect games to such a level.
[quote]But I have made a more of an effort over the last year to pick up more titles before they go on sale. If a title piques my interest, I don’t want to wait for it to get cheap before I enjoy it. Sales aren’t going anywhere, but that doesn’t mean we always have to wait for them.[/quote]
No shit you buy games you get interested in regardless of it being on sale, that's what a lot of people do.
I'm not, however, going to rush buy a game before it goes on sale as he's implying he does, if I'm interested and have the money I buy it whether it's on sale or not.
“So we give up and discard them at the first time we lose, or when we get confused or stuck.” Sounds familiar. “Some games are complex, tricky, hard to master, take a while to get to the point at which it all makes sense.
If this happens then it sounds to me you weren't even that interested in the game in the first place.
[QUOTE=woolio1;44305368]To be fair, he's got a point. I know I buy games on sale sometimes because they're on sale, and they looked interesting, but I had ignored them when they launched.
It's why I've got thirty-odd games with less than an hour of playtime, totaling at a cool $200.
Wasted. Because it was on sale.[/QUOTE]
True, that happens, no one is arguing that, the problem here is he's blaming sales for that happening.
In the end, we are the ones in charge of our wallets, so we are responsible for what the money is wasted in, after all, as much as it looks like it, Steam can't suck money off of them :v:
[editline]21st March 2014[/editline]
[QUOTE=garry;44305606]Rust has never been on sale. 1.4 million copies sold.[/QUOTE]
And it even sold for +100 bucks when you were doing those wacky sales on the website.
Make good demos so people will feel confident that the game is good. Ditch obnoxious preorder bonuses so people don't feel confident that you're desperate for people to give money upfront for something they'll regret.
Yep. People ignore your game on launch? It isn't because they're waiting for a sale - it's because you're game is ignorable.
Make a game they can't ignore. Don't blame EVERYTHING ELSE.
Oh great edit is broken.
gaarrrrrryyyyyy
[QUOTE=garry;44305606]Rust has never been on sale. 1.4 million copies sold.[/QUOTE]
Don't know why somebody dumb'd this, point made. The honest truth though is since steam I [i]am[/i] much more reluctant to buy things for massive AA prices, I have so many good games now that I'm like "do I really need this for this price?". It just seems like with the amount of games you can snag on steam sales if something really wants to charge $60 it better be amazing, dark souls 2 is the first game I've bought at full price in forever (technically $50 but close enough)
There's a reason I bought Stick of Truth for full price instead of waiting for a sale, it's a good fucking game. A bit short for $60, but it was more fun than anything I've played in the last year (with the possible exception of GTA V)
If a game is really worth buying at full price, people will buy it at full price
In 2011 I once saved up all my money to pre-order 4 games that I was massively hyped for, all of which I was completely disappointed by. And sadly this trend hasn't really died down, you always hear about shoddy launches and completely broken games like Battlefield 4, Sim City, Colonial Marines and Ride to Hell: Retribution.
It makes me a lot more reluctant to buy your possibly shitty or disappointing game when I can play all the games I currently have now, so I can get yours for more than half the price a few months later.
[QUOTE=woolio1;44305368]To be fair, he's got a point. I know I buy games on sale sometimes because they're on sale, and they looked interesting, but I had ignored them when they launched.[/QUOTE]
There's just as many people who specifically wait for a sale though (which in itself should be a clue about the perceived value of a game) as there are people who wouldn't have even considered buying the game at full price at any point in time. I pass on a lot of games simply because I don't feel they're at all worth the value or risk of wasting such a large amount of money as the developers are asking. On the other hand if you have your game priced at $10-20 then I'm willing to take more of a risk even if it seems like there's a reasonable chance I won't enjoy your game.
[QUOTE=Electrocuter;44305668]Oh great edit is broken.
gaarrrrrryyyyyy[/QUOTE]
it's broken because of those funky apostrophes and quotation marks in those comments you copy pasted fyi. Copying text directly from other sites causes that. copy paste the whole post and replace those with ones you type yourself if you want to fix it.
There's a lot of people I know that would just pirate the damn thing, and are now actually buying it, since "most these games are good, but not 50$ good.".
I don't buy games that I really want in a sale, I generally buy games which I don't care that much about but am willing to pay a little to play. If the sale wasn't there I just wouldn't buy it at all. If I really want a game, I'll just buy it at whatever price it is when decide I want it.
Long before Steam and digital sales were even a pipe dream, there were budget label titles like SoldOut and White Label, pre-owned and in-store sales. I have a healthy collection of budget label games because I have never played games long enough to justify release date prices. The only difference between then and now is that there is a much vaster ocean of titles you need to complete against for our time and money - I've spent way more in overall terms buying 'ok' looking titles because of it's low risk.
Actually, Gratuitous Space Battles is a perfect example. Little interaction, low reply value, but it's fun and quirky for a few hours. Why the fuck would I jusify spending more than £2 on something that I can get 40-50+ ours from League of Legends or DOTA 2 or he latest discounted AAA offering?
Get head out of arse.
As a poor person I think he has it backwards. Before sales I would save my money for a handful of games I [i]really[/i] wanted and didn't buy the others because I couldn't afford to. With sales I can afford to spend €20 on 4 games I might not have picked up before.
Maybe these indie devs who release 2 hour games for €20-30 should consider that their games might not be worth that much.
At the end of the game, this is not a fault of gamers, as all they are doing is being consumers in a most basic sense. If you are unable to cater to an audience that needs/wants your game, you are not going to sell well. Just because nowadays you suddenly have competition in the market from other indie games, rather than back years ago where only competition was in distributive form - piracy. This is simply whining of a developer who is stuck in an oversaturated market. He has a certain point - in fact, the same lack of quality/interest has been encountered in Great Atari Video Game Crash™. But now, this affects only a niche market of indie games, so the same effect is unlikely.
On a positive side, things like Metacritic are wonderful ways to judge games - flawed concept, but in function, assuming scores of 7-8 were to be removed, it would be possible to get a good average for a game. In fact, I'd say that many indie games suffer from the fact that they are not reviewed/tracked - but that is fault of developers. I am not saying that every game must have Titanfall/Halo3/MGS4 advertisment budget, but instead, devs should not be afraid of getting the word out of their games, good PR and word of mouth are important. Hell, Starbound got pretty damn far without much advertisment, so good for it.
Hell, to be honest, Democracy 3 got quite a bit of advertising done for itself. The fact that it's a game of a niche kind is the main reason it's not as popular as devs assumed it will be.
I never buy games full-priced anymore simply because they're getting too expensive. I don't make much money, 60€ is a major investment for me. Buying a game full-price at launch basically means I have to cut back on everything else that month to make up the difference. Last game I pre-ordered full-price was GTAIV, and I essentially got fucked because the game ran horribly before it got patched.
And I'm a patient consumer, if I feel like I can wait a bit to save money, I will. I don't care if there are no sales in the first year even. That's why I never buy any COD games even though I enjoy simple fast-paced fps multiplayer, they cost 50-60€, have crap sales, and get replaced with a new version every year.
It's sad that I have to miss out on most games at launch, and I usually get them well past their prime. At most I buy one game full-price a year, and I try to make it a good one after a lot of careful consideration.
For those who live in a second world country (like me), sales are a blessing. I used to buy just 1-3 games a year simply because I couldn't afford getting more. Now I have so many games on my account that I will need many months, if not years, to finish all of them.
I remember GOG saying things about "sales devalue games". Few months later they also started doing 75-90% sales.
[QUOTE=AntonioR;44308445]I remember GOG saying things about "sales devalue games". Few months later they also started doing 75-90% sales.[/QUOTE]
My favourite fuckup was when the guy who heads up Origin at EA said sales devalue intellectual property, and then...
[IMG]http://i1-news.softpedia-static.com/images/news-700/Origin-Kicks-Off-Its-Own-Summer-Sale-Slashes-Prices-by-50.jpg[/IMG]
[QUOTE=Alice3173;44305944]There's just as many people who specifically wait for a sale though (which in itself should be a clue about the perceived value of a game) as there are people who wouldn't have even considered buying the game at full price at any point in time.[/QUOTE]
A lot of these players, myself included, have no choice but to wait for a sale. Not everyone who plays video games can afford to buy $60 new releases every few days. Some of us can barely spare that much money for games [i]over an entire year[/i]. And those gamers are rarely, if ever, going to buy at full price simply because they cannot even if they want to.
Steam sales in particular are how I'm able to afford to enjoy this hobby, and I'm sure there's millions of other gamers in the same boat.
[QUOTE=TestECull;44305338]If the game is worth the price it's at on launch people will buy it. If it's shit on a stick people won't. It's not a difficult concept to grasp.
Stop blaming sales and discounts for your games not doing well![/QUOTE]
Also several companies already posted that they get more money when their game go on sale.
Lol he's the guy behind Gratuitous Space Battles? I got the game on a Humble Bundle but I was actually shocked when I saw that it had like 35€ of DLC on Steam. That's awfully expensive for what it is.
actually i looked
democracy 3 is 25 fucking dollars what the hell
don't blame anyone but yourself on this one
and its rated a 70 on metacritic
maybe thats why people aren't buying your game
[QUOTE=Untouch;44309825]actually i looked
democracy 3 is 25 fucking dollars what the hell
don't blame anyone but yourself on this one
and its rated a 70 on metacritic
maybe thats why people aren't buying your game[/QUOTE]
Well I don't know about the 70 on metacritic but one thing's for sure, this looks like a goddamn mobile game... for $25 dollars??
I don't buy anything at "launch" because that's basic investment failure. It's better to wait until the hype is dead and multiple sellers have access to the product; promotes price competition and devalues the product, which results in lower prices. Steam Sales are price competition without having to search a dozen different stores, and I know at least twice a year they're going to do it.
People like this Cliff Harris are laughably transparent, they're mad the gold mine that was video games has run dry. It's no longer [I]"that thing kids get into for a while"[/I] that let them get away with shitty marketing strategy for over 20 years. It's a mainstream hobby and thus entered the big boys league, which has [I]standards[/I]. It's part of subconscious culture, and has been for thousands of years.
Play the game or find a new profession, chumps.
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