Major game purchase influences?

On what do you base the purchase of a game?

  • Reviews

    Votes: 71 63.4%
  • Ads

    Votes: 1 0.9%
  • Advice from friends

    Votes: 36 32.1%
  • Demos

    Votes: 51 45.5%
  • Screens/trailers

    Votes: 25 22.3%
  • Box description

    Votes: 3 2.7%
  • Forum comments

    Votes: 75 67.0%
  • Previews/interviews

    Votes: 40 35.7%
  • Other (specify in the comments)

    Votes: 13 11.6%

  • Total voters
    112
Reviews, previews and interviews, forum comments. Increasingly the latter.
 
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Reviews, advices from friends, demos (if I can get one), forum comments (my most influencial source), rather interviews than previews, because this is the imho best way to find out what the developers intentions were, and for the point "other" I would say: First-hand information, if I can get some (through forums, mostly, in a few very, very rare cases talks to people at conventions directly).

In other words : I try to get information from a variety of different sources to get a - if possibly - most varied view of a game.
 
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Forum-Comments - and lots of them, to see the big Picture ... Reviewers are nowadays bought by the companies (well, except some heroic few here and at the Codex ^^).
 
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Well mostly by reading interviews or by talk on a forum( read as: this forum) I get interested in the game and if possible try a demo before I decide.
And sometimes the box intrigues me too finding out more or buy it direct. Good exemples are Guild wars and city of vilians and WoW to get interested and find more, a good exemple of direct buy is Gothic and Divine Divinity, Vampire and the Soulreave/blood omen series
 
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Almost always previews, interviews (and possibly media) for me. I nearly always have my mind made up a long time (maybe even a year or two from release) and follow the development as it moves along.

Occasionally, I use reviews to make a final decision but that's pretty rare. I don't think reviews are bought in the main - like everything, there are good reviewers and bad.

Haven't read a game box in years (and I prefer downloads, anyway).
 
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Based on several reviews, especially from more reputable sources, and forum comments. Rarely my purchase would be influenced by previews/interviews alone (except well known games like Diablo III), or by just looking at screenshots/trailers.
 
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Reviews, previews/interviews and demos if available.
 
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Review, preview and interviews.

I normally keep an eye on games that seems interesting and therefor many times I know if I want to buy it before it gets reviewed. Where its more the games that I might have missed or didn't thought to be interesting at first glance, where reviews can persuade me to buy it.
 
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Reviews, forum comments and demos. Demos are like the last fat chance if the others fail - I rarely have to opt for it through.
Same for me, with forum comments WAY out in the lead. There's this cool online site with some fairly intelligent folks that offer pretty informed opinions of games, from development to release to retro. RPGWitch? UPSWatch? Ummm...
 
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Forum comments and reviews for me. I tend to trust the forum comments more... specifically from the Watch, because I've learned that the tastes of many people here mirror my own tastes in games. I like reading reviews, but I don't take them as seriously.

I never play demos of CRPGs because I want to play a game from start to finish, and not just sample part of it. I will play demos of shooters and other types of games, but not very often. I just don't have the gaming time to waste on playing a demo.
 
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Forum comments first and foremost, followed by demos. I will read reviews, but they don't influence my decision to purchase very much, if at all.
 
FOr me it's reviews, screens/trailers, forum comments and (other) content.

Back in the days I knew what games was coming years before they did... Now I completely stopped to read previews/reviews because I do not want to hype for a game anymore. There was a few huge disappointments for me, then I simply gave up. I remember that I continued to pay for Star Wars Galaxies due to the promises of a better tomorrow until I finally gave up.
Oblivion was another great disappointment.

It's ironic that "Ads" and "Box descriptions" which is really the stuff that large companies put their money for marketing on, have 0% here.

When it comes to reviews I often check gamerankings.com. Games that falls as low as less than 70% will most likely be bad, unless they have a very small nische. Games below 90% needs some kind of special appeal for me to consider. That's why I visit forums such as RPGWatch and AdventureGamers that know the kind of games that I would like. Games above 90% I often check out, regardless the game. I try to avoid being a grumpy conservative old-school gamer and I try to give new things a chance (Ok, maybe I am lying now). Another note: I pay more attention to reviews the less time I have to play games.

I also have a look at screens/trailers to get a feel for a game. As an artist I find artwork important, but I have actually enjoyed games like Avernum despite it's low graphics quality. If a trailer can grasp my attention though, maybe the game is able to as well. Immersion is very important to me.

I do not take advice from friends. The reason is that my friends do not like the games I do so I simply rule them out these days.

What's really drives me to buy a game these days is content. To be worth a purchase the game really need to offer something more than a quick script-driven experience with some gee-whizz graphical effects. Games that you forget quickly is not the kind that I try to avoid when im buying.
 
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Mostly forum comments for me, which the occasional preview/interview I read because of the comments on it. I also read reviews in the major Serbian paper magazine, but they hardly ever influence me.
 
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Let's see. Friends' advice and reviews are first, and after that forum comments. The reason I don't place forums even higher is that I know most people have other taste than me, but with friends I know whose taste to trust for what etc. I like reviews still even though I find they're driven as much by the expectations on the game as the game itself when they set the score. (Subconsciously that is, I don't think most are actually bought in some way by the publishers...)

Demos and previews/interviews come in a bit behind, and it's different from game to game. WAR is probably one of the first games I'll by without caring about the reviews, but that only has part to do with previews and more with my friends in the closed beta. Demos are nice for more unknown titles IMO.
 
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Reviews (only if I'm in doubt), screens/trailers (important one. I like to see the actual gameplay), forum comments (of course) and previews/interviews (only as supplement).

But a thing I lack from the poll options, and why I've also chosen "other", is feature lists. They weigh heavily on my decision making.
But also circumstancial factors such as price and availability is important for my decision. They have to be pretty good games for me if I have to order them through online retail instead of buying them through Steam. And price. I tend to play a wide range of games whenever the price becomes reasonable.
 
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Demos and screens are of highest priority for me because they give glimpses of the actual product. Demos are invaluable since they allow to run the software. Full versions can have gamestopping bugs that are not present in demos, but at least demos let to test the game's graphics engine. Couple of screens showing the game and its GUI tend to tell a lot for me if the game falls into an already known category (rts, fps, rpg ..etc).

After those come friend advice, forum comments and reviews. All the hearsay so to speak. If I hear from those three sources some game is full of bugs, it tends to put off the purchasing decision until at least there's a patch available.
 
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Reviews, forum comments and whether or not a game is a sequel of a previous game I enjoyed. Sometimes even if a game doesn't get great reviews, I might pick it up if it is a sequel of something decent, just to get that "storyline continuity" vibe.
 
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