Kotaku - We Buy More Games Than We Play

Yep, I very much follow this trend. I have dozens of games bought on sales which I will play when I have the time/ when the mood fancies.

I very rarely buy full price games, the last which I preordered was Risen 2 which disappointed me. It's much safer to wait for review at least, and then when you look at your huge backlog of games it just makes more sense to play them first.

Besides I've backed around 80 Kickstarters many for more than a game would be full price!

Daniel.

I see these and the reactions to people having a 20 game backlog and go pour another drink as I decide what game of my 1000 game backlog to play.

The market certainly has changed a ton. Fewer people are paying full price but a lot more people are buying early/late at a discount. I've got no idea how those number balance over the long term... which can be a VERY long term now with people buying games that are a couple of decades old on GOG.

As customers, we've got a lot of incentive to wait. A game that's a year old will have bug fixes, excellent guides, and possibly a lot of nice mods plus it will cost less. A *lot* less! The only thing you lose is the "common experience" where a lot of your friends are playing the game at the same time.

If the budgets of AAA games continues to grow and they continue to resist new ideas, I would say yes, the current model of AAA titles will become unprofitable. I'm not convinced that's a bad thing though.

darklord said:

Yep, I very much follow this trend. I have dozens of games bought on sales which I will play when I have the time/ when the mood fancies.

I very rarely buy full price games, the last which I preordered was Risen 2 which disappointed me. It's much safer to wait for review at least, and then when you look at your huge backlog of games it just makes more sense to play them first.

Besides I've backed around 80 Kickstarters many for more than a game would be full price!

Daniel.

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I think these a key points to why publishers/developers are just as much at fault. People are far less willing to buy AAA stuff at full price because they don't feel the games are worth the cost while some people will pump way more than the average into Kickstarter projects with tiny budgets to try new/different things.

coyote said:

True only for games primarily sold for their multi-player content, assuming 'communauty' is community.

I like one facet of this development, though: games will be bought later on average, which means that hype in the form of previews and magazine reviews bought by the publishers will matter less, and gamers will be able to judge value more accurately. This should have a positive impact on game quality in the long term.

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Preordering has developped largely over the last few years. The $60 offer is meant to satisfy the preordering customers.

Games are less and less designed to be experienced on your own but more and more as a social experience. It goes far beyong that multiplayer. Everything in the game is designed that way to wrap the player in a community and deliver a social experience.

The social experience of gaming is the best experienced if even only experienced at peak community.
Customers paying the full price are buying themselves a ticket for the full experience.

Discount offers account for discounted experiences.
There is no extra value so to say.
It is probable that players who postpone to pay $15 overpay their product.

The value of the community experience is highly subjective though, especially for games where multiplayer is optional.

ChienAboyeur said:

Games are less and less designed to be experienced on your own but more and more as a social experience.

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Yes. And I don't like it. I don't want other people in my gameplay experience.

Hopefullyt at least some developers will continue to make undiluted single player games.

Not an average gamer either. While there may be a game I buy that I don't play its because it was horrible. In general 100% of all games I buy I actually play for at least enough time to see if I like it. About 80-90% of those I finish at least once and perhaps 50-75% (not counting MMOS) I play more than once.

I don't buy a game because it is on sale - If I wasn't interested enough to buy it when it came out (meaning I knew I would like it enough to want it) just because it is cheap doesn't make the quality of the game any better. Nor do I have so much free time I can just play crap games because they went on sale.

I also prefer to give the company full price, if it is a great game, for their work. I have brought a couple of games on sale but not because they were sale (except two, possibly three if I recall right) it was because I didn't have time for it before or I had missed it (or changed my mind after some reviews/friends recommended it).

I try to do a lot of research and sometimes I make mistakes but in general I try to stick to those games I think I would really like and for the most part have avoided to many bad guesses, although they happen.

But I can also afford to buy a game when it comes out as long as it isn't to often and frankly there are not nearly enough games that appeal to me to do that. I may only by 1 or 2 games in an entire year depending on what I am playing (MMO or a great game like Skyrim which has kept me busy for a long time or DAO which kept me busy for a year). Other times I might buy 4-5 if they are all good and then work my way through them.

PS - This does not count GIFTS. If someone wants to send me a game as a gift I may or may not play it. I have 6 games on stream I have never played, all gifts, and another couple I got that I play here and there when super bored, also gifts.

DArtagnan said:

Not exactly news The way we devalue games by buying them so very cheap means that many will start to expect and await a very low price no matter what game it is - and as such, publishers might have a hard time getting away with a reasonable price. That could mean the end of big AAA titles as we know them today.

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Totally agree ... my wife was recalling how she bought me Return to Castle Wolfenstein for Christmas way back when it came out, we had little kids so I actually waited, and then didn't play on Christmas Day, but spent many hours after the kids went to bed the next night, which she found simultaneously cute and annoying ... but it was such a singular event that it stands out more than a dozen years later. Now I just bought a crap-ton of games between Steam and GOG and have no clue when I might play them ... nor do I really care.

greywolf00 said:

The value of the community experience is highly subjective though, especially for games where multiplayer is optional.

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That. I know the younger audience grows up with all that MP experience and community stuff, but for me the value of MP is zero and the value of the community elements is sometimes low (talking in forums, etc.) and sometimes even negative (Steam achievement cards for community votes ... stop wasting my time with this nonsense!). So I do indeed get a better deal if I wait for the GOTY edition.

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I have 100s of games in my backlog, bought on average for 1€ I guess. I have become much more selective about the games I finish. If a game gets boring I stop playing, even if it means admitting I wasted money on a game I've played for only 2 hours. Finishing every game is no longer necessary for me.

I guess I've become a bit of a compulsive collector, but it's more of me just trying to "catch up" to games I've missed over the years. I may have 100 games in my backlog, but many of them are classics that I never got to play, so I slowly work my way through my list of games and try to play everything. It's just going to take awhile. I figure it's also good to have a big backlog for rainy days and that sort of thing.

And it doesn't help that there are sales every week, either. Sales, man. They just suck you in and take your money .

I fear I totally belong into the collector category. Been buying some on Steam and GoG sales, often games I already own even, just for the convenience. Full price I usually still buy as physical copies, but I have stopped installing all of those already in the 90s.
I've spend ages hunting down physical copies of games from back when I couldn't afford them. A lot of games - old and new - I install and give spin for 10 minutes before abandoning them. Knowing I own them lets me relax and save them for some later time which never comes.
Retirement looks a ways off still, but maybe the big crash will come sooner and we'll all be sitting in fallout shelters cut off from the internet before that - I guess I should get me a petrol generator one of these days...

greywolf00 said:

The value of the community experience is highly subjective though, especially for games where multiplayer is optional.

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The industry takes charge of the valuation. For them, it is not subjective since the valuation is cast against their production budget and the rate of sales they expect to meet.
The industry conceive their $60,$30,$15 offers (of the same game) in this regard and strictly speaking, there are no discount as customers pay a lesser price for a lesser product (as planned by the industry)
It also means that most if not all the budget goes to implement the $60 game offer. It leads to decisions that are not neutral in terms of game design and games are being substantially changed.

It was stated earlier that the scene is changing. One big change that is being operated is the appearance and the increase of a segment of customers who make money off playing video games. It does not only include professional players but types like streamers, casters who raise $500,$1000,$2000,$4000... per month to stream their game sessions.

The scene now pits people who come to gaming for leisure and people who come to gaming to earn money.
If you are interested in gaming (that is expected good gameplay from games), that is something to watchl.
People who make money from the practice of leisure activities expect first that their support helps them into making money. They are also extremelly defensive/aggressive as they want to protect their way of making money and will try to disqualify any criticism toward the game they use as support to make money.

It is now beyond the industry's reach to go against that segment of customers and more and more games are going to be thought, balanced toward the needs of those customers.

So, yes, big changes coming in the way.