I ticked Demos (if available, in practice that option is closed all too often) and buzz at forums like this one (where I have an idea of how well people's opinions correlate with mine) are the deciding factors for me. I also ticked "friends" since I count fellow forumites as that for gaming purposes (my RL friends are generally not into games).

Reviews/previews/ads/boxes can serve as eye openers and trigger further investigation, but dont make or break the decision on their own since they simply dont produce enough meat.

Just looking back over this, it's amazing that ads play almost no role for most people. I wonder what the advertising budget is for most games…it appears to be wasted among the hardcore or whatever we are here.

I'm surprised anyone admitted to being influenced by ads. Generally speaking that's just not done.

Advice from friends and posts on forums for me. I used to read previews and reviews… but their views change so dramatically within few months. I don't believe them anymore

Originally Posted by magerette
Just looking back over this, it's amazing that ads play almost no role for most people. I wonder what the advertising budget is for most games…it appears to be wasted among the hardcore or whatever we are here.

I just dont have access to ads unless they show up in morning newspapers or on national TV, and the main stream games that go that are advertised like that are usually not my genre. I dont read game mags and dont frequent game sites other than a few forums such as this one. I think the last ad I encountered for a game that I bought was an Oblivion ad in Nature (or was it Science?), and that was only after I had bought the game already.

I only see via ads that a game is out. Few more.

Originally Posted by magerette
Just looking back over this, it's amazing that ads play almost no role for most people. I wonder what the advertising budget is for most games…it appears to be wasted among the hardcore or whatever we are here.

That's because people don't realize they're affected by ads. Ads just get stored somewhere in the back of your mind, you forget about them but they're still there somewhere in your brain. Then when you hear about the game again you're like "I heard about that game, I can't recall from where exactly… but the name reminds me of something… must have been someone who talked to me about it… so it's probably good". Works for all types of products. Like when you're in the supermarket and you see that Ariel soap or Signal toothpaste, you can see they're more expensive but you also know they're better than the others because you heard about them more, you're not actually sure why and where… but you just know… that's ads…

When you see sales of Guitar Hero III, Halo III or GTA IV I'm almost sure most of the buyers didn't read any review before buying. Wasn't even word of mouth, just ads and the fact they played previous games in the series.

Oh and from a publisher's point of views "demos and trials" are pure ads, they're one same category of expenses in their budget.

I would say ads don't affect me, but that is probably because the types of games that get ads the most on generally action oriented console games, and those aren't my forte. I also don't read game mags and usually don't pay much attention to banner ads. So the only ads I see are on TV, and those are generally the big budget console games (or WoW).

Heck, my biggest influence these days is probably this site and particularly the screens shots that cycle through in the upper right corner of the front page! I never even considered buying Ps:T or Arcanum until I click through some of the screenshots that appeared there. Plus I've seen lots of games there I might buy that I'd never even heard of!

I am going by reviews and forum comments pretty much exclusively when I decide whether to buy a game or not.

But even if everyone shared that view, a certain amount of marketing is still necessary just to get a game noticed: magazines have little reason to write a review for a game noone knows about, as few people will want to read it. Also, there certainly is a psychological effect of a high profile advertisement campaign on the review writers, in particular those who want to spend as little time as possible with the game before getting the article out before everyone else does.

On the other hand, sometimes advertisement money would be much better spend on quality control in my personal opinion, given how easily technical problems can pull down otherwise promising games. And there is little point in getting a game noticed only to be bashed by reviews and the people playing it afterwards.

The very first thing I do is go to the official site and see how the makers describe their game. It's pretty much one big ad. I look at everything, including press releases. It's fun, and it just seems like a good place to start.

Then I visit forums to see what people are saying and how that compares. I pretty much base my decision around that. The rest is fill-in.

One other thing worth mentioning is that I almost-never buy a game anymore unless it was designed for my computer's graphics chip.

For me, influences can be ordered like that ( from the weakest to the strongest )
1) People ( friends, colleagues )
2) Description ( previews, reviews )
3) Screenshots
4) Videos
5) Demo

Unfortunately, it seems that demos are rarer over time, as real gameplay videos…
After years of playing games, I know what I want to play ( the perfect game ) so anything that comes close enough goes for me.

I'll add that if I know the makers/designers previous works it's fairly influential for me.

Good point… Most of the Gothic series players are waiting for the next PB game even if there's not even a single screenshot yet !

Also, the opposite is mostly true.

Almost exclusively reviews actually.

I mean I know myself which genre of games I will like, and then I look within that for many reviews to get an overall picture. Almost all of the other options have turned out to be less accurate for me. Forum comments tend to be hugely polar - either fanboys defending it or others slating it. Previews tend to be just too optimistic most of the time. My friends have different tastes to me in terms of genres mostly, adverts probably influence me in a subtle way - the sort of info based ones like blog and forum posts by developers etc the most. Demos only ever seem to put me off a game - I've only ever purchased one game I wasn't sure about by playing the demo, but I've cancelled many orders after trying demos.

Reviews. I go to Metacritic.com and Gamerankings.com (the best aggregate game review site on the web, IMO) for my info.

Previews mostly, but It always seems to be word of mouth for me, when it's not something that I'm already looking forward to because i saw a preview and it looked interesting. A lot of times it's something that I wouldnt have played normally, but thankfully others were talking about it here and got me jazzed about it. There's been a few winners, like Puzzle Quest and Witcher that I bought, played, and loved because all the cool kids here at the watch were doing it. Then there's others, like Kings Bounty, that I have to take a loss on because I just didnt enjoy it much.

Demos, forum reviews and like to see what Eurogamer has to say. Also whoever makes the game gets a consideration, although I've been burned by this from time to time.