I can be a cheap as the next guy. I admit that. Yesterday, I was debating with a friend about buying Red Dead Redemption. It was available for only five dollars off of full price at GameStop, but the local Pre-Played had it priced at $40.00.
They didn't have any copies
currently, but Half.com did, for the same price. Of course, I'd have to
wait for it and it would cost me $3.50 more in shipping. My friend cut
through the confusion with one very concise sentence: "Depends on
whether you want to give Rockstar your money or not." Gah! I hate
you!
This particular friend has a way of always being right and
he sure was in this case. I wasn't thinking of it that way. I find
that players have few compelling reasons to think of things that way,
either. That's no longer true for me. This is my industry. I have
friends in this industry. I want to see them get paid. Even more than
that, I want them to get the recognition they deserve. Sales numbers
are more than dollar amounts. They are statistics, metrics. The more a
game sells, the more players are affirming that they like it and want
to see more like this.
I started asking around about this.
"What makes you pay full price for a game?" For the most part, the
answers were the same: re-playability and the inability to wait for a
game to become available pre-played. If it was a franchise game, the
love of the franchise often seems to drive players to buy it as soon as
it arrives.
I thought about my own buying habits. I will
certainly pay more for a game that comes with a great toy. If there are
physical tie-ins to a game I'm hyped on already, my money hits the
table pretty fast. In-game content and downloads, even online play, are
all pretty meaningless to me as bonus items. I want an action figure to
put on the bookshelf. I want Pandora's Box and posters and maps;
concrete symbols of my geek status to add to my decor. I also buy games
that I don't want to live without, can't wait to play, and know I'll
play repeatedly.
Players, for the most part, don't see the
industry. They see their
wallets, and their lives. How do we fix that? Some developers have
started to put exclusive content in their games; content that can only
be accessed by the original registered owner or by paying a premium to
get to it, if you've bought the game used.
An employee of GameStop
stated that, in the case of Madden, this is working. Players
would rather be able to play online right away than pay the premium. If
I was just a player, though, it wouldn't work for me. Other than toys,
I don't know what would? I'm interested in the thoughts of others,
though.
For now, I hang my head in shame. I've let my peers
down. My one shot at redemption is finding an answer to that
question....how do we get them to buy our games new?