Giving Intellectual Property a Chance

The cast of Humble Indie Bundle V

Last week, EA's Senior Vice President of Global Ecommerce David DeMartini attacked rival Valve's Steam digital distribution service for its frequent sales and deep discounts on games, saying that it "cheapens intellectual property."

Yes, it is disappointing to developers when a game they spent years working on sits on store shelves at full price and fails to sell enough to fund a sequel or even another game. Given that many consumers can only afford or even justify a few game purchases a year at $60 a pop, people will tend to stick with franchises that they recognize instead of plunking down three Andrew Jacksons on something unknown to them.

But does that mean the value of a popular franchise, such as Call of Duty, is much greater than a game that didn't find a wide audience, like Beyond Good & Evil?  My answer: it depends on the person.

Many gamers fall into the category of only playing (and paying for) games that they know are popular, are already familiar with, or received a personal recommendation.  For the most part, they will not be willing to take a chance on a random game on the store shelf at full price.

The keyword here is "full price."  Now, if that same random game had a very steep discount and that same gamer looked at the back of the box, read the description and looked at the screenshots, there's a possibility that they would end up buying the game.  "Hey, it's only $7.49, I'll give it a shot.  It's not like I paid $60 and traded it in to Gamestop two weeks later for five bucks."

Looking back to last year's Steam Summer Sale, I purchased 16 games for about $50 total.  The most I paid for any of those was Dragon Age: Origins - Ultimate Edition at $10.  (Though I didn't play it yet... someday!)  Now I'm going to quote my article from last year regarding those purchases:

So checking my playtime so far of these titles, I've installed and played five of them and put in about 15 hours, which I imagine there were some $50 games that I didn't put that much time into.  So at least when you purchase a game on the cheap, if it turns out to be a dud, at least it wasn't a $50 dud.  Though now I am less likely to buy any game at full price, the pricing of games during this sale made me more willing to take a chance on a game.

Which I suppose is the point I'm trying to make with this article.  Prior to the sale, I was not interested in those games at full price, or even at all.  But if the game is presented at a fine price, I am more willing to take a chance on it.  And for every Indie Bundle I buy, there is usually at least one surprise in the pack that I never would have had the pleasure to enjoy were it not for buying it in the bundle.