And that at the sales they buy more indiscriminately, randomly, not really supporting the best, but whatever is so cheap and shiny enough that it triggers your buying impules (I know I am guilty of that).
I tempered a lot those impulse buy because I quoted that I'm not curious to play those games I bought just because of a very low sale despite a low interest. When I feel such impulse buy coming I just need remind 4 points:
- The number of games I have and never played.
- The number of those games bought at very cheap sales and that I didn't played longer that 30mn to 1h before to give up.
- The number of games I bought at very cheap sales, that I never played, and that seems deadly boring when I look at my collection and wonder what I could play.
- The number of games I don't even remember why I bought them even if it was at one buck.
So when I see a very cheap sale, I don't wonder if I want add it to my collection but I wonder if I really want to play it, or if there's a real discovery curiosity.
The example you quoted (TW Medieval 2) is typical, a good game in a great series but not the best in the series and not a genre I like that much despite the quality of the series, so nope I didn't buy any at sales, even very low.
The indie case is more problematic because there's ton, there's ton doing very cheap sales, there's ton that will just bore me, and there's ton that will stick me just few hours and much less than for the full game. But it's still a source of great discovery.
My top 3 of 2013 games I played would be just fully indie, between very low budget indie and very big indie.
I really start to be afraid that people become so used to these sale prices that fewer and fewer will buy games at full price…
I think I already fit that category. But I'd temper it by arguing I stopped buy boxes since few months and new release digital have obviously a too high price in comparison of boxes.
The "problem" isn't my current back catalog, frankly just looking at it doesn't excite me much. The problem is coming from multiple points:
- There is less and less identified games that make me curious. Recently it's been tempered by a series of turn based games not too hardcore and polishing the appeal level, and they made me do series of buys at full price or almost. But that's a change and I'm not sure this element will work as well for long.
- I regularly notice I have troubles to identify games I find very great, so the list of sales I bought among games I enjoyed the most is growing.
- More than once I just hadn't the time to buy the game before it gets a significant sale like 40 to 50%.