big discount sales (like 75%), because 40-60$ for just one game hurts my soul too much even if I have the money to spare.
Only games I have bought at release: Goldeneye, OOT, Pokemon Blue, Yellow, Silver, Sapphire, HL2 (for the SDK), Ecclesia.
What makes me want games is either the game just looks fun to my eyes, (though I can easily be dissappointed) and if I read reviews and the score of the game is a good score, for more than one game reviewers obviously.
...woah, I'm a vested member now.
I have a short list of games I might buy sometime, but haven't actually bought (or pirated) a game in years. Of these, most are available for less than $25. Many have some degree of nostalgic value, being either things I wanted to play when I was a kid, or sequels to old favorites. I'm also willing to buy recent-generation console games to run in emulation, because I like software that is open, extensible, hackable, or otherwise helpful and not a DRM-ridden hindrance to me and my machine.
Given that I'm on a Mac, I can't buy most PC games at release. And my consoles tend to be out of date too (I got the Wii, but I haven't turned it on in awhile). So mostly I buy games when I hear consistent good reviews for them and they're available on a system I have.
I also tend to have only 0-1 games in my "now playing" list, since gaming isn't the only thing I do with my spare time. In fact I'd estimate I dedicate more money in a year to buying board and card games than I do to videogames.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
Joined: 2/28/2006
Posts: 2275
Location: Milky Way -> Earth -> Brazil
I only spend money on a game it is epic good in any way.
For example some epic music could do that.
"Genuine self-esteem, however, consists not of causeless feelings, but of certain knowledge about yourself.
It rests on the conviction that you — by your choices, effort and actions — have made yourself into the
kind of person able to deal with reality. It is the conviction — based on the evidence of your own volitional
functioning — that you are fundamentally able to succeed in life and, therefore, are deserving of that success."
- Onkar Ghate
Bisqwit wrote:
It has to have a very steep learning curve where it's almost impossible for new players to catch up. Hard to perform techniques for extra points or other advantages are also cool. In short it should promote elitism. I've found that those games are the ones with the highest long-time replay value. Multi-player isn't a must. Prize and graphics aren't relevant except if it's a very bad case. Oh, and it should be fun. :p
Big discounts and generally positive reviews. I occasionally buy games at launch if I have a reason to believe I will enjoy it immensely (Dragon Age was one such an occasion).
But like Derakon Board Games are the real money sinkhole. They provide social interaction and the kind of logical thinking I enjoy (especially heavy eurogames and 18xx).
"Kids! Bringing about Armageddon can be dangerous. Do not attempt it in your home."
( Pratchett & Gaiman: Good Omens )
Almost every game that I've purchased in the past few years has been a sequel, remake, or port. I'm not sure if that's indicative of the state of the industry, or just that I'm reluctant to try new things.
Working backward through purchases in my mind, the only title I can name that was a clean slate is Dead Rising, which was a disappointment after playing the demo. Before that... um... Skies of Arcadia? I don't want to admit to having purchased Halo, so we'll skip that.
I HAVE tried a few new series, but only after they've been around for a while (Devil May Cry 4 comes to mind). Otherwise, I haven't really been adventurous with new titles in quite some time.
1. To play it, if I can't do that without having to pay.
2. To play online on official servers (if not possible otherwise). In 2000 I bought Ultima Online for that purpose. >_>
3. Fan gratitude (which is also the only reason I still buy music CDs).
As for other purposes… Previously I would buy pirated games in jewel cases (except when a proper release is sold at a similar cost), but since the advent of LAN shares and subsequently BitTorrent I don't need to anymore.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
Generally speaking, if it's made by Square/Enix, I buy it. (They make so few games for the PC or the PSP that I'll take anything they have to offer.) Also anything set in the Half-Life universe is an automatic purchase for me (I think I have bought all of them during the years, unless there's some obscure official HL1 expansion I don't know of). Most modern games by Id Software also fall into this category (although the expansion to Doom3 was somewhat of a disappointment).
In other cases, I might buy a game if:
1) It's widely acclaimed as one of the best games in recent history.
2) It's a sequel to a game I already own, and it hasn't got completely crappy reviews.
3) It's extremely cheap, looks interesting, and I don't have any pending games in my games shelf.
Joined: 3/9/2004
Posts: 4588
Location: In his lab studying psychology to find new ways to torture TASers and forumers
I buy games only if I want them. Generally because they're a sequel, or I played it by a friend and saw it was interesting, or read a review which really got me interested.
However I have a few criteria before I plunk down cash for it.
1) No DRM. I didn't buy Red Alert 3 despite how much I love the series, because I can only install it 5 times, which is unacceptable.
2) Right price. I'm not going to spend a small fortune on a game which I'll be done with in 2 hours. Generally this means I'll be waiting till the game is 2-5 years old and becomes bargain bin. Although there have been good exceptions, I bought Mega Man X4 for PC right went it came out for $8. Capcom generally has good PC game prices and gives discounts for early birds.
3) No almost malware. I don't want any game which installs all sorts of background monitoring junk or severally modifies my system.
It's for these reasons I like playing games in the normal popular emulators. The price is great. I can install it as many times as I want and copy it to any of my machines. They don't require installing all sorts of junk, and they're self contained well. Most don't even use the registry. Most I can just copy the directory to another computer and have all my settings and saves exactly as I left them.
Warning: Opinions expressed by Nach or others in this post do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, or position of Nach himself on the matter(s) being discussed therein.
Generally speaking, I don't buy games.
I have only ever made an exception once: When Valve's Portal became available, I registered at Steam and bought the package of games that included Portal, everything from the Half-Life series so far and a few other games, because the deal met my gaming interests rather perfectly at the time.
Anything else, I've either loaned (when it's a physical media such as a game cartridge), copied (when it's a DOS-era PC game) or downloaded (when it's an emulatable console game, which in my opinion counts almost as second-hand).
It's not that I think that game piracy is allright; it's just because I'm not an active game consumer.
pirate_sephiroth wrote:
I only spend money on a game it is epic good in any way.
For example some epic music could do that.
In this rare incident, I agree with your taste and like it.
Joined: 2/28/2006
Posts: 2275
Location: Milky Way -> Earth -> Brazil
Bisqwit wrote:
Generally speaking, I don't buy games.
I have only ever made an exception once: When Valve's Portal became available, I registered at Steam and bought the package of games that included Portal, everything from the Half-Life series so far and a few other games, because the deal met my gaming interests rather perfectly at the time.
Anything else, I've either loaned (when it's a physical media such as a game cartridge), copied (when it's a DOS-era PC game) or downloaded (when it's an emulatable console game, which in my opinion counts almost as second-hand).
It's not that I think that game piracy is allright; it's just because I'm not an active game consumer.
Yeah, I didn't buy games because I mostly borrowed/rented/traded them, because I always become sick of them after a while.
Bisqwit wrote:
pirate_sephiroth wrote:
I only spend money on a game it is epic good in any way.
For example some epic music could do that.
In this rare incident, I agree with your taste and like it.
"Genuine self-esteem, however, consists not of causeless feelings, but of certain knowledge about yourself.
It rests on the conviction that you — by your choices, effort and actions — have made yourself into the
kind of person able to deal with reality. It is the conviction — based on the evidence of your own volitional
functioning — that you are fundamentally able to succeed in life and, therefore, are deserving of that success."
- Onkar Ghate
Bisqwit wrote:
basically: make a good game, treat me right, and you've got my money.
- must not clobber me with intrusive copy protection mechanisms. I've had too many cases where a game I bought cost me hours to get to run, cost me hours to reinstall windows to get rid of the copy protection "drivers", or just plain didn't work ("please insert the ORIGINAL cd" when it was clearly in the drive). In those cases, I use those decentrally offered special editions without copy protection, or don't play the game at all.
- must not be bug-ridden (see: sacred, gothic 3, GTA IV, countless others)
- lots of bonus points if it works on wine (diablo 2, guild wars), even more if linux native (q3a, ut2004). Wii games are exempt from this bonus. ;)
I used to buy a lot of games for my Sega Mega Drive and SNES back in the days.
Now and then I still pick up a few titles for both of the mentioned systems. Some times from flea markets, ebay (and other sites like that), and some times you can actually find them rather cheap in various stores.
I somewhat like to own the actual copy of those old games. I still get slightly carried away, as I did when I was a child buying a new game.
I don't really buy, nor consume, most modern games.
The most modern game I bought was Warcraft 3 + Frozen throne. This I bought directly at the battle.net store. Mainly because I wanted to play custom maps at battle net. I bought them this summer.
Also I think that games mainly are to expensive. So I wait around until they release as a classic, when the price has dropped to a rough $13.
Speaking of bug-ridden games as Tub stated above; wasn't SiN one of the worst games of all when it came? I think they released a billion of patches and fixes for that game. Might be mistaking me for something else. But I want to recall that game at least. :)
I buy some games, I have more money now than I'm older, but I don't buy a lot of games. I try to find them used or low priced. I don't like buying a game when it just came out. The only exception is NHL. I buy them at release date every year.
Recent game I bought, Guitar Hero World Tour With Guitar, Assasin's Creed, StarWars : The Force Unleashed.
1) No DRM. I didn't buy Red Alert 3 despite how much I love the series, because I can only install it 5 times, which is unacceptable.
As a matter of principle, ok, but as a practical matter, who cares how many times you can install it, really?
I own exactly one gaming PC, and when I buy a game I install it on it, play it through, and uninstall it. That's it. So what if the game allows itself to be installed only 5 times? Why should that bother me? (Besides, most such games free up such an installation registration when you uninstall the game. It's not like I would ever want to play the game on 5 different computers at the same time. I don't even own that many computers.)
As for the game installing some DRM rootkit or whatever nasty things... Well that doesn't bother me either because I use Windows exclusively for gaming and little else. I don't really care what copy protection software is installed as long as I can play the game I bought. My principal OS is Linux, and I don't really care about Windows, as long as it works. Besides, I believe that most attempts at breaching people's privacy with such software get caught quite quickly, causing controversy, and usually get changed pretty fast. I don't think most gaming companies even bother to try.
Besides technical matters (broken installations, computer exploded, no way to cleanly uninstall etc.. I've had games I had to install more than 5 times on different systems and windows versions until they kinda worked or were returned.), there are larger things at stake here.
DRM and activation means: in 5 to 10 years, I cannot play the game any more.
That's fine with cheap play-once-and-forget titles, but why would I play those? I want to buy good games, and I often reinstall old games just out of nostalgia. I installed the Star Wars Racer a couple of days ago, still got diablo 1 and 2 installed, same for quake 3. All of them around 10 years old. Not to mention all those emulator ROMs..
Now would I really want all those games to stop working because the vendor decided to shutdown the activation servers five years ago? If activation becomes a de facto standard, do you think sites like tasvideos will still exist 10 to 15 years from now?
I couldn't care less about activation now, but I know I will in the future. That's why I don't buy such games, because that's the most powerful instrument given to us customers: the choice not to buy things we don't like.
It's also against the law (at least in germany). Customers have the right to re-sell pretty much everything they bought for personal purposes. You cannot buy large quantities and re-sell them for profit, buy you are allowed to re-sell used items you do not need any more. No amount of "Not for resale"-stickers on any product can void that right. And now there's software requiring activation, using technical measures to stop us from exercising our rights. Same with DRM and copy protection (as private copies are still legal here). If we willingly forfeit our rights because we don't really care, we shouldn't be surprised if they're gone someday.
That may seem a harsh reaction just because of some activation in computer games, but somewhere the line needs to be drawn. Technically disabling legal rights is where I draw mine.
It's also against the law (at least in germany). Customers have the right to re-sell pretty much everything they bought for personal purposes. You cannot buy large quantities and re-sell them for profit, buy you are allowed to re-sell used items you do not need any more. No amount of "Not for resale"-stickers on any product can void that right. And now there's software requiring activation, using technical measures to stop us from exercising our rights. Same with DRM and copy protection (as private copies are still legal here).
Don't worry. I'm sure music and movie companies will lobby your government to change those laws, as they have successfully done in so many other countries (including in Finland, which now has a copyright law so complicated that even half of the congressmen themselves don't understand fully). ;)
I pretty much never buy games on impuls. Most of the time I already know if I want to get a game at the moment it's announced. Most of these games are Mario, Zelda or Metroid games. I also liked Okami... and I'll get muramasa.
For me, a game needs to be made entirely for its single-player mode, and not have some halfassed multiplayer mode with it. This is what completely killed Resident Evil 5 for instance. Unfortunately, it seems like all game developers feel an urge to add something like this... and every game seems like it HAS to be online also.
While it's probably true that most on the wii games that come out are crap, there have been a few (which I mentioned above) that I liked a lot, which is enough for me. I don't need to have a new game every once in a while. If nothing particularly interests me, I won't buy a game for a whole year, and if two games come out that I like in a week, I'll buy both. They announced mario galaxy 2, and another metroid game for next year, so I'll have something to look forward to :).
(And no, it doesn't particularly bother me that they are sticking to the same old characters. The games are different enough, and at least with this generation of those games, they don't feel rushed. (I didn't particularly like Mario Sunshine and Zelda Windwaker for GC.))
I don't really buy games anymore. I don't consider new games good enough to spend my money on. Also, I do as a principle never buy anything DRM-encumbered.
Joined: 6/25/2007
Posts: 732
Location: Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
The only game I've bought within the past 3 years was World of Warcraft, and that's because the security for it required me to buy it.
Actually, that's a lie. I sought out and bought Tetris DS and Pokémon Pearl because at the time, I didn't think there was good enough emulation support for DS games.
Also, the touch screen is necessary, and I hadn't heard of flash carts for DS yet. ;o
