"I'll pick it up when it's cheap"

[Insideout Ink Demon]

Because not everything has to be the best experience you've ever had ever, there are varying levels I can feel entertainment; from killing time to being engrossed. If I just see an IP as fitting into kill time, it falls in to the Wait For a Price Drop category

 

[kommando367]

Most of the games I buy are around $10-$15. There are usually 3 questions I ask myself before buying a game period.

1. If applicable, was the previous game in the series a mountain of fun and lengthy? If so. The game is worth $60 automatically.

2. After renting the game, was it found to be a ton of fun? If so, the game is worth $10-$15.

3. If question 2 = yes, is the game lengthy? If so, the game is worth at least $30.

 

[DrunkOnEstus]

The Order 1886 kind of falls into that same category. It's short, it's mediocre, and it's a novel setting. I want to play it, but between the price point, my busy life, and current backlog, it's hardly a priority.

Humble and the 7 other bundles I use have inflated my backlog to an insane degree. I really just wanted to quote you because that backlog document is just glorious and I might steal your idea. Many times skimming through the Steam library (or god forbid the consoles current digital libraries) you get just a name and maybe a picture, and having a document like that is just bad ass when determining what to play and why something hasn't been finished.

Would you consider a mediocre AAA/AA game at a discounted rate to be a better buy than a great indie title at the same price point?

I don't think I'd ever consider a mediocre game a better buy than a great game. Especially at the same price point.

That's awesome, it tells me that at least for you the high-budget AAA designation doesn't give a game more credibility or worth than an equally priced low budget indie title. I love how much the gap has been bridged, even on console - games like Journey, Transistor, The Vanishing of Ethan Carter, Amnesia, and The Binding of Isaac are offering stable, strong and experimental experiences at a low cost that are hopefully causing AAA publishers to consider the value of what's on offer for $60 plus a Season Pass. Or if you're Ubisoft, you just make your own "indie" games like Child of Light and Valiant Hearts, but I can't say I have a problem with that. Rambled off-topic a bit, apologies.

 

[Timeless Lavender]

Well, games in general are expensive in my country because I bought a god of war game around $300 so normally by games in the range of $70-$100 ps2 games to $200-$300 for ps3. I guess I may be numb towards the prices since nothing where I lived is "cheap", so spending $70 to me is very cheap. But of course I do my research on games that I am interested in but sadly, many games I wanted to play are unavailable in my country, so I weep.

 

[the doom cannon]

The only games I pay full price for are games that I am completely on board with. Like when the gw2 expansion comes out. I will 100% buy that day 1 even if it's crap. I just recently purchased the Command and Conquer Ultimate Collection on origin for $10. I used to own the first decade, but managed to lose it. Would I have purchased all these games for $10 each like they normally are? Hell no. But 17 games for $10 of which a handful I know I enjoy, of course I will. I also preordered civ:be, but that was because greenmangaming was offering a discount to $37 or something like that, and I figured it would be that price during the Steam winter sale anyway. I wasn't going to pay full price for it because I enjoy civ 5 so much, and I knew civ:be would not be as complete a game on release. There are tons of games that I would never have picked up had they not been steeply discounted. I see no reason to limit yourself to games you buy full price on day 1, since for me that's pretty much 0 now.

 

[Dalisclock]

I make a fairly decent amount of money. That said, I still wait till most games are on sale before I buy them, which oddly led to me buying a lot of games that I probably wouldn't have bothered with, because it was cheap, but has saved me a lot more money as opposed to buying everything full price.

The downside to that is now I have 300 games in my backlog so now I'm getting really, really picky on both price and what I buy. I'm trying really hard to hold myself to buying only the games I really, really want instead of doing the old "this looks good/interesting and it's $5. SOLD!"

 

[Danbo Jambo]

Waiting just makes more sense to me. You often get some form of enhanced edition available, with bugs ironed out & additional features included, for less money.

The only game I'm gonna purchase on launch is The Witcher 3, and that's because I feel the devs deserve my money for creating such a top game in The Witcher 2. I'm prepared to show a bit of faith in them and throw a bit more money their way for that alone. If they keep producing such great quality, I'll keep doing the same.

 

[Pyrian]

I mean my Skyrim Imperial? Does he like lemonade?

"I vanted orange! It gave me lemon/lime." Deus Ex wins again.

When one of the principle problems with a game is that it's short, paying less for it makes perfect sense.

 

[babinro]

"I'll pick it up when it's cheap"

As a financially strapped gamer this has been my default stance on all games for years. There are a TON of games that catch my interest and reach this state of mind. As time passes and hype on the game dies off it's then a test on whether or not my interest remains when the game actually goes on a significant sale (translation, under $10.00 on steam or part of a bundle site offering).

About twice a year there's an exception to this rule where I'll buy a game at full price or near full price. This is typically a result of personal hype for a game or love for a franchise combined with a desire to experience that above anything else available on my steam backlog. A few examples of these would be Diablo 3, Dragon Age Inquisition and Arkham City (though I waited for Arkham Origins to become part of a bundle sale due to it's reception).

At the moment my only MUST have full price purchase game is the final Starcraft 2 expansion. The only reason this gets the day one treatment is because I have the Blizzard bucks from Diablo's real money auction house days so it's actual out of pocket cost is $0.00.

Do you often read a review/see a video for a game, find it to be "meh" but follow its price and watch for sales so that you can pick it up for a heavy discount down the line despite that assessment?

Yes. Sometimes I'll pick it up (The Bureau:XCom Declassified or Arkham Origins for example). Most of the time I'll pass on it though.

Would you consider a mediocre AAA/AA game at a discounted rate to be a better buy than a great indie title at the same price point?

Absolutely not. I find myself enjoying more indie games in the last five years than I have non-indie games. If anything, I'm more likely to favor an indie purchase over a AAA/AA because at least indie games are less likely to fall under the trappings of mass marketing decisions.

 

[Shoggoth2588]

I'll watch a review or a first-impression from one of the many youtube personalities who I'm a fan of but there is very little that will make me want to shill out $60 for a triple A game on week one, let alone day one. There are exceptions of course like Nintendo's big names which I generally give a free pass though there are some games that I don't really chomp at the bit for. I didn't buy my copy of Majora's Mask or Smash for Wii U for example and I wouldn't have picked them up yet. Of course part of what I love about Angry Joe or Total Biscuit reviews are those games that get reviewed. You know the ones, Ride to Hell Redemption and, Day 1: Garry's Incident. I wouldn't buy those day one but I would definitely buy them.

As for the second question, games like Duke Nukem Forever, Sonic 06 and Ride to Hell would have been worth it at $20 - $35 for me (the first I ended up getting for $15, the second for around $10 and, the later was a gift). If I was down to my last $20-bill and I had the choice to purchase all three of those arguably bad games or, some hypothetical collection of Gunman Clive, FTL (as it is now, with the Advanced content) and, Papers, Please I would consider the indie-bundle the better value for that amount of money...even though I have a sneaking suspicion Gunman Clive, FTL and, Papers, Please purchased together would come in at less than $20...definitely less than $35...I would swap out Gunman Clive for Democracy 3, Hotline Miami or, The Last Federation but I haven't played any of those yet...

 

[KyuubiNoKitsune-Hime]

Due to being rather poor(fixed income) I have to weigh game purchases carefully. If I'm going to spend $60 on a single game it had better be worth it. Especially because I can buy 6 games at $10 each instead, often times with all of their DLC bundled in. Besides that being a Linux user for the time being means rolling some savings for a copy of Windows, and/or a brand new PC.

 

[rvbnut]

This is basically what I do with games nowadays unless I have seen significant evidence that it is amazing. I've been stung by games before in the past (notably games released within the last 3-4 years) for being generic and bland. Basically, almost everything!

 

[Bizzaro Stormy]

Why pay full price when a little patience cuts the price drastically? A little more patience and you get all the DLC (actually getting the complete game) for the full price or perhaps lower. I have also seen the lines of folks buying new games, and the lines those same folks returning them a few days later for a fraction of the price after a minimum play through. So long as those people exist I can happily cheap out without fear of damaging the industry.

 

[nightmare_gorilla]

Would you consider a mediocre AAA/AA game at a discounted rate to be a better buy than a great indie title at the same price point?

See, AAA vs. indie is mostly a matter of budget/hype and promotion. The terms "AAA" and "Indie game" truly only hold meaning to advertisers and news sites. to the individual gamer the metric for game quality is not tied to the game budget or the number of banner ads there are for it.

given an identical price point i'd rather buy a better game than a worse one. There's plenty of science around consumers purchasing something "on sale" vs. something that's cheaper but not on sale so I think it's likely more people would buy the "on sale" title over the normal price one.

 

[shrekfan246]

Basically, I don't understand this line of thinking too much, and it tells me that there might be a lot of people who want to eventually own/play every game they can as long as it isn't broken or complete shit.

Well, yeah.

I play games because I want to experience the worlds and stories they've crafted.

Now, I'm a weird one because I don't really subscribe to a metric of "X money spent = Y hours played" like I've seen a lot of other people say they love to do, but I'm heavily interested in making a career as a writer. It behooves me to expose myself to as many different things--good, bad, or merely adequate--as I can, because it all helps me discover ways I can tackle world-building and storytelling or things I should avoid.

I won't always actually play something myself in order to experience it; it does need to have something that hooks me in. But a "mediocre" game is just as likely to have that hook as a "great" game. The first examples that come to mind are Lollipop Chainsaw and The Last of Us. Lollipop Chainsaw was a short, dumb, comical zombie romp with a fun if simplistic action-combat system. The Last of Us was a long, grim, serious and emotional zombie game about survival with stealth and shooter elements. I didn't finish The Last of Us, and I only played a copy my friend had bought because my previous experiences with Naughty Dog games combined with my general thoughts on post-apocalyptic settings and zombie themes meant that I was reasonably comfortable in the assumption that I wouldn't particularly enjoy it.

Do you often read a review/see a video for a game, find it to be "meh" but follow its price and watch for sales so that you can pick it up for a heavy discount down the line despite that assessment?

That depends? If I see a game and my response to it is "Meh", then the chances are I'm not interested in it. There are plenty of games I'll see and think, "Oh, this looks cool, but I wonder if it has any big problems?" and then I'll read further into it. But I buy very few games at non-discounted prices these days in the first place, regardless of how much I believe I'll like them.

Would you consider a mediocre AAA/AA game at a discounted rate to be a better buy than a great indie title at the same price point?

Well now, everyone has their own definitions of what they would consider to be a "mediocre" or "great" game, don't they? Braid's got a pretty nice cult following, but I found it boring and the piecemeal, convoluted way the story was doled out did nothing to capture my interest. Personally, I don't put much weight behind the distinctions between AAA, lower-budget, or indie titles when informing my purchasing decisions.

 

[Auron225]

It's because I have a backlog of other games I want to play but don't cost £45. I'd rather order a 2-3 year old game which I've heard great things about and pay £15-20 for it than pay the launch price for something that got released last week.

There are exceptions of course but usually that's how it goes down.

 

[Lightspeaker]

Do you often read a review/see a video for a game, find it to be "meh" but follow its price and watch for sales so that you can pick it up for a heavy discount down the line despite that assessment?

Depends on the game.

Would you consider a mediocre AAA/AA game at a discounted rate to be a better buy than a great indie title at the same price point?

Depends on the game.



See I think you're going at this all wrong. I can understand the argument of "why would you buy a mediocre game at ANY price point? Why wait for a sale on a game you know is average when you could just play something else?" that you appear to be going for but its not quite as simple as that. A game doesn't have to be the best game ever just to justify playing it.

Take...I don't know...the 2010 Aliens vs. Predator. Is it good? Well its alright, hardly brilliant, plenty of criticism that can be aimed at it. Average, in other words. Mediocre you might even say. Would I have been happy buying it at the launch price (presumably about £40)? No. Did I have enough enjoyment out of it to justify buying it later on for £10-15? Sure, even though it was a bit plodding and dull it had enough moments to entertain me and justify the expense.

Now the main question...could I have played a better game instead? Probably. But I didn't want to. I wanted to slice up some Aliens as a Predator.

And that's what it really comes down to. I can pull up Steam right now and start playing...I don't know...the Game of Thrones RPG? Is it particularly good? Not really; its pretty clunky and not very inspired. And I have innumerable other RPGs installed right now on my PC ranging from HyperDimension Neptunia Re;Birth 1 to Dragon Age Inquisition (to say nothing of my consoles). But that'd be missing the point, because at that point I don't want to play them, I want to play about in Westeros.

A game is more than any one of its parts. And any one of them might be enough to give you an urge to play it. For all the criticism I see levelled at The Order I still kinda want to play it because the setting looks glorious...I'm just not prepared to pay out full price on an average gaming experience just for the setting.


Captcha: gadzooks

You got that right, Captcha

 

[Ridash]

I'll get Evolve on a Steam sale. It just doesn't have enough content for a 60? game.

I played the alpha version of it and I can't see a major difference.

 

[sniddy_v1legacy]

Basic answer I HAVE a backlog I work etc so I have less time to play games....as such I can afford to wait

IF I want it THAT bad that it jumps the queue I'd consider it...

I however got burnt on pre-orders 1 too many times