This probably goes a long way to explaining why people would rather buy sequels than risk an unproven IP. Let's face it, marketing is out there with the objective of making us buy EVERYTHING.
We can't reliably know what games are good or bad - I arrived at my conclusion by wondering what the odds are, if my grandmother went and bought me a game this month, how likely I'd be to wind up with a copy of Dead Space 2 assuming she went shopping after it came out.
Too many games, too many variables. She will probably want to buy cheaply but still buy new. There's a good chance I am now the proud owner of the Avatar movie game.
Us gamers are uniquely familiar with the game buying experience. We have friends who share the hobby, we have years of trial and error, we have message boards, blogs and familiarity with the games produced by respective developerand publishers.
We know Activision games are the blockbusters, with high production values but questionabkle value of content - still likely to be fun. We're probably safe with most Electronic Arts titles as long as it's in the genre we're familair with. Anyone who likes Halo will probably buy anything called Halo, or made by Bungie - especially both. Anyone who likes Final Fantasy would be hard pressed to find any other game made by Square Enix that they won't enjoy to some degress.
But that's where we start to go wrong. Would I buy Dead Space 2 if I hadn't already played Dead Space? Why did I even buy Dead Space? I wouldn't have if my wife wasn't interested in it. My wife! The less experienced gamer and thereofre the more adventurous. Possibly even the more determined. I've been playing games for longer, but she plays them more obsessively, so she's probably overtaken me in actual cumulative playtime. She's probably not as cynical as me and I am far more likely to give up where she will persist and prevail.
But the point is, back when Dead Space came out I wasn't willnig to take a risk, and she was - I know know why Sonic the Hedgehog on 360 back in 2006 didn't know that out of her, but it didn't. My wife is eager to experiment with anything that looks kind of good, and I am loathe to discourage her.
We make a fairly good team - she's enthusiastic and I am real. Over the last seven or so years we've honed our gaming instincts. We play well together. She endeavours to try new things, I fine-tune her enthusiasm. I don't think we've actually missed a 'good' game in years. We've even risked skipping over some potentially exciting titles which later turned out to kind of bomb.
But that's the combined experience and luck of two gamers. On my own initiative I still bought and was subjected to Too Human, one of the most boring games ever published. I can't rely on reviews to do all my shopping for me, but I got cold feet two days before Black Ops came out and changed my prestige edition preorder down to a standard edition - and it turns out the game was pretty shit despite earning rave reviews and everyone constantly playing the multiplayer - though interestingly my friends are all migrating back to Modern Warfare 2.
My relatives are fairly set in that regard.
