It’s only $.99
I’m always looking out for game deals. I love finding a game that’s been marked down to a crazy low price so I don’t have to shell out $40 bucks. With that in mind, you’d think that I’d be all over the games on in the Apple’s App Store. Nothing could be further from the truth.
I find it so hard to pay 99 cents for a game. Not sure why, maybe because I’m unsure of the quality of the game. Maybe because I don’t want to get caught in buying up tons of these cheap little games or maybe I just feel more comfortable paying more because I want to get more for my money. What ever it is… I can’t bring myself to do it. Well, that’s not totally true. I have bought 2 or 3, but I thought long and hard about it and almost talked myself out of it. Think about it… I try and talk myself out of spending 99 cents or even $1.99. How crazy is that? I’ll slap down money for a bag of chips or a pop and not think twice about it, and those will only last me so long. I also won’t pay for any in game purchases. I don’t know about you but I take huge issue with buying things for a game that I’m playing. If I bought a game, I want everything that goes with it and not some pay for add on junk.
This attitude though makes me a HUGE hypocrite. See, there is an game in the App Store that I designed, animated and so I’m very proud of it. The price on it is $1.99 and I WANT people buy my game. Oh lord do I want people to pay $1.99 for my game even though I won’t for others.
I need to look at it differently. I need to see that I see that I’m supporting the developer when ever I buy these little games. Developers like me and where I work. It’s important. Because at the end of the day they need to make money so they can make more games, just like I need people to buy my stuff so I can make more games. Those that put games on the App Store are doing what they’ve always wanted. They’re having their shot at the game industry and they look for support from the community.
It really chaps my ass when I hear how others whine about how a game isn’t worth the buck or two they paid for it. If I could punch then through the internet I would. Developers have costs they need to pay for to make these games no matter how small they are. But then I realized I’m no better because I assume that the games aren’t worth my money before I even pay for it… no matter how fantastic the game is. I don’t need to be crazy and buy them all, but I should support the ones I feel I want to get behind because I like what they’re doing.
Play Asia
April 24th, 2012 at 10:39 pm
The app store annoys me, simply due to being unable to sort via rating or popularity to see what’s actually good or not, rather than wading through so many random apps of questionable quality. On the semi-bright side, a bunch of apps/games do have lite/free/ad supported/demo versions that let you test them out to see if you like it first – but I honestly can’t be bothered wasting all that time searching for smaller scale games that usually serve more as a distraction than anything.
On the other hand, I was pleasantly surprised the other day to find some PSP Final Fantasy games having been ported over to the ios, which saved me buying a whole new handheld.
April 25th, 2012 at 5:31 pm
It sounds like the problem is there’s no way of knowing if something is good before buying it.
Maybe some of those games have free demos available?
Supposedly, one of the things that helped the original NES was they showed people exactly what they were getting with box-art that reflected the in-game graphics and screenshots on the back.
This was done because, during the earlier video game crash of 1983, the biggest problem was that people couldn’t figure out which games were actually good.
Those of us who grew up in the 8-bit and 16-bit generation are used to games being expensive, so out of habit we approach purchases very carefully.
Cheap games tended to be crappy in the past, so the current idea of a $2 game tends to feel extremely ominous.
I think the worry with DLC is that it can easily be abused. Again, it’s a matter of not knowing exactly what you’re getting. Many people worry that some games will be deliberately divided up and sold in incomplete parts. Ideally, one hopes for a complete game with truly optional bonus levels you can download later. And a lot of DLC is treated like this. But there’s no way to garauntee that.
You don’t want to support developers who make money by misleading people. If you see that there’s an additional episode available for a game as DLC, you don’t know whether it’s optional or if the “full” game is actually going to be much more expensive.
Even if you have a vested interest in selling games and try to look at things objectively, the things that you feel uneasy about are also things that customers feel uneasy about. And they have no reason to feel otherwise. So there are subtle issues here that need to be considered.
May 1st, 2012 at 8:18 pm
I believe everything you’ve brought up here is true and reflects my thoughts and feelings and I believe most of the consumer population. I really enjoy replies from you as you have a great way of bringing up other points of view or things that have been over looked. Thank you very much for all that. ^_^