The Life Cycle/Span of a Game

[TimGuru]

Was talking to my boys this morning, the subject of "christmas list" came up (its not as far away as you think!). They were hassling me to not make them wait until dec 25 to get Gears of War 2, saying that they would be so far behind the day 1 buyers that they would always suck.

The more I thought about this, i occassionally am an "early adopter" too, especially for either multiplayer games or 360 games that will likely stay at full price for a long time anyway (rock band, for example).

So, the topic for consideration here is multipart, but primarily i am interested in your take on when you buy or hold off on buying a game you know you will get eventually.

Do you like to be the first kid on your block to jump into the hot new MMO? Or do you wait a month or 2 to let the first few patches take care of the inevitable frustrating bugs that eluded beta testers?

Do you jump in early if you think a game will have a short popularity life and its exclusively/mainly multiplayer? In my own recent experience, I waited too long to grab Frontlines: Fuel of War. Its a pretty good game, but NO ONE was playing it online by the time I got it at reduced price; friends at work told me it had been very full for about a month after it came out.

Should I give in and get the lads their GoW2 so they are spared suckage? Or should they wait for Santa Dad to give it to them for xmas? Should I rush out and get myself Red Alert 3 or can that wait for a Christmas gift too? Do you wait until a MP game has achieved icon status and it is clear it will be played on line for ages, ala Starcraft, before you'll even commit to it?

[terpkristin]

Depends on what the game is and what console you're playing it on. For a game like GoW2, I don't think there's going to be a lot of replayability, so I'd estimate that getting it sooner than later is probably the right call. You'll find that when new games come out for the 360, they get played online a bit in the first 2 weeks (judging from Major Nelson's XBL activity update each week) but then the "old regulars" filter back to the top of the list for most-played (the "old regulars" being Halo 3 and CoD4)...of course, Nelson doesn't give relative player-counts, so it's hard to tell how "dead" a game is at a given time. There's also the fact that most people who play those kinds of games online in the first few weeks are not necessarily the ones I'd like my (theoretical) kids to be talking to/playing with anyway. There are a lot of cockwads out there on Live.

Then again, GoW2 has a great single-player or local multi campaign, as far as I've heard, so it's probably not the end of the world to wait...

/tk

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by terpkristin

cockwads

mmmm...dirty talk.

[SackAttack]

I'm actually kind of weird in that while I do cheerfully pay for Xbox Live, whether or not a game has online multiplayer doesn't really affect how soon or late I pick it up.

I figure if a game isn't high enough priority for me without the online multiplayer, it can wait either way. Like, Fallout 3 - that is a game I would pick up day one, with or without online multiplayer, and without regard to waiting for Christmas or another event.

Gears of War 2? I'm just not into FPS enough to really give a flip about having it on day one one way or another, and thus don't really /care/ if I lag the online community to the point that I suck forever if and when I DO go online with it.

[Sgran]

I have a small budget for gaming, and I only play sports games (exclusively sim sports for the past few years), so my purchasing strategy is to let myself fall a year behind. All it takes is to not get swept up in the hype. A good example is that right now I'm addicted (hard-core addicted) to OOTP8 because I just bought it. I bought it because 2009 was just released, so 08 was only 20 bucks. I don't know what's been added to 2009 and I don't really care. For me OOTP8 is the hot new title.

[Matthean]

With it being a being a sequel to a highly popular title, I would say it's a safer pick to get it when it comes out. For MMOs, unless the developer has done them before, I would easily wait on those since companies seem to have a difficult time handling the bumps of doing a MMO for the first time, ie. AoC.

[Marc Vaughan]

I personally don't play any games apart from strategy titles online - I just have no interest at all in them being played that way; I either play with friends in person or as a solo activity .... playing with strangers just doesn't appeal, the few times I've tried I've either dominated or got pulped repeatedly and neither is fun imho.

[Mizzou B-ball fan]

Originally Posted by Marc Vaughan

'got pulped repeatedly'

Translation needed. I think he's speaking British again.

[Honolulu Blue]

I don't play MMOs, and hardly ever play any games with multiple humans, so I'll just talk about my thoughts on PC games.

I'm not generally an early adapter, preferring to wait for patches and discounts. There are exceptions:

a) If the pre-release discount is big enough, that might do the trick.
b) If I'm excited enough about the game, then I might pull out the CC early.

[sterlingice]

I think the games where it is of the greatest importance is where there is an ingame economy. In the end, these all end up being pyramid schemes so it helps to get in on the pyramid early on or else you face an uphill battle where you can never get the best of whatever you're wanting whether it be the best armor, the rarest novelty items, or the best Pokemon to battle with.

SI