Vote With Your Wallet

I buy the Pinball Arcade Pro packages solely to give extra because i know Pinball is a niche thing and i like the effort Farsight is putting into licensing tables. I've also bought DCS content on Steam early on with hope that all DCS content would be more available on Steam...again, supporting flight sims knowing that it's a niche market.

I like how you're being all sarcastic about a stupid cliche and then end your post with an even worse one.

Absolutely, I usually buy games by developers who've previously released something I've enjoyed for free (like previous games by Derek Yu and Derek Smart), or if they release games within genres I consider underappreciated (I preordered Grey Goo because of the genre and the people involved in creating it and would've bought it regardless of what reception it got due to how much enjoyment I've gotten out of Westwood's and Petroglyph's previous titles). I also tend to repurchase plenty of games I own on Steam whenever they're released DRM free on GOG and similar sites, to support developers who release DRM free products. When it comes to sales and stuff like that I tend to buy games at the prices I think are appropriate rather than waiting for them to hit their lowest point in daily deals and stuff like that too.

I bought the REmake remastering primarily to show support for that style of game. I played through it again mind, but I had already played through it many times before hand, so much so that it kinda felt like I was on auto-pilot due to the static nature of those games.

I voted for more "Life Is Strange" after playing the first chapter by buying the whole season. I'm buying The Witcher 3 mostly because I think Capcom is more then likely to turn teh next Dragons Dogma into trash - one sale for Project Red, one loss for Capcom. I will probably buy Mass Effect 1-3 if they put it on PS4. I would will very likely buy Assassin's Creed Rogue for PS4...if that make that...that is a vote for that type of AC game.

I won't vote for more Bethesda games EVER....nothing the publish will ever be in my collection ever. I will never give them a single nickel for anything they are associated with

If Sony sold AO games on its system, I woudl buy those so that the conspet of AO might be better served in the industry. I would not mind a "Taxi Driver", "Blue Is the Warmest Color", or "Grindhouse" level of game offered instead of "The Guy Game"

I think vote with your wallet is quite a bullshit term. The number of people that pay attention enough to games and dlc to pay what they think they're worth just varies so much that you just end up cancelling each other out.

The dark days of shitty DLC, pay-to-win, and freemium are behind us? God, I wish.

@monkeyking1969 Why the Bethesda hatred? I don't know anything about them as a company and have little experience with their games, I'm just curious.

@bribo: Sure I do this fairly frequently

Probably the biggest purchase I made in the last couple years was purchasing Dragon's Dogma and Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen at launch. And Then I bought the game a few more times to give to my friends.

What I'll also often do is if I discover a new (to me) dev or publishers I stumble across, I tend to buy their other titles to see what else they've done.

I buy plenty of indie games that I end up not really playing, mostly because I think they are good or the developers did a good job. These are games I'd love to play and appreciate but end up not finding the time for each and every one of them (there are so many). Sadly I end up only 'really' putting game time into the bigger budget games, like the upcoming Witcher 3.

I bought all 3 operation rainfall games. I even preordered Xenoblade at a specific Gamestop near my work because the people there were cool (and as expected I was their only preorder but that was still probably more than they were expecting XD)

also...I have yet to play any of them >_>;;; my backlog is so shameful ._.;;;

The Citadel DLC more than makes up for its price.

I buy a lot of things purely to support them. Even during times where my income is larger than my time, I still buy games I think are cool close to release, even if I can't play them until way later.

Damn right!

Well i always made sure to give the publishers and developers my opinion .

The most recent example is DmC & DMC4, Capcom is releasing both DmC and DMC4 in a remastered versions, So i will make sure to vote for the latter while i haven't ever in my life voted for DmC.

Any time you purchase a product not for the product's utility itself but to make some personal statement, you're playing into marketing. Marketers specifically prey upon values-expressive and ego-defensive purchasing behaviors, especially because they render product attributes moot. It is so much easier to market when you know your product will allow X market to say Y about themselves, because barring massive social changes, it will be a constant, reliable need. Do people buy driving gloves for the direct utility or for expressing an image to others?

Back in the day, the word for buying things in order to show you're not a terrible loser wasn't called ego-defensive purchasing behavior, it was called tithing.

Are you saying that me buying games from Ninja Theory, ACE Team, Obsidian, and Swery more to support those devs than enjoy their specific games won't reserve me a place next to our Lord in the afterlife?! Pffft. It's called Heavenly Sword for a reason, dummy.

@joshwent: Sounds more values-expressive than ego-defensive.

I'll say that I can't figure out what John Romero Is About To Make You His Bitch is supposed to inspire. Generally you tell people they'll be bitches if they DON'T purchase the product, not if they do.

Oh well. Suck it down, I guess.

@brodehouse: Ooooh, of course. I knew I was buying indie games to support their nearly (sometimes completely) non-existent marketing staffs and not their imaginative and ambitious developers. Glad that was settled. It's the same reason I subscribe to Giant Bomb, it's so I can tell CBS marketing that I love their work. It's certainly not because I like these guys.
/sarcasm

Seriously, what a generalized and pedantic way to look at it.

@mortuss_zero:

Do you buy an indie game to enjoy playing it? Then you're motivated by utilitarian behavior. Do you buy an indie game, not to play it, but because you think it's good that those games exist? Then you are definitively acting according to values expressive behavior.

You seem to think marketing exists only if you pay an expensive person in a suit to be Marketing Chief, or that marketing is necessarily telling lies about yourself about your product. I follow several indie devs who talk about their work and people like them, personally, and buy their games because they like the developer. This is not utilitarian behavior and it would be definitively impossible without marketing their product. Would you have bought any of those indie games had the developers never engaged in awareness raising, never positioned the product or themselves to appeal to specific consumer tastes?

If you buy a product not because you want the product, but because you want to 'support the dev', the product you are buying is the developer's marketing efforts. This is not generalizing, this is analyzing motivation.

Consider if you were to buy coffee from Starbucks rather than WalMart (stay with me here) not because of any product attributes but because you approve of Starbucks' CSR mandates and disapprove of WalMart's policies; these are definitively values-expressive motivations, and if Starbucks did not engage in these non-product activities and furthermore did not promote them, you would not buy their product.

I suppose I'd also wonder why the extreme backlash at the idea that marketing works on you when it conforms to what you want. Marketing does not mean 'advertisements'. Cause marketing, such as 'support the indie scene', is marketing. People generally look at advertising for values-expressive (or ego-defensive) products they don't want as 'conspicuous consumerism', but never the things that appeal to them.

I guess you could say that recently voted for the legalization of prostitution and marijuana with my wallet.

@brodehouse: Well, apparently we're talking about something much, much broader than the common use of the word marketing. In that case, noone (technicality inbound) ever bought a game(or any product outside of basic necessities) for any reason other than marketing. Even the "utilitarians" are just rewarding the marketing that made the game look like they would enjoy playing it, and if they do, it's because the developers positioned it to appeal to them. Even people who buy humblebundles for charity and give the games away are just being brought in by how the product has been positioned (as good for charity). Would anyone buy any game if the developers never engaged in awareness raising, never positioned the product or themselves to appeal to specific consumer tastes?
If you buy a product because you want the product, the product you are buying is the creators marketing efforts, to make you want it. There are no utilitarians.

Only reason we're having this conversation any further is because I "positioned" my response to appeal to your interest in rebuttal.

I think it's clear that most gamers just want to have aggressive sex with John Romero. Don't need a marketing team to crack that one.

@mortuss_zero: What do you mean by the last sentence? We're only having this discussion because sarcasm? We don't need to do that.

You're saying there are no utilitarian motivations if they promote the product to appeal to utilitarian motivations... Utilitarianism is a motivation, just like the others. Buying things for utility is no more 'right' than anything else, unless you choose to see it that way. Now you're saying utilitarian motivations don't exist if the company advertised the product's utility, rather than non-product cues such as group identification? This kind of analysis focuses on what motivates the targets to buy, but you're relying on erroneous "common" definitions. Marketing is everything you do to define a target customer and define how to attract them. It is not merely promotion.

I don't know what about this so offends you, but I no longer feel as if you're arguing in good faith. Could you explain exactly what it is you want? Do you want me to say that people supporting products not because they want the product but because they like the company who make it has nothing to do with marketing? It's not true, but you don't seem to care.

@brodehouse: The point of the last sentence is that it's easy for me to claim what your motivations were in doing something. Your definition of marketing is so broad from my perspective, that they cover every reason one would do anything that isn't related to survival. Including you responding to my post, which is hardly necessary or practical. I just marketed to you without knowing it. The post was genuine though (aside from the sarcasm which was labeled).

The reason i was bothered, (offended, no, my bad if I seemed that way) was that the language you used (in your initial post) seemed to imply it was wrong to do something for sentimental or supportive reasons rather than practical and utilitarian ones. Add to that, you used the term marketing, which while technically neutral, is typically used (owning up to word bias here) to represent sleazy, grimy, disingenuous, manipulative actions. It implied that the developers we support, we only support because they've fooled us into liking them. That the only reason they act the way they do, or make the games they make, is to make money off us. Never for the love of what they do. I did perhaps focus more on your assertions of ego-stroking and my own biases about the word "marketing" more than was necessary. But I do want to know, where does the definition of marketing end if everything a developer ever does with or says about their work counts as marketing?

As for wanting something? Nothing, I'm just being a bit pedantic and argumentative about word choice and meaning. You seemed to be receptive to those things. If I buy a game that I know I won't have time to play, but want to support the creator's visions and choices, I'm just supporting his/her marketing efforts. I can live with that despite the ugly words.

We're talking about business and the terms I'm using have to do with consumer attitudes. The use of utilitarian refers to how it affects the person buying products, no grand existential morass.

The reason i was bothered, (offended, no, my bad if I seemed that way) was that the language you used (in your initial post) seemed to imply it was wrong to do something for sentimental or supportive reasons rather than practical and utilitarian ones. Add to that, you used the term marketing, which while technically neutral, is typically used (owning up to word bias here) to represent sleazy, grimy, disingenuous, manipulative actions.

I attempt to not make a lot of judgments, I prefer to probe or perhaps prod. I'm not going to tell people what to do with their money, I might make reflective statements, share some information or stir some critical dissonance. Perhaps 'playing into marketing' was a bit staggering, I take it back. 'Marketing' being seen as a synonym for 'disingenuous' is maybe a problem; if you only think marketing happens when you can identify it not appealing to you (sleazy, disingenuous), how much consideration is going into things that contribute to what you see as who you are?

As for manipulative, this is generally the ego-defensive functions; spending to protect a self-image, often to avoid disconcerting truths. If I were being so rude as to imply people are objectively wrong to not spend on pure utility, and you don't like marketing towards ego-defensive behavior, wouldn't you have agreed with my prodding? If you think that kind of thing is manipulative, preys upon people with bad habits or encourages consumerism; then it's necessary to anyone to reflect and actually figure out what it really is that they get out of their spending. I do not think it is bad to be critical of things you purchased and did not use, on your own terms.

When I said "buying the developer's marketing, not the product", I'm not throwing shade and sitting on my shitty throne of shit where I never do the same; I would describe myself as buying marketing, especially for things I didn't use or didn't require. I think about name-your-price albums on Bandcamp; that's pure values-expressive behavior, motivated by my self-concept.

It implied that the developers we support, we only support because they've fooled us into liking them. That the only reason they act the way they do, or make the games they make, is to make money off us.

I mean, if I thought about, they've fooled you into liking them as much as any other artist, since art is subjective...? Kurt Vonnegut fooled me into liking his novels, but we know better than to like them, right? Or do we?

I think the 'marketing means I'm being lied to' meme is coloring a great deal of what you inferred from what I said, which makes most of this yelling past each other. Also this post is wayyy too long.

But I do want to know, where does the definition of marketing end if everything a developer ever does with or says about their work counts as marketing?

When the product isn't being sold to consumers anymore. As long as something is being sold, it's being marketed. Whether it's with care or without.

It's a tough call sometimes though, I remember being kinda pissed with Bethesda as a PS3 player (can't remember what it was exactly but something really rubbed me the wrong way with how they handled the whole Skyrim DLC delay, plus how messed up the game initially was) but I did enjoy the Elder Scrolls games soo I bought both Fallout 3 and New Vegas GOTY editions second hand for pretty much nothing and have put in a ton of hours. I also eventually got Skyrim DLC on PS3 but only when it was on sale for less than half price. I'll buy the next Elder Scrolls or Fallout game new because I do enjoy them but no way am I buying at launch.

I tend to buy most of my games new but awhile after release because I jumped into last gen late and I'll be jumping into current gen late so it just makes sense money-wise. Gimme a great game I 'know' I'll love that works and I've no problem paying full price at launch, I'm also happy to buy any 'good' single-player related DLC for games I really like too.

If you vote with your wallet then its not a vote. Vote implies equal weighting so the very premise is meaningless and so is any deconstruction of its meaning or implication. Marketing slogans often make no sense...

Not sure about voting, but I do buy what I like and what I'd like to see more of even if I don't necessarily play it. I just recently ordered the Bloodborne nightmare edition thing and will be receiving a ton of shit I don't care about + the game, which I do care about. That's probably the wrong way to "vote". Though my wife wanted the quill and ink sets it comes bundled with.

You're not entirely incorrect, except my premise is based on the system of proportional representation.

So, you define voting with my wallet as buying something because I support it, but I don't actually support it enough to actually want to play it? That sounds a little like voting for a homeless person for president.

@brodehouse: That's all fair, I've freely admitted that the negative bias I have for the term marketing colored a lot of my initial reaction. It felt initially like a group of people were sitting around talking about how they supported things they respected but didn't necessarily enjoy personally or have time for, then a person walked in and shouted "you're all fools, buying into marketing lies! you should all feel bad!". It's crystal clear by this point that that was never your intention. I'll also say "I'm sorry" in case any of the sarcasm seemed genuinely hostile, it was my misunderstanding by the seems and I didn't intend any hostility. Now that I understand you're working off the strict, formal meanings of words like marketing and whatnot, you're accurate in what you've said.

Still don't like the word marketing though. Met too many people who work in "marketing" to ever like it.

@mortuss_zero: I'm not outside of blame; telling someone to consider why they spend their money and how they feel about it is semantically different from telling them they're wrong, but carries something of the connotation anyways. Feeling dissonant towards your spending is fine and maybe even good, but it has to be on the person's own terms.

I think about a small donation I made to Wikipedia; ego-defensive. I don't identify with Wikipedia, but I don't want to feel like a mooch while I use it, and I won't forgo using it. I was considering this while I was reading the different opinions in the Ad-block topic, and how the For and Against sides were effectively acting under completely different motivations.

@bribo: Yeah... Video game boycotts don't work and will never work unless the medium evolves to some weird "Ready, Player One" VR Gameverse. Human natures a beast baby.