Check out this mini-interview. Valve’s vice president of marketing, Doug Lombardi, fills in Doug Kuchera of Ars Technica on the ins and outs of keeping it fresh with their customers.
In a word…UPDATES:
“The updates cause an incredible spike in sales. And when the update is offered in concert with new Achievements, new media, such as a new ‘Meet the…’ movie, and a promotion, such as a Free Weekend and/or limited-time price drop, the spike is even higher,” Lombardi told us. “With every release, we witness a spike in sales on Steam and at retail.”
The strategy works. Left 4 Dead and Team Fortress 2 are still discussed on the gaming blogs, and they enjoy a strong online following that waits breathlessly for the next update. When the sales start to dip again, Lord knows there will be another sale or content pack to keep interest up… not to mention sales.
Good ideas aren’t complicated. Not really. Just hard work.
Valve were engaged in this type of work just this last weekend. A new ‘Meet the Spy’ trailer coupled with a weekend sale. All in all this gives me hope. I think it’s good that Valve is experimenting in the retail space in this way. Gone are the days when I could hit three bargain bins on the way home from work in a 20 minute walk, the commercial real-estate just doesn’t support that now… those stores are all gone. I think it’s great that an e-tailer is finding that sales still work.
Unlike the situation where physical shelf space is a limited resource, there isn’t any necessity for making digital copies of games any cheaper over time. For me though, it’s the only way my budget oriented h/w purchasing plan is worth it: buy computer hardware just before it disappears and snag bargain shelf games that still run well on the old stuff. If I have to pay near-full prices for two year old games, I may as well buy them when they’re new, or more likely, I likely wont buy them at all and I’ll be playing less and less.
I haven’t played TF2 despite owning the Orange Box, but it seems to me that Valve’s actions build the value of the brand and the game community. Contrast this with Dice/EA’s treatment of Battlefield 2(although EA came after BF2’s release). Imagine you own BF2 and y-hundred servers are populated with x-thousand players all with the same version. Then the first commercial expansion comes out (Special Forces) that splits the server and player community (because obviously you can’t play on servers that have been upgraded if you haven’t upgraded) but also which lets upgraded players grief the non-upgraded community with weapons only available in the upgrade. Follow this with Euro Force and Armored Fury, plus Battlefield 2142 as a totally separate game, and the upcoming Battlefield 1943 and while I’m sure there’s a group that consumes each new release rabidly, I’m sure there’s a group that left the purchase pool long ago.
Or take for example SimBin and their handling of the GTR series of driving simulations. I admit I don’t fully understand the licensing issues between SimBin and previous publishers and the tracks and car manufacturers, but from an end users perspective it seems a little odd when GTR-2 has N tracks and Porsche and Ferrari cars, when the successor GTR-Evolution has some new tracks, but not all the previous tracks and not a Porsche or Ferrari in sight. A huge community of track and car modelers seem willing to spend enormous amounts of time building custom racing league skins and smaller venue tracks, but it’s illegal to post links to these suppliers on certain forums catering to the community.
It’s important for these developers to make money and survive. It’s better for SimBin to plonk awkwardly forward with products and adver-gaming (http://www.simbin.se/news.php?newsid=153, http://www.bmw.com/com/en/newvehicles/mseries/m3coupe/2007/experience/game/content.html) than for them to go broke with the community having to wait for another developer to come along to fill the niche. But it appears these companies have no strategy at all with respect to building a community around a game that increases in value going forward in time.
Great comment Helmut…worthy of its own post. I personally wait for the limited-time price drops myself in lieu of cherry picking older games about to slide off the shelf. I’m lucky though in that I’m still within sane driving distance of a few B&M gaming stores that have a bit of shelf space reserved for PC games, the only type (keyboard/mouse like nature intended!!) I can stand to play. Valve definitely seems to be setting the standard here.