Would the try & buy model work for games and movies?
I know you've all seen it, naughty people, you download a game for example, and the crack file says something like "Our cracker team does not support piracy, if you like the game, buy it".
So do you? I don't know about you guys, but while I was "coming of age" I probably wouldn't have bought stuff like this after I saw it, played it, but now that I am "coming of age" and I have income, this model would work for me.
There are two problems with movies and games alike, the first is that I think both are way overpriced (although games more so), the second, what if you try it and you don't like it? First of all, it's difficult to decide if you don't like a movie until you actually finish it. With games this is a bit easier, but the ending can make or break a flick completely.
In this case if you don't like the film you probably wouldn't buy it, although you did see it through to the end, so this is a bit unfair for the publisher. However, this would spur movie makers to make better stuff, since their income relies on people liking their stuff, at least more than it does now.
So do you think this business model would work? I think that it could in the long run. The problem is that many customers would consider this to a be a free ride, and wouldn't think about the future quality they may get from paying now. If combined with a lower price I think the demand would be very high and could be as lucrative, or even more so than the standard model, what do you say?
As one guy said in the comment to article, describing “Penny per page” business model (pay for the every visited Internet page), “My monthly bills are high enough”.
It’s the crisis now, and some people are forced to chose even between basic needs covering (at least in our country), there are many unemployed, but they are humans too and they have human needs. There is no room for the more “business models”. People don’t have spare money to pay to business.
If you give them something for free or very cheap piratic cost – they would accept, but I doubt that someone want to pay even a little more now.
People don’t now what would happen to them tomorrow, and some helping to their less lucky family members or friends.
When there was no crisis, I made the donations, and I even considered to spend fixed amount of my salary (3-5%) for donating. But now in this dire circumstances when I should help my family and friends – I have no money to support content business.
Hope they fare well without my support.
Game developers actually tried this model by proving demo versions of their games so that customers would not have to buy the cat in the sack.
Nowadays I’m buying all games that I want to play and that I know are excellent. This is achieved by either looking at a company’s game history (say Diablo 3 and Starcraft 2 are definite buys) or by buying it weeks after its release to see how it is reviewed. Video reviews are very nice to get a good impression of a game.
Having said that I normally do not buy more than 5 or 6 games a year because most games that get released are boring crap in my opinion.
I do think that money counts for the industry. If they think they can make more money from this business model they will go for it. I think they won’t do it. They probably love something like pay to play models where users pay per play (arcade anyone) or subscribe to be able to play.
Hi Roman Sharp!
Don’t confuse more business models with more expenditure. More business models are always welcome, since this is what drives the economy in good or bad times. If there is no demand for products, the crisis will just deepen, so there is a big-big need to find ways to increase demand.
Martin, I agree with you, I also pay for everything I watch or play, because I do think that a very good game, like GTA 4 for example deserves the boatload of money they ask for it (so does Diablo and Starcraft).
Maybe there should be a reveiw board and a game can cost only $12 multiplied by their review score from 1-5 :)
A demo NEVER shows you the complete game/product you are trying. I’d love to see people trying a “car demo” with just one door. How many people bought Spore thinking the game would be as good as the “editor demo” and they found the game was just crap?
I never thought that Spore would actually be a game that I would enjoy playing. To much hype that I heard hundreds of times before. Developed a bull detector during that time.
Daniel Pataki
Don’t confuse more business models with more expenditure. More business models are always welcome, since this is what drives the economy in good or bad times. If there is no demand for products, the crisis will just deepen, so there is a big-big need to find ways to increase demand.
Daniel , isn’t one’s demand the promise of one’s expenditure, is it? So the “big-big need to find ways to increase demand” is the “big-big need to find ways to increase someone’s expenditure”. I see it this way, and every news about cutting jobs says the same: “We are cutting jobs because our sales are falling”. But their sales were some other people expenditure, and cutting jobs means cutting salaries of sacked – and that salaries cut will in turn cut someone else’s sales… Vicious circle.
Of course, some business models is about saving money to someone on something – but this will lead to someone else’s sales drop, like the mp3 success led to the fall of CD sales.
I never thought that Spore would actually be a game that I would enjoy playing. To much hype that I heard hundreds of times before. Developed a bull detector during that time.
:thumbs up: for Martin.
Really, too much hype around to lose your head for it.
In spite of I’m a poor student, I bought a few games after I played them, because they were so great. For example Gothic
one and two, which has almost no prtoection. And I know some friends who also did so, even if they usally never by a computer game
However I would never spend money on a Game like GTA4. It might be a great game, but i blackball such aggresive copy protection no matter wether it’s the game of the decade or not.
wtf is this!?
What the hell are trailers for?
@Ben
Most trailers are just uhm commercials… highlighting the best, leaving out the crap + voice-over guy and you got yourself a trailer. This trailers tells you exactly nothing.