Black Friday: Great or Grating?

Black Fridays definitely a thing now. No matter what you think about the American tradition coming our way, it can’t be ignored. Last year I was quite the fan. I picked up three or four games and told the wife she was buying me them for Christmas. Maximising the present budget in style, keeping romance and the joy of giving truly alive. 

My purchases last year included Tomb Raider for £10. It had been released 22 months earlier. Tearaway for £20, it had come out in September and had pretty much flopped so the price drop was expected. Until Dawn for about £20 I think, it was three months old at that point. By now you’re wondering if I’m just gloating about my haul but really this is paragraph is just verbal foreplay for the point I’ll eventually get to. 

Check the black Friday sales of 2016 and you’ll see discounts on the likes of Dishonored 2, Watch_Dogs 2, Call of Duty, etc These games have been out for weeks... Not months. All three examples released in November, one of them has been out for ten days. If I had pre-ordered and bought on release day I’d be mightily pissed. 

How many folk did just that? Not that many it seems… I almost wrote a blog on Monday after the weekly sales data came out and yet again a new release was making headlines for how poorly it performed. Watch_Dogs 2 opened with sales of around 80,000. Its predecessor had opened with around 380,000. That’s quite the drop. There could be many reasons for that (including the lukewarm reception to the first game post-release) but I don’t think I’m mad when I draw a connection to the Black Friday sales.

Was it always going to go on sale 10 days after release? Doubtful. It’s likely that the slow launch combined with the marketing blitz every retailer has for black Friday created an opportunity. If it had launched well then it wouldn’t be cheaper on this day. If it wasn’t for the approach of black Friday however, would it have launched better? It’s impossible to say. But then this is an opinion piece so I’ll say yes. Factually proven with stuff from my head. 

So yeah everyone seems to have waited, and if it’s going to save you money then why wouldn’t you? I’m waiting even longer than you, so tight-fisted have I become with my gaming purchases. My chrimbo gaming requests are Deus Ex (released in august for £45, I got for £20) and Ratchet and Clank (released in april for £30, as of yet I haven’t seen a better deal than £20). These November games I’m blogging about will wait to 2017 when they’re cheaper again and I’ve cleared a bit more of my never-ending list of stuff I’ve yet to play.

The only problem with all this saving… Are these games now considered flops? Is there less chance of a Watch_Dogs and Dishonored 3? That’s got to be a concern. The gaming market is in a weird place in which it seems to more successful than ever but yet studio closures and job layoffs seem more frequent. Budgets are escalating and publishers are playing it safe. The main retail releases all seem to stick to standard templates (everything’s either open world or an online fps) whilst if you want variety and creativity you need to embrace the indies (read my last blog!! Please). There’s no middle ground. Dishonored is an exception, and the first game was blooming brilliant. Hopefully the sequel does well enough to warrant more of its kind, or at least show publishers that not every game has to be about driving around cities and machine gunning everything in sight. 

As admitted already I am part of the problem. I’ve bought very few games this year within release week and used vouchers for most of them. More frugality. The others included two Nintendo titles. I wish I understood how they do it but there games don’t come down in price. An HD remake of a ten year old Zelda was released in March this year. Quick check online and it costs £2 more than Dishonored 2 which released on November 11^th. Amazing. They love their ‘evergreen’ titles and seem to keep their big releases in the charts for yonks. Heck one of their Christmas releases is a slightly updated version of a near three year old game. Launch week performance means squat to Nintendo because their games will be charting for months on end. It seems the most sensible approach and weirdly it encourages me to buy day one because I know waiting won’t benefit me financially. Crafty.

So that was a blog. I can’t think of a witty sentence to end it with so just go back to shopping online and buying all of the things. Just don’t be complaining when that game you love but bought for a shilling doesn’t get a sequel. It’s all your fault. And mine. Enjoy.

Indie

Think of ‘indie’ and you’ll more likely get mental images of Blur vs Oasis, or maybe you’ll be singing along internally to that Killers university anthem. Unless you’re not 31 like me. Then who knows what way you think, strange young person.

So this blog is about music?! Wise up. As usual it’s about them videogames. Indie has become such an overused term in the medium and the rise of indie games has seen them make up probably half my gaming purchases. What counts as an indie game though? And what does that word even mean anymore to gamers? These questions and others will be explored below…

Still here? Nice! Thank you. So indie is obviously short for independent. So indie games are clearly those games made by small teams or individuals, outside the safety net of the big publishers. There you go, this blog will be short. Access your consoles digital storefront or Steam on the PC and you’ll have access to hundreds of indie titles.

Usually these titles are lower budget, cheaper priced titles. Like Child of Light and probably the opposite of No Mans Sky. Or not like those examples at all.

Child of light is a game made by a small team which I purchased for less than a tenner and here’s a screenshot to show it looks. 

Gorgeous but 2d and nothing like the technical grandeur of say a GTA or Batman. Except this game is not indie. It was developed within and published by the same gaming giant that produces Assassins Creed and Far Cry.

No Mans Sky is a game that’s huge in scope, that’s fully 3D and it retailed for £50. It was made by a team of around six people. It is indie. I’m not trying to confuse any of you, just trying to convey how some people use the term. Indie has become the go to word for downloadable, less expensive titles. If you can’t buy a disc version of it then its indie. If its 2d, its indie. Which of course is all a load of poop nuggets. 

Why does it matter? Well it grinds my gears a bit when folks say they don’t play indies, that they don’t like indies. That term does not describe a genre, it doesn’t relate to one definable type of gaming experience. Indie games include platformers, fighting games, horror titles, strategy, everything and anything. It’s the equivalent of not liking Indian and declaring you hate all food. It’s daft. 

It’d also be daft for me to then state I love indies. I love a lot of them. I’ve hated plenty too. There’s thousands more I’ve never played. The rest of this paragraph is just going to be a list of indies that I’ve loved… Shovel Knight, Guacamelee, Runner 2, Stealth Inc 2, The Unfinished Swan, Flower, Thomas Was Alone, JOURNEY!!! 

 

Next on my list to play is Hue. I saw it pop on a PS sale, watched the trailer and out of curiosity I tweeted asking for opinions on the game. A reply came from the developer themselves, obviously stating it was great but that was enough to clinch the purchase from me. Another time I tweeted about how much I enjoyed Mike Bithells Volume. Mike Bithell replied saying thank you. Amazing. I’ve tweeted my love for Nintendo a million times and yet they’ve never replied to me, the evil giant corporation. It’s a simple thing but I do like the idea that I’m supporting the little guys and that I’m getting an experience which has come from fewer creative minds, without being led or controlled by a team of marketing zombies. 

Indies are diverse. They can be rubbish, they can be generic but they can also be the most creatively expressive gems you’ll ever play. In a market which continues to see mainstream game budgets rise and studios close, indies have filled the gaps. They have provided me with plenty of palette cleansers between forty hour adventures and many more that make me ignore my gaming shelf. They’ve made me care about featureless squares, let me save the world with a shovel and provided me with a two hour masterpiece that stirred more emotion in me than I knew I had. Spread your gaming time, try something a little different. Don’t like it? Keep going, there’s an indie you will find that will join your favourites. Let me know what is.