Lending

The biggest seller of games (as well as books) is WORD OF MOUTH, in other words, friends recommending a game. The reason why the DS and Wii caught on as they did was because people demoed the system to their friends. The name of Wii is supposed to mean people coming together, right?

Before, and even after, the Wii launched, Nintendo brilliantly made the goal to put the Wii controller in as many hands as possible. They let people try out Wii Sports in malls and other areas. This is also how the NES originally sold. Many kids knew kids that got a NES for Christmas and after playing it, why, they HAD to have one.

Lending is an extremely important part of the ‘viral nature’ of making sales. Satisfied and enthusiastic customers make the best salesmen. A child, hooked on Super Mario Brothers, will sell Super Mario Brothers to other kids better than any salesman alive.

One of the reasons why Blizzard became Blizzard was because of Warcraft 2’s generous spawning. If I remember correctly, you could play five people off of one Warcraft 2 disc. This meant that at LAN parties, not everyone had to have the game. One or two people were enough to have everyone playing it. Warcraft 2 became a massive hit which the ‘spawning’ had to be a definite factor. Around the same time, ‘Red Alert’, another RTS game, generously came with two CDs which could install two separate full versions of ‘Red Alert’. The only difference is that each disc had a different single player campaign. So a person who bought Red Alert could instantly begin playing with a friend. And that game, too, became a smash hit.

We have figured out the mysterious second step for game makers:

1) Make the best game possible.

2) ???????

3) Profit!

The second step is: Have as many people as possible get their hands on it.

One ominous thing about the games industry is that it sadly does NOT want to get its product into as many hands as possible. To them, that is the equivalent of piracy. So we have games that contain DRM which limit the numbers of time it can be installed on a computer let alone anyone else’s. The glory days of ‘spawning’ or multiple full game discs with a game are long gone.

It is not enough to make the best game possible. One must put that best game possible into as many hands as possible. How does one do this?

”Demos!”

I hate demos. They used to be fun before the 3d revolution. Shareware used to be bliss (note that shareware shared the mission of getting the game into as many hands as possible). I don’t like demos for computer games because they take too long to download, too long to install, too long to uninstall, often don’t uninstall correctly, and the demos are little more than a tutorial. BORING. (You want to know what a ‘good’ demo is? Try the demo of the first Unreal Tournament. THAT is a demo. Not only did it have CTF, DM, Assault, and other example maps in it, it allowed mutators. A good demo is something a customer would want to pay for. So they are thrilled to buy the full game because they would pay for the demo, now they think they are getting a steal.)

Lending games is one of the best ways to sell games. I remember lending cartridges left and right. I am still pissed that some snot nosed kid didn’t return my NES copies of Marble Madness and Battletoads. Punks. (That reminds me, I need to get my copy of Meteos back).

One change in game habits is that a play session with a cartridge console ended with a pile of cartridges on the carpet, meaning I would put one in, play, and put in another. With the larger disc games, just that game sits in the disc tray until it is completed and then the game is put on a shelf for the next year. My cartridges were continuously in use.

Lending really favored the old way during the cartridge era. Games today are so long that lending a game like Twilight Princess means you won’t get it back until six months later. However, what was ‘old’ during the arcade and cartridge era is now the ‘new’.

And this brings us to the subject of digital games, namely WiiWare. Iwata says WiiWare is supposed to be the great laboratory of gaming. This is all fine and good, but the real objective, which I think Iwata would agree, is to put these experimental titles in as many hands as possible. You just can’t have the diehards buying these WiiWare games. And the makers of these WiiWare games would surely want as many people as possible to PLAY their game.

”Then Iwata needs to put up demos, Malstrom!” a voice says. “Demos would allow everyone to try the experiment.” A demo is nothing more than an interactive commercial. A far BETTER way to sell is to have a satisfied customer lend their game to their friends. The game, like the Wii, like Warcraft 2 and numerous other games, then spreads virus-like.

So why in the world can’t we LEND our WiiWare games?

Why can’t I really be happy with a game and want to LEND it to a friend? I can lend other games to friends. But I cannot with WiiWare. I suppose I could lend my entire Wii, but that solution is worse than the cure.

Let us say there is an option of ‘lend’. I put in the code to the Wii I want to lend my game. The WiiWare game in question then ‘disappears from my Wii and is downloadable for only three days to my friend. When his time is up, the game is automatically deleted and my Wii is able to download the game again.

You might ask, “There are too many technical problems with this!” Oh please. Nintendo experimented with ‘renting’ Virtual Console games or using it as a subscription service. There are various downloadable content, from music to movies, that ‘explode’ after a few days. So this is very technically possible.

Think of books. When you read a good book, you lend it to a friend. We do the same with our games. Anyone who thinks this will ‘hurt sales’ shouldn’t be in this industry anyway. They aren’t really interested in selling their game to customers but apparently are following a Ferengi Rule of Acquisition (“Once you have their money, you never give it back!”) The customer is not getting the money back. They are lending their game to other people. If the game is truly good, the other person will want to buy it.

”But Malstrom! What if a huge club is created on the Internet where only a few people buy the games and ‘lends’ to everyone?”

So what? You have more people playing the game than you would otherwise. WiiWare wouldn’t be pigeonholed to just a few dedicated users. The only people who would fear this would be the shovelware companies or people who make games that no one wants to play after three days (and these games don’t deserve to be bought anyway).

Good games sell themselves, but only when people play it. If WiiWare is supposed to be a laboratory of video games, what good is it unless the maximum amount of people are playing? Lending would greatly reduce the ‘risk’ customers have in purchasing an online game, have many, many people play the game itself, and it would create viral sales to boot. It worked for Blizzard. It worked for the Wii.

Why are game publishers so chicken when it comes to the customer having control?