Paradox of Abundance... and Games
There's an interesting little article in the Wall Street Journal today talking about Netflix and how the unlimited choice and unlimited viewing time has caused subscribers to actually watch LESS movies.

For Some Netflix Users, Red Envelopes Gather Dust

Netflix or the Video Store?
Now, part of me reads this and thinks that this article has been sponsored by Hollywood Video - particularly as it corresponds to their latest anti-Netflix advertising campaign ("Well, they sounded good when I ordered them last week.") But there's a big element of truth to it, and it left me pondering.

Now, for my wife and I, we've had the opposite experience. At least so far. We subscribed to Netflix partly because of the selection. Around Halloween time last year, I looked online for lists of the scariest movies of all time. I found dozens. I kept track of many of them, and my wife and I drove to Blockbuster in hopes of bringing home some of these classics.

We found that the selection was... anemic. Now, if you want a "B" grade horror movie produced in the last five years, they probably have all of them. But actual classic horror movies that are more than a decade old? Not so much. We found one of the movies on our list, and called ourselves lucky. We subscribed to Netflix a few weeks later.

At first, we were worried it'd be a waste of money, because we didn't watch that many videos normally. Maybe a couple a month. But we decided to give it a shot - and found that we watch a LOT more videos now than we did before. We've watched a bunch of off-beat or "not-so-current" films that we've really enjoyed. And a few that we didn't. Besides just the availability of these weird titles, I always felt pressure at the video store that if I was going to plunk down $4 *AND* the trip to the video store on a film, it had better be a good one! So I found myself avoiding the "iffy" movies. Now that we're with Netflix, the weird ones don't cost any extra, so I feel a bit more willing to experiment. Sometimes we are delighted by these older, foreign, or offbeat films (almost everyone BUT me has started getting into Indian "Bollywood" movies). Sometimes, not so much (I really tried to enjoy "The City of Lost Children," but it was the one film that we have tried that we ended up not finishing because we just couldn't get into it).

But we haven't had these problems with letting videos sit around for weeks or months at a time. Maybe that only comes after you've been subscribed for a very long time. Maybe we're still riding the high of finally getting the chance to experiment without (significant) risk (and with far more opportunity).

Maybe we're weird.

It Must Be Human Nature
Is this article just overstating the "problem?"

I can certainly understand the elements of human nature that are at work here. When I lived in the Washington DC area, we always joked about the fact that tourists saw more of the town than the natives ever did. The easy availability of the historic sites meant that we didn't feel any pressure to go see them. I had a few of my favorites, of course. I would have LIVED at the National Air and Space Museum if I'd had a chance. But when you live with the Washington Monument always sticking out on the horizon, going to see it up close doesn't seem like such a big treat.

The research project mentioned in the article rings true, with a choice between "low brow" and "high brow" entertainment differing between whether it was something to be viewed RIGHT NOW as opposed to later. This mirrors my own experience going to the video store. It wasn't so much low brow or high brow for me - it was the "safe bet."

Low brow is almost by definition a "safe bet." It's what caters to the tastes of the lowest common denominator.

What's This Have To Do With Games?
I first discovered "shareware" in 1991, while I was going to college. On one of the CD-ROM collections (CD-ROM was the "big thing" at the time) at the university library had a tremendous number of shareware & freeware games. Finding this abundance, I bought a bunch of floppy discs from the bookstore and began copying all these games to disc. Most of these games were small enough that they could fit on a single floppy - sometimes two or three to a floppy disk.

So I took all of these back to my apartment with glee. I had discovered a treasure trove of FREE GAMES! Well, free games and a lot of demos.

I only ended up playing about three-quarters of them. So maybe I'm not so weird after all.

A friend of mine told me that she'd downloaded Void War and Cute Knight, but never actually got around to playing them until days / weeks later.

It's the same kind of problem. With the Internet, there is certainly an abundance of... stuff. Games, information, videos, people spouting off about all kinds of subjects (like me)... it's all out there for cheap or for free. And most indie games (except for the purely casual stuff, though that used to qualify, too) are pretty much what you'd call "off beat" or niche.

So is the lack of perceived scarcity really hurting indie games? Is it resulting in people not even bothing to download or, if they've downloaded it, even play many of these games? If so, what can we do about it?

I dunno. I know I read at least one new review (announcement?) of a free web game every day over on Jay Is Games. You can't GET any more low-risk than that. But I still rarely check them out. It has to really grab my eye and convince me that it's worth spending two minutes of my time. But then I go and get these weird foreign movies and and movies starring people that died before I was born. What's the difference?

Labels: Indie Evangelism

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 11:42 AM (Permalink)