Should you "support" games?

So I've actually had this on my mind at some points, but it wasn't until I unfortunately had someone beat me to making this into a subject that I thought about writing it for an article. If you want to check the thing I'm referring to out, go right ahead as its an awesome video on the subject. Its about the idea of supporting games, and how the expression of voting with your wallet... may have gone too far with its interpretation. Don't get me wrong, it makes complete sense to vote with your wallet. We all want our voice to be heard and make an impact, and as consumers we do that by buying stuff. However as much as I am a person of principle, it doesn't always cost $60 for me to justify such a thing, nor should principles be taken out of context as some moral crusader where you run around buying stuff for the "good" of it. Yet here we are in a world where we're told we've got to go and support this one indie game because they're indie, or go support this one horror game because another will never happen again if we don't. I'm not entirely sure I'll agree that kind of "support" is necessary. If all you want to do is support the little guy, then I've got a good one for you to support:

At one point in recent memory, I was able to fool my mind into this twisted method of thought. I drew inspiration from the way I was having issues with the new AAA vs indie mentality in the 2011-ish period, where it felt like middle tier games were falling off the market completely, and the only good in-depth games of my liking were lost to things like COD. If a shooter looked even remotely old-schoolish I'd tell people its probably worth supporting. If I found a game like Inversion, I'd have a strong biased to give them a chance since they were a more middle tier type weird team doing some sci-fi game. I bought Two Worlds 2 at launch since while I knew it would go down in price fast, I really wanted to support them. I loved the game, but... I don't see why I didn't just wait. Then thanks to internet info, I would feel a little crippled whenever something like Sly 4 was so amazing and then sold so poorly. Why can't you support it better, gamers!? One of the lower points had to be Risen 2. I found out they had a special edition with all the DLC, poster and map extras, and it was the only console port I've ever seen the obscure little RPG team make, plus I had an optimistic curiosity for the game. I wound up buying it less because of how I really needed it, and more due to the fact that it was a small cult loved team finally putting this awesome version of it out in a physical form on consoles.  The result? Well it was a Clumsy, poorly designed RPG, with tedious tasks, and an interface I couldn't even read unless I stood-up right in front of the TV. I only played it like twice. $60 wasted.

Meanwhile lets look at Doom and Dishonored on the other hand. I "supported" both because they just looked like freakin' awesome games. Turns out they were incredible, and I'm looking forward to "supporting" the next Dishonored 2 on the basis that it looks incredible. Here's a list of all the other games that came out the same year as Dishonored. This was practically one of the final years of THQ's life. I could have "supported" them more, but... I didn't want to, and thankfully didn't give in to that whiny side of my mind. It wouldn't have made a difference, except in that I may not have had Dishonored if I wasted money on Darksiders 2 (a game I still want to play one day, but can borrow it from my sister at this point). I could have "supported" binary domain, but eh I wasn't interested enough to put $60 down, so I didn't. Sega is still here, and that game is still there to play, and it was never guaranteed a sequel anyway. Instead I supported Dishonored, which would be fine without me, but I feel much better myself with it because that's simply what I want. I could have supported Sorcery, but hey Sony isn't even supporting the Move anymore nor were they going to, so there wasn't any magical victory to be had there if I did. Regardless of who I "supported" life moved on. Risen 3 still sucks like R2 did, Dishonored is awesome, THQ fails, Binary Domain will be one of those PS3/360 cult hits people occasionally bring up, while Darksiders even gets re-releases.

Never again!

Eventually I got out of this nonsensical phase of favoring "support". I'll admit there's still a slight bias to support a team, but it ain't so overbearing that its the big factor. Essentially a realization of a few key thoughts and reflections pulled me back to my senses. Let me enlighten you on them...

1) Buying games you love is true support

Simple capitalism: Make a good product, or see a good product, and it will be bought. That isn't always entirely true and sometimes a good item will be missed, and a bad item will come under your possession, but you get the point. I didn't have to sit there and preach about how Doom is the end-all FPS to justify my support for it, I merely had to trust it'd be amazing, buy it, and see that I was right. I'm far from the only one. Its been well received, people are holding it up as GOTY material, and bethesda has shown some interesting confidence with the product. I haven't seen the numbers, but its clearly no bomb. Now when I genuinely support a product out of that sort of enjoyment, I'm a satisfied fan. When they have a bunch of happy fans running around, telling people how great it is, those are the people first lining up and ready to sing praises when a sequel comes around. Even if I were to run out and hypothetically buy Dark Souls for the first time from a $3 yard sale bin right now, I'd still be supporting it if I were to enjoy and discuss it. I'm telling you people how amazing it is, and then I'm looking around for sequels, and I'm hooked on what the series will do next. Meanwhile with Risen 2... you can see the only time I've actually discussed it, is right on here in infamy. I "supported it" with a purchase and kindness, but I've returned it with nothing but distrust since then.

2) Success isn't copied, only EASY success is

A large part of this dream, and goal, to get people to flock and support a game with some mega-ton influx of money is that we'll one day wake up and see ourselves flooded in new variants of such a game. You hear this not only with games, but with pieces of games, or pieces we hate from games. Quick, go buy this game that decided to sell itself without a season pass! Hey this game has a good narrative, quick run out there and throw money at the cashiers face, and then they'll directly email EA on how they should make a game just like it! Hey, maybe if we support this one horror game, COD will be replaced with an annual Silent Hill! Well hate to break it to you guys, but that's not how this industry works. People don't launch into trends, or die off of them, simply for making a good returning fund. All that happens is the company profits, and... thanks its fans. That's nice, and maybe its necessary for a direct sequel, but it ain't progressing some activist cause for better gaming mechanics.

Quick, name off some awesome gaming hits! Preferably recent, but old will work as well. Lets take Bioshock, Dark Souls, Skyrim, Mario Galaxy 1 & 2, and Assassins Creed. There's more obvious success stories, but lets get to those in a moment. Okay so while we do have a massive influx of open world, how many of those play out with Skyrim's tweaks to the WRPG formula? How many games went all alternate history, meta-lore, or even borrowed off of AC's gameplay? Not a lot really. How many awesome hardcore RPG/fighters have come out in the big market space to cash-in on the passionate fan base of the Dark Souls breakthrough success? Lords of the Fallen, and uh... Nioh. Some indie games to. How awesome is it that Mario Galaxy revitalized the 3D platformer genre, and... oh, they actually all kind of disappeared around that time. Biosh-, okay lets just get on with the point. The big breakouts are entries like COD, Minecraft, Candy crush, and watered down variants of the GTA formula. The trends are set by changing times, market conditions, and ultimately what easily copy-able things can be latched onto for good success. Nobody wants to carefully plot out, balance, or risk the struggle to make a good souls type of game. Nobody wants to sit back and do a half-life/bioshock type huge narrative linear shooter, when a cheaper online multiplayer skinner-box with a generic setting will pull in the same money and a longer attention time. Stuff like regenerative health catches on not because its just used in a popular game, but because it means developers don't need to work on balance, map layout, and item placement related to the old health systems. Same for bad monetary practices like microtransactions, which will stay because its a new trend that gets them money, and loses them almost nothing. Its an easy, popular, and proven element, so it catches on and sticks. That's not to say we're doomed to just see dumber and dumber things. Devs do care to try new or complicated things, but those things aren't what become the big trends unless by weird luck. So consider this the next time you think supporting that weird anime cyberpunk horror will suddenly flood the market with all of those things.

3) You are simply one person

Not much of a realization, but you are simply one person among many. Your purchase as one guy is just 1 sale. $60 might be a lot to you, but games sure cost a lot more to make, which is why they don't measure these things in 60's but rather you as a person and your new game sale. That means that for your support to send a game to success, you need to go and clone yourself an army of like 999'999 of you. That's just my personal average assumption of success as well, some publishers are looking for 3-6 million, and a couple are okay and chilled out about under 1 million. The huge successes are things that hit around 8 million, or bring in a long line of profiting revenue. As one person, and only one, there's no pressure in not supporting every game ever. As a matter of fact that's another thing, you can't. You can't be bothered to run around sweating over what games need and deserve your support. There's just too many, and you don't automatically know for a fact if you'll always pick the best route. Free will is a gift and curse. Just play what looks fun, and support the things that deserve it. Don't let that sound like a bad thing though. Go have fun, be yourself, like the games that you like, and don't have anyone else tell you otherwise. Your support is still adding to something, and you can be an awesome fan to the community. Its just that there's no use in getting worked up over how you can weaponize yourself as some serious authority of what deserves support. Just chill, relax, and play games.

4) The future is never clear, but the game will always exist

Lets talk about Sly 4 again. I didn't buy it out of raw support, even if I would have had I known its sales ahead of time. I actually assumed it would be a decent hit. Fans were all over this stuff, the marketing was out, the devs proved they knew what they were doing, and it must have been pretty awesome to see a sudden revival out of nowhere for a nice little iconic hero. Turns out I was so very wrong though, and the game failed to make even half a million. Meanwhile R&C was undergoing similar (but somewhat deserved) issues and sale numbers. It seemed like their releases were doomed, and things would move even closer to a wasteland for 3D platformers. However there are two big things to consider... if you dare to sit there and moan that the game is dead, you're a part of the problem. The game is not dead, the series was never in the grave anymore than before the last release, and unless your game is online only (ironically something I don't want anyone to support) it will never cease to be playable and enjoyable. Whether you pick this game up and play it 10 years later, or right at launch, its still the same game, and its still amazing. Just because Sly failed, doesn't mean Sony is going to come up to my house and steal the game back. Stop pretending this is doomsday just because a game you liked didn't sell. The future of its series was never promised or entitled to you in the first place, and the community and game will live on all the same. Heck I just now stumbled into this sly cooper fansite, with the news discussing a movie going into development.

Oh yeah, and the movie! That's the 2nd point: Ratchet and Clank didn't die off to poor sales. At their lowest point, Sony got up and went fully insane and said "Perfect time for a movie and new game, right team!" and so a movie happened. Around the same time, a teaser for a Sly Cooper movie happened. Because... ya'know, for some reason that's how failure works. No in all seriousness, this is how the future works. Sometimes a publisher pulls an EA and tells its Mirror's Edge fans they can't be bothered with a bad series, or an Ubisoft and hold its poor Beyond Good & Evil game in infinite suspense, or a SE and suggest that Tomb Raider just wasn't good enough at fucking 4-6 million sales. However Tomb Raider 2 happened, Ratchet's consistent decline below the millions nets a movie, and even after that movie fails (I think) the Sly one is greenlit, and Okami was remade 3 times (and got a tiny hand-held sequel) even if all of the ports combined don't even reach a modern success milestone. oh and all this time we had practically a decade without a 3rd Battlefront game, which could have been an excuse to print money at any point in LucasArts troubled game division career. Doom was still doing incredible after 3, and just disappeared until recently missing an entire console cycle for no easy-to-name reason. The future is called that for a reason: its not the present. The games you have in the present, are here to stay. Go and enjoy them without sweating over how much "support" they got. The future will do whatever the heck it wants to, and you can't predict it (and if you can, you wouldn't be using those powers on video games). Meanwhile good games don't always get good sequels or even sequels at all, and bad games don't stay automatically stay down forever just because they hit a bump... or even multiple. Heck we live in a world where Naught Bear has a sequel, and you know what, I'm kinda of proud of that absurd reality! Oh and the R&C game that accompanied the movie is doing very well as I hear it, so a series can bounce back in case you're not sure about its possibility.

Conclusion...

Should you support good games? Yeah, sure, but do it because you want to go out and play those games. If you want to legally manipulate the market and wait on some GOTY edition, wait for it to go on a deep sale, or even buy it used in some yard sale bin, go ahead and do that to. I'd really recomend buying the games you feel good about in a way that supports the dev, but you know what, they aren't a charity, and the general market is still supported anyway. Just go out and find what you want to play, spread the word on great games you love, and continue to smile and enjoy games. That's how you support games, not by risking your $60 on some trash RPG that you feel NEEDS the money for its effort on a console port and cult fanbase. Believe me, I've been there, you don't want that supported when you could be putting that money on something like Doom. The market is set up in a way that supporting yourself, is the thing that can also support others and speak the real truth. Go buy the games you want, at the price you see best, and everything else will sort itself out. ...and if things don't go the best way in your opinion, well its not always going to. Doesn't mean everything is dead and gone, you still got what you paid for, and there's still plenty of new great things out there.

Support the games you love, not for the sake of it