by The Schaef
rickert wrote:
Scorpion0x17 wrote:
rickert wrote:
Doesn't make sense. Promos are designed to promote the game. If even 20 percent of the people who are your customers don't like being excluded from the promotion and become less inclined to buy your product, what is being promoted. Will the other 80 percent buy more product just because of the promo? I don't believe so.
Selling promos to people that have already bought your game is going to do very little to promote said game and drive further sales.
A better way is to entice new people in to buying your game by giving away said promos, ideally when they purchase your game, or win competitions, or whatever, at certain shows, or events.
I believe part of your statement is totally wrong and was crafted just to fit this argument. How many people play in tournament-like special events without already knowing how to play and more than likely having their own copy of the game? That's a minority for sure.
This kind of misrepresents the way the promo was distributed at Origins.
When I demo'd the game, I sat down with two others who were jonesing to win the promo, a friend who had played before and a stranger who like me had not played the game before.
The five of us played a demo game under the (light) supervision of Iello, I won the game, and subsequently was handed the Space Penguin. All of us at the table got a packet of promo cards.
I turned around and handed my Penguin to the jonesing female, partly because she was so keen to win it, and partly because I did not own the game. But the demo made me want to own the game. Which in turn made me want to go back and play again, and win the Penguin so I could assure myself of a copy.
I got hung up in the Board Room and never got back to play it. So I'm kicking myself, hoping for some other way to acquire it, and expecting a hailstorm of criticism for my momentary lapse of generosity. But if I have to live without the Penguin, that's a problem of my own making.
Point is, people might be inclined to criticize them for running promos at attended events... I guess... but to treat it like an organized-tournament-winner promo kind of overstates the "event" nature of winning the Penguin.