Posted May 08, 2015
I really have to thank GOG.com for their free games, even though I haven't really actually played many of them. In the 90's when Tex Murphy Under a Killing Moon came out it was immensely popular and sold like candy, I believe it even won game of the year or something. Definitely one of the if not the top game of the year though, so I had very fond memories of playing and solving that game. I also got a copy of Tex Murphy The Pandora Directive but never solved it, and then... never ended up touching Tex again and kind of forgot about these games.
I stopped buying games in 2006 out of a combination of angst towards the general direction the video game industry was going with DRM and other consumer non-friendly behaviour, and the fact that my aging PC wasn't particularly capable of playing newer games that were coming out anyway.
In 2009 my good friend that introduced me to Tex Murphy back in the 90s sent me an email with a link to get the first 2 Tex Murphy games for free - right here on GOG.com, a place I had never heard of before, so I raced at the opportunity to just grab some free stuff without putting any more thought into it than that. I got in, got my free games and got out, didn't stick around to explore or anything else and I didn't really have any idea what GOG.com really was all about (much to my own loss as I came to eventually realize). But I did sign up for their newsletter that dropped ads in my mailbox from time to time. I didn't mind the occasional mailings and figured perhaps there might be another free game sometime so why not?
Quite some time passed and eventually there was another free game (I forget what it was), and when I was on the site the second time for that freebie, I fiddled around a bit and found there was a way to view the entire catalogue of games and to sort by price. I still was not quite in the frame of mind to start buying games again, but I was of the mindset if someone is offering something for free, why not grab a copy it might be fun, so I searched the catalogue and found a few other older games and grabbed them too. I did however get to pore over the entire list of games they had and there were some great classic games in there that I had fond memories of.
It's important to note that at this point in time, GOG.com wasn't just a passing thought in my mind but now I remembered the place and intended to periodically drop by to look for other free games too because.... why not? :) So I did this I dunno how many times, maybe 10 times spread out over 3 years or so, and each time I visited the GOG.com website I'd find something that caught my eye and stick around a bit more. But then one day while not logged in I noticed that they had a blurb banner on the site advertising DRM-free which totally caught my eye and I read it and clicked on it and read what GOG.com was all about. That was the first time I had actually seen their "mission statement" or whatever you want to call it (which I think should TOTALLY be much more prominent on the website so any new people showing up can't miss it whether they are logged in or not). Once I actually read what GOG.com was all about I immediately felt happy about it and that planted a seed of fondness in me for the company and of greater curiousity. That was mid-2012 or so, about 3 years since I got my first free Tex Murphy game.
Over the next few months after that I visited the GOG site to review their game catalogue, latest news etc. not just for free games but to see what else there was too, and the more I visited the more I felt like "this is a company I want to support some day soon". Then the fall came and GOG.com had a mega promo sale that had games discounted up to 75% or 80% off and that blew my mind as I had not really followed gaming as a consumer for years and had more or less let the entire digital distribution side of things swim right over my head.
The games were so cheap compared to any prior experience I had buying games anywhere that I felt compelled to buy some, and I waited a day or two and then finally went ahead and bought some games and felt great about it. The next day or few days later I bought some more, then some more and some more, and by Winter I had accumulated over 100 games and I broke their shopping cart system with one of my purchases which was for 57 games in one purchase which apparently nobody had done before in a single transaction or some other technical issue. :)
It's 2.5 years later now and I have approximately 328 "bundled" games or 423 unbundled ones in my account depending on how one wishes to look at it. I've picked up a handful of GOG freebie promos over time and gotten some more freebies in giveaways on the site and gifts from generous community members, but I've bought the majority of the games on my shelf, and I've also bought gifts for friends a number of times as well. All in all I'm a happy GOG.com gamer and feel I've gotten my money's worth in value and then some from GOG and that they've made gaming fun for me again.
So I started out coming for the free stuff just because it was here (without any entitlement mentality) and I stayed for the ride and have become a full time money spender sucked into the sales promo vortex of great games at great prices. Hard to say how many others in our community started out here just coming for the free stuff but ended up becoming a regular paying customer but I would bet that it is a lot.
I also have an old friend of mine who for the most part has both pirated and bought games for the last 30 years with no particular preference other than to play the games and not feel like he got ripped off. Due to my constant talking about and promoting GOG.com and their gamer/consumer friendly stance towards gaming, I've managed to plant the seed in his mind too and he's now bought a few games from GOG including ones he could have pirated easily himself but decided to buy it because of the benefits proper ownership provides him with here. He still pirates games too, but he's recognizing the value of paying for them and making at least a partial shift towards supporting companies that are consumer friendly because he sees the value they provide and that's a good thing to see!
So I know the community here has a huge distaste for piracy of games and people who openly admit that they pirate games or that they have pirated games, and I understand the reasons why of course. Don't forget though that many that pirate games also buy games too, and that if they feel the value they get from buying a game is higher than that of pirating it, they are likely to make the right decision on their own. GOG.com recognizes this and has spoken about their view towards pirates in videos etc. many times. They recognize pirates as being "potential future customers" more or less and it's a great way of looking at it. By GOG constantly striving to be as consumer friendly as possible and provide games and gaming services that add value for the money one spends here, they hope to convince would be pirates to think about becoming paying customers, and I think the model does work for them.
Hopefully if anyone shows up here that does pirate games whether they do so silently and privately, or openly public - hopefully they end up also spending money here and supporting GOG.com and the game publishers that offer their games here, and maybe... just maybe they'll be convinced that buying their games here instead of pirating them is a better way to go for themselves too, whether it is from the value proposition, ethics or some other reason.
Resistance is futile, become assimilated into the GOG! :)
I stopped buying games in 2006 out of a combination of angst towards the general direction the video game industry was going with DRM and other consumer non-friendly behaviour, and the fact that my aging PC wasn't particularly capable of playing newer games that were coming out anyway.
In 2009 my good friend that introduced me to Tex Murphy back in the 90s sent me an email with a link to get the first 2 Tex Murphy games for free - right here on GOG.com, a place I had never heard of before, so I raced at the opportunity to just grab some free stuff without putting any more thought into it than that. I got in, got my free games and got out, didn't stick around to explore or anything else and I didn't really have any idea what GOG.com really was all about (much to my own loss as I came to eventually realize). But I did sign up for their newsletter that dropped ads in my mailbox from time to time. I didn't mind the occasional mailings and figured perhaps there might be another free game sometime so why not?
Quite some time passed and eventually there was another free game (I forget what it was), and when I was on the site the second time for that freebie, I fiddled around a bit and found there was a way to view the entire catalogue of games and to sort by price. I still was not quite in the frame of mind to start buying games again, but I was of the mindset if someone is offering something for free, why not grab a copy it might be fun, so I searched the catalogue and found a few other older games and grabbed them too. I did however get to pore over the entire list of games they had and there were some great classic games in there that I had fond memories of.
It's important to note that at this point in time, GOG.com wasn't just a passing thought in my mind but now I remembered the place and intended to periodically drop by to look for other free games too because.... why not? :) So I did this I dunno how many times, maybe 10 times spread out over 3 years or so, and each time I visited the GOG.com website I'd find something that caught my eye and stick around a bit more. But then one day while not logged in I noticed that they had a blurb banner on the site advertising DRM-free which totally caught my eye and I read it and clicked on it and read what GOG.com was all about. That was the first time I had actually seen their "mission statement" or whatever you want to call it (which I think should TOTALLY be much more prominent on the website so any new people showing up can't miss it whether they are logged in or not). Once I actually read what GOG.com was all about I immediately felt happy about it and that planted a seed of fondness in me for the company and of greater curiousity. That was mid-2012 or so, about 3 years since I got my first free Tex Murphy game.
Over the next few months after that I visited the GOG site to review their game catalogue, latest news etc. not just for free games but to see what else there was too, and the more I visited the more I felt like "this is a company I want to support some day soon". Then the fall came and GOG.com had a mega promo sale that had games discounted up to 75% or 80% off and that blew my mind as I had not really followed gaming as a consumer for years and had more or less let the entire digital distribution side of things swim right over my head.
The games were so cheap compared to any prior experience I had buying games anywhere that I felt compelled to buy some, and I waited a day or two and then finally went ahead and bought some games and felt great about it. The next day or few days later I bought some more, then some more and some more, and by Winter I had accumulated over 100 games and I broke their shopping cart system with one of my purchases which was for 57 games in one purchase which apparently nobody had done before in a single transaction or some other technical issue. :)
It's 2.5 years later now and I have approximately 328 "bundled" games or 423 unbundled ones in my account depending on how one wishes to look at it. I've picked up a handful of GOG freebie promos over time and gotten some more freebies in giveaways on the site and gifts from generous community members, but I've bought the majority of the games on my shelf, and I've also bought gifts for friends a number of times as well. All in all I'm a happy GOG.com gamer and feel I've gotten my money's worth in value and then some from GOG and that they've made gaming fun for me again.
So I started out coming for the free stuff just because it was here (without any entitlement mentality) and I stayed for the ride and have become a full time money spender sucked into the sales promo vortex of great games at great prices. Hard to say how many others in our community started out here just coming for the free stuff but ended up becoming a regular paying customer but I would bet that it is a lot.
I also have an old friend of mine who for the most part has both pirated and bought games for the last 30 years with no particular preference other than to play the games and not feel like he got ripped off. Due to my constant talking about and promoting GOG.com and their gamer/consumer friendly stance towards gaming, I've managed to plant the seed in his mind too and he's now bought a few games from GOG including ones he could have pirated easily himself but decided to buy it because of the benefits proper ownership provides him with here. He still pirates games too, but he's recognizing the value of paying for them and making at least a partial shift towards supporting companies that are consumer friendly because he sees the value they provide and that's a good thing to see!
So I know the community here has a huge distaste for piracy of games and people who openly admit that they pirate games or that they have pirated games, and I understand the reasons why of course. Don't forget though that many that pirate games also buy games too, and that if they feel the value they get from buying a game is higher than that of pirating it, they are likely to make the right decision on their own. GOG.com recognizes this and has spoken about their view towards pirates in videos etc. many times. They recognize pirates as being "potential future customers" more or less and it's a great way of looking at it. By GOG constantly striving to be as consumer friendly as possible and provide games and gaming services that add value for the money one spends here, they hope to convince would be pirates to think about becoming paying customers, and I think the model does work for them.
Hopefully if anyone shows up here that does pirate games whether they do so silently and privately, or openly public - hopefully they end up also spending money here and supporting GOG.com and the game publishers that offer their games here, and maybe... just maybe they'll be convinced that buying their games here instead of pirating them is a better way to go for themselves too, whether it is from the value proposition, ethics or some other reason.
Resistance is futile, become assimilated into the GOG! :)