Well the sale as such is very good of course, and I've found a few titles to pick up for myself (and will probably pick up a couple more when my card is renewed), but the issue I have with it all is that it wasn't exactly a surprise, let alone a BIG surprise as it was overhyped to be with a 14-day buildup. I mean, it was staged wrongly - first we got a really BIG surprise, for reals, in the line of Atari/Hasbro releases. For me personally that was the biggest surprise of the entire year here at GOG. I mean, even if I did not like those games (but I do love them!), it would have still surprised me to the first degree because I just heard what it is like to deal with Atari, and I've read in many places how stubborn those guys could be. For me personally, Atari was in the list of companies "that would probably never come to GOG" - seriously, if anyone asked me (before it all happened) which companies we are likely to never see on GOG, among LucasArts, Blizzard, EA, and whatnot I would have named Atari/Hasbro (Atari as in D&D, you know), and GOG proved me wrong - so that was a BIG surprise.
Then, however, after all that great surprise, they pull out some strange obscure video which is kind of supposed to give us an idea that something at least as big or maybe even bigger is coming, but since then I haven't seen a single release (except Baldur's Gate 2 of course, which I believe *everyone* knew was coming by the time 6th Atari/Hasbro game was released) that would have been at least as grand as that (no offense to fans of Moto Racer and other good games - they're good for sure, but not super explosive as in "Atari comes to GOG!", you know). So yeah, after that they set this 14-day countdown, claiming there's going to be a BIG surprise in the end - and given that the 14th day fell on a Tuesday, I think many people had rights to believe that it was going to be a new game, and given the promo video before and "We're happy about the release schedule" finale of the said video, people expected some grand release, kinda like the whole Infinity Engine series and Atari/Hasbro in general. When, however, the "big surprise" turned out to be a "mere" sale, people had a right to feel disappointed - I mean, *everybody* expected a sale. Plus, it's not a surprise because it's a similar kind of sale they already did, e.g. last year. This is not surprising at all. Don't get me wrong, it's *GOOD*, very good - like I said, I believe many many GOG users, including yours truly, have found some good ol' games to pick up on this sale, yet it's not a "BIG surprise" as it was claimed to be. It leaves more unanswered questions than anything, and at this point, I'm not sure if I would care about the answers - instead, I just feel like "going with the flow" and seeing what GOG will do next (I expect Moto Racer 3 soon, then... I dunno what then, I'll see :D). The unanswered questions, however, are at least:
1) What was the promo video about, and did it actually have anything to do with anything? The dark theme, the "covert ops"-like setup, the "we're happy about the release schedule we've procured" finale?... What was that all even about except for just hyping up to make people visit GOG more often?.. Once again, if it was relevant in any way, given its theme and setup and all, people rightly expected some stealth action games coming to the scene - Call of Duty, Thief, System Shock, whatever... But there's nada.
2) If the promo video was actually relevant in any way, did we already get the releases those buddies were so happy about in it or not? Do we already know what the promo video was all about?.. Let's see: since then we got Moto Racer, Moto Racer 2, Space Rangers, Broken Sword Director's Cut, Chaser, Alien Shooter series, and Dream Pinball 3D. Out of it all, personally I picked only Dream Pinball 3D and only because I'm interested in Pinball games. Don't get me wrong, these are all lovely games (minus maybe Chaser which I personally didn't honestly like), and I'm sure many fans got them, but they are not explosive blockbuster hits which would have blown off nearly every GOGer's mind... Were they the games the spec ops were so happy about when they got the release list?.. Yes, there was this Witcher 2 Pre-release announcement, which was kind of cool, but it's coming in May 2011, not now, so it doesn't count as a release yet, at least not for me. So yeah, I dunno...
At any rate, I'm done meditating. I can't say I'm angry at GOG or anything - I'm not, and I'm happily buying some cool games they have on their holiday sale now, they just made me expect... more, and they failed to deliver. I think that they would have been better off without this whole 14-day overhype. Everybody fully expected Baldur's Gate 2 by the time the 5th or 6th Atari/Hasbro release hit, everybody fully expected the Christmas sale sooner or later, at that time there was nothing surprising in those events, and everything else that has happened since hardly deserved such a build-up and such hype... Sorry for the rant, just my $0.02 in addition to everything I've spent on the sale. :)
Post edited December 16, 2010 by Agetian
