Are You an Impulse Game Buyer?

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This article asks the rhetorical question “are you an impulse game buyer?” Which makes me wonder...what drives you guys to buy a game?

What gets you to buy a video game? Reviews? Punditry? A friend's recommendation? Message board prattle? Previews? Developer diaries? Carefully assembled personal research? Or is it occasionally something more impulsive?
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I don't see myself as an impulse game buyer. If I play a game and like it, I'll buy it. When I hear about games, like I do with movies, I'll tend to download it, play a bit, and then judge if it's worth my money. However, I do this very rarely because there are few games that even pique my interest anymore :( Next one is DragonAge: Origins, which is amazing.
 
I never have been before, but now with Digital Delivery and the nice sales that Steam and Impulse have, I find myself buying more and more.

For instance I bought Saints Row 2 yesterday because it was on sale for $7.50. I don't care for GTA style games, but I thought, getting it for the price of a movie and then I mess around with it for a couple hours, it is worth it. Plus it says it has some sort of co-op. Lets gansta it up.
 
I am an impulse game buyer for sure lol. If I am sitting at home on a Saturday with nothing to do sometimes I cant help going to buy a game. I fall for the hype of a lot of new games all the time as well and end up buying them on launch
 
I only buy games if the online multiplayer is phenomenal, or the single player a well thought out, non linear, great storyline, and jaw dropping landscapes/interiors.
 
If a game hits the magic price point - $19.99 or below I'll pick it up as an impulse buy... If it's $29.99 I might buy it too, but the reviews will carry more weight in that decision..
 
I wasn't before Steam, now I absolutely am. If there is a game that I am remotely interested in that goes on sale, it is way too easy for me to click a button and have it zapped over to my PC.

Steam's weekend sales are something I actually look forward to, the result is a huge pile of games on top of the backlog of unfinished PC and console games I already have. :)
 
sometimes I am an impulse buyer.
Mostly during raging at idiots in a present game I am playing.

Shear frustration at playing L4D one weekend raged me to impulse buy DemiGod (ironically off impulse) which I loved (although HoN is infintily better ;) )
 
I can be a bit impulsive with good sales (sub-10 dollar range)...but for a full price (or even half-price game), I have to be very sure that I'm going to enjoy it (reviews, experience with previous installments, etc) before I'm going to put out the money.

Including Christmas gifts I receive, I get may five half-to-full retail priced games a year.
 
absolutely not
I do my homework before buying a game and very selective on whether I'll go on and buy it or not
 
Not at all. I check out screens, read reviews, ask people about it, and even take it on a not-so-legit try before I buy spin (;)) before I'll spend $50 on a game.
 
Full price game is something I have to know everything about and preferably have played a demo first. 50 bucks is a lot of cash.
"no its not, that is how much a nice dinner or Saturday night out costs" - yeah well I avoid that as much as possible to because that is effing expensive too.

Down around 29 and under I am more likely to buy it without reading many reviews. 10 and under I will buy based on the description. 5 and under I will buy based on the pretty pictures and genre'. ;)
 
InorganicMatter said:
Not at all. I check out screens, read reviews, ask people about it, and even take it on a not-so-legit try before I buy spin (;)) before I'll spend $50 on a game.
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Being prudent with a $50 or $60 game is easy, its when a game is discounted to $20 or lower when it gets tougher. :)

I passed on Mirror's Edge when it was full price, the reviews were good but not good enough, if that makes any sense. When it was $20 on Steam, different story, I bought it right away and thoroughly enjoyed it.
 
I usually see myself as an impulse game buyer when there's a good price on a game I want. Case in point, the recent Direct2Drive $5 game sale. I don't fall for the new game hype as often as before, mainly because games (especially consoles) are so expensive. Even if the game actually does gives me hours of fun, I can't justify paying $50-$60. I prefer spending no more than $25-$30 on any one particular game.
 
I think the only case I become an impulse game buyer is when its really cheap. Like the Hitman series on steam.
 
I used to buy a game or two a month at Babbage's when they were around. Now, I just don't have as much interest in these games as I once did. So I buy games that I think may interest me, and that's probably 4 or 5 games a year. I do demos of some games to see if I really do want them. There have been quite a few demos that never made it to purchase. Impulsive? No.
 
I wish I could be an impulse game buyer, but I always cheapen out. I haven't bought a game for more than $10 since Homeworld 1 - maybe 6 to 8 years ago.

If it gets below $10, then I look at metacritic, the plot if any, and then I decided. I usually get about 2 or so games a year; though this year D2D's $5 specials pushed me to 5.
 
I used to buy games based on rep, until I bought a string of shitty games that my grandma wouldn't find exciting. Crysis, Far Cry2, Mass Effect and Fallout 3. I bought Dead Space but cant play it cuz I am unwilling to relearn how to play on a pc for the sake of getting the "console experience" (go fuck yourself EA). I wont buy a game now unless it has a demo. Maybe PC gaming is dying after all. I know the joy of PC gaming is twitching and shitting itself as we speak.:mad:
 
I impulse buy from the PSN all the time. I've got BF1943 and Fat Princess... never gave either of them more than 15 minutes time. Oh well, they're there if I ever feel like playing anything other than NHL 10 or GT5p.
 
Not anymore, thankfully. I just sold my last set of silly games I ended up never playing.
 
I buy impulse games all the time on steam. Getting it for cheap and not having to go to the store makes it too easy. If I've played a demo or seen 1 review that speaks to me about a console or pc full priced game then I'll give it a go. I also usually try and beta test all mmos before committing to buying those.
 
I will impulsively buy Starcraft 2. And you won't see me for at least 1 week afterwords.
 
i never buy games on impulse, i always deliberate, pondering however long i care to before coming to a decision based on whether or not its "worth it" to me (fun factor, my rigs capabilities, original premise/gameplay, ad nauseam)

might sound silly but i dont want to get stuck with a shitty game i dont enjoy. the only exceptions ive ever made and bought impulsively were half-life, bioshock, and portal, and i only bought the last two because they were five bucks each :)
 
yes. one lazy friday afternoon i bought ten shooters off direct to drive priced at 19.99 or lower. most of them i've never even downloaded.
 
snaggletooth said:
I impulse buy from the PSN all the time. I've got BF1943 and Fat Princess... never gave either of them more than 15 minutes time. Oh well, they're there if I ever feel like playing anything other than NHL 10 or GT5p.
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I really enjoyed BF1943 but man was Fat Princess disappointing. So much potential but the developers completely screwed it up by keeping the respawn timers static all the time. The result is eternal stalemates, no fun. Had they adjusted the respawn timer like in TF2, based on how much offensive progress one team has made over the other, it would have been so much better.
 
Back when I had a lot of money to burn I would buy anything that I thought sounded good. Now I curb myself and do quite a bit of research before a purchase. Unfortunately I was still burned by NFS Shift. Glad I rented Brutal Legend instead of buying it 'cause I was very close to doing so. Waiting for Forza 3 and Dragon Age: Origins since they're both pretty much guaranteed awesome. If something is a great sale though like when I found Prince of Persia (360) for 7 bucks at Target, I'm a sucker for huge sales.
 
If its really cheap and I'm moderately interested in it, I'm buying.
 
Because RPG's (single player) are so few I've bought many of them just to give 'em a whirl. So in this category I'm 50/50 impulse vs research first. If I see it in a store and it looks interesting I'll give it a try. But also, $40-60 for a game is not a super big deal to me. Hardware decisions and higher amounts of $$ and then I almost always research first.
 
I know it sounds sooooo stupid, but sometimes I will buy a game if it's on the PC just to support it. I really like the way Capcom is now supporting the PC and instead of buying RE5 for my PS3, I waited and purchased for PC. No regrets either. Very polished game, and this dev should get the support from PC gamers, if for nothing else but the polish of the finished product.
 
I bought Sins which led me to buy The Witcher both on and from impulse. Like others, on here, if a games cheap enough and looks interesting enough I'll give it a try.
If its Civ, I'll be at the store helping them unpack the truck.
 
The only games I buy for PC are FPSs and then I only buy good ones with a following. I have given up on the COD games. The single player is fun but I haven't had much fun in multiplayer COD since U.O. expansion.

EA lost my business when they decided they where gonna screw everyone on BF2142. I payed 60$ for that game and it was great until they released a patch that turned it onto a slide show on any hardware then refused to fix it.

I stick with TF2. Maybe something will cause me to buy a new game in the future but lately all that has come out is shit. I would play UT 2004 but no one plays anymore.I hate MMO's. I only like RTS in single player. I want to buy Ghost Busters but I don't have much of a PC right now and the game looks like too much fun to half ass it.
 
I'm an impulse game buyer at a certain price point. 10 bucks and under and I'll grab a few quick reviews and if the game looks good I may get it (thanks steam weekend deals.....titan's quest is a fun diabloish clone for somebody that likes ancient history/mythology).

At full price, no way I go impulse. I can miss on quite a few $5-10 games (or even 20) before I equal the pain of a miss (50? 60?). I DO pay full price for games that I am confident will be worth my time and money. Demos go a LOOOONG way towards getting me to pay full price. Fallout 3 was the last game I paid full price for, though. Bethesda has earned my confidence (morrowind + expansions + user mods did it for me). So has bioware (at least for mass effect 2....).
 
i am the complete polar opposite.. i wish i could buy more games, just cant justify the expense (with having a house/dog/baby and tons of bills) which is why i usually wait until they become super cheap, ie-mirrors edge for 5bux, mass effect for 15, etc.. i never get bored because there are thousands of pc/amiga classic games that ive never played or want to play through again like DOTT
 
I am absolutely an impulse game buy when the price is under $10. For anything more than $20 I pretty much require either a lot of research/critic reviews/user reviews etc. I maybe buy 1 or 2 full price games a year.
 
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