The current run of EU4 DLC "free weeks" is brilliant. "Try before you buy" when there's nearly 6 years of DLC to buy is a clever move.
https://www.strategygamer.com/articles/eu4-dlc-free-trial/
Something interesting about this article is that a large chunk of it was taken out by my editor. That's not necessarily a bad thing; anyone who's read what I write here already knows that I tend to wax a little prolix from time to time and a good editor exists to help cut that back a bit.
Nevertheless, I thought this would be a great venue to share the chunk which didn't actually see publication. The original form of this article was a little bit heavier on creating historical context for what Paradox is doing. Not everybody loves historical context.
Maybe you guys will.
Opening the Valve
Steam was the first digital distribution platform to really make it big mainstream. There were other tries, but a very specific combination of funding, game studios really seeing the advantages of not having to hold as much inventory or ship physical discs, and being able to update their games after release made Steam a really big deal – and with it more mass access to game demos.
Go to Steam now and it's easy to pull up over 100 pages of game demos that you can play for free, putting a means of playing a game that might not have immediately attracted the attention of a busy gamer right in their hand. Combined with a dynamic sales front where prices can be changed quickly and easily; the market from the perspective of studios – even established studios with very conservative store policies like Paradox – had a lot of pressure to change.
2016 had Paradox beginning to experiment with more aggressive sales on the Steam platform, building interest and an even more devoted fan base in the mainstream for what are and historically have been very niche titles. Things didn't always run smoothly, like the 2017 kerfuffle when Paradox increased prices right before the Steam Summer Sale, ruffling feathers everywhere.
By and large, engaging in frequent sales and more aggressive engagement with the broader community has been very good for Paradox both within the industry and within the marketplace.
As a consumer, the emphasis on free weekends, free weeks, and the like is an amazing advantage. For quite a while, we just didn't see demos. So much game purchasing was done effectively blind, with just the promotional material carefully curated by publishers for us to judge.
More digital platforms and generally accessible bandwidth was the thing that changed the world for us. Suddenly even small game creators could put demos and vertical slices of gameplay in front of customers who wanted to see it.
Along with that came something which is arguably more important, the rise of video streaming. At this point, you could have a rich argument about which is more important to publicizing a new game property, releasing something that people can play themselves or paying/interesting popular YouTubers and Twitch streamers to engage in public performance, lending a particular voice to the PR.
In some ways, cheap bandwidth and CPU have re-created the old days of radio advertising, where DJs and hosts would read a commercial aloud, surrounded by the "doughnut" of the content listeners came to experience. People are literally doing the exact same thing in the streaming arena.
Everything old is new again.
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
This post was shared in the Curation Collective Discord community for curators, and upvoted and resteemed by the @c-squared community account after manual review.
@c-squared runs a community witness. Please consider using one of your witness votes on us here
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit