Why Do Gamers Buy the Video Games They Buy?

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Video games might have started out as a very small market. But today, this market has grown even bigger than the movie or music industry. Each year, millions and millions games fly off store shelves. Grand Theft Auto V broke sales records of the fastest selling entertainment property ever. While this game and others such as Call of Duty, Battlefield, and Assassin’s Creed sell millions of copies every year, other games don’t sell so well and just sit in store shelves. So, why do gamers rush out to stores to buy some games and pass by others? The answer is not so simple as “good games sell and bad games don’t.” If this were the case, then a game like Persona 4, a critically acclaimed game, would have sold millions of units. While Call of Duty that gets mixed reviews from its fans each year, sells millions of units each year. There are many factors that go into the buying decisions of a gamer. Advertising, gaming reviews, and trends/popularity(how well known a game is and trends by popular people) all affect the buying decisions of gamers.

Advertising is a main factor in determining whether a game sells or not, as it determines if gamers know if the game exists or not, as well as piquing consumer interest in a game to go buy it. You can make a great game that receives glorious review from all the critics, but still not have it sell. If no one knows about your game, it won’t sell. This is just the basic surface of what advertising is for. Now that consumers know about the product, how does the advertisement encourage them to buy it? An academic study by Hermann Ebbinghaus, one of the first men to study how the human brain works, ran a test to see what parts of advertisements people remember best. His findings have shown how adver...

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Guardian News and Media, 10 Feb. 2014. Web. 29 Apr. 2014.

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LIU, HUA-JUNG, and YIH-CHEARNG SHIUE. "INFLUENCE OF FACEBOOK GAME

PLAYERS' BEHAVIOR ON FLOW AND PURCHASE INTENTION. ." Social Behavior & Personality 42.1 (2012): 125-133. Umass Lowell Online Databases. Web. 24 Apr 2014.
Micheal, Pacther. "How Much Do the Programmers Make?." . Game Trailers, 10 May 2014.

Web. 10 May 2014. .

Pewdiepie, . FLAPPY BIRD - DONT PLAY THIS GAME! . 2014. Video. YoutubeWeb. 24 Apr

2014. .

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