14 DAY TRIAL // Recently Steam ran another round of lightning price cuts for a variety of games, allowing gamers to get their hands on stuff like Alpha Protocol, a rather recent title, for as low as 7.50 dollars and throwing in some special deals for groups of more players, built around the idea of Thanksgiving.
All in all it seemed like it was just another wallet busting promotion in the Steam mold, but the company also pushed a connected initiative, encouraging gamers to create wishlists and share them with both the corporate entity that is Steam and with their friends on the service.
The incentive to do so was that a select number of those who created wishlists with at least ten items would get their first five titles for free from Steam, which could potentially mean a pay off worth up to 250 dollars for something as simple as selecting which games one would like to get access to in the near future.
Steam was smart to put the incentive up front and link it to the current set of promotions, but a future might be near where sharing information about what one likes and is willing to pay for could be a sure fire way for at least some people to get access to some of those things.
The gaming market is becoming more fragmented each year and, at the same time, the customer base specializes in a number of experiences and seems to become less likely to try out things outside their comfort sphere.
Don't be too surprised if the wishlist and price cut combo becomes a sign of a future where talking openly about what we like will be a gate to getting that but for a limited time, with an option to pay later for more.
Say you like fast-paced real time strategy, but you only have 1 hour a day to spend on gaming, so you still cling onto old titles even though Rebirth of Starcraft is available.
The publisher would like to sell the game, but you're unlikely to drop full price because of time issues or something else.
But the publisher has sophisticated operation that gathers personal data about potential players and customizes deals to their needs and offers an hour worth of the new game for each day for a month, deducting all of that from the full purchase price after that period.
When you take that future deal, think that it might have all started with wishlists and deals.