Season Passes on sale
I've been a huge supporter of Telltale Games for many years now, and it's great to see so many great things coming out! I'm really looking forward to seeing how Tales and Game of Thrones play out, and Minecraft just sounds awesome.
That being said, I'm a bit...irked at the moment.
Generally when I appreciate something, I'm willing to pay a little bit more than I otherwise might in order to support it. For example, I don't care that episodes for TWD were reduced in price later, or that the first episode were free, whatever. I bought them at launch, I enjoyed them, and I know that games always drop in price. In my mind, more sales = more incentive to make better products. Other people I know have much more of a "wait and see" attitude: "I'll get it when it's on sale."
With the latest round of sales, it seems that my thinking is backwards. Clearly buying content before it's released is the wrong idea.
I'm a huge gamerscore freak, so when Tales from the Borderlands dropped, I bought a copy for it on both the 360 and the One. I then proceeded to pick up the season passes for each so that I'd get them when they came out. Yes, I bought two passes for the same game, albeit two platforms. $30 for both. (I'm only talking passes here.)
Then when Game of Thrones came out, I did the same. Two platforms, $40 for both.
The second episodes for each have not yet come out, but the prices have been dropped for the passes on the 360 and One marketplaces. I'm assuming the same is true elsewhere, but I don't know. So for those of us who support TTG, it's now been made clear that we should still support the games... just wait before doing so. The passes were a discount already, so buying them isn't a bad deal, ever (unless someone doesn't like the games, of course).
Still, even a 15% discount is an insult to those of us who support a developer on day one, paying for digital content on faith before we know a single other thing about the episodes. As I said, I paid $70 to support TTG for the future releases, and today I can get all of it for $10.50 cheaper. Nothing has changed since I paid the initial. Nothing new has been released, the coupon has just gotten cheaper.
For $10.50 I can go see a movie, buy a Skylander, take my kids to McDonald's, whatever. It's not insignificant. I wouldn't even care except, again, nothing has come out since I bought the Passes.
Lesson learned: don't buy the Passes until at least the second episode has dropped. I should have learned from instances with Halo, Assassin's Creed, CoD, etc (which I no longer support with Season Passes on Day One), but I didn't. Shame on me.
Nevertheless, I look forward to great things going forward from TTG. After all, that's why I invested that $70 on day one in the first place.
Yours truly,
Sashamorning
Comments
Most people pre ordered season passes so they can play the game immediately on LAUNCH. Having to wait 3 weeks before I can buy the game for slightly cheaper is torture For me at least especially when it's a Telltale game.
So I'm glad I preordered a Season Pass. It was slightly cheaper than normal and I got to play a kickass episode by Telltale the exact day it came out.
I think there may be a difference in platforms. On the 360/One, episode 1 is sold separately from the rest ($5). The Xbox does not have a full 5-game TftB bundle, only ep 1 followed by eps 2-5. Two separate purchases. (Same with GoT, TWD, and TWAU).
Therefore I purchased (with no qualms whatsoever) TftB episode 1 for $5, and the SP for the rest for $20. I actually had that same episode the exact day it came out, the same as you did. I also didn't get any discount on the 1st day for the first episode: the discount in the bundle is shifted completely into the season pass. Buy 3 episodes, get one for free, essentially.
I didn't have to preorder a season pass to be able to play episode 1 on launch. Actually, I didn't have to buy the season pass at all to play episode 1 at launch. I can buy episode 1 and wait for episode 2 to drop before buying the pass. It doesn't even bother me that the first episodes are on sale, because they were available to play at purchase. I couldn't preorder anything where it was worth doing so. I purchased the first episodes on day one, but they were not bundled with the passes. I absolutely could have waited to buy the season passes until the 2nd episode, and now it looks like that would have been smarter to do. Which is very strange.
No, what bothers be is having paid for a product for which 100% is unavailable on day one...and then goes on sale before any of it is available.
It isn't about the cost. I've bought TWAU, TWD1 and 2 on disc on launch day (even though I haven't gotten to them yet #REALLIFESUX). I don't have a problem doing so--when the content is available for me to use that day. Otherwise, as I said in my blog on TrueAchievements, this is almost like a "belief tax." I believe in TTG enough to buy eps 2-5 (or 6) sight unseen on day one, but I don't want to be a sucker for doing so and then have that same bundle discounted before I get any benefit. I'll have the same first day access as everyone else does, whether or not they purchase an SP.
The point is, for the 360/One at least, there's no point for the consumers in buying the passes at launch if they'll be on sale before the 2nd episode.
(And no, I haven't gotten to a lot of them yet. School is finally over now, which means I can catch up on all of these and get back up to the TrueAchievements #1 spot on the Point & Click leaderboard again.)
PS for TTG: This has nothing to do with the quality of your games. I hope you can tell that I am a huge fan of your work, and that I hope to see great things to come. Also another note: if you make all of these Live-enabled for PC, I guarantee you'll get more sales. Gamerscore sells, especially with great games. ;-)