Having too much of something isn’t always a net positive.

Too many Spiderman’s boil the soup?

Or at least, that is the common wisdom on the matter… (no, not the Spiderman thing), the “too much of a good thing is a bad thing” thing. So says gaming marketing analyst Chris Zukowski, who Gamesradar initially reported on, but that I stumbled upon randomly reading Gamespot’s reshare of the matter. In his dictation on the industry at large, and how Valve has managed to understand and deliver on gamers needs, the unstoppable monster known as Steam has continued to succeed year after year, and Chris points out why: at heart, gamers are hoarders:

“The power of Steam as a platform is that it enables hoarding….knowing Steam players are hoarders explains why you give (Valve) that 30% (cut): You get access to a bunch of drunken sailors who spend money irresponsibly.” He continues by saying-“Don’t be discouraged by that! This is totally normal for Steam…If Steam shoppers were rational and only bought games they were going to play, we would sell a lot fewer games. Half this industry would be gone.” Finishing up his sentiment by pointing out a distinction about genres- ‘Ah, I love open world survival-crafting games! I know this! I am definitely going to play this once I am finished with the other 20 OWSC games in my collection.’ If your genre is ambiguous, you won’t be picked up by hoarders.”

Kind of pointing out what we all know, but an accurate analysis remains as such. Valve figured out a long time ago just how gamers spending habits work, and realized, there is no game quite like gamification, and when you create a metagame around commodification, the results are major bank. Gamers end up getting into the very habit of just collecting games, even if they’re still just digital representations of the experiences, because at the end of the day, any system of metrics that can be judged by numbers, will ultimately be categorized, understood, and mastered by those that often seek to glamorize any hobby, whether it be a game collection or just a shiny conglomeration of dice for goodness sake.

If one combines this simple notion with the idea of eye catching and spontaneous sales, creating some kind of fun seasonal event while simultaneously saving the consumer money, making *most* of Steam fairly painless and straight forward to us as possible, while also adding the extreme functionality of placing all of your software into one convenient place, you’ve got the perfect storm of digital finance a brewing. I have yet to even mention adding multiple other layers of metagaming to the mix, with mastery and competition of all sorts to be privy to, whether it be Steam trading cards, achievements, or even having a go at the insane notion of in-game collections of hats, there is literally no end to the commodification and gamification pipeline when supplying the dopamine seeking, addiction riddled, bad habit prone, thirsty consumer just wanting another shiny object to look at or cheap novelty to enjoy for three seconds.

Consumers are easy marks: hell, they willingly consent to their own exploitation, you just gotta know in which ways they enjoy being exploited. When I worked in a toy store years ago, I was always amazed just how intense a five minute love affair with some cheap shiny bit of plastic some random kid could have in the blink of an eye, going from totally obsessed to absolutely over it in the time it took to see it on the shelf, to being checked out at the counter, and barely making it out the door before they lost complete interest. Some extremely insane plastic love affair; matched and nearly rivaled both the speed and efficiency of a commitment involving the traversal of a revolving door.

Who am I to judge? If that’s how one gets their rocks off and they (or someone who loves them) work hard for the money, be my guest. One person’s retail therapy is another person’s healthy economy.

~Pashford