The Yearly Christmas Update Spam

During my ongoing literature review I often discover interesting facts about things I’ve never thought about. Sometimes I can connect these facts with my own observations: The result is mostly a completely new idea why things are as they are. Maybe these ideas are new to you, too. Therefore I’ll share my new science based knowledge with you!

This week: This time, I think about the yearly spam of new game updates that get released just a few days before Christmas.

The last days before the Christmas holidays are always very busy and result more than often in a lot of stress. A last minute Christmas gift needs to be bought, a travel across the country needs to be organized or other Christmas related events need to be enjoyed.

The computer game industry also seems to get very busy around this time of the year as many new games or updates get released just a few days before Christmas. Especially the Christmas updates seem to have become some kind of mandatory goal for many game developers. Of course, this perfectly makes sense, as releasing an update indicates that the game still gets improved and, more importantly, it encourages players to return to the game thus raising the global awareness for it which can result in an increased amount of new buyers. Along those lines, many YouTubers also want to enjoy and show their experiences in a new update which in return raises the awareness for a certain title even more.

However, from a player’s point of view, this sudden spam of new updates and releases feels a bit overwhelming as only one game can be played at a time. In addition, Christmas is the time of the year where I have the least amount of time to play computer games as many other things are more important. Furthermore, once the Christmas updates are released, it often takes a lot of time until new game contents are designed which results in a period of time that lacks new additions to games I already play.

In the end, there is no solution to this problem as players want to have a constant stream of new updates whereas game developers like to maximize their revenues which is mostly possible around Christmas. However, it would be interesting to see if countercyclical releases would result in better sells due to a reduced amount of competitors. The only good thing is that so much content gets released around Christmas that it lasts for several months.

Merry Christmas! (Especially the real one and not just the virtual events!)