Today I logged into the Epic Games Store for the first time in over a year to claim some free games.
This used to be a weekly ritual. I’d open up the shop every Thursday (muscle memory’s funny like that given it’s Thursday today) and get my free games. I figured, one day if my life went to hell, I’d have a lot of games to play to numb the pain.
Turns out my life never fell apart.
Instead my life got better, busier and far more interesting.
I’ve still not finished the Cyberpunk 2077 expansion and anyone who knows me knows I was obsessed with the game, I’ve played like 300 hours.
Apparently our habits can just change.
I used to tell everyone to get the free game of the week
It was a really big deal in my life, one of those things I brought up every chance I could.
While most people never cared, I took pride in my religious approach to game acquisition. Even though I only really play one or two games at a time, and choose giant epic adventures primarily, I collected anything that was free.
I took games that looked good, games that looked trash and really put no thought into it.
My goal was to load my vault with as much as I could, all for this mysterious time when life would be bad and I’d have time to game.
I was such a net promoter, even if most people who got excited were also the converted, we’d compare how long we’d been collecting games for.
It feels significant that it became a memory so suddenly, I wish I knew the moment I stopped caring.
One day I actually looked through the games I got
Inevitably I started to wonder if I had anything good in my collection.
There were the obvious ones like GTA V and other mainstream titles that were clearly fun. However most of the titles turned out to be games I’d not want to play. Either they were too simple in concept, or a genre I wasn’t that keen on playing.
As an example I got a Truck Simulator. I like racing games, but real life trucking isn’t my jam. There’d be mid rogue-like adventures and quickly made shallow RPG experiences.
Despite the fact that there were a lot of free games, it turned out I’d spent years collecting stuff I didn’t want.
I must say there was a deep level of disappointment when it clicked.
I didn't have endless fun, more like 5-10 games I’d “like” to play here and there.
Once the value disappeared so did my brand loyalty
Tying this all into something tangible, we need to think about brand loyalty.
People are loyal to brands as long as they extract value, and that value remains consistent over time. Since often value is a matter of perception, if reality doesn’t meet expectation, we’ll adjust our loyalty without thinking twice. Once it was clear I wasn’t actually getting good games to play, or at least parsing through them to find good games would suck, I was out.
One day I probably got distracted as life was lifeing. Then I didn’t open the Epic Games Store for 2 weeks in a row. By the 4th week the new habit was formed and it was no longer important.
I promise you if I felt excited by my game collection, I’d still be collecting.
Don’t assume that people who are loyal will stay loyal.
People will only be loyal as long as it makes sense, in other words, as long as you keep providing the value they expect.
Live Long and Prosper Everyone
P.S. - I no longer see a life where I have time to play games like that.
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