I’m uncertain about how many of you are familiar with this game, or the company that is bringing it to North American shores. Recettear: An Item Shop’s Tale was released on September 10th, 2010 and though it was a very low budget game, it is creating quite the spark among game enthusiasts. The game’s success is indicated by its miraculous appearance near the top of Steam’s (a digital game download service provider) top seller list, competing head to head with games that are multi-million dollar projects. The price for the game is a ridiculously bloated $19.99 for a budget title, and yet they are flying off the virtual shelves. Where does it’s success lie?
It seems to me that the company; Carpe Fulgur, has done quite a good job of trying to sell itself rather than the game. They have marketed themselves as a company that cares about the people who are buying the game, that listens and actively improves their product in order to better fit the gamer. You’ll see that Recettear is getting rather mixed reviews, it is an innovative game, without doubt, but it is hardly flawless. Plenty would say the game just doesn’t deserve the kind of attention it is currently getting.
The reason Carpe Fulgur is such a success is because it has decided not to implement any sort of DRM in the game. DRM is a major hot topic with gamers at the moment and I suppose a bit of background information is needed. DRM stands for Digital Rights Management, and essentially it is any type of technology that prevents people from pirating games or sharing them. This could be as simple as assigning a CD Key or using SecuROM disks to stop copies from being made. Major companies like Activision and EA have been pooling incredible amounts of money into researching new ideas and technology to lock down any possible way that a game could be pirated. In the past, when the best technology around was just the use of a CD Key, gamers didn’t pay too much attention to it. However, in the last few years, gamers are feeling that companies are actually hurting the people who buy the game itself more than frustrating pirates. Ideas like registering computers or detecting where games are being played are causing such a hassle for people who genuinely buy games, that DRM has become a term that is almost synonymous with greedy companies implementing policies that don’t make sense.
Carpe Fulgur has taken full advantage of the hate for DRM that is all over every major gaming website, and sold itself as the exact opposite. The game has zero protection and is completely open to pirates. It’s even more vulnerable that the toonie games that have been stuck in the Staples discount bins since I was born. Even though all games sold through Steam have DRM automatically provided, Carpe Fulgur has provided a patch to undo that particular safety feature. The company has also tried to appeal to their customers through a variety of other methods that are not as significant.
For one, they have released a demo of the game that is fully playable, which is opposite to yet another trend. Publishers have been distributing game demos that are becoming ever shorter for two reasons. The first is the obvious, where gamers may opt not to buy the game if they have a very playable demo for free. But the other is actually a rather horrendous practice of focusing development on a very short segment of the game and using it for the demo to misrepresent the game as a whole. Needless to say, a full demo is very much appreciated by many. I can continue to mention the various minor details Carpe Fulgur have used, such as their constantly updated blog, a forum where the publishers are actually replying, and so on, but I think the point is clear that Carpe Fulgur has very well portrayed itself.
The effectiveness of this marketing strategy is tremendous. Carpe Fulgur knew full well that gamers have been so upset regarding these key issues that there have even been boycotts for major releases, and thus, they have managed to attack their competitors, and appeal to their customers at the same time by observing their environment. It seems that many of the people who have purchased the game do not intend to actually play it, or rather, had no interest in it at all. Many have bought the game to support the “groundbreaking ideals” of this publisher, others have done so in hopes that other publishers would take notice of all the things these people are doing right. Whatever the reason, it is clear that Recettear is making a huge splash. I personally have bought a copy of the game, though I do have the intention of playing it.