News
SavyCharts: January 2012
It’s been a rather quiet month on the new releases front, as January often is, so this month has mostly been about games from last year getting reduced. It looks like a couple of high profile preorders have attracted plenty of attention too. I’m also fairly sure that this is the first month since I’ve been compiling these charts that a PSN game has been at the top of the PS3 chart. Read on to see what’s been most popular on SavyGamer this January:
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Another new thing I am doing
If you’re following me on twitter, no doubt you’ve seen me going on about this since late last year, but if not, this will probably be news to you.
I’m a member of the inaugural BAFTA Youth Board, a team of young people BAFTA have assembled (in their words) “to discuss BAFTA’s Learning & Events programme, Communications and Awards Ceremonies and their relevance for young people in today’s competitive jobs market.” I mainly just pleased that they still considered me to be a youth.
As one of the two games people on the board of 18 members, it’s a fair old bit of responsibility. We’ve already met once, and are going to meeting throughout 2012 to discuss all sorts of things. Hopefully you’ll all keep an eye on BAFTA’s activities, particularly the games awards in March, and send any thoughts or feedback you have my way.
Details on the BAFTA Youth Board here, including all the interesting people that make up the rest of the board.
0Savy Market Share: Retailers 2011
Since I’m always fascinated by the data generated by SavyGamer users, today I’ve had a poke through my records for the split of purchases for different retailers, and compiled a chart of where everyone spent the most on SavyGamer deals. A few qualifiers though: The data only includes places that do affiliate links, so there are some big omissions (Steam for one), also some of these retailers only serve the UK, whereas others will deliver to a range of international markets too. I’ve ranked the retailers in order, and listed what percentage of the total spend of SavyGamer users they had in 2012.
12SavyCharts: December 2011
With 2011 done and dusted, it’s an appropriate time to take a look at which deals attracted the most attention during the always busy Christmas period. Here’s the December SavyCharts, a record of the most popular deals posted on SavyGamer from last month:
0Grainger Games Coupon Glitch
Everyone’s favourite Northern games retailer Grainger Games have got a coupon for 10% off preowned games, accessories and consoles. If you apply coupon “MERRYXMAS”, you get 10% off.
However, they have accidentally set it up so that the coupon applies the discount to your current basket contents, then you can modify your basket, without it updating the discount to reflect the new contents.
You could, for example, add all of the used consoles they have in stock here, apply the coupon, then remove all the consoles but one, to get a massive discount applied to the console.
Have fun, they might update the website in the morning.
18Merry Christmas From SavyGamer
Happy 25th day of the 12th month, fellow human beings. I thought it was appropriate to momentarily take pause from my quest to find all of the cheap games to deliver a soppy Christmas message.
Whatever your plans are, I hope you have a lovely Christmas, and that you and your loved ones stay safe. Have fun stuffing your tummies with delicious Christmas food and drink!
2011 marks the year where SavyGamer has developed from being a fun hobby with an ambition for the future, to a proper job that I earn a humble but comfortable living from (alongside my other work). As such, in January I’m going to be making the bold step of moving out of my parents house into a nice little flat in London, and it’s you lot who are going to be paying my rent (mostly). Thanks for that!
As we enter SavyGamer’s 5th year (The 5th anniversary is the 3rd of May, mark your calenders), I suppose I should reassure you all that I am in this for the long haul. I’m totally committed to the cause of video game frugality, and really my brain isn’t assembled in the right way to cope with many proper jobs, so I don’t know what else I could possibly do. You can expect this site to have a long and healthy life into the future, and in fact, I’d say I’m just getting started.
Thank you dearly for your continued patronage of SavyGamer, your words of encouragement and support, and for spreading the SavyGamer name about. Don’t think it goes unappreciated. Extra special thanks to all the SavyGamer subscribers. You’re the best.
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More love than you’ll ever realise,
Lewie Procter
PS
Aren’t Will & Tony doing a brilliant job of the Steam sale this year?
12One Savy Left Or Something
Check it out kids, I was on the radio the other day. Here’s the evidence of said radio appearance. I hope you don’t think I sound like an idiot.
6SavyCharts: November 2011
As we enter the final month of the year, the serious discounts are flying thick and fast. Most of the big games of the year have been released now, but we’re bound to see more heavy discounting in the run up to Christmas. Here’s my rundown of the most popular deals posts on SavyGamer from November.
1Declaration Of Interest: Indie Royale
Starting today, I am employed by the digital distributor Indie Royale in a support/community role. I will also be writing for INDIE GAMES: THE WEBLOG, which is part of the same company.
SavyGamer has always been fiercely independent, and will continue to be so, as long as I’m in charge.
This is a part time position, and will still leave me plenty of time to run SavyGamer.
10What games do you want me to look out for good prices on this Christmas?
Christmas is a time of year when the many retailers of the land reduce their prices to tempt you to send money their way. It’s also a time of year people might have presents to buy, and hints to drop to loved ones about presents they want for themselves.
I’m going to be doing my best to catalogue the best deals available, as always, but if there are any specific things that you’d like me to keep an eye out for discounts on, let me know in the comments and I will do my best to help you out. Make sure to include what format you are after with any game requests.
Then make sure you’re subscribed to SavyGamer (either by RSS or Twitter), and I’ll post the best deals for people’s request as I see them. It’ll be a Christmas miracle.
67SavyCharts: October 2011
It’s been a busy month for SavyGamer, with lots of big releases either having just come out, or fast approaching on the horizon. But which deals were the most popular this month? We’ll I’ve delved into the mass of data generated by SavyGamer users, and compiled a chart highlighting which games have caught your attention the most. Here’s October’s SavyCharts:
0SavyCharts: September 2011
I’ve just finished scouring the data generated by SavyGamer users for the month of September, and there’s some interesting trends. Here’s an info dump of the most popular gaming deal posts on SavyGamer over the last month, and a chart of the most popular games by search. The number one slot may come as a surprise to you, but whilst this fantastic launch offer is obviously attracting a lot of attention, it remains to be seen if they will be able to maintain continued interest. Here’s the September SavyCharts:
5SavyCharts: August 2011
As introduced last month, here’s the regular monthly chart of which SavyGamer deals have been most popular. Deus Ex: Human Revolution has been the most sought after game by SavyGamers in August, and the PC is totally dominating the top ten. Part of the reason for the popularity of the PC amongst SavyGamers will be because of my close relationship with RPS, but also I think there is more to it than that. What’s your theory?
8SavyCharts: July 2011
Here’s a new thing for you. I can be a bit a of a nut when it comes to looking at analytics and other such data, and I thought you lot might enjoy having a poke around at the wealth of data generated by SavyGamer users. Welcome to SavyCharts, where I track what games are most popular amongst SavyGamers. I might expand it to include other data later on, but for now I’m planning on putting out a monthly chart of which deal posts have been most popular (measured by pageviews), and which games are being searched for the most. Hopefully you might find this of interest.
12Let’s fix game retail
If you’re following me on twitter, you will have seen that this morning I indulged in a hobby of mine: moaning about things on the internet. GameStop, the massive games retailer from the US, has recently launched a UK based site. Annoyingly they were charging £2 delivery per item, which is more than their shipping from GameStop.ie to England is.
I let them know what I thought, and to my astonishment, they responded by changing this policy, and making standard shipping free. Good on them.
This got me thinking, I bet there are dozens of things other retailers with policies or rules which are either annoying, or harmful to their customers. I’d love to hear from you lot about what you’d like to see changed. We probably have to pick our battles here, it’s easiest to change the world a little bit at a time.
If you lot all let me know which particular policies retailers have that you are not happy about, I will pick what I think are the most worthy and realistic causes, and initiate a dialogue with the retailers in question to see if I can get anything done about it.
Please share any ideas in the comments.
Who knows, maybe control over GameStop is the extent of my powers, but I think it’s worth a try.
56So You Want To Be A Games Journalist
It’s a new world. The old rulebook is now history. Read it (starting here), and sort through which bits of the wisdom contained in it are timeless, and which bits are relics from the past. Then come back here.
The profession of writing words about video games has rapidly changed over the last few years, largely disrupted by the internet, and technological progression shows no signs of slowing down. Convincing someone who runs a magazine to give you a job is still a viable route into employment, but there are plenty of opportunities elsewhere, and that’s what I’d like to talk about here.
Here’s my guide to becoming a ‘Games Journalist’ in 2011, primed for some whippersnapper to consign it to the history books in another five years time. I’m going to focus on passing on things I’ve learnt from my own experiences, and looking at what’s been going on around me. Currently about 1/3 of my income is from writing for other places on a freelance basis, and over the years I’ve written for Rock Paper Shotgun, VG247, Eurogamer and a few others. Hopefully I’ll have something to say that is useful to some people, but I look forwards to seeing what my peers have to say too.
21SavyGamer Downtime: I’m off to Glastonbury
It’s that time of year where I take some time off from informing you about cheap games. I’m going to be spending the next week and a bit at Glastonbury, so there won’t be many updates on SavyGamer til I get back (on Monday the 27th). Don’t go doing anything crazy like start buying games for full price. Hopefully the other contributors will be around to pick up some of the slack.
What better time to consider donating or subscribing to SavyGamer? Festival cider is expensive. A big thanks to all the people who have already subscribed and/or donated.
Follow my festivals antics here, and give me a shout if you’re going to Glasto too.
4My new Eurogamer thing: Cheap This Week
Check it out kids, starting today I’m going to be doing a weekly roundup of deals for the fabulous Eurogamer.net. You can read the first instalment of Cheap This Week here.
So if round the clock deals from SavyGamer, and my RPS Bargain Bucket every Saturday aren’t enough for you, pop along to Eurogamer every Wednesday for a selection of the best deals across all platforms.
Big thanks to everyone at Eurogamer.
4Details on free PC/Mac version of Portal 2 with the PS3 version
Valve just put out a press release, including this information:
Steam on the PS3 provides access to all of these features once the player has linked their PlayStation Network account with a Steam account, which is done right within the game. A Steam user can login to an existing account, and anyone new to Steam can create an account with the click of a button. In the spirit of Steam Play, linked players of the PS3 version of Portal 2 can also access and play their copy of Portal 2 on any PC or Mac by redeeming an in-box access code on their computer. The Steam client verifies the linked customer and then lists Portal 2 among their library of Steam games for PC and Mac.
So, it sounds like you need to have a PS3 connected to the internet, and to pair your PSN account with your Steam account (with Portal 2 in the PS3). Once you have a Steam account that is linked with a PSN account, you register the single use serial on the PC version of Steam to get Portal 2.
This indicates the following:
Two people can play co-op together (One on PC/Mac, one on PS3) with just one copy of the game, as long as you used a different PSN account to the one paired with the Steam account being used.
You will need to own (or have access to) a PS3 to be able to register for the free PC version.
Once you have registered the PC/Mac version, there shouldn’t be anything stopping you trading in the PS3 version.
You can get the PS3 version for £29.99 delivered here.
Edit: This is somewhat speculation on my behalf, I don’t have any more information that you, but I guess we will find out for sure soon enough.
19Trading in: Avoid being a mug in a mug’s game (2011)
This is an updated version of a guide previously posted on SavyGamer in 2009.
Trading games in is damn convenient, but it is an easy way of haemorrhaging money without even realising exactly how much you are spending. There is a technique that you can use to massively improve the return you get on trade ins, that makes it almost good value.
21SavyGamer: Now with optional subscription option.
I have decided that I am going to ask you fine people if you would like to consider optionally donating some money to me for running SavyGamer. I explain everything in detail on the donation page here, but feel free to ask me any questions about it in the comments here.
49A TV programme about Video Games
Specifically the Dare to be digital student games competition. This is what SavyGamer contributor Will Templeton has been working on recently and last year. It’s designed to be watched by a general audience, so everything’s explained clearly. One of the saddest things is seeing Realtime Worlds (who were mentors to some of the students) still being referred to as one of Dundee’s giant studios.
You can watch it on 4od here, and parts 2 & 3 are on over the next two weekends.
Well done Will.
6Free App Hero – Let me tell you about this app
As you may have noticed, there has been much more activity in the iPhone category for iThing gaming bargains recently. That’s because Stu Campbell has taken the Savy Reigns for that area. Since I am far from an expert, and he has a seemingly encyclopaedic knowledge of the iPhone gaming scene, he’s far more capable than I.
Another thing that he does is Free App Hero, an iPhone App for tracking free games.
It has one section dedicated to games that are permanently free, and one constantly updated section with temporary giveaways. It does not include any ad supported games, “lite” versions or freemium games, and unlike every other free app tracker I have seen, every single game posted has been hand selected, rather than automatically scraped from the store. Every game has a snappy review, so you can decide whether it’s even worth your time installing.
It has a lot of the same ethos as what I try to do with SavyGamer, and I’d say if you have an iThing and like games where you use your fingers to touch the screen, it is a must have.
It’s available for £1.19, or a free version, which is ad supported and is missing some games, and Stu wrote about it himself here.
7Zavvi announce 3DS price drop
Alert SavyGamer reader Justin just let me know that Zavvi have emailed him to let him know that they will be dropping the price of the 3DS tomorrow.
They’re currently selling the console for £217.85, much more than the best price elsewhere (£197 from Amazon).
Here’s the email in full:
2Hi *Customer*,
Thanks for placing your order with zavvi.com. We are pleased to let you know that we will be reducing the price of your 3DS. A refund of the difference you paid upon placing your order will be processed automatically back to your account shortly after despatch of your order. You can view the new price tomorrow Click here.
Should you have any further questions please contact us through your online account message centre or on 0844 264 0702 and we will be happy to help you.
Many Thanks,
The Zavvi Customer Care Team
Zavvi 15% off coupons now expired
It seems that despite the initial terms and conditions for Zavvi’s 15% off coupons saying that they would be valid until the end of March, The Hut Group have decided to end the promotion early.
The Britvic “Reward your Thirst” promotion page has been updated with this message:
Zavvi.co.uk (The Hut Group Ltd) has announced its withdrawal from the Reward Your Thirst collector mechanic as of 04.02.11 in accordance with the Terms & Conditions.
The web site looks like this if you are curious.
It also looks like they have revoked any previously issued coupons (none of mine are working). No word on whether they will be cancelling preorders or not, let me know what happens to any of yours.
We had some good deals I suppose.
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