Black Friday Bundle Deal! (Patreon)

CONSUMER FRENZY: ENGAGE!!! 

I have hastily assembled a bundle deal that will run on itch.io starting on America's Thanksgiving holiday, proceeds to Black Friday, continues across Stupefied Saturday, extends on to Have I Spent All My Money Sunday, staggers through Cyber Monday, and ends on I Think There Is Also A Name For Tuesday:

https://itch.io/s/24161/black-friday-fantasy-game-assets-bundle

So, I have some thoughts on all of this. 

As a consumer, hoo boy this season is an endless buffet of savings. Setting aside the relevant worry that one is encouraged to overindulge, you sure can get a lot for a little.

As a creator of things, this season is largely a disaster in every possible way.

Now, I do not want to sound like a Scrooge, neither the Dickensian sort or McDuck. I enjoy being generous and helping people, and always look to provide good value with products I sell. What I take issue with is Discount Culture and the devaluation of creativity.

This... could develop into a lengthy rant if I was to really explore the issues. Unlike a typical Thanksgiving feast, I will boil it down to the essentials:

• Deep discount sales have gone from 'a rare opportunity' to 'a frequent and obligatory occurrence.' What was once a novelty keeps creeping outward. As more is given to consumers, they are desensitized to the value of the discount and so next time, even more must be offered.
• Participation in such events is necessary for survival as a vendor. Few are those who can decide to preserve the value of their work by not participating.
• The cost in time, material expense, and energy to produce high quality creative work does not often go down.

So, what you end up with is a race to the bottom where products are not purchased unless they are on discount, and greater discounts are needed on each iteration to stay relevant. In order to maintain any sort of visibility in the marketplace, you also need a steady stream of new products and a large catalog. The inevitable end of this death spiral is an increasing rate of diminishing returns. In effect, consumers are eating up small producers because only larger entities can survive all the chunks bitten out of their balance sheets.

I don't have a lot of great solutions to this predatory system. Getting in early on a new market before this cycle starts (like I did with game asset packs back in 2013) is one path to survival... but I'd like to stick around at this table without becoming the turkey on everyone's plates. It is ironic that in order to survive in the market I felt compelled to create a discount platform of my own, which only adds to the greater problem while hopefully offering temporary relief.

That's already a lot of gristle to chew on, and I'd prefer you dine on tastier topics. Your participation here helps quite a lot, and so I thank you again for your patronage!