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RPG Deals Finale

By Russ | March 26, 2017 at 10:01 pm

Thank you.

On August 16, 2008; I started posting deals on RPGs via LiveJournal. Within a month it became a column at a friend’s site called the RPGO. By January 2009 this column found a home on RPG Land and it’s been here ever since. I’ve done this column just about every week for almost 9 years. In that time the landscape of deals and video game commercialism has changed. Set deals often began on a certain day (mostly Sunday) and continued for a week. Gamestop bucked this trend with its deals starting Tuesday, and PSN has done the same. Nowadays, digital distribution has been normalized. There’s flash sales and deals which occur at the drop of a hat for a limited time. Places like Circuit City have closed. Sears and K-mart have stopped carrying video games. Many of those stores have closed as well.

There’s also RPGs themselves. Several games implement RPG elements nowadays to keep players more invested in the title’s online mode. How many FPS titles have a an XP-based ranking system? And how many of those titles use traits? Collect orbs in action games and level up your skills. Want that sweet part for your racing vehicle? Gotta earn that rank and grind that reputation. Yeah. Our genre is now a part of the gaming meta, and that means it can be hard to tell what is a RPG unless it has a familiar name strapped to it. And even then it may not be a RPG anymore.

So yeah, the world changed. It does that. And these changes mean this column is not needed any more. That happens, too. I enjoy writing and, oddly; I enjoy routine. I still have the monthly column. Games have to release, after all. I am planning on doing a different type of column. We’ll see how that goes. In the meantime, if you’ve clicked on the links which brought you here: Thank you. Happy Hunting.

…and remember to check endcaps in physical stores for clearance titles; while using a search engine’s compare features for buying stuff online.

What? I like a good deal.

-Russell Ritchey

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