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If You Want The Complete Rage Experience, You'd Better Buy It New
By now, gamers are getting accustomed to online passes for games, which give players access to early access to DLC, additional content, or even multiplayer modes. Publishers see it as a way to encourage players to pick up new copies of their games, as opposed to purchasing them on the secondary market. The upcoming shooter Rage has a similar strategy, but it's been woven into the single-player campaign.
As players explore the game's massive wastelands in id's upcoming shooter, they may come across some mysterious hatches that dot the landscape. How can you open them? Well, that's where the code that's bundled in with new copies of the game comes into play.
"If you bought the game new, [those hatches] would be open for you," says id's creative director, Tim Willits in an interview with Eurogamer. "You still have to download it, but you don't have to pay for it. Those hatches are all over. Most people never find them. But as soon as you do, you're like, oh. And then you start to look for it. That's our first-time buyer incentive.
"But as you can tell, most people never even see it. I can tell you, some people will buy Rage, download that, and still never set foot in those things. They just won't. I think that's fair. It's cool. It's outside the main path. We're not detracting from anything. But I know some consumers, when you can't avoid it, then you get a little touchy subject."
What do you think? Does this kind of strategy make you more inclined to pick up the game new, or does it turn you off entirely?
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