As soon as the calendar month tag flips to December, all hell breaks loose: the PR departments switch to hyper drive, Marketing overdoses on dirty tricks and retailers go out of their way to create a “new and exciting” web of promotions in which they hope the naive, unsuspecting consumer will get caught… again. No matter how old, cheap and obvious the whole ritual is, customers act surprised each and every time and go along with it, sacrificing embarrassing amounts of money on products they would normally ignore if it was June. I wish I could say gamers are special, that they developed some sort of immunity when it comes to advertising and that years of experience have thought them not to go with the flow, not to believe that shiny and cheap means better, and not to let themselves mind controlled by simple spells such as “Holiday Special!”. But I would be lying to say that and the sales reports released by big companies would only come to underline what a big fat liar I am.

Take this one for example: did you know that the reported Thanksgiving sales for Wii in the US have reached the record breaking figure of 1.5 million units? I can’t even begin to realize the significance of that number, of the amount of money wasted. You could feed a small country for months with that amount of cash and I can’t stop thinking of the hypocrisy that stands behind the whole thing: wasn’t this type of holiday meant to say something about love, compassion and all the other feelings that make us yawn for the rest of the year? And don’t even get me started on the fact that we are talking about the Wii, the worst console out there, the tiny mentally challenged jester that can only do dumb jokes and old tricks. Also keep in mind that this is Thanksgiving, not Christmas, this is a holiday celebrated in only a handful of countries and not a worldwide event, this is the calm before the actual storm. And what a mighty storm this will be. Care to guess what the sales will be when the whole Christianity unites under the banner of shopping frenzy? I don’t – I’m having trouble sleeping as it is, without having to deal with such nightmares also.

The whole fun started already. Everywhere you turn you see Christmas packs, holidays special offers and discounts, gift lists and recommendations. Gamers rub their hands together in expectation and most game developers are rushing their last products out now, hoping that proper marketing combined with the season hype will boost their sales to unprecedented values, which will probably be the case. Did you know there is no game release planned and confirmed for this year after the 19^th of December? Why? Because that would be a financial suicide given the fact that consumers’ purchasing power will be drastically reduced after the 24^th. So as a developer, if you can’t make it until Christmas, you better hold your horses and wait for next year’s first paychecks to come out before releasing your product, otherwise the game in which you have invested so much work, time and money will go unnoticed and will lie on some shelf covered in dust. And this is all because everybody knows that a game should be released before the birth of Christ and not after. Silly, isn’t it?

What’s really sad and disturbing is actually not that the Christmas holidays have turned over the years into a marketing abomination that turns the normally calculated and patient consumer into a mindless zombie, but the fact that amidst the chaos a lot of products of questionable quality get the same attention as top games or platforms. You don’t have to be a sales mastermind in order to think this up – this is not related to ingenuity, but more to common sense. This is that time of the year when unfortunately a lot of gamers let their guard down and end up owning stuff they are ashamed of by the time February comes knocking on the door. Stuff the bought simply because they thought “why not buy it if it’s on sale?!”. The way you spend your money has a more profound meaning to the way the game industry evolves than you think. By purchasing a product you support a developer and basically encourage him to keep creating games or consoles. This support sometimes comes in the detriment of another and on large enough timeframe it can be translated into the success of a company or its demise. So if you are not comfortable with the idea of a possible future in which the only available console is the Wii or the only decent game you can play is another mutant form of Mario, then these holidays try to spend your money wisely. Look at it this way, this Christmas give your favorite developer the best gift he can hope for: purchase his game and his game alone.