Created a wishlist for the first time, but I wonder how this pays off to them...

Maybe they have already selected the games before making the announcement. :p
You get e-mails and gog notifications when an wishlisted game goes on sale, thus encouraging you to buy more games.

That would be unfortunate...

I've currently got 97 titles on my wishlist, and I think all of them are things I would be happy to receive.


I think Sniskerbobberton may also be bang on... That dragon seems a little random, I'm calling Skyrim release on Monday :)

Now that would be something to kick-off the 10 year celebrations.
Also if Skyrim comes, then Fallout 4 will probably arrive too.

I have only 2 titles(star control and Way of the Samurai 3)...
Seems like I'm a minority in this thread.

*chuckle* How to Train Your Dragon maybe.....

:)

edit: The Harry Potter non Lego games?

Could be a number of things.

;)

Not to mention the whole process of looking through the store to add games to wishlist, adds traffic, increases visibility for titles, costumer participation (and obviously engagement to the store), and increases the chances one would actually buy what you spot during the search...

Ref: It's like a giant hug: From Wishlists, With Love Sale now on!.

TLDR: That was the 55 most-wishlisted games on sale. This time might have the additional gimmick that instead of the regular "same freebie for everyone", it'll have a custom freebie based on your wishlist? That'd be neat. I'll assume here that "active" is just "visit the homepage during the sale", so that it mostly works the same as other freebies, and the only quirk is the random game.

I considered doing that. The question is how the free games will be distributed.

- Are they randomly granting one game from everyone's wishlist without other constraints? If so, having only expensive games on your wishlist is good. But they then run the risk of having lots of users game the system by only wishlisting Witcher 3 GOTY, and they probably took that into account.

- Are they maybe monitoring the average value of wishlist-items for all users, looking for signs of trying to game the system, and punishing that by modifying the probability that you'll get a game in a certain price-bracket?

- Are they re-using the code from the pinata/star sales, and drawing a random game from a pre-assigned "pool", just this time without us having to pay $x.99 for it, and limited to only using the subset of that pool that matches your wishlist? (Knowing gog, that setup sounds likely.) If so, then if you can manage to be on the homepage immediately after the sale starts, and have at least one expensive game that's also in the pool (hint: look at those pinata/star sales), it'll pay off. But of course they'll mostly have cheap(er) games in the pool, so if you're not there right at the start, or have an eclectic taste that doesn't have overlap with the pool, you might just not get anything.

- Are they pre-assigning game matches from such a pool/wishlist combination for all "active" users (where "active" there is actually having posted on the forum / bought a game recently), so that the timing aspect doesn't matter? "Non-active" users in that scenario just wouldn't get anything / only get a cheap game from the remaining pool. Seems like too much coding effort without any benefit to gog itself, so I doubt it.

Lots of other permutations and possibilities I can think of, and nowhere near enough information to go on. In the end, I'm just going to leave my wishlist as is. It's my wishlist, for my benefit, and I'm not going to tweak it for the benefit of further marketing. (Though yes, of course, having it stored in gog's system is already giving marketing 90% of the value; and in that case I'm happy about that for them.)

Yeah, as tempting as it is to cut my wishlist down to only some expensive or very desirable games, at the end of the day the stuff that is on there is on there to remind me I have an interest in it and if I dropped half of it I'd probably completely forget about the games.

I imagine they will either pre choose a selection of games and you get one free if it happens to be on your wishlist, or they will be giving away one or two games free that happen to be on a lot of wishlists (thereby fulfilling thousands of wishes with no complicated programming required).

There are 180 titles/ DLC's on my wishlist, I'm pretty sure there'll be a few good deals. :)

Everyone, wishlist Dying Light! It is on my wishlist! Then we can all have it for peanuts!

I personally had a way more important wishlist not only a few months ago, but I reduced it drastically to a very few. Because I want to actually play games, and because I came back to old consoles gaming (and other old PC games that I am sure gog wouldn't have in the future sadly).

So I would be happy if major community wishlist entries are coming to gog's catalog.

In the other hand, I presume that announcement can be double-edged, because it is easy to disappoint people with a such promotion.
We shall see.

I have it wishlisted too. It would be great to have it cheap.