aluinie: GoG has got to be one of the finest companies i have seen. One that cares for their customers instead of thinking only about £,$ whatever.
stonebro: I'm fairly sure they do both! :)
The thing is, one doesn't rule out the other. In fact, one is pretty much a prerequisite of the other. With the many debacles concerning game companies in recent years, at lot of gamers have had enough. Intrusive DRM, high prices, poor customer service: for many years, these things have been the norm for consumers when dealing with the gaming industry. But lately, lots of people have had enough. We have so many choices these days, that we don't HAVE to put up with these things if we don't want to. And lots of people don't want to.
For a newly started gaming company, the trick is therefore to provide a better experience than the majority of other companies out there, in order to attract a customer base. Keeping that customer base then relies on continuing to deliver that quality of experience. Once people have gotten used to high quality, they won't accept anything less, as long as there are other places to go.
In essence, it's a positive spiral, for company and customers alike. The company treats its customers well, and in return, they give the company more of their money. The company rewards this by treating them even better, and so it continues.
Companies over a certain size, established under the "old regime", can still get away with treating their customers with much less respect. Case in point: EA hasn't gone bankrupt yet. Their customers don't expect much from them, and they have such a large share of the games being published that they are sure to sell lots of them. The question is, how long can this continue?
As more and more new players in the industry emerge, committed to delivering a high quality experience for their customers, because that is the only sure way to make it, established publishers may find themselves outclassed from below. Huge corporations are much more unwieldy than small ones, so the question is whether they will notice in time to change their ways before it is too late.
I foresee a future in which lots of new companies follow in GOG's footsteps. As consumers, we get more choosy as the number of choices we have explodes. Soon, our range of choices will be so wide that no company, no matter what size, can afford to ignore us. As the world gets smaller, as we all get more connected, new vistas open up ahead of us. New companies are sure to take advantage of this. Where once, you needed local offices with lots of employees in every country you did business in, these days, a single person can, from the comfort of his own home, theoretically reach as wide an audience as a global multinational corporation. This raises the competition immensely. Smaller companies have, marketing-wise, much the same possibilities as larger companies, but with less overhead and bureaucracy. They are more adaptable, and can operate on much shorter time frames. This gives them unique opportunities that larger companies simply cannot keep up with.
Uhm... I started making a brief observation, and ended up writing an essay. Sorry. Anyway, those are my... 87 cents ;-)
