srellim234:
Games- You're looking at this game with an entitlement attitude.
[snip]
But, I can get a watch. Just like I can play this game.
Interesting analogy, but pretty much about apples/oranges. The WGT "game" involves competition against other players, either for credits or just for the fun of it. Where your watches analogy breaks down is that the "game" of watches is to tell time. Anyone who buys a Rolex just for the bling of it is playing a different game. And only a hermit would opt to duff around solo and never accept or offer a competitive challenge.
It's hardly "entitlement" mentality to expect there to be provisions in a public video golf game to at least in some ways approximate "real" golf. Here at WGT, there are no "Po Boy Cinderella story" chances. Enter a heads-up game against the proverbial 'little rich kid' with half your talent, experience and golf (read mathematical) savvy at WGT and you're not at all up against another person as much as you are pitting the equipment you can afford against his/hers. Anyone who believes it's all about hand-eye coordination just doesn't get the business model here at WGT.
And let's spare the "gracious accommodation" sentiments for WGT for providing a free game... if you wouldn't mind duffing your life away with free equipment. As an Internet marketer, I would suggest that ANY online game or other enterprise with a biz model as juicy as WGT -- "the first one's free, kid" with escalating costs per "user" longevity -- can, sooner or later, boast some impressive traffic stats.
Know what you do with those traffic stats? You sell advertising out the ying-yang for BIG bucks. WGT is not a missionary outfit offering "free" golf out of the goodness of their highly suspect hearts. Rest assured, they're sitting on an exponential gold mine. But gouge the geese too hard, too much, too often, and you'll see some of them flee the aggrivation.
Trouble is, methinks WGT has reached a critical mass in traffic to where they can afford to piss off 20-30% or more of their long-standing base users (some say "addicts") and still count on their advertising of WGT in Facebook, TV and elsewhere to keep fresh blood circulating and that ol' "unique visitor" traffic log smoking.
As such, I'm sadly not hopeful that WGT will do anything other than keep gouging. It's bad marketing under normal circumstances, but WGT is anything but a normal phenomenon, and we free traffic stats folks are who did it FOR them. Started out like a nice symbiotic enterprize -- free or low cost entertainment in exchange for building an impressive user base. But once a biz can mount a certain critical mass, they can weed out the Po' Boys and whiners with impugnity, while upping their advertising rates and herding in more golden egg geese at the same tme.
It's just too damn bad that WGT has apparenly discovered that rude but disgustingly valid marketing reality. Great game, but ruined by the ability to totally disregard customer satisfaction. Get pissed-off enough at the gouge and leave -- you won't cause a ripple.
It would take some noble character on the part of WGT to reverse the present trend of customer disregard. Hope springs internal (heart), but that other internal organ called 'marketing experience' (gut) just chuckles that sad little chuckle.