TirithRR wrote:
Well, budgeting doesn't necessarily mean cutting back on spending, just allocating that spending for a specific purpose, etc. They want you to budget hundred of dollars to your gaming allowance.
Yes, that's the definition of budgeting, but the average person doesn't budget unless they are trying to cut back on spending. For a business or a government, budgeting is a way of hiding money in innocuous categories so that it can be there later for emergencies (business) or patronage/graft/corruption (government).
idiggory, King of Bards wrote:
Sure, but considering how psychologically effective the structure of the sale is in specifically breaking budgeting perspectives on users, it's still odd. The structure of the sale, between different sale types, different durations, and one-day structure of each deal, drives people to stress and bargain with themselves over a purchase.
I mean, Steam makes more money off of you buying a daily deal than buying a flash sale. But offering the game as both helps drive purchases. If you didn't grab it on the daily deal, and the flash sale deal is slightly better, it creates the sense of this being your last chance. So even if that sale isn't the best deal, your disproportionately more likely to buy it.
Likewise, if they offer it as a flash sale, and then later as a daily deal, you're more likely to feel like you "missed" the original sale and this is the best you can do.
But the effectiveness of both those strategies is forcing you to think emotionally, not rationally. And my rational brain tells me that every dollar I spend now is a dollar I can't put into savings for a gaming rig. But my emotional brain sees something pretty at 75% off.
I agree with this, and think it was very well written. I've stopped using double spaces between sentences, after using it for over twenty years, because I recently read a piece that explained it was not the proper style to use and my left brain would no longer allow it. My left brain and my right brain have been at war ever since.
And Zam, in an apparent effort at saving space on their servers, will not allow more than one space. There are ten spaces between this sentence and the last.
EDIT: Oh. I made a pun. Edited, Jul 14th 2013 11:38am by cynyck
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"the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country."
Hermann Goering, April 1946.