Game value & the gamer community

Recently i have been thinking a lot about the price of games. The reason behind this? Well it started with the realisation that despite the huge price difference between indie and corporate games, i usually enjoy them just as much, and i usually spent way more time on a single indie games then i usually do. This leads me to believe that for me personally, and i know a lot of gamers who agree with me on this, indie games have a higher value for me then "corporate" games do. But if so many of us agree with this sentiment, why don't the big publishers stop publishing the same games with a tacked-on number to the title every year? The same reason the do everything:

Now i hear what you are thinking: the money us gamers pay for their games. While this is absolutely true: there is a much bigger player here: shareholders. The big publishers might be willing to support small indie developers, but shareholders are less likely to do this. Why? Because while there are indie games that have turned into huge profit geysers (think Minecraft, or Braid, or a game that started as a small indie game before it got picked up by valve: Portal), for every single indie game that does this, there are dozens, maybe even hundreds of indiegames which fail to make any profit. Meanwhile, the big titles might not have the huge profit percentages say minecraft has, but their actual numbers are always predictable and profitable. A safe bet for shareholders, which every shareholder wants (if a shareholder wasn't looking for this, he would be something else: a gambler.)

So what can we do as a community? There are a few things i consider beneficial to increasing the general value of the games we buy:

• Say no to safe bets by publishers. When your friends are looking for a new game to play together, don't automatically go for the first modern warfare FPS Activision, or EA, or whoever else just brought out. Instead, take a look at the indie catalog on steam, see if you don't see anything fun there. One of the most fun experiences i've had while gaming has been playing playing Magicka co-op with 3 people. This game, made by 8 Swedish students might not be the most polished, or the most balanced, or the best looking-game of the century, but accidentally blowing up your friends while you try to zap that yeti standing next to him has never been this fun.
• Steam Greenlight. Let me start with this: Valve are my personal heroes. I know there are people who really hate steam, but it has done one great thing for PC gaming: simplifying it for all. If i want a new game, the first place i go looking for one is steam. Why is this? Comfort. Steam has everything in one place. Greenlight is a relatively new initiative from valve, where game publishers can show their (not necessarily finished) game to the gaming masses, who can then decide if they want it on steam or not. This does something other game publishers (yes, valve is more then a publisher, they can be called the biggest indie developers around) dare not do: put the power to decide what we want to play not in the hands of shareholders, but in the hands of the community. We decide what we want to play. You might think this is the same as deciding what games you buy, but there is a big difference: you can't buy the games a publisher decided they won't risk publishing. So what you do? Go to greenlight, take a look, like a few games you think look awesome, and submit suggestions to developers. 
• BUY your indie games. I buy all games i play, because i want to later work in the same industry that produced these games, and i would rather play a few less games and support the developers then pirate, but i know the sad truth is most gamers don't. And honestly, for the big "corporate" games, i don't give a damn. But for indie developers, and publishers struggling to make ends meet, i do care. A few examples:
• World of Goo: looking at various statistics, the developer of WoG, 2D Boy, deduced that only between 10% to 20% of all people who played WoG legitimately bought the game. This is a game that cost 9 euro, less that a movie ticket would cost you. I recently even found this review: "Great game. It's absolutely worth it's price, but since there is no DRM and thus no need to download an additional crack i recommend just pirating it". Really? This is the mentality of the PC gaming community? We can whine all we want about us not getting some big titles, but if this is what big companies see, i completely understand it. 
• THQ. For those of you who don't know: THQ filed for bankruptcy halfway into december, after having partnered with Humble Bundle to make a Humble THQ Bundle with  some of their best titles in it. THQ has a bit of a bad reputation, mostly because they used to release some more crap. They did however take some risks: 
• The Warhammer 40K games. That license hadn't produced any profitable games in a long time, and THQ put Relic on it who made some of the best RTS games of the last few years and a very fun shooter with it.
• Saint's Row, a series that started as a GTA clone, turned from that path with part 2 and Saint's Row 3 was a completely different game, which i had a ton of fun with just messing around.
• Kickstarter. Steam greenlight is great for getting games published on steam, but it doesn't give developers something they need: funds. Kickstarter gives the community a great way to show developers the community loves what they're doing, and allows them to finish the game the way the developer wants the game to be finished, not the way the publisher says it needs to be finished if they want it to ship.

So the next time you are about to buy the latest installment in some big-name gaming series from some big-name publisher, or about to pirate that indie game, think if this is what you want, because there is one thing i believe:

The gamer community gets exactly what we as a community deserve from our actions