I’ve been advocating buying skins for a while now, but it still seems that a lot of people even within the gaming community consider spending money on skins to be stupid. Without diving deep into psychology and subconscious, let’s be honest that people who condemn spending real money in virtual assets often secretly want to do so, even if they deny it consciously.
This phenomenon is similar to hating iPhones and entering a competition to win one while thinking “I am not going to win anyway.” Our brains are full of contradictory desires and beliefs, which often results in such activities as eating eight chocolate bars or buying a new DLC though you have little money to sustain on to the end of the week. I believe these contradictory beliefs are the reason for entering giveaways. One part of us wants the thing, but not badly enough to buy it, and the other thinks we don’t need it or it doesn’t worth the money. And therefore I decided to try the luck.
My Experiment with Giveaways
I have been against giveaways, and any of the “try your luck” occasions for a long period, which made me quite an annoying person, I guess. However, I decided to find something good about the whole thing as a challenge to myself. And these are the notions I managed to collect while trying to win every single gaming skins giveaway I could get my hand on.
1) Not everything is a scam.
I may sound like a grumpy old man, but most of the time I believed that giveaways were scams. Or at least that they were orchestrated. So it came to me as quite a surprise that most of the gifts and promotions in the gaming field are honest. I didn’t consider the fact that in the era of social media scamming someone is even riskier than it has ever been before. After someone gets caught in your trap odds are no one would ever join your group or participate in your promotions.
2) You can profit from the item you win.
As it usually goes, I won the item I didn’t want that much. After a subtle hesitation, I decided to try to sell it and use the money to buy the skin I wanted. That felt great for a couple of reasons. I didn’t spend a single dollar for the skin I wanted since the skin I won covered the price entirely. And I got the AK-47 of my dreams! I believe this is nearly the same as getting the skin in the giveaway, just takes a little longer.
3) It can help you discover what do you want.
When I can’t decide between two skins, games or options for dinner, I toss a coin. The trick is that relying on the chance helps to determine my desire clearly. The same is with promotions and giveaways. You will either be happy with the item you received or realize what exactly do you want to see covering your AWP. There’s the third option when you chose neither, but then you can just exchange the skin for money.
Final Thoughts
If you have never participated in a giveaway, try right now. They are fun regardless of the fact you win or lose, and I also find them addictive. But probably it’s just my perfectionism and “I’m not leaving until I win at least something” feeling kicks in. Though free CS:GO skins may at first sound too good to be true, as they did to me, most of the time gaming websites use Gleam, an independent service for creating events and promotions. And you don’t lose anything, right?
Written by Alex Miller
Alex is the founder of the csgoreview.com and, as you have probably guessed , a computer gaming fan to the marrow of his bones. Video games and eSports are his calling, hobby, and job, and he considers himself to be very lucky for being able to connect all that. He also studies the gaming industry and writes articles about it on a regular basis.
