Video games may have started out as a very small market. But today, this market has become even bigger than the film or music industry. Every year, millions and millions of games fly off store shelves. Grand Theft Auto V has broken sales records for the best-selling entertainment property of all time. While this game and others like Call of Duty, Battlefield, and Assassin's Creed sell millions of copies each year, other games don't sell as well and simply sit on store shelves. So why do gamers rush to stores to buy certain games and miss out on others? The answer isn't as simple as "good games sell and bad games don't." If that were the case, then a game like the critically acclaimed Persona 4 would have sold millions of units. While Call of Duty, which receives mixed reviews from its fans every year, sells millions of units every year. Many factors go into a gamer's purchasing decisions. Advertising, game reviews, and trends/popularity (the awareness of a game and the trends of popular people) all affect gamers' purchasing decisions. Advertising is a main factor in determining whether a game sells or not, as it determines whether players know if the game exists or not, as well as generating interest in a game for the consumer to go out and buy it. . You can make a great game that gets glorious reviews from all the critics, but still not sell it. If no one knows your game, it won't sell. This is just the basic surface of the usefulness of advertising. Now that consumers know about the product, how does advertising encourage them to buy it? An academic study led by Hermann Ebbinghaus, one of the first men to study how the human brain works, conducted a test to see which parts of advertisements people remember best. His findings showed how the ad...... middle of paper ......ian.com.Guardian News and Media, February 10, 2014. Web. April 29, 2014.flappy-bird-ebay-app-store>.LIU, HUA-JUNG and YIH-CHEARNG SHIUE. “INFLUENCE OF FACEBOOK PLAYER BEHAVIOR ON PURCHASE FLOW AND INTENTION.” Social Behavior and Personality 42.1 (2012): 125-133. Umass Lowell Online Databases. Internet. April 24, 2014. Michael, Pacther. “How much do programmers make?.” . Game Trailers, May 10, 2014.Web. May 10, 2014. .Pewdiepie, . FLAPPY BIRD - DON'T PLAY THIS GAME! . 2014. Video. YoutubeWeb. April 242014. .