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General discussion (archive)Good Game Pricing: a lost art?(81 posts)(81 posts)
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This is my favourite topic
Posted January 27, 2010
I am pretty sure Vic Davies actually posted that he would consider a discount on a SI games package if the demand was there.
Unlike a lot of companies Mr. Davies has repeatedly shown a lot of integerity when it comes to his customers and his games. Im sure if you continue to drum up support for a discounted bundle on his site he will at least listen to what you have to say.
Posted January 27, 2010
AARGH! It's more moaning about the price of SI and AE, as has exploded on internet sites galore (see rockpapershotgun). Heck, it's half the price of Dominions 3, and about 1/3 the price of War in the Pacific, which are probably comparable in terms of target market. See Spiderweb for a similar example.
Anyway:
1) Vic recently put out a discount voucher for the game through another website. No huge flood of new sales thus far reported.
2) Vic bundles the two together at a reduced rate. No huge flood of new sales was reported.
Perhaps the thousands of people waiting credit card in hand to suddenly purchase a CrypticComet game if the price dropped missed these deals?
I completely accept that people may not want to buy x game at y price-point. That's great.
I completely accept that people may want to ask the creator to reduce x game to z price-point. That's great.
I cannot accept people describing the pricing policy as 'not sensible', 'poor pricing', 'crazy' or 'nonsense' , because as far as I can see, Vic Davis sells the game at a price point he wants, and enough people buy it to keep him happy and producing games. And for Vic Davis, read Jeff Vogel or John Tiller or whoever.
Post edited January 27, 2010 by dougaiton
Posted January 27, 2010
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Lone3wolf: Full price games : �9.99 or a little higher. Brand new games, probably movie tie-ins, big box, heavy manual, maybe a novella too.

Unless it was made by Ocean. Then you got a gigantic box half the size of your chest with a disc one one corner and a single folded instruction leaflet (which basically said "Move Joystick=Move, Button=Fire" in 12 languages) in another. Empty of content in box and game...
I've seen a few complaints for games like multiwinia saying that it should cost less because it's multiplayer, as if AI was somehow a massively valued part of a game and the rules/graphics/application architecture etc was all so much window dressing. Never understand that...
Post edited January 27, 2010 by Aliasalpha
Posted January 27, 2010
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Lone3wolf: ZX Spectrum, and lets include C64, Amstrad CPC464, Amiga, Atari ST too, games came in a 2-tier system :
Full price games : �9.99 or a little higher. Brand new games, probably movie tie-ins, big box, heavy manual, maybe a novella too. Copy protection usually ran to "what's word 5 on line 18 of page 27, in the manual?" Elite had a lenslock.
They kept that price for 6-18months or so, and then they usually dropped to :
Budget price games : �1.99-�3.99. Old, re-released games, or games the publishers didn't think it was worth pushing the boat out for. Small plastic cassette case, inlay containing tiny-print instructions. Maybe a small leaflet for a manual if needed.
I've always said PC games should have kept to this trend of high/lower pricing.

Interesting idea, but I wonder... I think in some ways they have kept to that trend, its just that inflation and sales-culture have skewed our vision of it. If you buy Deus Ex, or Rogue Spear, or Dungeon Keeper on CD/DVD in the UK, you are buying the equvalent budget line (£10) of the original release (£30). Considering inflation, and that Amiga games were £20 ($40) down to £10 or £8 ($20) 15 years ago, games are probably cheaper in real terms now than they were then.
Posted January 27, 2010
It is all supply and demand. If people buy it at the price they ask there will be no change, but if games are passed over due to a high price you typically see the price drop to a range where it will then begin to sell.
If the entire gaming community stop buying $60.00 games they would drop in price very quickly; of course that will never happen.
My thoughts...
Posted January 27, 2010
Well, the Witcher Enhanced Edition could of easily been sold for $59.95 considering the content and extras that came in the package, yet the game sold for only $39.95 at my local Wal-mart and Best Buy. Was it pirated less?
I personally, was so impressed by the value and the generosity of CDPR, I paid for two copies of it. One NA edition, and extra for an imported UK edition. I'm curious whether this experiment worked out for them. It would certainly validate the OP's point if it did.
Posted January 27, 2010
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Aliasalpha: I've seen a few complaints for games like multiwinia saying that it should cost less because it's multiplayer, as if AI was somehow a massively valued part of a game and the rules/graphics/application architecture etc was all so much window dressing. Never understand that...

It's all a matter of creating a community. Multiplayer games without a community are dead, plain and simple. Thriving communities will not only be more inviting to others, people inside that community will also talk about the game and create an interest. That's the pitfall of online games: a lack of an audience is the worst thing that can happen there. That's why the initial numbers need to be high and then remain high enough to lure in new gamers.
Multiwinia was too much a Darwinia update for many and they suffered from a very poor community to a point where people who bought the game complained on the forums that there was a bug that only showed a few servers when, in fact, those were the only games running :(
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evmiller: Well, the Witcher Enhanced Edition could of easily been sold for $59.95 considering the content and extras that came in the package, yet the game sold for only $39.95 at my local Wal-mart and Best Buy. Was it pirated less?
I personally, was so impressed by the value and the generosity of CDPR, I paid for two copies of it. One NA edition, and extra for an imported UK edition. I'm curious whether this experiment worked out for them. It would certainly validate the OP's point if it did.

Actually, a LOT of people who I know that pirate games bought it. Not only that, they really respect the company behind Witcher (you do know they own GOG.com, right?). I bought Witcher twice as reward for their hard work.
Post edited January 27, 2010 by Red_Avatar
Posted January 27, 2010
I pirated it, then because I liked it I bought 3 copies.
Same thing happened with WoG I pirated that one too then donated 50 bucks because it was very good
Posted January 27, 2010
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Lone3wolf: ZX Spectrum, and lets include C64, Amstrad CPC464, Amiga, Atari ST too, games came in a 2-tier system :
Full price games : �9.99 or a little higher. Brand new games, probably movie tie-ins, big box, heavy manual, maybe a novella too. Copy protection usually ran to "what's word 5 on line 18 of page 27, in the manual?" Elite had a lenslock.
They kept that price for 6-18months or so, and then they usually dropped to :
Budget price games : �1.99-�3.99. Old, re-released games, or games the publishers didn't think it was worth pushing the boat out for. Small plastic cassette case, inlay containing tiny-print instructions. Maybe a small leaflet for a manual if needed.
I've always said PC games should have kept to this trend of high/lower pricing.

Actually Amiga games peaked at £29.99 even when the box contained nothing but a pile of disks. £24.99 was the norm with Speecy/C64 versions of the same games being around £9.99 to £14.99.
Posted January 27, 2010
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Red_Avatar: It's all a matter of creating a community. Multiplayer games without a community are dead, plain and simple. Thriving communities will not only be more inviting to others, people inside that community will also talk about the game and create an interest. That's the pitfall of online games: a lack of an audience is the worst thing that can happen there. That's why the initial numbers need to be high and then remain high enough to lure in new gamers.

So what, because the community isn't created for them they should pay less? I have absolutely no disagreement that players are essential to a multiplayer game but every game struggles to some degree with getting an audience and there's no reason that people should pay less for a multiplayer only game if thats what is written on the metaphorical box.
If they want to generate an quick community, have a launch sale to bring in a larger number of potential customers and write off the loss of revenue as word of mouth advertising. This will be recouped at least in part the next week when the game is back to full price and more people know about and buy the game
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Delixe: Actually Amiga games peaked at �29.99 even when the box contained nothing but a pile of disks

You have to admit though that sometimes you got a LOT of vaue for money with the number of discs you got. if I remember correctly, Monkey Island 2 had 11 and BASS had 14, you really felt like you got something for your money then even if it was just crippling inconvenience and a corrupted disc13
Post edited January 27, 2010 by Aliasalpha
Posted January 27, 2010
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Red_Avatar: It's all a matter of creating a community. Multiplayer games without a community are dead, plain and simple. Thriving communities will not only be more inviting to others, people inside that community will also talk about the game and create an interest. That's the pitfall of online games: a lack of an audience is the worst thing that can happen there. That's why the initial numbers need to be high and then remain high enough to lure in new gamers.
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Aliasalpha: So what, because the community isn't created for them they should pay less? I have absolutely no disagreement that players are essential to a multiplayer game but every game struggles to some degree with getting an audience and there's no reason that people should pay less for a multiplayer only game if thats what is written on the metaphorical box.
If they want to generate an quick community, have a launch sale to bring in a larger number of potential customers and write off the loss of revenue as word of mouth advertising. This will be recouped at least in part the next week when the game is back to full price and more people know about and buy the game

Actually, YES the developer has to make sure the community is there and if that means lowering the price $5-10, so be it. It's better than the alternative: making a game and pricing it at a level where there aren't enough takers to sustain a healthy community. Not only do you hurt yourself, you're screwing over your customers as well.
There's other solutions too like a sale (which he says he wouldn't do) to get enough people in and then get further sales from word of mouth advertising. Or how about bundle sales? Or a proper trial that runs for X days but which is fully functional during that time? These gamers could then mingle with official gamers and boost the community.
I know this sounds harsh but it's just reality - people also pay for the community, not just for the game itself. A crap community can cripple the best game and a great community can lift an average game up and many gamers realise this already.
Posted January 27, 2010
Anyone remember the big videogame crash that followed?
Frankly, at the moment, I'm a little worried that all the steam sales and discounts are killing the market for games. These days even $5.99 games on GOG are starting to look expensive... because every weekend we're getting almost new games at 75% off.
If people aren't careful they'll end up with a situation were no-one buys games at full price anymore.
As for older prices, I seem to remember that PC games when I was young were much more expensive. 49.99gbp was the standard price, and there were a lot less places to buy them, and a lot less discounts. I remember paying 49.99 for Hired Guns (and taking it back soon after) and the same for Populous and Tie Fighter.
I remember gazing longingly at the boxes for Ultima Underworld 1 and 2, but back then a game was about 4 months pocket money.
Considering I can now get games on the internet, and in dollars if needed, and that the standard price of PC games seems to be closer to 30gbp, and I never buy at that price because they halve in price within a month.... i can't say i'm complaining... but i can see why the developers might.
The one area I possibly agree is mutiplayer only games. SI is essentially a board game, but one where every player has to have a copy. 2/4 player discount packs do seem like a good idea.
Posted January 27, 2010
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Red_Avatar: Valve admitted that the weekend sales on Steam brought in 100+ times more profit for a game than for that same game spread over a full month. For many gamers, there's a certain price threshold and the moment a game falls under that treshold, it becomes worth buying. The sad truth is that too many games are above this virtual line for many gamers.

Part of why this works though is because of the perceived value of a game coupled with the rarity of the sales price point. When you know the game is normally going for $50, then you see it will be sold for 3-4 days at $25 before it goes back up to $50, you are more likely to buy the game then. This is not totally about the game reaching some price threshold. It's more about feeling like you got a good deal. If that same game launched at $25, I probably would still wait until there was a sale and so would many others. They set the original retail value bar high so that will be your point of comparison for when a game goes on sale. Then you get the people that feel compelled to own the game at release buying up the overpriced copies, and you get all the bargain hunters sometimes paying more than they normally would because they've seen a high benchmark.
Posted January 27, 2010
Seems to me they charge what people are willing to pay.
I personally don't mind waiting a year or two until a game is below $20 (better yet $10). This not only saves me money on the games themselves but also reduces the need for expensive PC upgrades. (e.g., today's bleeding-edge video card will be bested by a run-of-the-mill $100 card two years from now.)
But quite obviously there are millions of others who will pay top dollar to have it NOW. I don't mind that actually - I view them as the "early adopters" who are the ones paying for the developer to recoup its production costs.
Posted January 27, 2010
high rated
Just a small addition to this topic from our company side.
Pricing + package content in case of TW: EE worked for us very well. And in fact is still working. Game despite its age is selling constantly well (although not everywhere full EE is still available). We get very warm response from gamers from all over the world which translated into (among the others) extremely high ratio of sold boxes to voluntarily registered users.
So it was worthy, there is no doubt about it. Same as investing additional 1mln usd in creation of the EE and also giving it for free for registered users of the original release.
This philosophy is taken directly from our Polish market. Here, when we started company in 1994, there was 95% of piracy, caused by imported from ex Russian countries industrial pirated copies (done in normal pressing plants with a use of the same production methods as original games). So the situation was that original games cost let say 50usd, and pirated cost 7. There was no effective help form government, police and any other authorities, and the pirated copies were freely available in many places.
This made us to develop certain strategy. We started competing with pirates as they would be just other business entities, just next normal competitors:-) Surely we couldn't go as low as 7 usd per game. But we decreased prices of new releases to reasonable 30 usd (more or less PC games still cost that amount in Poland, which is now, still the lowest price point among western countries for PC games) and we raised a packaging and content quality to the level absolutely not reachable by pirates. In fact, we started adding things you could find in TW:EE, years ago. That happened first time with the release of BG1 and we follow this till today. We also started budget ranges below pirates price point (around 6 usd let say roughly) and superb collectors editions. Today we don’t have such a freedom and everything is more difficult cause western publishers observe Polish market after joining EU very carefully and any exceptions from global policies are not so much welcomed (but thanks to things like gog.com or TW we can still find good places to express our philosophy;)
The most important conclusion is that, there is a way to fight with illegal market – which those days means torrents and all other internet downloads. From our perspective, and I believe that it is universal rule, the solution is to find good balance between price and quality, to ensure that final customers are happy, or even better, very happy.
That is a basic truth. Unfortunately often not understood by bigger, corporate companies (with exceptions of course, fortunately). The bigger company is, the more often top guys forget that their fat salaries comes not from mysterious funds, investors, etc, but simply bit by bit from everyone who buys their products. Unfortunately popular way of thinking is to concentrate on how to please shareholders (and analytics, investors and others) and at the same time forgetting that this primarily should come as an outcome of pleasing company final customers. And they, thank to the fact that they are happy, buy more, and become more and more loyal. There is no other way around in long run. You can try to please shareholders and analytics, and investors without solid foundations just to a certain point after which big losses suddenly appears (EA?;) ..same with marketing, you can try to make people buy a new product by spending millions on the campaign (remember Matrix by Atari;) but even if many people buy it and the quality won't be delivered, franchise is dead or at least in big troubles (NFS;)
I know that someday everyone will need to adopt to those or similar rules. But this will take years and may require some changes on the bigger scale, which is separate, more philosophical topic;)
Coming back on Earth;) ..it was very difficult to convince publishers to make EE same rich edition around the globe (with small exception in Russia). But with W2 we hope that we will have better position to negotiate similar things (we are not first time devs anymore;) So please expect the same policy.
..and if some day we will be able shape this kind of things from very beginning to the very final end completely according to our vision, you may expect something more, a lot more;-) We already have some cool ideas;) but for that, right time has to come. And some day will come;-)
Post edited January 27, 2010 by Mikee
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General discussion (archive)Good Game Pricing: a lost art?(81 posts)(81 posts)
(81 posts)