Another point that comes to mind is that indies tend to have rather smaller budgets than AAA developers, and are more likely to lack dedicated marketing people; as a result, they will tend to have far less marketing than AAA developers. As a result they're less likely to get the sort of hype that a AAA developer might.

Between the deficit in marketing, the lack of a big name (even if it's just the publisher) to provide recognition, and the greater tendency to appeal to niches, indies probably tend to get fewer individual sales than a similar AAA project, even if they have comparable quality and length, meaning that an indie might not be able to afford a lower launch price.

Speaking of length, for myself it's not as great a factor in determining a reasonable price for a game as I gather that it is for others here; on the other hand, an interesting concept, fun gameplay or a good story can all increase the amount that seems reasonable to me, which are all points on which indies seem to be safer bets than AAA developers.

Exactly and that's the reason why so many artists aren't rich. :)

Definitely. There are few things in life that we truly need. Water, food, shelter and not much else. Everything else is just fluff on top of that to make existence more exciting. We all supplement our bare necessities for survival with conveniences to make life easier, save time, entertain ourselves etc. and we're each willing to spend up to a certain amount of our money on any given thing depending on how important it is to us to have the particular convenience, entertainment etc.

But there is also such a thing as saturation too. When you already have a massive number of conveniences or an endless supply of entertainment, your willingness to spend higher dollar amounts on the next convenience or piece of entertainment is likely to go down simply due to supply and demand. That's as true for games as it is for most of the modern conveniences/entertainment and other optional things we have available IMHO. I used to own maybe 2-5 of the popular current games at any given point in time back years ago and I'd be willing to spend up to $60 for the right game to come along. Now I have like 700+ (no idea, cant possibly even count them all) and could never finish them all if I played 24/7 for the next 50 years likely. :) So very few are worth $60 to me. Not one game that has come out since 2006 has been worth even $30 or more to me. I'd rather have the $30 in my wallet and never play the game. But with 700+ games well... now it's more like I'd rather have the $5 than play that 10 billion dollar budget game, but if it drops below $5 wake me up. :)

The same thing is true for camera and cordless phone batteries for me, as I just did the same thing with them recently too. :) That $100 charger they wanted 10 years ago? $15 now, I bought one. Those $35 phone batteries? Just got 2 for $12. It's not "being cheap" either as some might see it, it is assigning value and importance to things, and I value the money in my wallet more often than owning the various optional things out there which I can live without. :)

Indeed, there is certainly a risk that when someone creates art, develops a game or a movie or something else - that the market may not assign a monetary value on it over time that exceeds their costs to produce it, or exceed it with enough profit margin to make doing it profitable. That risk is inherent in any venture of course. :) But people who are big fans of some artist, game studio or whatnot that feels the urge to help try to contribute to their success can always spend their money sooner than later, and also use forms of advocacy to get the word around as well. :)

hmm.... no... I think 'silly' is the correct one. 'Naive' would be if you did not think it matters being business-oriented, but from the rest of your posts (and previous interaction on this forum), I believe you do know that this is so. Advocating therefore someone to be "less marketing-oriented and less worried about pricing theory" when they need to survive in just such an environment is a bit silly.

Why Indies? is it not a better place to ask this out of the mass prodced industrial games? i.e the AAA buisness? and let the indies to what they do best - make innovative and niche games without considerations except making the games the best they can? You are the one who just advocated them to ignore the markets and so on - but you still want them to be accountable towards a "standard"?

and is it not honest to say that this game needs to be sold for $20, or we will go bust?

more sales != higher profits. You need to find the right balance.

Selling 3 games for $20 > Selling 4 games for $10.

Lots of good points against the OP, I'll just add that it's their prerogative to price their game as they like; up to you whether you think it's worth paying that price, waiting till it's something you like, or moving on to something else.

Starting with a high price has the advantage that some people will pay these high prices, else they would have paid less.

Personally, I agree that nominal prices are too high to instabuy most indies. But is this really the issue or the fact that the games fail to create a strong desire to own these games. So are not-Kickstarted games partially ignoring or failing to analyze the market demand?

I would if books and movies had wide discrepancies in their length that were large enough to matter to me. Most movies are 85 minutes to 3 hours in range, with possibly a very small number going outside of that. If there were movies that were only 15 minutes long coming to the theatre or DVD or whatever for $20 while huge blockbusters can be seen that are 90 to 180m long for $3.50 then yes, I would avoid the very short movie and not attribute much value to it for the money being asked in comparison to the other choices I have available.

Likewise, if I were looking at buying a book to read and a book has 50 pages in it for $20, and the majority of books that I find interesting are 250-500 or more pages for $5 to $10, I am probably not going to be interested in the $20 book with 50 pages unless it is some kind of specialty item that I perceive a much higher value in those 50 pages than in the other books.

We all assign a value to things which is based on how we individually value those things, whether any other person out there perceives the value in the same manner or not. That is to say that other people do not get to decide for me how much I am willing to spend on something that I have no obligation to ever buy in the first place - I get to decide it, whether someone thinks my valuation methodology is rational or irrational under their own metrics or in comparison to something else as you have suggested.

I've decided that I don't ever need to buy any video games again ever, and that if I opt into doing it going forward it is under no obligation, and that if and when I do so I'm willing to spend $3 max on a single video game period as a good general rule because I really do not need any more video games. I may choose to make exceptions and pay more for a single specific game from time to time if something about that game interests me or intrigues me to do so and I perceive it having a value greater to me than the $3 limit I've decided on for the general case. It makes no difference to me whether or not anyone else agrees with this or finds it logical or not or whether someone wants to criticize me in some way. I ultimately get to decide what I'll spend my money on and how much I'll spend using my own criterion, and under no obligations to anyone, and I never need some else's permission to do so, nor do I need to justify my choices nor my reasoning to anyone.

It's a free world, and I'm under no obligation to buy anything, nor to spend a cent more than I feel like spending if I decide to. If that makes someone else uncomfortable, that's unfortunate for them to be bothered by it and I hope they're able to find their happiness somehow rather than me ruining their enjoyment of life with my purchasing decisions. :)

Dind't read the full thread because I'm lazy and jittery (supremely important event in 18 hours), but this jumped at me.
No, what you call "fluff" is mandatory. People go insane and die for the lack of entertainment. You might not need a specific book/movie/game/whatnot to stay healthy, but neither do you need a particular dish or a particular house.

I just find it difficult to believe that anyone is going to go insane out there due to not being able to buy a video game they find interesting and entertaining when there are more video games available on the market right now than ever before in history and at prices lower than ever before in history. With the various bundles and super-sales going on literally every day of the week year round in an ongoing basis, anyone can find something out there that will entertain them for $3, if not less and that's not counting all of the dozens of free game giveaways offered regularly from different promotions etc.

One thing that I may not have stated clearly in things I've said above, which I'd like to try restating another way that might be a bit easier to convey too, is when I say that I've set a price of $3 as my max price for a game - that is just one way of looking at it and expressing it which might be interpreted in any number of ways (positive, negative, neutral) by individual people depending on what it is they are looking to find in the statement. A perhaps better way of expressing myself might be to say it this way instead - I have a huge video game catalogue and don't need to buy any more video games no matter how interesting or exciting they may look. I can just play what I have now and be happy with that, and I'm sure that any rational person would consider it perfectly acceptable for me to do so and not ever buy or play anything else out there again, much in the same way it would be acceptable for me to grow bored of video games as a hobby and just stop playing them entirely. However, even though I have an endless supply of games already and don't need anymore of them, one thing that can motivate me to go ahead and spend money and buy another game anyway (and I've done this many times during GOG's summer promo), is to see a game offered at a really low price that looks like an amazing deal which can be hard to pass up. $3 is not a lot of money and so when a game drops below that price - even if I wouldn't have been interested in it before, I can be coerced into buying something that I do not personally need to own.

The game industry wins because I end up spending that money for something I don't even need and may never actually end up playing. As Running WIth Scissors games said in their Facebook feed a few days ago: (paraphrasing) "The game industry has effectively combatted piracy because we used to play games that we didn't pay for, and now we pay for games that we don't play." I fit into the latter category and I have spent more money on games in the last year than the entire amount of money I've spent on video games in my entire life before that, and I have no reason to feel guilty about it, nor to feel I owe them any more of my money than I wish to continue giving.

If beer won't knock me out skeleton will out of exhaustion of reading his posts. :P

Why are you assuming all the time that being less marketing-oriented will automatically mean going out of business?

You make then a really strange statement of how this plead would make more sense if targeted towards AAA titles, from which I think I can answer the rest of your questions.

The ideal difference between the industry and the indies is that the first one does not have any respect for what they do, they only produce games for the profit. If any of these games is any good is secondary, that is how a business works. Indies, in principle, do not work that way, they are in this for the love of making games, they respect what they do and want to do it the best way possible. Therefore, you cannot ask the big publishers for higher standards because they do not care for any standard as long as profit keeps happening, but you can ask indies because they are closer to their games and their audience.

In fact, that is the only real difference between indies and the industry. Since they are smaller, they are closer to what they do and to the people who will enjoy what they do, but nothing else. If we do not take advantage of that and hold them accountable under higher standards, they will eventually fall into the same, profit-driven, crappy behaviors as the big publishers, especially in times of high competition.

There is a lot of assumptions here and ideology.... go ask any non-indie developer also if they are not " in this for the love of making games, they respect what they do and want to do it the best way possible"... you may not think this is the case, but I seriously doubt that any developer do not think so.

I know a developer whom among other have worked on Barbie games - still he did it for the love of making games, wanting to make the game the best way possible and actually enjoyed the challenge. Who are you to say otherwise?

edit: in fact - these statements are actually insulting to people like my friend.

No, the only difference between indies and non-indies is the constraints set by founders, budget sizes and team sizes. I think this is when you need to define what an "indie game" really is.

How cheap is it to produce is only 1 factor (arguably, the gatekeeper factor that will make many games unfeasible to make in the first place).

Beyond that, how good the game is overall, how novel it is and possibly how much it caters to a target audience (ex: the Trekkie in me went wild when I saw FTL) are the main factors driving prices.

You can have a top production game with fency graphics that it a pile of garbage and which I wouldn't pay 2$ for (I'm sure if I searched GOG's catalog, I'd find one).

Then, you have games that are more cheaply made, but have such a great gameplay that I wouldn't feel bad forking more than 10$ for them.

The adage "work smart, not hard" comes to mind here. I'd take a well-made Indie that was made by an handful over developers over an AAA turkey (or a well made uninspired one) developed by 30+ employees any day of the week.

A philosophical take on it would be: People pay for value, not sweat. Sometimes, more sweat will make something more valuable, but often, it won't. Quality is often an art.

So really, it's up to the developers/distributors to gauge how "good" their game is either for the mainstream or a more specific target audience (for Indie games, it tends to be the later) and price the opening price accordingly.

Admittedly, I very rarely buy games that are discounted less than 50% or that are more than 10$ after discount, but it has happened.

honestly had been thinking about this.to me 15 bucks is probably more appropiate.I know perspectives will be skewed on what represents value when it comes to value in a game, but 20 bucks for a game that last 3 to 4 hours max? ( there's a few last less than an hour?) . Some of the indies on Kick starter should be included in discussions.... the new Dream falls will probably be around 35 to 40 ( personally think this is a bit of a ripoff considering the potential quality of other games being made) on release... I suppose the studio past history, size and quality of product needs to be taken into account but still....I tend to equate indies to old shareware concept and priced accordingly.....