In the last two days I have played Lifeless Planet and Among the Sleep. Wow!, when I thought the first one was short the second one took me less than 4 hours. And then you look at their prices and both are $20, :/ Not the only indies to be over-priced, I can remember Machinarium and Little Inferno being $20 too.

It is not only a question of length, it is also a question of quality. I'm not saying that they are bad, I enjoy the large majority of indies I play, including the ones above, but they are often not very polished or offer very little variety. I can understand and accept that a game from a small studio will have shortcomings, but then I expect a modest release price too. I have the impression that any indie that achieves certain status on the press goes automatically into the $20 price point and it's a shame because they are promoting the same problem that big budget games had, the perception that any game below $60 or below $20 if indie is automatically a poor experience.

Indies are fairly regularly in sales, humble bundle, etc. It does cost a lot of time, money and effort for an Indie to make a game so I don't begrudge them trying to make a living out of it.

ff you don't want to pay full price you rarely have to wait long before it's discounted somewhere.

Machinarium was unpolished? :O
I didn't particularly care for Machinarium, not my kind of adventure game, but I can hardly accuse it of being unpolished. Every animation, ever bit of art, every bit of music was individually crafted.

If you ask me, games in general should be cheaper.

I never said it was unpolished, it was a general statement.

Yes, I think that indie games aren't cheaper because even though the games aren't of "the best quality", the developers spent a fair amount of time creating them and also made a big effort, because they didn't have a very big budget to make things easier. And that's what makes those games "indie" games.

Yup. Sales are inevitable and sell more copies, developers know this. It's not hard to figure out.

Further proof that pricing in video games is quite off. It's all about selling big on release because everybody will forget about it in a week and only remember about it when it goes 50% off or more in a sale. I don't think a problem is an excuse for another problem, but, yeah, you are mostly right.

But indies could "re-educate" us. What's wrong with 10 bucks as a base price and 50% off during sales? Let big publishers go the 90% off route... Who cares?

I would buy Among the Sleep for 10 bucks. Instantly! But I'm not going to buy it for $20, because it's overpriced and I would feel ripped off if I see it in a bundle or in a 75% off sale two weeks later. I'm fine with paying $5 extra to play the game a few weeks earlier (especially if I think it's a fair price). But I don't feel like wasting $15.

No, the price is correct.

The initial sale price is set up as FenixP says, and it also provides the developer with the initial cash flow which is initially needed before it goes on the bundle and sales tour. The day 1 sales are still very important to keep afloat.

There are many out there who want to both try out the new games, want to support the developers and have the means to do so. It is only logical that they then are taken advantage off first. When that well have dried up, it is time to move on the the deep sales - where those who think $10 is enough to pay for an indie game. However, it does not make much sense going out targeting the latter group from day one.

Considering the time and effort it takes to create a game such as Among the Sleep, it just makes sense to try to recoup the costs as much as possible. If you think that it is to much to pay for such a game, then you need to wait until it goes on sale, and that is the price you pay for wanting the game for a lesser price. It is really a win-win situation for all.

See, there is where the modesty comes into place. A game that is fully 2D simply does not cost as much as one that is fully 3D, or a game that has little voice acting and one that has a lot. It is not saying that they are worse in an abstract sense, but they are definitely much cheaper to produce and offer less in terms of quantity than what I consider worthy of a $20 price point.

Oh I'm not saying I like the trend, just that it's there. As far as I'm concerned, games should be far cheaper in general. I'm sure publishers would love to see them try :-P

....

um...

no.

Crap 3D is much easier to make than good 2D.

A good 2D artist is both expensive, and can take just as long to do as a good 3D artist. Given the proliferation of 3D tools and the cut price on 3D engines, the cost is not much different. In many ways, good 2D is just as expensive as it tend to create proprietary engine instead of using something like Unity, Unreal or CryEngine.

Take a good look at the good 2D pixel artist, and see how long it takes them to do a good walk cycle, for example, without the help of 3D software doing the actual animation of the characters.

Me being an idiot time! Or maybe not. XD

This isn't gaming but I do run what is in more common terms a "mom & pop" operation as an innkeeper, and I can say that for us, in many regards, it can be more expensive. We don't buy in bulk and we don't carry a big name which equals partnership and sponsorship which equals HUGE discounts and HUGE favoritism. A lot of big companies get these deals and Joe Schmo in his basement programming isn't getting squat not to mention he is also probably trying to hold down several other jobs as well as take care of family and medical that a big company would have covered. Point being, an indy may be charging more because it's way more expensive for them to produce.

Before buying any game, indie or otherwise I usually look it up on http://www.howlongtobeat.com to get an idea of the range of hours of game play the game offers depending on how it is played through. If a game shows up as only having 1/2/4/8 hours of total gameplay or similar then I probably wont be interested in it at all unless there is something very special/unique about it that strongly piques my interest. If I can buy an AAA game from last year on Steam or somewhere (even here for that matter) for say... $5 that has 50-100 hours of grade-A gameplay in it, I simply can't justify spending $10-20 on any grade-B/C/D game with 2-4 hours of gameplay or some other low figure though. That's just me though too, to each their own. :)