Someone want to play The Dagger of Amon Ra with dosbox, so I tested both games.
Yes, those two GOG releases could be played in dosbox. :-)

looks great, thanks

you left out actually one part I think,

The game companies in advance, are thinking what is the max they want to put these on sale for,
knowing certain people only by on sales as you said, and also certain people specifically tract the percent of sale.
Some people, at least from reading the forum, only want to by games if they are 80% off.
This all factors into the initial price.

For me, I don't worry about pricing that much, if I really want a game, and I can afford it I by it, if I can't, I wait until its on sale and if I still can't afford it, then I play something else. A $6 game that is fun to play is a better value for me regardless of age than a movie which is going to cost the same or most likely more.

I by the games to play, not digitally collect, although I know many by to collect and not necessarily play, so I understand where pricing in that case is important.

a-big-snip-tm:

oo. didn't know you could do that. thanks for the tip.

i laughed a bit harder than i should have.

have an upvote :P

in the case of some of these very old games, i don't think they're worth much more than a dollar or two at this point, so i am absolutely one of the folks who track the price until it hits that magic threshold.

i'll tell you why i'm in this boat:

a) often, i experienced the game on release - when it was new and when it cost the 1980/1990 equivalent of $60. that was a lot of money then and historically, it was absolutely worth it, at this late date, though? that's been on store shelves for 30+ years at this point. it shouldn't nearly cost that $60. [or, in this case, $6.] to be fair - as others have stated - this is kind of a value proposition.

b) i already own the game in some form. [or have previously owned in some cases.] - i'm merely buying to have ready access to the game online so that when - say - i travel, i can take my library with me. buying a /second/ [third, fourth] copy at an "inflated" $6 feels a little like highway robbery. again. this is a value proposition. and the value proposition for me is: "i think this game is worth $1 or so."

with all that out the way: i'm perfectly willing to throw top dollar at interesting, new, indie games. i feel that the "spirit of video gaming" lives with indies, now and i want them to succeed. so, when the indie isn't being silly [like the tyranny folks and their ridiculous pre-order shenanigans] i will plonk down the $10/$15/$20, etc when the game stops being sold at it's [usually discounted] opening week price so i can help those guys and support them.

i "get" that publishers don't want to set the price /too/ low, but they'd probably get more impulse buys at this point if the games were in the $1/$2 ballpark for a 30 year old [or so] game.

If you are using ScummVM as it is packaged with GOG installers, then yes, you need to tweak settings for each and every game. ScummVM from Game X and ScummVM from Game Y don't and can't interact.

My suggestion is to always use your own ScummVM installation and add games there. You can take full advantage of its global settings and change preferences for all games by just a few clicks. Of course, if there's something that doesn't work well with global settings, you can use game specific settings which override global settings.

And if you want to experiment with things, you can tweak your own ScummVM and have different settings in GOG-installed ScummVM. You should be able to have the same game running in two different configurations with this method, even simultaneously, if you really want to get wild with things.

And to answer your question about audio, you should be able to use any sound fonts or midi devices that are recognized by the operating system. A bit confusingly, there are three different tabs in the settings: audio, MIDI, and MT-32, but if you go through those, I'm sure you can have the audio configured the way you want it to be.

I understand those views, and as a buying customer I appreciate lower prices. But otherwise, I highly disagree with games losing value over time.

With physical objects, such as cars, that is understandable, as older cars usually have more problems and burn more fuel than newer cars. A working incentive to buy an older car (other than love for certain older models) is to lower the price, to have enough price difference, making an older car be worth buying.

With games, I don't see this happening. Unless you are playing games to see them drawing even the last drops of powerjuice from CPU/GPU with spectacular graphics, older and newer games should be relatively equal. What matters is how the gameplay works and how it manages to entertain the player.

Maybe *some* games really lose value (football, ice hockey, formula...) because they attempt to provide a simulation which on one hand relies on being visually as realistic as possible, but on the other hand, having the team names and everything realistically matching the release date. But most games really don't suffer from this.

Especially adventure games, if the story and puzzles were good 30 years ago, then they must be just as good even now. In fact many adventurers insist that the quality of present day games is nowhere near as good as older games, so maybe those newer games should be cheap, and older games more expensive...

What is true though, is that without physical discs and manuals, there are practically speaking no production costs per sold unit, so in that way, older games sold today should cost less than what they used to.

Agreed. I haven't seen any solid facts about it, but anecdotal observation does suggest what you've said. I think their perception is if they let the market decide, the market will gradually only accept lower and lower prices and their margins will gradually shrink, and as that happens it will cascade upwards to higher priced games expecting lower prices as well. Sort of a reverse-inflation scenario. So, the biggest companies that can afford to do so keep their games base prices inflated and wont go below a certain minimum price in order to keep up the inflation of the prices of games from old to new, regular price or on sale. They do this because they can, and if the given game is priced higher than the market supports they're comfortable just selling less copies of the game in order to keep people's expectations in line with the direction of inflation they want to see.

Then I think the only games that drop below that pricing model is from the companies and indie devs whom need the money to put food on the table or to actually fund their next project to stay afloat. It's supply and demand negotiation standard fare for them, and that's where we see many games drop down below $5 or even down below $1 on the indie side of things. They need the money more than we need the games, so the price has no real floor. I just don't think we'll see that from huge studios with a huge catalogue of games with numerous highly successful AAA titles though by and large. They can inflate prices and just ride it out forever more or less as long as they keep putting new games out that are exciting enough to capture mindshare and open people's wallets. Plus the tendancy to nickel and dime people on new titles with DLC and collector's editions and whatnot is high and rewards the model.

As for pricing for myself, I more or less think about it the way you described it for yourself however I normally wait for 75-80% off discounts or more because even when a game excites me or draws my interest I'm almost never so eager to play it immediately that I can't wait. The only game that I can think of that cracked my wallet open on new release (although with 20% discount) in 11 years was The Witcher 3. Other than that, the other 2 most expensive games i bought in the last few years IIRC on a price per individual game basis was ArmA2 on GOG for around $8.50 and Torchlight 2 on Steam for $7ish. Then maybe a few others at $5ish. Next game that gets me going will probably be either Cyberpunk 2077 or Star Citizen once either or both games are officially fully released out of beta.

Virtually all other games go through my "I've got so many games already, I'm not compelled to buy you except whimsically on ultra-mega discount." more or less. :) I do occasionally have a spurt of whimsy during a GOG sale though and buy a bunch of games I don't really need although at great prices at least. ;)

Completely agreed. I can say that while I'm now pretty resistant to whimsical purchase overall because I more or less own a huge pile, $3 CAD for a game starts to tip my whimsy if it is a great game I really want bad enough even if I don't need it, and when it hits $2 CAD or less it quickly becomes something that any rational reasoning in my mind goes out the window and I race to open my wallet to buy games I might never even play.

I dunno how many people like me are out there, but I can say that if every game on my wishlist went on sale tomorrow for $2 or less each I would uncontrollably probably buy every single one of them including ones I don't care hugely about because $2 breaks through my brain psychologically beyond my ability to think or reason. :)

Fortunately I own most of the games that broke that barrier that I am concerned about and GOG, Steam and publishers haven't figured out how to milk my brain and wallet through a pop straw yet. GOG does occasionally about once a year have a sale where I lose all self control though. :) The last one was one of the ones in the fall, but I've held up pretty solid since then.

When CP2077 comes out I'm totally screwed. :) Especially if they end up throwing some lure on it like a CDPR customer loyalty discount as I own all of CDPRs games presently. Ok, lets face it, I should just give CDPR my bank account login. LOL

I felt SWAT 4 and Emperor ROTMK were underpriced (pleasant surprise at the prices), and Laura Bow is kind of overpriced (shoulda been bundled).

I'm guessing in six months or so these games will get down to about -75% off (1.49 USD) on sale, but probably not lower than that.

a) A game from 1989 is still on sale when it should be free. Am i the only one who feels this way?

b) GOG says it's here with no DRM. What kind of DRM could it possibly have? It's so old. Maybe it means those pages with codes, words that you had to find from the manual at the start of the game? Maybe.

It's up to Activision, not GOG.

I have over 1,000 games in GOG, and the average price I paid is under $3 for each game.
Usually I only buy games here in sale, but I just bought both Laura Bow games with the full price.
Why?
Because I think they are worth it.

I loooooove old text parser adventure games, and The Colonel's Bequest was one of my favorite.
I am sad that new developers never make this kind of games again, and I want more new gamers learn to appreciate those damn old gems.

$5.99 is too high for many people, but I think the game totally worth it even in today's standard.

...

I've never played this game (or The Dagger of Amon Ra, for that matter). Are they among the Sierra adventure games where it's possible for the game to become permanently "unwinnable" if you don't use a certain item at the right time, talk to a certain character at the right time, etc.?

Yes. Almost all Sierra adventure games have this kind of problem.
Save early, save often, or you will have to replay it over and over...