Examining Indie Game Pricing 188
As the second Humble Indie Bundle flourishes, having taken in over $1.5 million in pay-what-you-want sales, the Opposable Thumbs blog has taken a look at indie game pricing in general, trying to determine how low price points and frequent sales affect their popularity in an ocean of $60 blockbusters. Quoting:
"... in the short term these sales are a good thing. They bring in more sales, more revenue, and expand the reach of games that frequently have very little marketing support behind them, if any. For those games, getting on the front page of Steam is a huge boost, putting it in front of a huge audience of gamers. But what are the long-term effects? If most players are buying these games at a severely reduced price, how does that influence the perception of indie games at large? It's not an easy question to answer, especially considering how relatively new these sales are, making it difficult to judge their long-term effects. But it's clear they're somewhat of a double-edged sword. Exposure is good, but price erosion isn't. 'When it comes to perception, a deep discount gets people playing the game that [they] wouldn't play otherwise, and I think that has both positive and negative effects,' [2D Boy co-founder Ron Carmel] told Ars. 'The negative is that if I'm willing to pay $5 but not $20, I probably don't want to play that game very much, so maybe I'm not as excited about it after I play it and maybe I drive down the average appreciation of the game.'"
IMO (Score:2, Insightful)
Personally, I wouldn't have bought those games at larger price. Gish and World of Goo maybe, but others are so so and not that interesting. You will find lots of more fun from Steam sales or Good Old Games. But since I could get them cheaply (I paid $5 so I'm not a total jackass), could as well get them to fill up my Steam games list.
more demos (Score:5, Insightful)
Problem is... (Score:5, Insightful)
... indies are competing with discounted AAA games from years prior. It's hard to charge ~$20+ dollars for an indie game when you can get yesteryears hit games for the same or less.
People will always pay exactly what they want (Score:4, Insightful)
Publishers who suffer massively from piracy should re-think their product pricing. A customer will only pay what they want anyway.
$60 blockbusters ??? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Very Sad. (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd love to play black-ops, but not at 60 bucks. I bought MW2 at that price, the last 1/3rd of the single player campaign sucked, and the multi-player was cheap radar/wall hacky/wonky death from above garbage, and don't even get me started on the console bullshit matchmaking. Just because they throw 30 million bucks into production does not guarantee them my hard earned cash either. Will I buy it and play it? Probably, once it hits 20 bucks on steam in a year or so. Or I can pick it up used at about that price for the xbox.
Too many of us have been burned by buying something that was nothing but over-hyped crap. Apparently it's not just me who is tired of it, I'm no longer bleeding edge, I don't have to have it right when it comes out, specially if I know its something that I'll be able to buy at 1/2 price in 6 months.
Re:Think back to (Score:4, Insightful)
This. We've even recently pointed out [slashdot.org] how possible it is. You absolutely must be creative, though, and come up with novel gameplay that a lot of people (not necessarily including yourself) will enjoy. You will never be able to compete with the big houses on the quality of your art, but if you provide compelling gameplay people will beat a path to your door.
Re:Think back to (Score:5, Insightful)
>Find an engine with the right contract (free), code it up (free) art it up (free), add sounds (free/low cost bulk deals), music (free if skilled/a
>band friend?), spin up a really good press release with a few (many) thousands of US$ to get your brand out.
Unless you found a place for cheap slave labor, it won't be that easy. You might some people who want to do some of this for free, but getting all of them aligned and agreeing on a game is no small feat. Or maybe you're a superstar who can do all of this by him or herself. In that case, kudos.
I'm sure the path to good indie games is filled with unfinished, directionless projects and games severely lacking in one area or another.
Re:Problem is... (Score:5, Insightful)
Not quite.
You'll notice two things in indie games:
First, the quality is going up. Way up. It gets easier and easier every day to make good content in little time. Free engines are by no means inferior to commercial ones anymore. And a fair lot of ambitioned young artists are very willing to work for little to no money on a game project so they finally have something to tack to their resume.
And second, they cater to a completely different market. You will not find a lot of indie FPS or indie MMOs. They exist, actually, but few can go toe to toe with AAA titles. But you get a lot of puzzle games, strategy games, simulations. A market almost left bare by the main studios. Maybe it's not sought after enough for them, but that's where indies shine. These games also incidentally don't need killer graphics to be a hit. Simply because the game idea behind it makes or breaks the game, not flashy effects.
And, bluntly, those flashy effects wear off very, very quickly. To give you an example, I still play Civ 3 and Patrician II from time to time. But when did I pick up that Battlefield 2142 the last time? I can't remember.
Re:Very Sad. (Score:5, Insightful)
I do too, and I'm sure many do the same. It must have something to do with the fact that MechWarrior 2 is a far better, more memorable game.
Re:IMO (Score:2, Insightful)
Maybe we should be looking at the real problem? Video games, all video games, are laughably over priced. $60 isn't the kind of price point that a ten hour long FPS should garner.