Tell us your wishes!

[JulieHeyde]

Lovely players - we're crunching like maniacs on an update that we wanna push live within a couple of weeks. Working on physics (for realz), performance tweaks (a few of you had issues after last update and it seems to be related to drivers, but we're doing what we can on our side), Steam achievements, new racket(s) and balls. So now is the time to tell us your wishes. It might make it into this update or the next.

[Earl Sagan]

I wish it wasn't overpriced.

[JulieHeyde]

Hahaha. How about content wishes?

[ojek]

How about no? You wanted to hear our wishes, and here you go - we wish it wasn't overpriced.

[RickK]

Couldn't agree more about the overpriced comment from Earl Sagan and ojek. You guys really should find a way to offer this at $15 instead of the current $20 asking price. A lot of Vive owners like me just cannot justify paying the current price when comparing your title to the competition. An adjustment to what I believe is unfair pricing vs competing titles should generate way more sales especially if you annouce it on reddit. If I'm wrong - put the price back up to $20 ! Sorry this rant is not full of new feature suggestions but I am, as others are, addressing the elephant in the room here.

[JulieHeyde]

I hear you - but you're comparing price to content, right?

[JulieHeyde]

I'm very good at ranting myself. Trust me ;-) so don't worry about my feelings. We had a sale some weeks ago as part of Devolver's sale. You didn't get a notification then?

[RickK]

Originally posted by JulieHeyde:

I hear you - but you're comparing price to content, right?

No Julie I'm comparing value between Steam VR titles. From your perspective you attach a price to development costs. The question in the consumers mind is how the majority of Vive games bring in better value at this price point. I'm surprised when the first 3 reactions you get all say the same thing you're challenging the wishes of your consumerbase. The writing's on the wall.

[JulieHeyde]

I was anticipating price comments, so I'm not surprised. We actually took a different approach than measuring development costs, but I'll wait a bit with commenting on that. I'm the one who has indebted myself over my shoulders to finance this team of crazy unicorn jammers (I financed another game we worked on when #SelfieTennis took over and had to take a loan when we pivoted) and I am also the one who makes the call on pricing. I'm all ears - so please keep the arguments coming. We took a beating on price on reddit forums as we were the first ones to announce ours it seemed (we launched a few days before the actual Vive launch), but I don't see a huge in-balance between price and playtime/fun. Quite a few Vive games have no replayability whereas we see loads of players returning to #SelfieTennis.

[JulieHeyde]

There's a nice conversation going on over at Reddit about content: https://www.reddit.com/r/Vive/comments/4lk1ab/tell_us_your_wishes_selfietennis/

[Strider]

There is no need to be rude to the Devs. No one is holding a gun to your head asking you to buy content for a $900 system.
If anything it's important to support smaller independent teams because they take huge risks to provide creative content like SelfieTennis that maybe triple A studios would never do.

Aside from that, I think a cool feature would be to have a little more to the scoring system. I like how it sounds like a little casino when you score a good amount of points. It would be interesting to take that further. Greetings from twitter :)
-@CBSequence

[RickK]

I wrote this before Strider's unnecessary little outburst. People are simply saying what they think and sometimes the truth hurts. Developers deserve the truth, not sycophantic drivel.
Seriously Strider, if you can't add something of any constructive value to the conversation don't bother.

I have every sympathy with game developers and small studios - devotees like Julie taking out loans and facing risks. I develop software for industry myself so am aware of the efforts involved. Unfortunately it doesn't change the market VR Unicorns have launched into. I look at the app store markets on smartphones and really feel for those guys who I believe get rinsed. They pile in tremendous effort and very often get meagre returns. VR Unicorns are fortunate in that Steam VR is not saturated in the same way. While the returns may be too low for some, it isn't about to change. Wishing all your potential buyers have that extra $5 is not going to make it happen. VR Unicorns could cram all sorts of new features and stuff into #SelfieTennis and it sounds like their plan is to do that and generate a bunch of new fans who decide the latest version of the game is now worth the asking price. It's not an impossible strategy but not what I'd do. I'd drop the price to $15 and move on to title #2 using the feedback they now have from the community about all the peer titles to deliver a second SteamVR game that really plays to people's VR desires. They've got invaluable experience behind them with this project and assuming they're in a position to make a second game it seems the smart thing to do to me.

[JulieHeyde]

Casino: we actually had the idea of the court interaction from a pin ball machine where the tennis part is the actual play and the sandbox part is all the crazy stuff that happens when your pinball goes off track! So there could be a sub-score when you're doing something wacky? We have heart score for kills, but could add a score board when entering a specific mode?

[JulieHeyde]

Guys, don't fight! We love you all. Remember it's hard to not misunderstand the written word.

[RickK]

We love you too but let's keep it constructive. People chiming in to say 'dont upset the developer' helps nobody. As you well know all the comments you've received on price are for your benefit. We obviously believe that if you acted upon them you'd make more money. All we can do is suggest. I can tell you now, I'd buy it at $15 not at $20 and yes I missed the promo you did on price initially...

[JulieHeyde]

We love #SelfieTennis and we don't wanna cramp it with unnecessary features - but we do wanna update it with features that we have thought of throughout the development process, but didn't make it in yet + the features that you come up with if they fit with the game. This is our first launch on Steam and and we're learning a lot, but not ready to let go of #SelfieTennis in any way and we've pushed #SkiJump to later in the Summer. Love this game so much. We decided to do an actual launch (on April 1) instead of early access and that may/may not have been smart when managing content expectations, but I love having these conversations with you peeps - whether we get attacked or praised for making the game. I love that you care about #SelfieTennis.