Why is this 2D game so expensive?

[Opochtli]

was it highly anticipated or is the game huge? It looks pretty cool and i'm interested in buying it but games like this usually never go above 30 bucks.

[UL]

Canada gets ♥♥♥♥♥♥ with game prices. Here its 25€/ $27.

[serene]

this is expensive to you? get a job lol

[SilasLR]

sounds like you should stop being Canadian

[Opochtli]

i mean i get the same conversion rate from any other game and i'v never seen this type of indie game above 30 bucks, I assume it's more expensive than average usd too.

[Laub]

Originally posted by Opochtli:

was it highly anticipated or is the game huge? It looks pretty cool and i'm interested in buying it but games like this usually never go above 30 bucks.

It's not indie. 2D is not only choosen because it's cheap. It can be used as design too. At the end the cost for a employer is the same.

Btw: Game with this graphic style are the "old" full price games. A modern 2D game like this, have often much better by graphic, design and so on and is cheaper then over 20 year old releases with less content or technical limitations.

I think everyone can be happy to pay just 30 bucks for some fun and not 90 bucks, because normally the prices increases and not decrease. Because creating a game is a unique project (normally) and not mass production.

Btw: I have a box with CD from Never Winter Nights. 60 bucks release price. Or the old Baldurs Gate with 50 bucks. Fallout 1 ~55 bucks and so on.

I think the price is okay, maybe to cheap. But it's my opinion. I just bought it because it's looking interesting. Never thought about the price after his posting. lol.

[Boss_Ginger]

because it is a 30 hour long RPG/action game with good art
25$ for it is a steal, especially since it's not another 8-bit roguelight with OC donut steal characters and incremental "spend 5 hours grinding a resource to get +0,5% damage while in airborne" progression system. It's an actual game.

[TheFrommie86]

If you than take inflation into account it makes sense to be priced like that but I agree with the person above me, 25 Bucks is a really good price for what it offers.

[Magus Coldfire]

Originally posted by Opochtli:

was it highly anticipated or is the game huge? It looks pretty cool and i'm interested in buying it but games like this usually never go above 30 bucks.

Expensive? No. You get a full open world experience with story and different endings, lots of gameplay and many other things. And pixelart isn't "cheap". The effort that goes into pixelart is sometimes as big as creating a full 3D model. And the artist expects the same money. It's more of a style choice.

But if it's to expensive for you, then wait for a sale. It will probably get it's 20% in the winter sale, then it's 24$ for you.

[Nikanuur]

1. It's not expensive at all. It easily could be 40 bucks for what it's worth.
2. It's a very long, very complex, very replayable game. Graphics has got little to nothing to do with gameplay value. Mostly only thing you pay in those 'added' 35-45 bucks in AAA games is exactly that - superficial race towards realistic visuals. This sad, mongering practice has been around since 2000s and the first 3D cards, and did very little as in improving the gameplay posibilities. What it improved colossaly was companies' profits. But that's another story.

Drova is exactly what happens when you take the best graphics' practices—as in actual art and not just "copying the real world"—and pair them with thoughtful and abundant gameplay features.

[ФDeadEyeФ]

It's the best game I've played in years. A "graphic style" is not 1:1 with what you see as "low res/poly", it's a choice. A good one here I would say as it really adds to the immersion for myself.

I've seen ultra realistic games, and just like VR, it's cool for a minute but you soon realize that the depth just isn't present for whatever reason. I can't look away from this game, and it's been years for something to grab my attention.

Fallout 3 that I waited so many years for, played once, and still go back to Fallout 2 when I'm bored. F2 is a better game, just like Vegas is better than everything after it.

[Wlerin]

Originally posted by Laub:

Originally posted by Opochtli:

was it highly anticipated or is the game huge? It looks pretty cool and i'm interested in buying it but games like this usually never go above 30 bucks.

It's not indie.

It is though. That said the price is fine for the amount of content.

[Nikanuur]

Originally posted by Wlerin:

Originally posted by Laub:

It's not indie.

It is though. That said the price is fine for the amount of content.

I think that one is more complicated. Indie refers to (usually) a small studio that funds and develops the game by itself—therein the "independent" part.

However, Drova was developed and published by different entities.

In the broader sense it can be designated as an indie, because they are small and this is their first one, etc. But technically speaking, they skipped that part/step by finding a publisher—and not a small one, as deck13 has funded some pretty pricey/complex games so far—and this is something of an A game.

If it were for me, I'd say AAA because the "major publisher" part or "a large team" in AA to AAA game pubslishing feel as merely political terms, and I'd say that A, AA, and AAA should refer to how complex, compleat, artful, and large the game is. Drova managed to fill the shoes of all those categories. It's an absolute blast both in quality and depth, and coming from such a small studion it's nothing short of a miracle of achievement.

[Pink Pink]

28 hours in and have explored maybe 50% of the map. Well worth it.
Im the degenerate that skips dialogue in 90% of games, and I havent skipped a word. Top notch writing.

[fourfourtwo79]

If it's too expensive for you it's too expensive to you. I think 30 bucks may be a tipping point for some, psychological thing and such. The regular price in EUR is thus 24.99 EUR, launch discount was 10% off for a while. That's roughly 1/3 of modern triple-A.

Reportedly, the game cost ~800.000 EUR to make and market. That needs to be covered somehow, in particular considering that it was developed with a more niche taste in mind and is unlikely to sell like a million copies no matter the price. Source: Dev interview. https://www.heise.de/hintergrund/Drova-eifert-Gothic-nach-Wir-haben-die-klassischen-Rollenspiele-vermisst-9992579.html The core team at peak consisted of about 8 people, there were additional externals involved, production was roughly six years total.

It's a big game with features you don't see in this type often. Even in bigger productions, they aren't the norm. Like day/night cycles influencing a few quests. Simple NPC schedules (they go to bed at night, to the tavern in the evening and some even move between locations). Dynamic weather changes. A game world so open you could walk everywhere from the go. A persistent map where the torch you dropped still is around when you return two weeks later (and bodies decompose). Some quests with multiple solutions. Dialogue choices leading to consequences. Generally reactions to what you did. Changes to locations over time. And no cheap convenience markers guiding you from A to B -- but dialogue, visual cues and hand drawn in-universe maps to immersive yourself in.


And it's also fun. Still, your call.

[harakiri]

Originally posted by fourfourtwo79:

Reportedly, the game cost ~800.000 EUR to make and market. That needs to be covered somehow, in particular considering that it was developed with a more niche taste in mind and is unlikely to sell like a million copies no matter the price.

Almost half of the game was financed by german tax payers...

https://www.bmwk.de/Redaktion/DE/Artikel/Wirtschaft/Games/Games-Projekte/drova.html

So no - they did not need to reel in 800k.

I think a price of 20-25€ is fine for a 35+ RPG - its not a greedy price but a greedy publisher more likely - reflecting on the sum of the cost this game could have also been sold for 15-20$ and provide a ROI easily.