price of modern indie games

[Vulture]

i dont entirely get it, clearly the world is gone to ♥♥♥♥, people have less money, inflation is rampant, a lot of indie games and studios died this year, so people paying half of a triple A game for a indie game might be somewhat a lot, but you have a huuuuuuuuge volume of gamers. so why not buy thousands of a game for 5-10 bucks (and have more reviews on top) instead of a few hundred for 25? :/

i'd argue many big successes like terraria and vampire survivors were because good games were also sold incredibly cheap.

[Ric]

With the release discount it's only about £23..

for an early access game which is as stable and as in-depth as this seems to be at launch, I would say that's very worth it!

Even if you're on minimum wage, that's like 2 hours work and you can buy it. not much imo.

[Devilinside13]

Publicado originalmente por Vulture:

but my bread is not a digital good and multiplying it costs money for bakers and ingridients while selling multiples of a steam game costs nothing.

Non consumable goods also have their ongoing expenses, for licenses (f. e. steam-charges, software, game-engines), power, rent, employees (marketing, support, customer-service, future development), etc.! Those costs along with production costs goes into pricing. You can't just throw out your digital product, if you want to be successful.

[InsertCoin]

Publicado originalmente por Devilinside13:

Publicado originalmente por Vulture:

but my bread is not a digital good and multiplying it costs money for bakers and ingridients while selling multiples of a steam game costs nothing.

Non consumable goods also have their ongoing expenses, for licenses (f. e. steam-charges, software, game-engines), power, rent, employees (marketing, support, customer-service, future development), etc.! Those costs along with production costs goes into pricing. You can't just throw out your digital product, if you want to be successful.

they using their own game engine, so yea they don't have to worry about that licence ;)

[Solus Hunter]

Can this really be described as an Indie game. When its developed by some of the pillars of the genre? Literally dating back to the 90s.

[Vulture]

Publicado originalmente por Devilinside13:

Publicado originalmente por Vulture:

but my bread is not a digital good and multiplying it costs money for bakers and ingridients while selling multiples of a steam game costs nothing.

Non consumable goods also have their ongoing expenses, for licenses (f. e. steam-charges, software, game-engines), power, rent, employees (marketing, support, customer-service, future development), etc.! Those costs along with production costs goes into pricing. You can't just throw out your digital product, if you want to be successful.

But none of those costs scale with the amount of units sold.

[Cacheelma]

It's like 16USD or so with my Thailand's regional pricing. If this is not cheap, I don't know what you expected. I pay full price for games all the time, mostly without regional pricing. And those are 60USD++++ mostly.

[Narkulus]

The pricing is correct, in fact it probably could have been higher. Anyone who is a fan of the original settlers game probably knew this was coming and was willing to pay. The game will probably do well at this price. Sell as many as you can at this price and lower the price down the road to pick up everyone else. Better to sell 50,000 at a higher price and pick up another 25,000 at a discounted price down the road than just sell 75,000 at a low initial price.

[Anonymous]

Publicado originalmente por Vulture:

Publicado originalmente por naapsuland:

I DISAGREE , why should it cost only like 5 ? 25-30 is ok price , you think they should do it for free so people could play it? again, i disagree, would you work forfree? or accpset 50 % less , why people think like game devs should work for free? gaming is not human right , if you dont have money you look for better work or wait for sale, and you say everythin going up why the hell should they lower theyr game price?and again nothing in life is free and game devs should not work for free

better go challenge 70 euro games

i like how everyone thinks i want to hurt devs or talk about this because i am a egoist. i dont. i am actually curious what would happen if you sell a somewhat good and appealing indie game for prices that most people in most countries can afford. and i feel that 25 is not that. i think it would help the income of the dev. surey they would sell more copies, maybe they would exhaust their niche faster, but i dont think the niche is as small as people think and i also think for a low enough price people might explore niches that they wouldnt explore otherwise.

That's why regional pricing exists.

[Vulture]

Publicado originalmente por Narkulus:

The pricing is correct, in fact it probably could have been higher. Anyone who is a fan of the original settlers game probably knew this was coming and was willing to pay. The game will probably do well at this price. Sell as many as you can at this price and lower the price down the road to pick up everyone else. Better to sell 50,000 at a higher price and pick up another 25,000 at a discounted price down the road than just sell 75,000 at a low initial price.

That is indeed true. Hard to go higher, can always go lower.

Now I wonder what happened to early access titles starting low. Guess a thing of the past.

[Anonymous]

Going higher is the usual way for EA titles though.

[Ruck]

I bought farthest frontier for about the price of this... I don't think it was worth it as is. I may watch some more gameplay of this game and decide but... ya 35-40$ seems a bit much right now.

[JamieLinux]

Publicado originalmente por Lhosson:

As far as Pioneers of Pagonia is concerned, you are also talking about the original developers of The Settlers, which are an established team. Just because they are an indie team, doesn't mean they shouldn't be allowed to ask much for their games. The asking price of Pioneers of Pagonia is really good. Have you seen the price of some of the AAA publishers out there? €130 is common-place for Ubisoft. Now that's unreasonable pricing.

Honestly I feel the price is fair, for a city builder that you can in theory get 1000s of hours in. Look at games like sim city or cities skylines trapico and so forth.

[lion]

Publicado originalmente por JamieLinux:

Publicado originalmente por Lhosson:

As far as Pioneers of Pagonia is concerned, you are also talking about the original developers of The Settlers, which are an established team. Just because they are an indie team, doesn't mean they shouldn't be allowed to ask much for their games. The asking price of Pioneers of Pagonia is really good. Have you seen the price of some of the AAA publishers out there? €130 is common-place for Ubisoft. Now that's unreasonable pricing.

Honestly I feel the price is fair, for a city builder that you can in theory get 1000s of hours in. Look at games like sim city or cities skylines trapico and so forth.

You can finish a map in like 5-6 hours. What 1000 hours?

[Tiojion]

Units sold at $10 rarely come out ahead of units sold at $25 for a quality PC Indie game.

Several reasons:
1) The Indies that go the $10 route most often had a great idea but required much less actual programming/work. They can afford to go low because they have less time invested. Indies that put a lot of work into their product tend to list their price based on their work. That doesn't make it a good game but it reflects their effort. This ties into ...
2) The most accepted model in general business is that you get what you pay for. Something listed at $5 is not considered valuable and a good deal of consumers won't even take a look at it unless it happens to be one of the rare exceptions that goes viral, as in they will only look after it's successful, but it's chance of success is actually less. The same item listed at $25 draws attention from a different crowd...one that expects a game worth $25. Mobile games break the general business model. That has not translated to PC. This is in part due to....
3) Most PC games only have a cult sized audience (small but dedicated groups focused on a particular genre). Unless your game is very mainstream AND has great replayability plus console or mobile potential your consumer base is limited. Something often overlooked in PC game pricing is that their game market is heavily tied to strength of computer. It's something the developer has to think about when they are making the game..."who is their target audience?" Someone with a weak computer doesn't consider the same games as someone with a strong computer. When you switch from the $20-25 price range to the $5-10 range you are switching which groups are interested and not necessarily gaining customers. Only a few extra people will look at games in both ranges and usually only the ones that have already gone viral.
4) Indies don't have the marketing. The only way an Indie hits the big time is in one of those rare occasions when they somehow touch the right note and go viral. For every good Indie that goes viral there are ten that were good too and just didn't.
5) While the world is struggling economically this includes Indie games developers. They can't afford to put $20 effort into a game then give it away for nearly free on the hopes it's the one that hits the viral lottery when most don't. They are trying to pay rent, not just entertain themselves.

The bottom line is that the sort of $20 game that can be sold for $5-10 needs a lot of factors lined up. Even then it likely needs to be a game that would resonate with console or mobile users (the main audiences for low powered computer games) or actually be able to be converted to a console/mobile game.

PS As for lowering the price for other regions to be able to afford a game, it's a valid thought but complicated by the need for extra language support. This drives up the work required to reach release. Lower prices eventually happen through sale prices as the game ages so the day does come when it will be a $5 game (and by then sometimes a successful Indie has more language support).

[Mulyono]

Publicado originalmente por Vulture:

i dont entirely get it, clearly the world is gone to ♥♥♥♥, people have less money, inflation is rampant, a lot of indie games and studios died this year, so people paying half of a triple A game for a indie game might be somewhat a lot, but you have a huuuuuuuuge volume of gamers. so why not buy thousands of a game for 5-10 bucks (and have more reviews on top) instead of a few hundred for 25? :/

i'd argue many big successes like terraria and vampire survivors were because good games were also sold incredibly cheap.

Bro became racist because he's american and never live at argentina