PRICING OF INDIE GAMES

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So I was inspired by the drama in the Skyborn topic. Pricing of indie games, now most us here are amateur game makers and don't really have to worry about pricing our games but some of us are consumers of indie games and we'll gladly (or grudgingly) shell out some cash for games every now and again.

Googling for "indie game pricing" comes up with loads of articles from indie developers and games journalists about how problematic the pricing for many games are. Many games fall under the 10 euro mark, which is kinda problematic.

But as a consumer I know personally that I rarely want to pay loads of moneys for the games. But I'm also woefully inconsistent, I'm rarely willing to give more than 5€ to a indie bundle (of which there are many these days) but I pledged 30$ for Wasteland 2, a game that hasn't even started development yet!

The question is does price matter in the end? According to one of the articles the quick google search gave me.
But for permanent pricing — within a certain “indie” range, it’s been demonstrated time and time again that lower prices often don’t often yield anything close to proportionally equivalent sales numbers. In general, after an initial flurry of new purchases, things often settle down to being just a little higher than they had been before. And some developers have reported similar results to Persson’s … price increases astonishingly yielded higher sales.


So low prices? According to this sales increase sales, but it seems that it's more the promotion that a sale brings that really affects sales rather than the actual price of the product.


Of course some of these articles are quite old, this indie pricing thing is a debate that has been going on for quite a while without a proper answer (and loads of trends, just look at the kickstarter trend that's going on right now). Things might have changed.

So this was background I suppose. What about you guys? What are you willing to pay for your games? With indie games do you want to pay more to support the developer? How do you compare publisher games to indie games? Do indies have to be cheaper? I mean oftentimes I've found myself playing smaller games a lot more than the big budget expensive ones. Yet I'm unwilling to pay more for the "lesser" games.

Does price really matter? If I want a game I'm probably going to get it. I might wait for a sale (so it's better if the game's expensive to start with, it makes it easier to feel like a sale is a bargain then. Like when I bought Deus Ex Human Revolution for 15€ recently. In indie terms that's a brand new full price game but it felt like a bargain. I might ask myself why that is).


So. Yeah. Discuss? I don't know where I'm going with this. (other than to take the pricing discussion away from the Skyborn topic) What is a game worth to you?
I'm inclined to say "price doesn't matter", but I'm afraid the game devs might listen shhhh...

But you're right. If I want a game, I'll buy it, no matter how much it costs... but I speak as someone who very rarely buys any games, so whether I pay $3 or $30, it's a once-in-a-lifetime-like kind of thing.

Last indie game I bought was Cart Life. It was being sold for $5. I would have paid $30. I actually did try to buy the "deluxe" version, but it was sold out. I'd have paid around $50 for it.

Last time I bought an indie bundle, I paid $15. Probably less than the whole bundle was worth, but seeing as I wasn't particularly interested in any of the games, that's a fair amount.

It's indeed tricky. For instance, that Skyborn game is a game I'm not interested at all. If it cost $2, I wouldn't pay. Well, it's unlikely I'd download it for free. But I'd gladly pay $14 for a game I was interested in.

This is speaking as someone who rarely buys any games. I guess I'd think differently if I bought games every week or so. And also if I was CHARGING for the games... because there'd be a HUGE difference between charing $5 and $15.
KingArthur
( ̄▽ ̄)ノ De-facto operator of the unofficial RMN IRC channel.
1217
The personal value of money fluctuates excessively depending on what it is you're buying, and like Cal said above you might shell out $50 for one game and then not even cough up $2 for another.

That said, personally if I really want or need something, I'll buy it without considering much about the price unless that price is something utterly ridiculous or my current situation calls for tighter scrutiny of my budget.
I personally think indie game pricing should be determined by both the amount/quality of work it took to make and the amount/quality of entertainment it provides to the buyers.
Pricing would be highly subjective, but setting a fixed price range wouldn't do all indie games justice either.

For instance a price of, say, $0.10 per hour of work should be legitimate.
As for content, it could range from $0.10 (for shared/RTP resources) to $0.50 (for full custom highly detailed hi-res resources) per hour of gameplay (excluding non-interactive parts such as cutscenes).

Using this example, a short 2 gameplay hours-long game with shared resources and that took 10 hours to make could be priced at $1.20

An average 10 hours long indie game with fair quality 50% custom resources ($0.30 per hour) that took 50 hours to make, could be priced at $8.00
This and the earlier price are what you'd typically pay for comparable iphone games.

A developer that would make a professional-like game of 30 gameplay hours and 100% impressive custom resources that took 300 hours to make could be priced at $45.00
That might sound a lot for an indie game, but at this point it wouldn't be any different than a professional game.
Solitayre
Circumstance penalty for being the bard.
18257
I'm not opposed to developers being able to be paid for their hard work. If I ever released a game for commercial purposes I'd probably charge five dollars or so. But that's speculative since I don't currently ever intend to do so.
Price on Indie games? Who the heck came up with that! It's worse than Atmosphir with them making cars that you have to buy, so it's pay to design AND play with the cars!
But, if people start making there games pay to play, then I'm out.
It's bad enough we have to pay for RPG maker. I'm sticking to my motto, don't buy anything on the internet and just wait for it.
Really, I find it dumb someone would even bring the idea up! It's a bad idea, and even with me and my family desperately in need of money, I wouldn't make my games pay to play. Besides, with Dad working, and getting checks on the first of every month, might as well not make the games in such ways.

P.S.:I didn't reas the whole intro post...yet...
You might want to get on that, pyrodoom. There are lots of people making commercial RPG Maker games. I believe Aveyond would be up there in terms of well-knownedness. She definitely set the precedent that is for sure.

My opinion on the pricing of Games in general is that they are all over-priced. I don't buy anything unless it is at the very least 33% off, and that is if I really fucking want it.

The price of a game that I am willing to pay after that pre-requisite is entirely determined by whether or not I want it. Skyborn, for example, I would actually quite like to play. I'd be willing to pay $10~ for it, not $15. But that is because of my rule. The same rule applied to Skyrim, Kingdom's of Amalur, and Mass Effect 3.

A game like Space Pirates vs Zombies, I might be interested in trying, but it would need to be below $5 for me to consider it, and even then it might be on a whim.
It's hard to determine what a fair price is for an indie game, but keep in mind the following:

Most console games go for about $30+ (some newer consoles start off higher but then quickly drop), and within a few months they are about $20+, where they tend to even out. You get a hard copy of the game and game case and manual, and if your console breaks down and you get another, you're assured the game will work on the new one as well.

With indie games, you get a download that you install on your computer. That's it. Most often, there's no guide, and certainly not a hard copy. If your computer crashes, you must weed through customer service antics to get another download for the next computer, assuming you can prove you purchased the orginal dl to begin with.

For that reason, an indie game priced at $19+ seems a bit unfair. You can find a crapload of games on the VC for about $5 to $8, so my opinion is an indie game should be around $10 to $15 tops, no more.

Edit: One last thought, but it's probably best to stay out of the freeware communities when you have a commercial title, unless you frequent the site and know most of the people. This mainly applies to sites like this, VX.net, RRR, and other such sites. If you are planning to sell, look for a commercial site that primarily handles commercial titles, such as Amaranthia.
author=Avee
A developer that would make a professional-like game of 30 gameplay hours and 100% impressive custom resources that took 300 hours to make could be priced at $45.00
That might sound a lot for an indie game, but at this point it wouldn't be any different than a professional game.

It seems to me most games would fall into this category. Except maybe the length. Consider for example one of my favourite indie games of last year Frozen Synapse. That game was in a beta for nearly a year, made by a team of two members (and a bunch of tester, plus the later volunteer beta testers). The campaign in that game is probably close to 30 hours, it has a multiplayer component that is the meat of the game (apart from that 30 hour single player campaign).

The game released at a price point of 20 dollars, for that you actually got two copies of the game. In your math the game would probably have cost hundreds of dollars.

I guess you could apply math to see how much a game is "worth", but I think your formula was a bit off.


author=amerkevicius
It's hard to determine what a fair price is for an indie game, but keep in mind the following:

Most console games go for about $30+ (some newer consoles start off higher but then quickly drop), and within a few months they are about $20+, where they tend to even out. You get a hard copy of the game and game case and manual, and if your console breaks down and you get another, you're assured the game will work on the new one as well.

With indie games, you get a download that you install on your computer. That's it. Most often, there's no guide, and certainly not a hard copy. If your computer crashes, you must weed through customer service antics to get another download for the next computer, assuming you can prove you purchased the orginal dl to begin with.

With one or two exceptions I haven't got physical manual with any game I've bought over the last couple of years. In many cases I haven't even got a physical disc. Instead I've got restrictive DRM that prohibits me from playing the game without logging in to a service or from playing offline.

Except of course when it comes to indie games. I've been lucky enough not to lose games from hard drive crashes except for one indie game where I sent a polite e-mail to the developer asking if I could redownload his game somewhere (and he gave me a link) in order to play it.

In fact customer service antics are probably a lot easier to manage for indie games, since indie developers tend to want to have as good relations to a customer as possible.

Not to mention services like Desura. Basically I have not seen your experience at all amerkevicius.
i've been collecting my thoughts on this and might (might) post later but i just want to say that if you're an indie developer who sells commercial games and you're not a customer service paragon, you are wasting your one advantage over the big guys.
I remember reading an article about an indie games bundle that started at 1 cent, and you could pay what you wanted for it. It was one of the most pirated bundles (people weren't even willing to pay 1 cent for a bundle of games). That, I think is ludicrous. I think with the market the way it is, regardless of what you charge, indie games will never be respected the way they should be. (Look at the reviews of people complaining about how the game they bought for $1 on the android market should have better support and free upgrades).
Dudesoft
always a dudesoft, never a soft dude.
6309
If I redraw Atom Pulsar and the bg art by hand, we could charge $5. It's not a long game, but it's entertaining and that would pay for the workload. As well as licensing on font, software, and copyright costs. Then there's the minor issue of hosting.
Is $5 too much to ask?
What do you say?
@Shinan: I think some sort of formula would be helpful but of course we should set a top limit and offer discounts after a while.

What's interesting about selling indie games is that you make your money with the sales instead of being paid a fixed amount by a publisher. Unless you pay to advertise your game on someone else's website, every penny will be yours. Provided that one has decent online marketing skills I suppose one could earn substantial amounts.
author=Avee
@Shinan: I think some sort of formula would be helpful but of course we should set a top limit and offer discounts after a while.

What's interesting about selling indie games is that you make your money with the sales instead of being paid a fixed amount by a publisher. Unless you pay to advertise your game on someone else's website, every penny will be yours. Provided that one has decent online marketing skills I suppose one could earn substantial amounts.


Ahh, but even then, Indie games have usually a high loss of interest gap. You would have to keep making games to gain the customers attention over and over as Idie sales die hell of fast unless if you make a deal with someone like MS, to get the game out there and to boost its appeal.

For example, indie game "I made a game with Zombies in it" has the most inconsistent profit earnings I have seen in awhile making from a few hundreds to $5 and so on.
Let's begin with the easy part, how much I would pay for an indie game.

It depends on how much enjoyment I think I'll get from the game. In that regard, indie games doesn't really differ from high budget games. I bought Kingdom Hearts for full price and I've spent maybe 250 hours on it total. On the other hand, when I got sufficient information on Final Fantasy XII, I decided to not buy it until I can get it used for at most 1/3 the initial price. Granted, since I bought it used, I may as well not have bought it at all as far as SquareEnix's profits are concerned.

I will make the same judgment for indie games. In average, an indie game will give me less entertainment than a game made with a high budget. It's far from granted though. Terraria gave me far more entertainment than most high budget games did, although it was still priced rather low.

It is however hard to say what an indie game should cost. I could try to judge how much quality and quantity there is in a particular game and say something like "that game seems good enough for $15." However, with the pressure for low prices on indie games, there's no way I could recommend that kind of price. So, that $15 is not what I think the developers should charge, rather it is how much I think people should be willing to pay for it.
author=tpasmall
I remember reading an article about an indie games bundle that started at 1 cent, and you could pay what you wanted for it. It was one of the most pirated bundles (people weren't even willing to pay 1 cent for a bundle of games). That, I think is ludicrous. I think with the market the way it is, regardless of what you charge, indie games will never be respected the way they should be. (Look at the reviews of people complaining about how the game they bought for $1 on the android market should have better support and free upgrades).


This is rather true, but it is worth noting that a huge number of AAA commercial games are pirated every year as well, which shows that the kind of people who pirate stuff don't care if it's from an indy developer or a commercial industry:

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2012-01-03-the-most-pirated-pc-wii-360-games-of-2011

I think that indy developers are better off either making games that appeal to a niche audience (what we do), or making games with a mass-market appeal that anyone can enjoy. Don't appeal to the 'hardcore gamers' crowd; they will demand free support, nothing less than perfection from presentation and gameplay, and many will just end up stealing the game anyway. Games for the mass market, which include games like Wii Sports, Angry Birds, and Tetris, are the really big sellers, far out-pacing games designed for more 'serious' players in sales.

As for niche games, I like to think that there is a certain sense of camaraderie; the same people who play the games are often the ones who make them, and since the stakes aren't high we're not inclined to screw each other over. At least I hope not.
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