Should Good Indie Games Be More Expensive?

spidweb writes "Indie gaming blog The Bottom Feeder has an article on why independent games should be more expensive. The enforced low prices on XBox Live, Amazon, and iTunes might feel good now, but they'll kill off the variety and depth gamers are hoping indie developers can provide. From the article: 'Every year, life is getting more and more expensive. Insurance. Rent. Food. And, at the same time, games are getting cheaper and cheaper, sometimes as cheap as a dollar, as we engage in a full speed race to the bottom. This is not going to help developers stay in business. This is not how a healthy industry is maintained.'"

Comments

Economies of Scale

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

If your game is really good, then won't it sell more copies, making you more money?

Is there some hidden cost in producing more copies of a binary file?

Re:Economies of Scale

[Yvanhoe]

Somehow, I feel that if a game is good enough to make me go through the process of grabbing my credit card, going to the website, checking for traps, entering the number, etc... a price of 1$ or 15$ doesn't really make a difference.

10-15 is probably the good price range to maximize the number of copies sold. Lower won't make more under our current distribution methods.

Re:Economies of Scale

[Opportunist]

No, but there is one in selling more copies. It's called marketing and advertising. You can make the best game of all times, if nobody knows it exists you won't sell it.

Re:Economies of Scale

[Opportunist]

Oh yeah, that works great. So far I still didn't see a single case of true grassroots movement that didn't at some sort gain a lot weight either by media coverage (ya know, the kind that the real people out there watch and read, like newspapers or even TV) or by being picked up by someone who has a lot of media presence.

Word of mouth is fine and nice, if you want to get famous inside a certain circle. It works very well if you're, say, a scientist and want to be known amongst your peers, it works to some degree for underground bands. It fails when your audience does not really "hunt" for what you offer but needs to be told that it's there.

The average ("casual") gamer doesn't read game mags, and he certainly doesn't dig through blogs and game pages. I have to admit, I turned "casual" not long ago, lacking the time I had during my college days when I did actually spend some time on such pages. You know where casual games get my attention? Steam. Steam offers World of Goo for (IIRC) 15 bucks, I heard somewhere something about it and I dimly remember it was positive for some reason (it was on TV, a show about the indie game market), so I thought what the heck, 15 bucks, no loss, buy. Flock was offered, it looked cute, 10 bucks, what the heck... bought. And so on.

Word of mouth would have never told me that those games even existed. First, few of my "gamer friends" play indie. There's the FPS crowd that plays CoD and L4D, there's the MMO people with their WoW and EvE, but the people that I'd call my friends and that I'd put in the "casual" or "indie game" area rarely if ever talk about computers. Why? Because computer games aren't an important part of their life. They play them, they don't talk about them.

So word of mouth, while free and the best kind of ad, does not really work for Indie games IMO. Simply because those that play them the most talk the least about them.

Just like how software should be...

[Anonymous Coward]

'Every year, life is getting more and more expensive. Insurance. Rent. Food. And, at the same time, software is getting cheaper and cheaper, sometimes as cheap as a dollar, as we engage in a full speed race to the bottom. This is not going to help developers stay in business. This is not how a healthy industry is maintained.'"

I agree. The race to the bottom for software is not how a healthy industry is maintained. What will we do if software reaches a price point of zero?

There are no clear examples out there of how free software or applications can stay in business.

*rolls eyes*

Re:Just like how software should be...

[bigstrat2003]

Hate to break it to you, but those models aren't going to work for gaming. Gamers don't need support contracts, and they'll go nuts if you try to cram advertising down their throats. Just because it works for some, doesn't mean it'll work for anyone else.

Re:Just like how software should be...

[TheRaven64]

None of your examples are of games. There are no good, free, fun, games.

Re:Just like how software should be...

[Biswalt]

Really gamers go nuts with advertising thrown down there throats? Played any EA sports games recently? In those games the ads even ad to the realism. You don't get a half-time report you get the Gillete Razor half-time report, since this is how it's done in the real world, it fits right in, but it's still an ad. An even better example is EA Skate 2. The ads are not only in the game on the in game billboards, they actually rotate out to feature different products or companies because EA is selling that ad space just like real ad space. It's a profitable enterprise for EA, and none of my friends has commented on it beyond "hey those are real ads." After I explain how they work, most of the people I've asked told me they thought it was cool. I agree that most gamers wouldn't play a game all plastered with ad banners (a la porn sites, and torrent sites), but real ads on the boards in EA NHL 09 only makes sense.

Re:Just like how software should be...

[BlitzTech]

I don't think most of those games turn a profit, or even that much in revenue. For full-time game developers who don't have a day job to pay the bills, they need to earn money with the games they make. Some go with ad revenue, donations, or micropayments to keep their games free; others, like those from the author of TFA, prefer to charge for their games.

If you would like to play only completely free games, you're certainly welcome to. I'm willing to pay for games that I want to play, and hopefully that will encourage the developers to make more games I like.

My point is that your examples are of games that don't need to make money, which completely ignores the entire indie games market. Don't devalue games because free ones exist; examine the quality and decide if it's worth paying for.

In response to the GP, Ubuntu makes money on service contracts, Firefox on donations and corporate partnerships, and Gmail from ad impressions - analogous to micropayments, donations, and ads in games.

Enforced low prices?

[dangitman]

iTunes doesn't set a maximum price for games, neither does Xbox Live, apparently except for those created with the XNA tools. So, the only one enforcing low prices is Amazon. Thus, calling the credibility of the summary into question, and the article for tenuous exaggeration.

Wrong question...

[denzacar]

It should be "Should expensive games be better".

FYI: Indie =/= Good

This is also an example of a "indie game".

What rock have these guys been living under?

[TOGSolid]

Have they completely missed Valve's Steam pricing report on what happens when you sell good games for cheap?
At twenty to twentyfive bucks, an indy game that isn't going to have the exposure a triple A game has is going to alienate shoppers that would have otherwise bought it just for the hell of it. It's going to have to be pretty damn good and get a lot of word of mouth exposure in order to be able to reign back in lost potential customers.

Re:More expensive? You mean LESS expensive

[Millennium]

Look... I'm sorry but 15 years ago games were $10-$15.

No, they were not. $50 was the standard price for new console games since at least the mid-1980s, and still is on the Wii.

Most developers use other engines to produce their games so don't give me the BS about how much a game costs to make.

You'd be surprised at just how little difference this makes. It has been a very long time since the majority of a game's development budget went into its code.

in fact ALL games should cost a LOT less.

The last few games I've bought were all PC games off of steam because they were reasonably priced. If it's more than $30... you're over charging. Period. You can try to argue this with me... but everything past that mark is greed pure and simple.

In other words, you're just being cheap. Nothing wrong with that, I suppose, as long as you're not using that as an argument to steal games, which I suspect you probably are.

If you absolutely must pay less, buy used. This will not kill you, make you any less of a gamer, or shrink your genitals.

(Sigh...) Again, it's supply and demand

[dazedNconfuzed]

Supply and demand is an economic law. Arguing that prices should be higher than the market will bear, in an attempt to re-write that law, is foolish.

I recall a little "indie" game company that released, with little advertising, a mindless shoot-em-up by giving away much of the game and selling the full package cheaply. They made a good game, didn't charge much, and did well by it. 17 years later you can _still_ buy Wolfenstein 3D.

Mathematics

[Zarkonnen]

What most of the commenters seem to be ignoring is the evidence that the author is doing perfectly well selling his game for $28.

Having played (and paid for) one of them, given it took me dozens of (entertaining) hours to complete, I don't have much of a problem with that price.

I think what the post really boiled down to was:

Expect high ($30 - $60) prices for big commercial titles because they cost millions. Huge development costs divided by lots of customers result in high prices.

Expect low prices ($1 - $10) for indie games in popular genres (puzzle, etc) because there is lots of competition. Low development costs divided by lots of customers result in low prices.

But expect highish ($10 - $30) prices for indie games in niche genres, because there are simply fewer potential customers. Low(ish) development costs divided by few customers must result in highish prices, or you lose money.

Yes, there are free flash games, but point me at a free flash game in the same genre and of the depth of the author's games?

Some games are niche

[cliffski]

It is not at all that simple.

My best selling game is this one:
http://www.positech.co.uk/democracy2
It's a very complex and in-depth political simulation game based around the idea of the interconnectedness of all aspects of government policy, and modelled using a custom-written neural network. It assumes a decent understanding of modern political issues and a willingness to not be put off by what appears (at first glance ) to be a VERY complex interface (it's actually not that complex).

In short, the game appeals to politics junkies, political science students, and people who enjoy chaos theory and complexity.

It doesn't matter HOW good it is, how polished it is, or how well I market it...if your idea of games is Halo, you will NOT enjoy it, and NOT buy it.

Many games exist in a very small, specific niche, a niche where the developer can make a living selling $22.95 games like that one. A lot of those niches are already on the borderline (mine is). Unless I can actually generate a worldwide greater interest in playing political strategy games, I can't expand my sales. So a drop in prices just means less overall revenue, and thus makes it less viable to make games like that.

If all you want is 'mainstream' games that appeal to everyone, why bother with indie games anyway? we make games for specific groups of players, not the whole market.