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On the Expectation of Value From Inexpensive Games
An article by game designer Ian Bogost takes a look at what type of value we attach to games, and how it relates to price. Inspiration for the article came from the complaint of a user who bought Bogost's latest game and afterward wanted a refund. The price of the game? 99 cents. Quoting:
"Games aren't generally like cups of coffee; they don't get used up. They don't provide immediate gratification, but ongoing challenge and reward. This is part of what Frank Lantz means when he claims that games are not media. Yet, when we buy something for a very low price, we are conditioned to see it as expendable. What costs a dollar these days? Hardly anything. A cup of coffee. A pack of sticky notes. A Jr. Bacon Cheeseburger. A lottery ticket. Stuff we use up and discard. ... I contend that iPhone players are not so much dissatisfied as they are confused: should one treat a 99-cent game as a piece of ephemera, or as a potentially rich experience?"
Moreover the value of ones time, which degrades when the game experience is good. If the game sucks, then suddenly we grow impatient and want the buck back out of spite. If the game is good, then hours become years as we trance out like lab rats on the crack feeder button test...na na na na ....be the ball billy....
I have this problem as a indie game dev. If I charge too little everyone thinks its cheap and won't even try the demo. If I charge full price everyone is assuming its too expensive since its can't be a real AAA title. Lots of different people have very different ideas of a "right" price for a non big player game.
So at this stage there will be a demo, a "steam" like rental version ($5 per week) and a full version ($20). Rental becomes a full game once you hit $20 bucks.
The Grey Goo disaster happened 3 billion years ago. This rock is covered in self replicating machines!
I had the same experience "selling myself" as a remote Linux administrator.
I'd fix your services, audit your machines, and provide advice for £40 an hour. A few takers, and everybody was very complimentary when talking to me - but when I doubled my hourly rates I got way more business.
In other words, you should expect the same amount of enjoyment out of a 99 cent game that you would out of a $1.98 cheeseburger, when a 99 cent cheeseburger would've provided similar nutritional value, without that taste?
But, fine, let's look at the shirt. You'll spend $15 for a shirt that says "No, I will not fix your computer," or something like that, but 99 cents on a game is too much? Yes, you have to clothe your body, but I'm guessing you had enough shirts.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
iPhone dev. community as of late has been struck by recession or something.., lots of pokers arised that try to bash you and drag your app down. Developers are starting to battle themselves, that is a bad trend, not drive-by killings yet, but really the buying of positive comments, bashing competition and cyber-bullying is terrible.
I never had the original XBox, but when I saw it was compatible with the X360, I found a used copy of Morrowind for $2. GOTY edition, no less, with the expansion packs. Yes, $2 at my work's monthly swap meet (it's an engineering outfit, so the swap meet has all sorts of computer stuff, test equipment, great for the mad scientist in your house) Must have gotten a couple hundred hours of enjoyment out of it. I wish Bethesda would port Daggerfall and Arena over to XBox Live Arcade.
So for what reason does the BMW continue to demand such a price premium if not the simple fact that it's asserted as a high-priced car?
BMWs aren't cars. They're billboards to announce how rich you are. There's no point in buying used, or building one to last more than three years, because having an *old* BMW just means that you couldn't afford to buy this year's model. If you're trying to repair an out-of-warranty "beemer", you're doing it wrong. They're a lot like the "i'm rich" app on the iPhone app store.
What I find confusing, though, is that people of average means who will pay $40k for a car will turn around and make fun of YOU for paying $2k for a computer or more than $300 for a bed. It's like they don't even realize that they could get a decent car for half that price, and have enough left over to afford luxury everything else.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
What's that old, but very common, expression? You get what you pay for.
Is a BMW/Benz 5x better than a Honda Civic? It may be a better performance vehicle, but more reliable? Not really. I've got 200k mi on my '97, and while it's reliable it's pricey. How about a Land Rover? Definitely not, yet they are easily twice as expensive as any other SUV.
People commonly associate price with quality. If you go into a store to buy something, and X is $2 while Y is $4, most people will buy the $4 because they assume "There's gotta be something about Y to justify the $2 increase in price.
The worst price? FREE. Why? Because psychologically when someone sees something that is FREE, they assume that it has no value. Have a yard sale? Don't mark anything FREE, otherwise people will look at it and assume it's junk. Would you "buy" FREE food from the supermarket? Doubt it, you'd probably think "there's gotta be something wrong with it."
Bottom line: without doing any research people look at two objects/services of different prices and instinctively think that the higher priced object can justify it's higher price.
If the kid you're talking of has an iPhone
He doesn't. He has an iPod Touch that he got for Christmas. I've seen kids who get Wii consoles for Christmas run out of things to do in Wii Sports and not have any way to buy Nintendo Points cards.