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World of Goo Creators Try Pick-Your-Price Experiment
2D Boy, the independent game studio behind World of Goo, recently celebrated the game's one-year anniversary by offering it at whatever price buyers cared to pay. They've now released some sales statistics about how people responded to the opportunity. The average price during the sale was $2.03; the game normally retails for $20. According to a survey of why people paid what they did, 22.4% said it was all they could afford at the time, and 12.4% said they already owned World of Goo and were buying it for a different platform. (Yes, there is a Linux version.) Over 57,000 people took advantage of the offer, which was enough for 2D Boy to term it "a huge success." Interestingly, they also saw a significant increase in sales through Steam, and a smaller increase through Wiiware. They've decided to extend the experiment until October 25th.
You can pay $0.01. There's no minimum.
Thanks for the slashvertisment :) Didn't know about this. Just grabbed my copy for $5.
How does the absolute intake compare to what it was before the experiment though?
I'm reminded of a sale Valve had for L4D a few months after it was released; Jeff Atwood relayed the results. In short, Valve cut the price of L4D in half, and the result brought in more money (not just more sales!) than the launch day.
So how did World of Goo's experiment do in absolute numbers? Did the revenue increase or decrease from before the experiment? Certainly sales increased, but that's a far cry from revenue increasing.
This is a pretty cool experiment. But...
Why would I have to purchase the game multiple times to be able to play it on different platforms in the first place?
Well, if you buy from them directly, you get all of the PC/Mac/Linux versions at once for $20 (before this experiment), which is quite reasonable. However, the WiiWare/Xbox Arcade versions are obviously separate; there's no way the console manufacturers are going to allow cross-platform buys, and the only recourse developers like 2D Boy have against this is to not put it on consoles, which would be pretty stupid for the developer.
I offer some of my software for 'pick your price'. I recommend a price, but clearly state that any price is ok. Most buyers buy at the recommended price. Very few pay significantly less (pay is through Paypal, which I think imposes a minimum price of $1). And - not quite unexpectedly - almost nobody ever pays more :-)
i don't know how many people know about this but if you've bought the game once directly from their website you have access to versions of the game for diffrent platforms. just revisit the download link you got in your mail after your original purchase.
xb0x
Either I'm reading things wrong or people are doing it because they feel they should support the developer. Their World of Goo page says:
In a way it is good and bad that you get it for all platforms. I want it for Linux, so it'd have been nice to specifically say "look, I'm supporting your port to Linux", but at the same time it is good to get it on whatever platforms you want without having to pay multiple times.
Now, I had this on my Christmas list. Do I tell my family so that they can get it cheap and do the developers out of some money when a lack of DRM and an innovative game should be welcomed, or do I just let the "pay what you want" period go by and give them the money they deserve?
There is no making you happy. You aren't happy with naming your own price on WoG, you complain about crappy sales on WoG leading to DRM in a future game and then you threaten to not buy the game. You are truly an enigma.
And, as today's pointless bad analogy, it's like trying and failing to sell the last apples at half the original price after they've started rotting, when they could be sold as fertilizer and use the money to buy more land, even if just a little.
What, iPhones?
10 PRINT "SCUNTHORPE"(2 TO 5): GO TO 10
There's plenty of $0.01 payments, yeah, but also a considerable number of higher payments. They say 57,000 total sales at an average of $2.03, minus 13% of the total in PayPal fees, which equals a take of $100,000. They're a two-man company, so that's $50k per person, from a single week of sales. Sounds like a success to me.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
This is a game that should *definitely* be available in Ubuntu Software Store for next release.
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
(..) so that's $50k per person, from a single week (..)
Are they hiring?
Rock Paper Shotgun provides a good analysis on the name your price -sale: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2009/10/20/world-of-goo-sale-provides-fascinating-results/
Even though people mostly paid the $0.01, they still made a nice amount of money with a year old game
Commercially published game sales tend to spike when they're released - and then tail off afterwards. For Indie games I assume the 'spike' is a bit further down the line as people have to find it first - but sales will trail off once everybody is aware of it and has decided whether or not to buy it.
:) is to raise the price of games from release up to a point.
"Back in the day" the game ended up as a budget release (if it were lucky), maybe first at £10, then £5 - and you know only a teensy proportion of that shelf price ever made it back to the developer.
The "name your own price" strategy seems designed to mop up anybody who had an interest in the game, yet never got around to buying it for whatever reason.
Basically if somebody doesn't buy it - they were NEVER going to buy it under any circumstance at all.
So - nice idea for games in the 'tail' of their lives.
What I'd like to see a publisher try (just to satisfy my idle curiosity
i.e. We are going to sell this game for $25. We are launching it at $10 and every day for the next 2 weeks, we're adding a dollar to the price - seems an ideal way to get your headlines, and convert those waverers (the vast majority who will never buy) into purchasers.
I guess in summary, the general rule is that when you get somebody looking at the purchase page, there should always be a reason for them to buy now, rather than next week.
I for one have been hearing about WOG for aages - have I got around to even playing it - no - I had something 'else' to do. I now see the name your own price is about to finish so in my head I can heat "It's now or never time for me to buy it." *wanders off to purchase*
I did the same experiment with some Unity3D tools/scripts of my own, offering them at four different prices with a suggestion as to what I think they equate to, but a very obvious statement that no matter which price you pay, the download will be the same.
Interestingly, the distribution is 6-2-1-1 over the prices, showing that people do not always pick the lowest price, even if they can. Like the World of Goo makers, I consider the experiment a success and may use the model in the future.
It even checks out economically. I made ~180 US$ this way. If I had offered the scripts for $20 (2nd price), even assuming that half of the $10 buyers would have bought it at that higher price, I would've made only $140.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Who bought this not knowing anything about the game, solely supporting this pricing model?
*slowly raises hand*
what bugs me is that 16,852 people paid $0.01 for the game. Which is nothing but legally pirating the game.
If you were doing it for an OS port of the game thats fine, but otherwise at least throw in a dollar.
The bandwidth and credit processing would cost them more then the cent provided.
At least they got the marketing, and my business, which is some good from the cheapskates
Thats my $2.00 cents.
To avoid criticism; Say nothing, Do nothing, Be nothing.
There's all sorts of interesting pricing models an indie developer with zero retail distribution could try if they're controlling the sales.
I think an interesting experiment would be to auction say X copies a day, with the price being set at the lowest winning bid. Folks who MUST have the product on day one can pay more, those who wait can pay less. Obviously there are some challenges, but it's at least an interesting intellectual exercise.
It would be fascinating to see what folks would pay for, say, a week of exclusive access to WoW: Cataclysm. Sort of ruins the spirit of the game, but interesting nonetheless.
How do they know disappointing sales were caused by piracy? Perhaps disappointing sales were caused because, well, not every game is going to be a massive blockbuster.
Also wasting money on DRM isn't going to stop the game from being pirated, it'll be cracked within days (possibly hours). DRM has been a failure since the days of the ZX Spectrum. You'd have thought developers would have learned it's a waste of time by now.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
You can pay $0.01. There's no minimum.
Yes there is I tired using negative numbers and it wouldn't work.
I want them to pay me to buy it.
And the actually working link
Anything less than around 33 or so cents goes to to paypal from fees. So just keep in mind that you are donating to paypal not the indy game developer if you do that. There's a lot of people who donated 1 cent to paypal. On the other hand, if you WANT to cost paypal money, donating 1 cent with visa card probably costs paypal money.
Sorry, I'm not going to read what you wrote in your reply. I'll assume it was something pro-Microsoft, so I'll simply call you an MS fanboi and put some exclamation marks aftewards!!!
Long-live /.
You can advertise in this sig from as little as £99.99 a month!
I forgot the exact amount but I recently bought Halflife 1 for under a dollar off of Steam during a sale. They do sell their old games at low prices, you just have to catch when they do it.
My webcomic
Every developer out there seems to think DRM will "get them more sales" at least at some point in time. Some then realize this fact: The people pirating aren't "lost sales"- they're people who either can't/won't buy your product for varying reasons.
You want to win the "can't" crowd back if possible- you're never going to convince the "won't" crowd ever. The former is a possible customer, the latter is not and will not be.
DRM might slow the infringers down (it's been proven that pretty much every DRM solution to date has been circumvented within weeks of the release of the title...and that initial crush in the case of many titles won't be where you make your money if you're download only/mostly...) but it will pretty much never stop them. Ask Microsoft how nifty their DRM has been on the 360. DRM won't turn the "can't" crowd to be your customer- it won't put money in their pockets to buy. DRM won't turn the "won't" crowd into your customers- if they want your game badly enough, they will take it whether you have DRM on the title or not. If it's such that they won't bother, you've failed at making a fun game.
DRM is a folly wherever it gets used. It's use is based off of a flawed premise out of the gate.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Just buy it twice?
First time buy it for 0.01.
After you play you buy it for whatever.
I'm surprised it's not obvious.
But since it isn't, I guess most of the 0.01 buyers didn't do that - otherwise it might explain the two peaks - people buying it for "free" and then buying it again.
They're basing it off of the online play results indicating at least 10% of the people might have been using an infringed copy. The reality is- you're going to find people committing "piracy" on a given title.
However, the leap they make that the infringements were costing them sales is tenuous at best. And the further leap that DRM will somehow make the sales better is even more so.
In any group of infringers there will be a mix of population of people that can't afford the game and those that will never buy period (I called them "won't"s in an earlier post...)
The "can't' crowd is a prospective customer- they would buy if they had the ability to do so, because of lack of credit card in the case of online sales, or due to things like pure lack of funds. You may or may not get into a position to have them be their customer. 2DBoy did that with me and I paid them what I thought was a fair price and what I had to spare ($15...as much to reward them as to buy the game. They didn't have to do this or make the Linux version after all.). Had they lowered the price to $10 or even $5, the result would have been the same. I was a "can't" because of budget concerns- there's other reasons and they're all over the place on the spectrum of things. You want to try to convert those to sales if possible.
The "won't" crowd is not, nor will they ever be your customer. The people that paid one cent are really, if they're honest with themselves", part of the "won't" crowd. They didn't pay even remotely a fair price for the game. The "won't" crowd will almost always pirate the game, either because they don't believe in paying for any of it, don't believe your game is worth any real money (but yet they made an illegal copy thereof and are playing it...go figure...), or similar. No amount of DRM will preclude them taking what they feel they're due from you if they want the title bad enough. If it is barring them, there's a very, very good chance that your game is not fun enough to rate cracking it. If it's not that much fun, you might want to re-think your thinking on why it's not selling better as it's not infringements that are your problem.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
GOG.com?
There is a war going on for your mind.
I skimmed your post and saw "pro-Microsoft," so I'm going to assume you're a (Apple... no wait, this is games) Sony fanboi and diss the PS3!
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
The game is well-made. It's fun and interesting to me. I have not found any bugginess so far. They produce a native Linux version. They don't harrass us with DRM.
I paid them US$20. That was my pick-a-price. Because, you know what?, the developers felt it was worth that much originally and I agree.
This isn't some contest where I have to make sure I win over the other tens of thousands of customers.
How do we know that AC isn't making things up to stir up discussion? ;)
"Fact is, for me this game wasn't worth buying. I tried the demo and it was pretty enjoyable, but not enjoyable enough that I felt like spending money on it... How exactly am I a pirate? "
So "pretty enjoyable" is worth 1 cent? So I take it to get you to part with $10 the developer would have to give you a hand job.
So no, you aren't a pirate. You are, however, a cheapskate.
IIRC it was 0.99, the same price for Opposing Force and Blue Shift. Since they have the technology in place this seems like an awesome way to make a few thousand out of games that don't sell anymore. They had Bioshock for $5 a while back, and Assassin's Creed is $5 right now. I just bought it :)
Makes me wonder... how many of the folks who helped make this experiment a rousing success were former pirates who jumped at the opportunity to go legit and support the makers of a game they enjoyed playing to the tune of a price they thought was reasonable? (as opposed to the full price.) I'd be willing to bet the answer is a lot.
Piracy is, in essence, a way to try before you buy. (A lot of people are stingy and will "try" it forever, but that doesn't change the dynamic. It's an unrestricted trial, and there's some normal distribution of how long people try it – some "try" it forever, others buy it up-front.) You know it cost someone money to produce this, but you don't want to pay what they're offering (either because it's too much, or because you don't know if the product is any good yet). Some people eventually buy it, but only after they think the game was worth the selling price.
So, if you have a lot of people actively playing pirated copies of your game, you can conclude that it's a good game, but you're charging too much for it. A promotion like this could actually be the perfect opportunity to convert the pirates into (credit :) card-carrying customers... they might never buy the game for the price you're asking, but many/most would be willing to chip in some small token amount for a game that's really good. They're only lost sales if you insist on charging full price, and these sales are not really lost: they just never existed at that price. If you have a large pirate userbase, you can't possibly expect to get full price from all of them, but something is better than nothing, and $100 grand is certainly a lot of something!
Seriously: similar tactics would be very interesting to see from the record companies. I don't buy CDs; I just don't – I've bought, I think, 2 music CDs in my entire life and one of them was self-produced by a friend of mine. The record companies aren't getting jack squat from me, and never will. However, if I, and the thousands of people like me, had the opportunity to give some token amount to pay for the enjoyment we've had – say "look through your music collection, find the artists/songs you really like, and donate whatever you think is appropriate for those" – publicize it, hype it up, "you'll finally be legit, and you'll be supporting the artists you think are really talented"; they'd probably make a killing in a very short amount of time! Exactly the way this game's developers did.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
Would have given more if I thought everybody was going to stiff them. Come on, average price of $2.03?
I do take your point, but even though most people are giving very low amounts, I'll bet that it's all extra sales that wouldn't have happened if the price was $20. I'm not ashamed to admit that I donated $5, and some people might think that's cheap (but apparently not as cheap as the average customer) but I would never have paid anything over that amount for World of Goo. So yeah, people are being cheap about it, but it's all extra money in the developers' pockets which probably wouldn't have been there otherwise.
You can advertise in this sig from as little as £99.99 a month!
That's how much I spent, too, and it's actually more than I initially figured I'd pay ($1). I'm a firm believer in free stuff, and I'm willing to spend a few extra dollars (occasionally) to show my support for a business model that allows people to get free stuff. Especially after it's proven to be massively successful... I figured I'd spend more than the average, just to emphasize the point.
I would never have bought the game for $20, and probably wouldn't have bought it for $5 or even $1 from a bargain bin. But since they're essentially giving it away to anyone who doesn't want to pay, they got my $5.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.