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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.
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 :-)
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?
On that topic, I wonder if the fact that I knew the average was about $2 affected my price point. I didn't want to go below the average, but if the average was $1 I imagine I would have paid less.
I wonder if it would be improved by having an updating average price display showing the current average price, or if it would mean that the average would stay down low because seeing that other people are paying $2 or $1 makes it OK for anyone else to pay that low.
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'
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*
An option would be to provide the customer with 3 figures at the pay point: Retail price ($20); Recommended price (say $10); Average price so far ($X).
I can't speak for everyone, but I certainly don't like to be perceived as stingy -- so I wouldn't want to pay below the average if the average is much less than the recommended price. By showing the average the buyer gets the sense of being watched, even though that isn't really the case. Result: the buyer is more inclined to pay above average.
Assuming everyone behaves similarly to me, the average price is slowly pushed up towards the recommended price limit. As it gets closer, buyers will start paying less than the average, and it will reach an equilibrium -- I'm guessing in the range $6-$8.
The key, I think, is to provide a reasonable discounted recommended price so that people are less inclined to think a low average price is "ok".
"Write down your worries and then depress your companions by reading them out loud." - Eeyore's Little Book of Gloom
I did the same experiment with some Unity3D tools/scripts of my own, offering them at four different prices with a suggestion as to what I think they equate to, but a very obvious statement that no matter which price you pay, the download will be the same.
Interestingly, the distribution is 6-2-1-1 over the prices, showing that people do not always pick the lowest price, even if they can. Like the World of Goo makers, I consider the experiment a success and may use the model in the future.
It even checks out economically. I made ~180 US$ 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
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.
Why is that at all surprising?
I would expect more, to be honest, out of 57,000 and you have to take account of that when you run any such event. Personally, I'd have said any *dollar* amount, so it would have gone for at least $1 and made the maths a little easier but if it was *possible* to buy at 1c, I quite expect to see a hefty percentage of people pay that.
The so-called "honesty box" system works on the basis that *enough* people are honest (not that all of them are, or even most of them), whether you've put bunches of flowers in a tub by the side of the road, with a tin for collecting payment, or you're selling a game on the Internet. (The flowers thing is quite common the rural UK - a few pennies and you can take as many flowers as you like because they are effectively surplus, and very few people run off with the tin full of change, either).
I've personally purchased two World of Goo's, one for me, one for a friend, and think it's a great game. On reading this article, I emailled a couple of friends that might be interested. I don't really care if they pay $10, or $1, or 1c, so long as they get the game - it's not "costing" the authors anything that they aren't already paying, and it is with their blessing, and the publicity etc. they are getting more than makes up for it.
The fact is that most games are too expensive, and I've often thought "If that was a little cheaper, I'd buy it" but rarely tell the author. The feedback from knowing what/why people are spending what they do if a phenomenal statistic to have. And I don't think they did bad out of a game that most people already have and most people already paid full-price for, and for which sales are sloping:
(57,000 times $2.03) - 13% (Paypal small-transaction fees) = just over $100,000, before they even make the front page of Slashdot. IN A WEEK. I don't think the authors have suffered. I think a lot of people who couldn't justify the expense now get a great piece of entertainment. The authors get a shedload of easy money from an "old" game, tons of free advertising and lots of useful feedback, a few pirates make themselves legit, some people get that warm glow of supporting and author, some cheapskate people get a "free" game and Paypal make a shedload of money too. I think that's pretty much win-win.
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.
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