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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.
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.
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.
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