Slashdot Mirror
Letting Customers Decide Pricing On Game DLC
An anonymous reader writes "How much should game developers be charging for DLC? It seems that one indie dev has decided to carry out a unique experiment. The latest expansion pack for Gratuitous Space Battles is priced at $5.99 — or is it? It turns out there is both a standard ($5.99) version and a discount version ($2.99). And the difference between them is... nothing. The buyers have been left to make their own decisions on whether or not they should pay full price, and send more money to the developer, or treat themselves to a deserved discount. The buy page even lists comparisons of national incomes, average salaries and even the price of sausages to help buyers make up their minds. Will this catch on? Will Microsoft start asking us whether or not we should get a discount and trust us to answer honestly?"
If it's possible, they'll ask YOU for the $5.99 and get your game with it.
It'll catch on just as much as Radiohead's experiment caught on.
Horse armor, or a quest that's obviously supposed to be in the game because you run into someone trying to give it to you, I will not.
If I then have to pirate the whole game just to get around the DLC DRM, I will.
It's not a $3 discount on the cheaper one, it's 100% profit on the more expensive.
Preempting the altruistic "I'm funding future development" crowd with "I have bills to pay. I know he does to. Obviously $2.99 covers the cost, so his bills are paid. That $3 goes towards paying mine." More power to you if you have disposable income, you can spend it on his 100% markup if you choose, but you're a mug if you do.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
It's not unique, you see the people behind these types of schemes aren't doing it with the goal of groundbreaking news stories, they're doing it because generating a news story on sites like Slashdot, no matter how dull or inane simply by changing ever so slightly the method of selling means that they have increased their potential customer base by several orders of magnitude.
Indies aren't trying to do something groundbreaking here, they're cashing in on the fact that editors are sites like Slashdot are stupid enough to repeat the same tired old story and produce fuck loads of page hits and potential sales for them. The genius isn't the pricing mechanism itself, it's the pricing mechanism as an advert on the front page of some of the largest relevant news sites on the internet.
There are other similar tactics- write a blog post about how your game made x amount of sales because you ported to and gave away a free picture of a lolcat with it or whatever inane blog post indies are thinking up nowadays to get on the front page of sites like Slashdot. Realise that these people don't give a fuck about how interesting their blog post actually is, or how clever their pricing scheme is, they only need it to be just relevant enough for sites like Slashdot to post it and link to their site giving them massive amounts of traffic and sales as a result.
At least for me "DLC" reads as "Stuff we took out from the main release or would give out in a free update but now sell as extra to squeeze more money out of the customers", 'cause that's exactly what has been done by most publishers.
Call it "expansion pack" or "small expansion pack".
Next give some sort of no-monetary-value reward for people who pay the larger amount. Maybe easier access to the developer and the ability to suggest improvements for the next version.
That said, is the "expansion pack" even worth the small amount? For all we know the two amounts listed are "more money than it's worth" and "way much more money than it's worth" and this is all a poor-man's advertising gimmick. Certainly getting the game to Slashdot will bring more sales.
(Disclaimer: I have no idea if it's so or not. Maybe the use of the word "DLC" has put me in a overly-negative mind-set with regards to this and even the large amount is great value. Take my opinion with a pinch of salt).
I'm all for DLC, don't get me wrong; I love the fact that new areas and items can be implemented after a game is released. I understand that releasing new content after a game's initial release isn't free; it costs developers and publishers money, but people really need to look at how much some DLC packs cost. That being said, sometimes publishers and/or developers do some really cool things. DLC that is available for free on launch day? Totally awesome...there was stuff that they really wanted to get into the game, and obviously ran out of time before the discs had to be pressed; I really appreciate it on the rare occasion when it occurs.
But what's with DLC you have to pay for being released not even a week or two after a game is released? Couldn't you have just delayed the freakin' game for two weeks if it was that awesome?!? Seriously, publishers...if there is an amazing dungeon or a few great items that just absolutely HAVE to be in a game, give the developers the extra couple of weeks to implement them into the release version. Don't make us pay extra money because the game had to be released NOW NOW NOW, and there isn't time to include things that you should. Can you imagine if you had to pay for DLC to get the Spear in Secret of Mana, or if you had to pay for DLC to unlock secret ingredients in Secret of Evermore?
Developers/publishers walk a fine line with DLC. They need to be careful.
Living With a Nerd
Oh come on. No shit $2.99 covers the cost. It's digital. The incremental cost to the developer to ship another unit for a piece of software is tiny, tiny, tiny. Most of the $2.99 goes to profit, R&D and fixed costs.
Now, he still needs to pay those developers who made the software, buy computers, rent office space, etc. I'm sure he's done the math and knows he can achieve that by selling X at $6 or 2X at $3. Of course, he could go open source, set the price at 0 and make it up on volume [/stupid slashdot joke]. In Econ 101 he would have read about the price curve that suggests that fewer people will buy at $6 but maybe not so much fewer that it isn't the better price for his business. For a businessman, the ideal scenerio is to charge everyone the most their willing to pay - price stratification. This is why you have coupons at the grocery store. People with little money and lots of time can clip coupons and pay less. People who have more money will not and will pay a higher price.
The play here is not that he's trying to sell the 2X number with some paying $3 and some paying $6. He wants to first make sure he is able to break even by selling something like .5 X @ $6 and X @ $3. The $6 price helps him break even the same way the $3 price does. Plus, after Econ 101, you learn the price curve is somewhat BS in the first place. Part of what he's doing is stating "We think the product is worth $6, but are offering a 50% discount to poor people and assholes (distinct groups)." Now, regardless of why I look at the $3 price, I am much less likely to think, "Is $3 too much for this expansion?" because it's already a half off discount and be more likely to purchase. He may actually sell more units at $3 than he would have without the $6 option.
These guys are just remarkably (for better or worse) upfront about the price stratification. He's also a freak'n brilliant marketer. Free publicity on Slashdot is a win.
All software pricing is arbitrary. Always. It's up to a vendor to ask for what they think the product is worth, offer discounts / sales / etc to those who think it's worth less, and for the consumer to either purchase or not. The vendor needs to deliver a product that delivers a fair enough value that consumers will purchase their products again / not leave angry messages on forums or app stores.
There is nothing more likely to get me to argue about a bill than "A X% gratuity has been included in your total price". Has it really? Bloody cheek, what makes you think I was going to give you one in the first place and/or that it would ever be a particular price?
I call it rude. It's like the porters who cough politely and wait for their money. The most they will get will be a small lozenge and a recommendation to see their doctor about that cough. Don't say a thing, though, and just walk right out of the room after lugging all my stuff up five flights of stairs and you *will* get yourself a nice tip.
People: stop "tipping" others who do a shit job. You're just encouraging people to do a shit job because they still get paid for it. Instead, tip the ones who do a good job TWICE as much and don't pay the lazy, rude, idiots anything past your legal obligation.
And, yes, the whole "pay what you want" thing is really just a tip-based scenario, so it's hardly ground-breaking. More important would be the results of such an exercise AFTER you done all those sales. I'd be interested in learning just how much good work is appreciated voluntarily, having bought such things myself.
Yes, run Linux.
(Please don't mod me funny. I'm serious - I've seen lots of people pirating Windows and Windows apps, I've seen lots of people running Linux for all sorts of reasons but I have never yet seen anyone run Linux because they can't pirate software. Because they don't want to pirate software (and perhaps can't afford to purchase legitimately), sure.)
Thing is, GSB worked out at less than 10p/hour for me, and that's assuming I never play it again.
I plan to play it again.
Compare that to most free and open source space combat games that cost me precious time without entertaining me, and I'd rather give cash to the non-open but independent and well supported game that's fun to play.
(On the flipside I hate DLC and so he's not getting a sale from me on this race. But I'll buy the campaign expansion when that's ready..)