Game Pricing - Fair or Foul...

[honvedseg]

Personally, I'll wait until last year's movies hit the bargain bin at $5.99. Besides, by then I know from the reviews if the movie is worth watching.

Risking $50 for a game which may or may not be enjoyable, or even playable, is asking a lot. I generally wait until they hit the $19.95 category, and have seen comments by the discussion groups, before buying. Spartan was an exception, where I actually paid $29.95 for it, based on previous experience with Slitherine products.

In terms of "bang for the buck", a game which I find only marginally enjoyable, but which keeps me distracted for 3 or 4 weeks before I finally get sick of it and shelve it or trade it in, is no better or worse than a game which I enjoy immensely for an evening or two before it is abruptly over, but doesn't have decent replayability because of a totally linear plotline. A game needs the right combination of an intuitive interface, variable challenge levels, an AI that doesn't do too many obviously stupid things, and enough depth that you can get in and fiddle with the details when you want without becoming bogged down in them, combined with either the ability to play different sides, multiple storyline branches based on the outcomes of individual scenarios, or a random scenario generator.

Surprisingly, RTW hasn't fallen in price, in spite of the bugs, flaws, and support issues, so I probably won't even try it for another year or so, when it reaches $9.99 on the close-out shelf, or as a used game.

WoW has the marketing advantage of building upon the well-known "Warcraft" series name, and appeals to a group of younger gamers who frequently have no idea of the value of money because they don't have to work for it. Fantasy generally appeals at a more "impulse buying" level than historical strategy games anyway, so the "I want it at any price" syndrome probably comes into play. The online thing is also a huge consideration, as many players meet their friends in the game universe and socialize while they play. The "empire builder" thing doesn't lend itself to this social aspect, since competing city-states don't behave in the same way that a group of individuals with a common mission would. For this reason, I don't think Legion Arena Online would have gathered mass appeal in the same degree as "WoW" or "Evercost", although there may still be some market for competitive players to judge themselves against other players, using either a ranking system or head-to-head battles.

[malthaussen]

Well, I just have to contribute what may be a sort of minority report. I'd like to say up front that I'm not rich; as for stupid, I'm certainly not competent to judge.

I am, however, quite unusual, especially for a native of the USA, in that I don't watch movies or television very much at all, and hence don't buy DVDs, and I rarely buy music CDs, and when I do, almost always from Amazon Marketplace or eBay. Then again, most of the music I like is so old the performers are dead and buried, so the only ones who would profit from me making a full-price purchase are the production companies, and they're rather well-off as it is.

Computer games, however, are one of my "major" purchases: I might even go so far as to buy four or five in a year! And when it comes to the products of "major" companies, I tend to wait at least a year (or more) before purchase, so I can see the reviews, so the companies can work out the plethora of bugs that always infest their rushed productions, and so the price will come down to something reasonable. Frankly, I do not trust the brand-name companies very much at all, as I believe they are more interested in faddism and hype than in producing a decent product. For this reason, I haven't bought The Sims 2, but don't get me started on that.

When it comes to "minor" companies, such as Slitherine or the group of developers at Shrapnel Games, I am happy to pay full price. Indeed, I bought the Spartan/Troy combo at 70 USD, even though I could have gotten them for roughly half that price at the outlets. The reason is simple: I want to support the smaller companies at least as well as they support me. Too many excellent developers (can we say Sir-Tech? I knew we could) have gone out of business because they couldn't compete with the crap-of-the month produced by the software giants. Well, that's capitalism for you, and I doubt there's a cure. Since I buy few games, and play them forever, I am willing to pay whatever frieght the devs consider to adequately recompense them for their product. I suppose this might change if prices were raised too much, but 50 USD is pretty much a "standard" price for a new release, and has been for just about as long as I have been playing computer games, even in the early 1980s. In constant dollars, that 50 USD is not very much at all.

Consider that a new hardback book retails for about 30 USD these days. I rarely pay that price, unless the book is by George MacDonald Fraser or one of my other favorites. At Amazon Marketplace, the same book can often be purchased for one cent (that's 1/100 of a USD for you foreigners), plus 3.50 postage! I will almost always get more than twice the value for a computer game, so 50 USD is a bargain. Since circa 1970, hardbound books have increased in price approximately sixfold, and paperbacks almost tenfold. Compared to this, all electronic media have actually decreased in price, in constant dollars. So I see little reason to complain.

-- Mal

[honvedseg]

Well, Malthaussen and I are somewhat alike in not being bound by the media, as I hardly ever turn on a TV, except for a weather report or an old movie once every month or two. Then again, we're both Pennsylvanians (and only about an hour's drive apart), so that makes us atypical Americans.

[pipfromslitherine]

A lot of you have said that it's a lot to ask for $50 for a game you might not enjoy. But I ask the question - do demos not help you decide on that ahead of release?

This is all interesting stuff Although I'd be careful of admitting to being in the US and not watching TV, you never know who's monitoring the forums! <gasp>

Cheers

Pip

[sum1won]

Demos definitely help me decide. Why wouldn't they? And, of course, they give me something to do between games.

[bvg]

I used to buy games based on friends, reviews and gut feeling. It got me Starcraft (good) but it also got me Baldur's Gate and Black and White and many others.

Now I rarely buy because of that, but most of the time because of the demo. Every time I don't wait for a demo, I find myself with a product that i didn't want in the first place. I also buy more and more because of previous experience with the franchise, so I am a franchise sucker...

Prices are ok for me as they are, of course they could always be cheaper, but what couldn't?

[ste]

according to Andre La'mothe "sending reviewers free stuff works too", so if you want to boost sales, send your game to reviewers will a truck load of freebies

[sum1won]

If you send me free stuff , then I will tell people your game is good too. Of course, I do that anyways, but....

[duncan]

Demos are the key...they can be used for marketing purposes, but It's up to me to decide if it's a hype or not. I'm usually good at it. I bought Spartan because I couldn't stop playing the demo. And I didn't buy Pretorians or Srtenght & Honour because I didn't like the demo. Anyway, sometimes it is not possible to have a demo (RPG games come to my mind...)


Bye

[bodidley]

There are two problems you run into with demos. The first and simplest is demo accuracy. What I mean by that is the quality of how well demo play reflects gameplay. If you have a great game, the key is to design your demo very well. The problem is demos that do not give you a real feel for the actual gameplay. The second, and more sticky problem with demos, is distribution. When the consumer goes into the store, has he played the demo? Is the demo difficult to download? Will it reach people who don't goe online very often? When id Software released Quake, they sent discs containing demos to major retailers for free distribution at registers. The problem with that, though, is that you need some pretty heavy duty publishing power to get it done.

[malthaussen]

I agree about demos. Since I only have a dial-up connection, most demos bulk too large for a convenient d/l. So I have to rely on what the forums say about the game -- not whether or not it's good, but how it is played, what choices the designers made, what points are worthy of interest, etc. And if there are a torrent of bug complaints, that also is likely to persuade me to at least wait a bit before buying.

Some things make the decision simple, however. I have a number of well-defined prejudices that are the prime determinant in whether or not I'll even consider buying a game. Since two of these are NO RTS and NO single-character RPGs, there aren't a lot of games I even bother to look at.

--Mal

[maddin]

Personally I don't think demos can't help you to decide about the game because you can't image about the time you'll spend at it when you bought it.

Let's talk about GuildWars. They had some open Beta-Weekends. I loved them and played as much as I could. When the game hit the stores I bought it on the first day and played 5 hours a day. Now I'm more in the game and I simply think it's stupid. The quests are more or less the same and even I play with my friends it isn't as good as a high quality role playing game like the Gothic series (don't know if Gothic is known outside germany ... maybe the new one from E3 ) http://www.piranha-bytes.com/gothic2/co ... dlines.php. For this game I would even pay 75?‚¬ because I'm still playing the old ones.

But about game prices in general: For people in my age (16) are 50?‚¬ a lot of money. I read in a magazine that the developer would get about 10?‚¬ per game so I would prefer downloadable games without a publisher and you've got to pay 25-30?‚¬, but not 50 like Valve showed us with Steam. Highspeed Webaccess is widespread here (in a month up to 6 MBit/second flatrate for 35?‚¬ with voiceoverIP).
I think you can't compare prices of a DVD with the ones from games because only one of your friends has to buy them and then you watch them together.

So far.