Because gamers are worthless

Irish Halo

I'm kind of surprised this hasn't been posted
Because You’re Worthless: The Dark Side Of Indie PR
http://www.puppygames.net/blog/?p=1574

It is an interesting read about the things Indie Game creators can't say and among many things he says is that gamers are "worthless":

Now you’re worth $1 to us. If you buy every one of our games, you’re worth $5. After Valve and the tax man and the bank take their cuts, you’re not even worth half a cup of coffee ... Even if you buy everything we ever make again. Even if all your friends buy everything we ever make again. You just cost us money. Not just fictitious, huge-piles-of-filthy-lucre indie-game-developer who made-it-big money. All our money. We barely scratch a living, like most indie game developers.

I can see his point there is probably no money in selling games for a dollar, even if it makes you look charitable (Humble Bundle) but is it really sour grapes (I don't know much about Puppy Games) or is it true that "gamers aren’t very nice people", "the more infamous and terrible we are … the more money we make." and "You [gamers] are worthless to us"?

Ralphdejones

There is plenty of simple cheap app type games that have made their developers a fortune. If your game is popular enough you will make money, if it's not you won't. Instead of whinging about their customers, crap developers with crap games need to understand this simple concept.

Its a dream I will never realise because it seems like an awful industry to get into

ForstalDave

Developers seem to focus on graphics over game play resulting in a game that costs a fortune to make and with sub-power game-play. This seems to be down to large developers like EA trying to get as much money out of a title as they can, they bought up the small companies like westwood studios and bullfrog and killed what made the games so fun to play. Steam green lit games has proven that if you make a good game that is fun to play you can make money and the industry is shifting back towards smaller indie developers. I believe goatsimulator is up to a million copies sold currently

Ralphdejones

ForstalDave wrote: »

Developers seem to focus on graphics over game play resulting in a game that costs a fortune to make and with sub-power game-play. This seems to be down to large developers like EA trying to get as much money out of a title as they can, they bought up the small companies like westwood studios and bullfrog and killed what made the games so fun to play. Steam green lit games has proven that if you make a good game that is fun to play you can make money and the industry is shifting back towards smaller indie developers. I believe goatsimulator is up to a million copies sold currently

Exactly, you can try polishing a turd all you like, it will still be a turd. Game play should be no. 1, then you can invest in all the expensive graphics and development you want.

Wossack

reason why you cant say it, is because its cutting your nose off to spite your face

Monotype

When you're selling at a dollar or so, you're going to sweep up a lot of people who would definitely not have bought the game for $20 anyway.
With humble bundles the past few years, I've found myself spending more on games than I used to. So even they're not getting the world of cash, I wouldn't have bought the bulk of those anyway. Humble bundle tend to have some standards for what they have and I'll give them a little extra if they release good titles DRM free.

It's tough competition out there now. Digital distribution has blasted open the doors for worldwide selling - it might even make it appear easy to develop with tempting stories of success, but you really have to differentiate yourself.

There's a lot of other bundle sites now with 5 games for €2 but it doesn't matter if it's €5 or €10 - I'm not paying out for charities to keep developers in business.

BizzyC

Any time i buy a €1 game in a sale or the likes, it's a euro they wouldn't have gotten from me without the sale anyway.

From their point of view, it should be a free euro.
They didn't do any additional work on the game, me buying it hasn't cost them more money, they've gained a euro they weren't going to get.

So they can either continue reducing the game after sales have dropped to suck in people like me, or they can stop the sales and make less money..

wes

Well, the current business model they speak of seems to be flawed, and a lot of what he rights makes some sense. I can understand the frustrations, and it seems that the indie game business is a tough one to work in, especially when they could easily go work for a bank or something and make a lot more money, with better hours.

Zillah

I'll pay you more if you make a better game. If you can't make a living making computer games then you should probably find a way to make better games, or find a different career, or accept that you're not going to get much money.

The same could be said for almost anything. Someone can only write a book that you'll find in the bargain section for a euro: is it my fault that your book isn't worth more than a euro? Your movie production company isn't very profitable; your song isn't selling well on itunes? Whose fault do you imagine that is, exactly?

Dur, I know - instead of making a feature film that will sell well I'll make a niche genre short film. What do you mean it's not making me rich?!

Kirby

Quit your whining. These people expect things handed to them.

Don't like it how things work? Well do something about it to change it. Be a trend setter. Otherwise, you have to live in the status quo.

Nobody is forcing anything on them. If they can't "scratch a living" doing this then they should do something else.

Steviemoyne

Similar to the above it's not my problem if they can't make money on their games.

I'm only entering my career in the software industry, I have been in a situation where the user does not have the required "software" for a particular piece of software so I actually included it in the installment, I think it was windows powershell or something like that...also included a version of the .NET framework. Yet they complain about having to offer "support" because of bad drivers, surely if it's happening often enough they could offer it as an FAQ as part of the support form process.

It's also my first port of call for a faulty game to check my driver versions. I don't anymore because AMD send me emails when a new driver is released.

nesf

Part of the issue here was that Revenge of the Titans was a relatively big success but none of their later games came anywhere close to this popularity and whilst you still see people picking up Revenge of the Titans when it's heavily discounted I don't think I know anyone who owns their other games.

You can kind of see why they'd get bitter with their main success now generating them peanuts but that game came out a good few years ago and you can't really expect it to be fetching full price four years on or anything close to that even with the main AAA games (excluding anomalies like Blizzard).

Arcen Games of AI War fame had an interesting take on this: http://arcengames.com/ai-war-first-four-years-postmortem-and-by-extension-arcen-history/#comment-1859

It's a post mortem of their last four years, their successes and failures as a company very much publishing niche indie games and how they've managed to turn a profit whilst doing it.

richymcdermott

Man starts a band with a few friends and put all its production into making a album , but no one buys the album - people are worthless


Man starts a book , finds a publisher but no one wants to read it - people are worthless

Man makes a movie , puts all its funds into getting a great camera , location shoot , props and actors , no one watches it - people are worthless

Now to be real , you choose to go into a line of work full we knowing its a tough business and you do it because you love it. If you go in thinking your first , second or fifth game is going to be as big as call of duty , minecraft or pokemon then you have no one to blame but yourself. You try harder next time around , and fail again try even harder. Bashing the people you are trying to sell your product to is stupid, its what seperates people who try to better themselves to phil fish a douche bag who tried to live the success of one game and think he was a god

ScumLord

Steam kind of compound this problem by making their games expensive outside of sales and dirt cheap in a sale. You'd have to be crazy to buy a game off steam outside of a sale and generally if I want a game there and then I go to the likes of G2play.

This is a problem for "gamers" in that if you don't support a developer that you think is making a good game they won't stay in business, you can say suck it up or move on all you like but that just leaves the big players who really don't care about their customers once they've gotten the money off them.

A business not in profit will shut down, an entire industry that can't make money means that industry disappears. I'm of the opinion in todays world that how you spend your money is more important than how you vote.

There are a few game developers where I'll pay full price for what they make regardless of sales because I want them to succeed and the only way I can assure they do is to give them full price on their games. Waiting for a sale is a bit like robbing them because they get little to nothing out of the sale.

ForstalDave

ScumLord wrote: »

Steam kind of compound this problem by making their games expensive outside of sales and dirt cheap in a sale. You'd have to be crazy to buy a game off steam outside of a sale and generally if I want a game there and then I go to the likes of G2play.

This is a problem for "gamers" in that if you don't support a developer that you think is making a good game they won't stay in business, you can say suck it up or move on all you like but that just leaves the big players who really don't care about their customers once they've gotten the money off them.

A business not in profit will shut down, an entire industry that can't make money means that industry disappears. I'm of the opinion in todays world that how you spend your money is more important than how you vote.

There are a few game developers where I'll pay full price for what they make regardless of sales because I want them to succeed and the only way I can assure they do is to give them full price on their games. Waiting for a sale is a bit like robbing them because they get little to nothing out of the sale.

This is worth reading in regards to that, not true for all developers and of course if you really want a game you should pay full price if you think its worth it

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/174587/Steam_sales_How_deep_discounts_really_affect_your_games.php

the incredible pudding

The weird thing about the article is that in the comments section, he states that they've done pretty well for themselves sales wise (made over 1.5 million in revenue). They just mishandled a lot of their finances apparently (including trying to get into the free to play model with some mmo). I think the fella is just adopting a philosophy that any publicity is good publicity and is being a bit of an ass so as to boost their profile.

ScumLord

ForstalDave wrote: »

This is worth reading in regards to that, not true for all developers and of course if you really want a game you should pay full price if you think its worth it

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/174587/Steam_sales_How_deep_discounts_really_affect_your_games.php

On older games it's a bonus, the developer has gone through making their money on that game and moved on so it's great that a game can continue to bring in money long past it's expected lifespan.

On a new game that's supposed to be the earner for that year I can see how it's really hurting. Your expect a certain amount of money to come in but very little comes in until the sale then you get a big chunk of money but it's half or less what it would have been spread out over the normal sales year.

If it was in a grocery you'd buy in 5,000 tomatoes for 10c a tomato, you sell the tomatoes for 50c each, cover your cost, make your profit and put what's left over and at the end of it's shelf life on sale to get whatever you can out of it before you have to dump the stock.

If steam was acting like a middle man in that scenario you'd buy in your tomatoes for 10c each, all your customers would wait for steam sale to happen, they buy the tomatoes at 12c each, you sell all the tomatoes but you're lucky to cover your costs and there's little to no profit in it. Decide it's not worth the effort and move into a different business, no more cheap tomatoes for anybody. Maybe no tomatoes.

richymcdermott

ScumLord wrote: »

Steam kind of compound this problem by making their games expensive outside of sales and dirt cheap in a sale. You'd have to be crazy to buy a game off steam outside of a sale and generally if I want a game there and then I go to the likes of G2play.

This is a problem for "gamers" in that if you don't support a developer that you think is making a good game they won't stay in business, you can say suck it up or move on all you like but that just leaves the big players who really don't care about their customers once they've gotten the money off them.

A business not in profit will shut down, an entire industry that can't make money means that industry disappears. I'm of the opinion in todays world that how you spend your money is more important than how you vote.

There are a few game developers where I'll pay full price for what they make regardless of sales because I want them to succeed and the only way I can assure they do is to give them full price on their games. Waiting for a sale is a bit like robbing them because they get little to nothing out of the sale.

Well its unrealistic for the Average person to buy all games at full price and its only natural to wait till a game drops in price to save yourself money especially if money is tight.

You will always have both sides that will buy day 1 that were truly waiting for your game and the other might be interested but cannot invest so much for a of sure chance they might enjoy it or they are willing to buy another game instead.

If the game is great either way it builds creditbility off that studio and mostly like pushes sales of a sequel or something else in that series.

Its the nature of business no matter what it is.

johnny_ultimate

'Full price' for an independent game is rarely more than 15 euro, and I've seen a lot of people consider than an unacceptable price even for critically and player acclaimed titles. I could definitely see why the 'race to the bottom' could frustrate a developer that has put a time and effort into a release and then struggles when they release it as a pretty reasonable price.

As the article linked above proves, though, bundles and sales have many benefits (the developers questioned articulate it better than I can). And it is unreasonable to expect players to pay full price for every game they're interested in - few of us can afford that, especially with the knowledge that a bundle or sale is usually only a few short months away. Hell, most of us don't have the time let alone the money to be buying everything at full price or even to keep track of everything that's out there (bundles are probably best for the unexpected discoveries) :P But, as I mentioned in the Hohokum thread yesterday - a game IMO I was more than happy to pay for even knowing it will likely end up on PS Plus within the year - I do think it is important for us all to support smaller games we're interested in at full price, far more so than with AAA games - those who takes personal & artistic risks and push the boundaries of gaming deserve all the support we can give them. Especially when 'full price' in independent gaming is far from the price you'd be charged for a new release in a physical retail store!

One thing I think we can all agree on in that rant, though - many members of the gaming community online are insanely ignorant and obnoxious, or at the very least act that way :pac: I for one don't envy the developers who have to deal with some of the crap they most definitely get.

gizmo

To be honest, I think people may have missed the point of this article somewhat, interpreting it as a commentary on Puppygames own rather precarious situation instead of a general commentary on the state of the industry itself. Whether that's due to the content of the post, the manner in which it was written or otherwise isn't important but from reading both the article and the follow up comments from the developer, it very much appears to be the case.

Anyway, taking it as a commentary on the industry in general, I have to agree with much of what they're saying. While I've alluded to it before, I'm very much of the belief that the increased prevalence of Steam sales, availability of bundles, free PS+ games, key sites (complete with some of their ****tier tactics) and the like are having a profoundly negative effect on how we value the games we play. That's not to say that any of these things are intrinsically bad, they're very much not, I mean who doesn't love a good sale? We get to try things we may not have otherwise tried, titles get exposure they otherwise wouldn't have etc... To add to that, as others have said, not everyone can afford either the time or money to play every new release that comes out. But neither of those are really relevant to the point I'm trying to make, it's the bigger picture of games becoming worth less in peoples eyes because of these things that I'm worried about. They seem to be becoming something we wait to hoard at sale time, things we joke about not playing and things we quite often criticise for being "too expensive".

Puppygames addresses this when they specifically talk about how the value of the typical indie game has dropped significantly over the last number of years. johnny_ultimate touches on it above too when he mentioned that many consider even critically acclaimed games in the $10-$15 bracket as being too much. Now we can dismiss this and say that it's just the changing and highly competitive market out there which is causing this, and there's certainly an element of truth to that, but at the same time, if the net result of our desire for increasingly cheaper titles is a decrease in the number of independent studios being able to survive making the kinds of games they're making, whether they're quirky niche retro rogue-like pixel-art platformer-adventure games or not, then I can't see how this can't be viewed as anything other than a negative thing.

To be fair, there are a whole host of other factors at play here, from the effect of deeply discounted AAA games on mid-tier and indie games, how AAA publishers react to the push towards games with lower barriers of entry cost-wise, how this would affect the viability of the 'mini' AAA game, the rise of Kickstarter and Early Access titles, basically far too many things for one post but it's definitely a topic worthy of discussion and not just through the lens of one small indie developer in the middle of the UK.

I'll attempt to wrap things up on fairly solid point though. The race to the bottom did not work out well for games on mobile devices. The respective app stores are now flooded with games made by as many monetisation designers as actual game designers and the vast majority of the revenue (up to 98% in some cases) is coming from Free To Play titles, those featuring the kind of micro-transactions that are loudly condemned on both this site and the majority of other gaming-orientated ones. We've already seen these kinds of "mechanics" sneaking into both PC and console releases and if that doesn't provide adequate warning for the need to vote with our wallets for games and studios who avoid this then I don't know what will.

SirLemonhead

Yeah it's as if most people in this thread didn't actually read the original article

Steviemoyne

SirLemonhead wrote: »

Yeah it's as if most people in this thread didn't actually read the original article

I read it in full and took it as the author pointing out his own individual problems, especially with malicious feedback. Then a bit of nostalgia in how things used to be followed by how they are now. The moving background done my head in.

nesf

gizmo wrote: »

To be honest, I think people may have missed the point of this article somewhat, interpreting it as a commentary on Puppygames own rather precarious situation instead of a general commentary on the state of the industry itself. Whether that's due to the content of the post, the manner in which it was written or otherwise isn't important but from reading both the article and the follow up comments from the developer, it very much appears to be the case.

Anyway, taking it as a commentary on the industry in general, I have to agree with much of what they're saying. While I've alluded to it before, I'm very much of the belief that the increased prevalence of Steam sales, availability of bundles, free PS+ games, key sites (complete with some of their ****tier tactics) and the like are having a profoundly negative effect on how we value the games we play. That's not to say that any of these things are intrinsically bad, they're very much not, I mean who doesn't love a good sale? We get to try things we may not have otherwise tried, titles get exposure they otherwise wouldn't have etc... To add to that, as others have said, not everyone can afford either the time or money to play every new release that comes out. But neither of those are really relevant to the point I'm trying to make, it's the bigger picture of games becoming worth less in peoples eyes because of these things that I'm worried about. They seem to be becoming something we wait to hoard at sale time, things we joke about not playing and things we quite often criticise for being "too expensive".

Puppygames addresses this when they specifically talk about how the value of the typical indie game has dropped significantly over the last number of years. johnny_ultimate touches on it above too when he mentioned that many consider even critically acclaimed games in the $10-$15 bracket as being too much. Now we can dismiss this and say that it's just the changing and highly competitive market out there which is causing this, and there's certainly an element of truth to that, but at the same time, if the net result of our desire for increasingly cheaper titles is a decrease in the number of independent studios being able to survive making the kinds of games they're making, whether they're quirky niche retro rogue-like pixel-art platformer-adventure games or not, then I can't see how this can't be viewed as anything other than a negative thing.

To be fair, there are a whole host of other factors at play here, from the effect of deeply discounted AAA games on mid-tier and indie games, how AAA publishers react to the push towards games with lower barriers of entry cost-wise, how this would affect the viability of the 'mini' AAA game, the rise of Kickstarter and Early Access titles, basically far too many things for one post but it's definitely a topic worthy of discussion and not just through the lens of one small indie developer in the middle of the UK.

I'll attempt to wrap things up on fairly solid point though. The race to the bottom did not work out well for games on mobile devices. The respective app stores are now flooded with games made by as many monetisation designers as actual game designers and the vast majority of the revenue (up to 98% in some cases) is coming from Free To Play titles, those featuring the kind of micro-transactions that are loudly condemned on both this site and the majority of other gaming-orientated ones. We've already seen these kinds of "mechanics" sneaking into both PC and console releases and if that doesn't provide adequate warning for the need to vote with our wallets for games and studios who avoid this then I don't know what will.

The core issue that he didn't touch on is that the end of the market for games made by small teams with low budgets has been rather saturated for a good few years now. You see bigger independent studios doing well, Triumph Studios sold a lot of copes of Age of Wonders III at €40 a go, but they've feck all competition there as that type of game can't be done by a very small development studio.

If Revenge of the Titans (a retro graphics tower defense game, a fun game but not very sophisticated graphically or gameplay wise and in a fairly niche genre) was released in 2014 instead of 2010 it would have had a much tougher time getting noticed and gathering sales in. Right now it's extremely hard to stand out with retro style or small budget/studio games, so it's very hard to sell at full price. It's tough to get $20 out of me for a roguelike when I already bought five or six in the past year. Give me a turn based hex based wargame and you'll easily get that $20 out of me since there's hardly any of those being released these days (you see the same on the iOS market, serious turn based strategy games are sold for €10+ and apparently do well but there's relatively few of them released each year).

There is an issue with value perception due to Steam Sales etc, but there is also an issue with market saturation and we've always had people willing to wait to buy the Game of the Year editions before there was digital distribution but we've lacked this massive ability to self-publish on this scale until recently as well. It's hard to see games without name recognition commanding full prices unless they're in a genre that is very quiet and the fans are starved for new games in it.

gizmo

nesf wrote: »

If Revenge of the Titans (a retro graphics tower defense game, a fun game but not very sophisticated graphically or gameplay wise and in a fairly niche genre) was released in 2014 instead of 2010 it would have had a much tougher time getting noticed and gathering sales in. Right now it's extremely hard to stand out with retro style or small budget/studio games, so it's very hard to sell at full price. It's tough to get $20 out of me for a roguelike when I already bought five or six in the past year. Give me a turn based hex based wargame and you'll easily get that $20 out of me since there's hardly any of those being released these days (you see the same on the iOS market, serious turn based strategy games are sold for €10+ and apparently do well but there's relatively few of them released each year).

This is the thing though, does a saturated market implicitly mean games are worth less? Specifically, does the fact that you've played five or six rogue-likes in the last year mean either they or the next one you buy isn't worth the full retail price? Surely the only real implication would be you buy less of those types of games which is a raw sales issue than a pricing issue? In the context of Puppygames, they don't seem to have an issue with that, more so that the sales they do get are at a significantly lower price point.

I guess it comes down to purchasing habits though. I'd be more inclined to just wait and buy them when I want to play them rather than just waiting till they go on sale and stockpiling them for when I'm ready to play them or feel like playing something in a particular genre. As for how this waiting applies to what I said above, while I'm not a massive fan of the sale thing I do think it'd be better to see a more organic price drop over time. Taking Steam for example, some studios seem to lower the prices of their games over time but others seem to retain their original prices unnecessarily to the point that waiting for sales for older games is nearly encouraged.

the incredible pudding

gizmo wrote: »

This is the thing though, does a saturated market implicitly mean games are worth less? Specifically, does the fact that you've played five or six rogue-likes in the last year mean either they or the next one you buy isn't worth the full retail price? Surely the only real implication would be you buy less of those types of games which is a raw sales issue than a pricing issue? In the context of Puppygames, they don't seem to have an issue with that, more so that the sales they do get are at a significantly lower price point.

I guess it comes down to purchasing habits though. I'd be more inclined to just wait and buy them when I want to play them rather than just waiting till they go on sale and stockpiling them for when I'm ready to play them or feel like playing something in a particular genre. As for how this waiting applies to what I said above, while I'm not a massive fan of the sale thing I do think it'd be better to see a more organic price drop over time. Taking Steam for example, some studios seem to lower the prices of their games over time but others seem to retain their original prices unnecessarily to the point that waiting for sales for older games is nearly encouraged.

In answer to your first question, I would say yes, definitely. It's simple economics really, scarcity value is a very real thing and when you've got literally hundreds of games coming out every year there's two options. Buy less or buy cheaper.

Personally speaking, I can't afford to buy too many games at full price so wouldn't actually own I'd say about 70% of the games in my Steam library if it wasn't for the sales and Humble Bundles. It was the same case when I was younger and the second hand market blew up during the 6th gen and I bought about 20 ps2 games in the course of two years rather than the 2-3 a year I'd afford myself normally. I became a fan of the developers of some of these games and am much more likely to purchase their games than if I hadn't.

I would argue that Puppygames would be in a much worse state if it wasn't for these sales. Any one of these "worthless" gamers who bought their games for pittance who loved the game is far, far more likely to pick up their next title than if they hadn't purchased it. For example, I picked up machinarium on a whim during one sale, loved it and subsequently pre ordered botanicula, bought a copy of their humble bundle to gift the games to others in hope that it'd create new fans for them. Machinarium was like a cheap entry point that created a loyal customer. Due to the sheer volume of games that are released by small indies these days, they probably would have passed me by if it wasn't for their inclusion of that sale. I know this piece of anecdotal evidence probably doesn't mean too much to the game creator who is sick of seeing their work devalued but in my opinion the alternative is the imminent burst of the bubble. I see it like some socialist spreading of consumer's funds, where people buy humble bundles and games they wouldn't even consider buying and that in turn helps these small developers hopefully continue their work and where only the top producers gaining great full price-sales.

nesf

gizmo wrote: »

This is the thing though, does a saturated market implicitly mean games are worth less?

(short on time so only answering this)

Yes. Absolutely. Value is not some fixed quality of a thing but simply what people are willing to part with to own something or get a particular service. Games aren't just "worth $20." The value is determined by a large range of factors like popularity of the game, age of the game, whether the core market for the game has already mostly purchased it and you're trying to sell it to less engaged customers, the number and price of alternative games and so on.

So you can still charge $20 for your roguelike but you won't sell as many today as you would have in 2010 because you've so many competing games selling for less than that and everyone won't stay at $20 because there a ton of sales at the $5 and $10 levels to people who aren't huge roguelike fans but who will pick one up cheap if it's going. The main issue for smaller publishers is the shorter time you can spend high before dropping low to sell to the latter and this is mostly because of sales cycles combined with a very competitive market where you're jostling for sales with plenty of other smaller developer houses who will cut prices if you don't.

johnny_ultimate

nesf wrote: »

It's hard to see games without name recognition commanding full prices unless they're in a genre that is very quiet and the fans are starved for new games in it.

My main fear wouldn't be for games from familiar genres, but rather the unclassifiables. At the risk of generalisation, if you buy a tower defense game you broadly know what sort of thing you're getting, and there's pretty much a guaranteed audience even if the market is heavily saturated. It's the same with most old school type games - nostalgia is a powerful selling force, as indicated by the huge amount of retro revivals that have been some of the biggest indie and Kickstarter success stories.

But it are the original ideas and experiments that I fear suffer from the strange market dynamics that are prevalent at the moment. I'm speaking in purely anecdotal terms here, but it tends to be with games like Gone Home, Jazzpunk, Papers Please or Hohokum that you see the 'looks interesting, but I'm not going to pay full price' type of comments (disclaimer: internet comments should always be taken with all the grains of salt). In all these cases - except maybe Gone Home, which was a bit more expensive than you usually see - the launch price was perfectly reasonable - and even with all our individual takes on what constitutes 'good value', €10-15 is most definitely not an unreasonable asking price for a brand new game. But I definitely sensed a lot of reluctance from a lot of people who opted to 'wait it out'. Now not all those games are going to be of interest to all players, but personally I tend to find it a wee bit frustrating how many players are willing to splash out premium prices for AAA releases and seem to baulk at the idea of paying even a fraction of the price for something completely different.

On the plus side, the modest success of many small and experimental releases is cause for optimism, and the gaming community has grown large and diverse enough that there's undoubtedly a niche there to support these types of games at launch (even if they're only 10% of the people who will ultimately play the game, they could well represent a significant chunk of the final gross). The rhetorical question is whether that niche is big enough. Especially as risky games become bigger and more ambitious - The Witness, for example, has a budget in the $3-4 million range - it's fair to say the bundle and sales model won't be entirely sufficient to support them. There are more and more games out there that are not mere riffs on existing ideas, and it'd be disastrous if unsustainable market dynamics had a knock-on effect on the quality and variety of games available. Some posters above have effectively said 'tough luck if you can't make a living out of it', but I can't imagine any of us would want a situation when talented and ambitious developers simply can't make the games they want to make.

An aside: Jason Rohrer - about as experimental a game maker as is out there - articulated why he has opted not to discount one of his games in the future and what he feels are the negative impacts of sales: http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/JasonRohrer/20140115/208673/Why_Rampant_Sales_are_Bad_for_Players.php

nesf

johnny_ultimate wrote: »

My main fear wouldn't be for games from familiar genres, but rather the unclassifiables. At the risk of generalisation, if you buy a tower defense game you broadly know what sort of thing you're getting, and there's pretty much a guaranteed audience even if the market is heavily saturated. It's the same with most old school type games - nostalgia is a powerful selling force, as indicated by the huge amount of retro revivals that have been some of the biggest indie and Kickstarter success stories.

But it are the original ideas and experiments that I fear suffer from the strange market dynamics that are prevalent at the moment. I'm speaking in purely anecdotal terms here, but it tends to be with games like Gone Home, Jazzpunk, Papers Please or Hohokum that you see the 'looks interesting, but I'm not going to pay full price' type of comments (disclaimer: internet comments should always be taken with all the grains of salt). In all these cases - except maybe Gone Home, which was a bit more expensive than you usually see - the launch price was perfectly reasonable - and even with all our individual takes on what constitutes 'good value', €10-15 is most definitely not an unreasonable asking price for a brand new game. But I definitely sensed a lot of reluctance from a lot of people who opted to 'wait it out'. Now not all those games are going to be of interest to all players, but personally I tend to find it a wee bit frustrating how many players are willing to splash out premium prices for AAA releases and seem to baulk at the idea of paying even a fraction of the price for something completely different.

On the plus side, the modest success of many small and experimental releases is cause for optimism, and the gaming community has grown large and diverse enough that there's undoubtedly a niche there to support these types of games at launch (even if they're only 10% of the people who will ultimately play the game, they could well represent a significant chunk of the final gross). The rhetorical question is whether that niche is big enough. Especially as risky games become bigger and more ambitious - The Witness, for example, has a budget in the $3-4 million range - it's fair to say the bundle and sales model won't be entirely sufficient to support them. There are more and more games out there that are not mere riffs on existing ideas, and it'd be disastrous if unsustainable market dynamics had a knock-on effect on the quality and variety of games available. Some posters above have effectively said 'tough luck if you can't make a living out of it', but I can't imagine any of us would want a situation when talented and ambitious developers simply can't make the games they want to make.

An aside: Jason Rohrer - about as experimental a game maker as is out there - articulated why he has opted not to discount one of his games in the future and what he feels are the negative impacts of sales: http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/JasonRohrer/20140115/208673/Why_Rampant_Sales_are_Bad_for_Players.php

I don't know, I think Papers, Please is a perfect example. It's really *not* from any established genre with an existing core of gamers happy to buy new games of that type. It's exactly the kind of game you'd expect there to be a lot of "I think I'll hold off until a sale, I'm really not sure if I'd enjoy this one" responses for.

I mean, if you release anything obviously unusual and experimental into almost any market you get this unless it's back by some "name" that has a track record in that market. It's the same as with tower defense games, for the established fan base you can sell games for €20+ (i.e. to me) but for the much larger group of "fringe fans" you're only ever going to sell to them at a discount down the road. The only difference with Papers, Please is that the core market for such unusual conceptional games is far smaller than even that of the tower defense market.

the incredible pudding

Well, Papers Please has sold over half a million copies, which can probably be considered more than a moderate success. To be fair though it got quite a lot of publicity and winning the Seumas McNally Grand Prize probably helped a lot too! The Witness is probably getting some funding from Sony too for the exclusivity deal. Blow is pretty respectable in that he's willing to put so much of what he earned from Braid into it though, it allowed him to get a decent sized team together. Hopefully it all works out.

Waiting it out is better than not buying at all. I know for one, I'd buy a lot more music if bands were to sell some of their older albums for cheaper online. Why don't they offer me their discography at a discount?! I occassionaly use platforms like bandcamp to support smaller bands I like but again it's usually price dependent. I find that 15 quid is too high, ten euro would be reasonable to my mind.

I agree that €10-15 for a unique gaming experience certainly isn't too much to ask for alright. If you consider how much going to the cinema costs I think it's a pretty reasonable figure. However it'd want to be a damn good game for me to want to pay that much, just like it'd want to be a good film! Otherwise i'd probably wait, see if I like it and then maybe get their next game at release.

johnny_ultimate

the incredible pudding wrote: »

Waiting it out is better than not buying at all.

It absolutely is, and there's plenty of evidence cited in this thread that suggests that the 'wait it out' model has benefited quite a few developers and countless players in a variety of ways. And yes given the really exciting commercial success of games like Papers, Please - even taking into account the bonus publicity it received - there's no immediate fear that creativity in gaming is going to be severely neutered by market dynamics.

Again, the fear I think is being expressed is that the race to the bottom might not be sustainable in the long term, and could have a negative impact on some developers or certain games. Theoretical more than anything, barring in the few cases where developers have spoken out about it. Above all, I think the central frustration that prices are being driven ever downwards is a reasonable one that can't be dismissed, and that in some respects the model has unfortunately distorted what is deemed a 'reasonable' price by many consumers. From a personal perspective I've always felt that unique and experimental titles are 'worth less' is an unfortunate one - but I have no illusions that I'm in something of a minority in valuing those types of games far more than the bigger ones. I also completely understand that these types of purchases are a risk in some respects - although thankfully the huge amount of responses to any game mean it's easy to avoid the straight-up duds (although a bit of sensible signal:noise filtering is necessary so you don't ignore the worthwhile ones either!)

I'd actually say Sony are shooting themselves and developers in the foot far more than Steam or Humble Bundles are. The 'it'll be free on Plus' attitude means many will buy the big games and wait until the more unusual ones are completely free. I'd love to know what kind of 'compensation' developers receive when their games are up on the service (not all of them can make up the difference with boosted DLC sales), because I think the Plus model - for its incredible benefits - is also eating into future revenues for everyone involved. Sadly we can only speculate as the specifics of the service seem as secretive as can be! Sony must offer something really appealing, but I'm at a loss as to how they sustain that for six games a month given they have a finite fund to work with. But then I suppose even 50c from all subscribers is a serious chunk of change.