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Indie Games Should Be Cheaper

R

Robert at Zeboyd Games

Banned
I've seen a disturbing trend of more and more indie games launching at higher prices recently. Whereas $10-$15 was the norm for non-mobile indie games not that long ago, it feels like more and more $20 is becoming the standard. What's even more baffling is that these higher prices are occasionally celebrated by non-developers as some sort of stance against the "evil mobile empire."

Lower prices often benefit both players and the developer. Lower prices mean more people play your game. Lower prices often result in more positive reviews. Lower prices means more buzz around your game and more people tell their friends to play the game. Lower prices often means more total revenue for the developer as dropping the price in half often results in WAY more than double the sales.

Some common arguments I've seen against lower prices for indies games:

My game is worth more: As a developer, you're biased and are probably over-valuing your own game. Making games has never been easier than it is today. With digital distribution, the cost of selling a single game is basically free. And there's never been as much competition as there is now - for example, RPGamer recently did an article on their Top 20 most wanted RPGs that are coming out soon & it didn't even include every RPG I'm looking forward to! There are far more GOOD games coming out now than anyone has time to play PLUS you have to compete against a history of over 30 years of quality games. Games should be cheaper now than ever before.

Game X sold for $20 and did well: Chances are your game isn't the highly anticipated follow-up game to one of the best-selling indie games ever (Transistor/Bastion) or one of the best looking 2D games of all time with the direct backing of one of the most powerful companies in the world (Ori and the Blind Forest). Games can do well at higher prices, but higher prices shouldn't be the norm for every good indie game.

A high price means I'll make a lot of money in sales: A high starting price conditions people to wait for sales. And by the time your game goes on sale, there will be a lot less buzz & excitement around your game. Plus, there's no reason why you can't have successful sales when your game price was lower to begin with - our most popular game normally sells for $3 and 4 years after release, we can still do a big sale & manage to sell thousands or even tens of thousands of copies in a week.

A low price means that people will think my game is not good: Maybe if your game is free or $1 this is applicable, but I've never seen someone say "I was going to buy this game but it's such a good deal that I'm afraid it's bad."

I just want developers to make money: Higher price doesn't necessarily mean more money. In fact, the most lucrative games these days are sold for free.

My game is niche: Probably not as niche as you think it is. And we've seen some games that seem incredibly niche sell incredibly well (like Papers, Please).

Anyway, I know not everyone is going to agree with me, but I think this is a topic worth discussing rather than derailing every high priced indie game thread with talk of pricing.

Disclaimer: I'm an indie developer and our games tend to be on the low price of the spectrum.
 
Aren't you (OP) an Indie dev? That adds legitimacy to your post if so.

I still don't agree with you though. If an indie dev is happy with selling at $24.99, and that is proving to be lucrative, then that's great.

The indie dev should simply price its game however it can to maximize profit. For some games, that will be 99 cents. For others, that price will be $60. Both extremes and everything in between is healthy for our industry. Choosing the "right price" should be a pure profit-fueled business decision. There are no other rights and wrongs to the equation in my humble opinion.
 
I agree. I'm far more comfortable about paying $15 for a new game from a new developer or someone who I don't have any experience with. If demos were more popular then my stance might be different, but for now $20 is a bit too much for most of these games I've seen. I can only think of a handful of games I would have paid $20 for: Velocity 2X (hell, I'd pay $60 for a bigger game, tbh), OlliOlli 2, Assault Android Cactus (everybody needs this game) and Hand of Fate.

Peltz said:
Aren't you (OP) an Indie dev? That adds legitimacy to your post if so.
Click to expand...

Yep, that kinda shocked me lol.
 
$20 is the cost of a movie in some places. I don't understand why you think it's too much for a well-crafted game. If you're going to attack prohibitively high pricing, $60 is where to start - it actively keeps people from experiencing new games and hurts the industry.
 
I think developers should just price their games at what their own perceived value is, and then the market will judge accordingly.

A low price means that people will think my game is not good
Click to expand...

This however, is a problem. Lots of people assume that there must be SOMETHING wrong with a game if it's selling for <$10 at the very beginning.
 
Steam sales have forced the rising of prices on indie games so as to mitigate a race to the bottom.
 
ViolentP said:
I think cost should be relative to content.
Click to expand...

I sure as hell don't. More content shouldn't equate to a higher price tag. What if that content is crap? People say they don't like the open worlds that Ubisoft provides. What if you had to pay more for Ubi games because of that content?
 
I think it's far healthier for everyone, at all levels, if we can break away from the idea that games should either cost $10 or $60. In both directions.
 
jwk94 said:
I sure as hell don't. More content shouldn't equate to a higher price tag. What if that content is crap? People say they don't like the open worlds that Ubisoft provides. What if you had to pay more for Ubi games because of that content?
Click to expand...

I don't think Violent's post was about the amount of content but rather the quality.
 
You erroneously assume that a lower price has a direct 1:1 connection to higher sales and more profit, now as far as I can tell the isn't any major substantive evidence for your claims. See the issue is you could be correct that for certain games at certain times lowering the price would result I'm higher sales, but to assume this is always the case or even usually the case seems odd to me.
 
The rising cost of indie games has made me more weary in purchasing games. Most of the time I usually just wait until they're on plus or xbl now.
 
Depends on the game, but yeah, the pricing structure for indies seems to be taking the overall structure of big budget titles. Everything is $60 until it's not for big budget work, and most indie titles seem to be getting pegged at the $20 mark. This is fine for some games, I thought Axion Verge was well worth the $20 (hell, game was easily a $40 title IMO). But clearly there needs to be more pricing levels for games, both indie and otherwise.
 
LegatoB said:
I think it's far healthier for everyone, at all levels, if we can break away from the idea that games should either cost $10 or $60. In both directions.
Click to expand...

I would agree with this, but move the goal post down to $0 to capture mobile. I'm perfectly fine with $20. I feel like indie games are so much cheaper and offer more value than the AAA-level games.
 
ViolentP said:
I think cost should be relative to content.
Click to expand...

I'm not sure I agree here, partially because how do you measure content to begin with? Let's look at something like Tetris (not exactly an indie game, but it illustrates my point):

Tetris in terms of content is sparse. If we go by the GB release we have 1 mode, 3 songs (4 if you count off as a song), and a few additional options for things like starting game speed, starting difficulty in number of lines. We have a total of 7 blocks, and some basic physics. Content-wise, Tetris is sparse.

Compare it to something like World of Goo (another puzzle game). WoG has 48 levels, multiple different mechanics, and quite a bit more options. WoG has a lot more content than tetris.

Would I pay more for WoG than Tetris? Personally no, I've played tetris way way WAY more than WoG, despite WoG having more content to it. I don't think the amount of content is a fair way to judge price for a game in this case.
 
Low price means that there are far less people who are asking for refunds.

I also think that making a game cheaper is always a good thing. I havent bought a game at full price in god damn long time.

I always liked the cheap priced <10€ games (Cthulhu saves the World(Hehe), FEZ, DLC Quest) because i thought i get more value for my money.

dralla said:
The quality of indie games has gotten much better so I'm okay with a higher price.
Click to expand...

What? No. Indie games are less polished now than they were a few years ago. Im not saying all of them are less polished. But if you look at all the crap that gets released on steam that is considered indie than "wow are we getting worse here"
 
ViolentP said:
I think cost should be relative to content.
Click to expand...

This is how I feel mostly. Though this can be hard to judge as a dev sometimes I feel.

But also
A low price means that people will think my game is not good: Maybe if your game is free or $1 this is applicable, but I've never seen someone say "I was going to buy this game but it's such a good deal that I'm afraid it's bad."
Click to expand...
I've seen this a LOT. In my experience, a sub-$5 game gets looked down upon as a potential shovelware game from many sadly. Obviously more so if the dev is unknown. And really more so if it's sub $5, and even worse like a $2 game.

---

But overall, I do agree that pricing too high is bad. I've seen games that were only really a $2 game get priced at $8. Or a game, where similar games in content/theme/etc are $10 get priced at $15, $20. Not a fan of that trend.
 
Can't agree basically at all. Sure, not all games can support a $20 price point, but those that can should let their price and product speak for themselves. I see a lot of serious harm that bundles, steam sales and PS+/GWG have done to people's perception of indie game value and I really don't think hoping for 10k sales at $1 instead of 1k at $10 is a brilliant plan for victory.

Going bargain-bin is basically the mobile route, and mobile is filled with failures and is basically gambling--release a ton of cheap games, hope one sells great. If this game fails, no big, it wasn't expensive, and so on. It works for some games, but it has clear impacts on the quality of individual releases and certain types of games (narrative, in depth) simply don't support it.

I feel more confident buying a game that looks good, reviews good, and tells me "game's $20, and it's going to be $20 a year from now. No PS+ either. If you don't like that screw off". Or a slightly more polite version of that. I can feel confident in buying that game if I feel it looks worth it, where I might feel ripped off if I buy a $10 game that goes on sale for $5 a couple weeks later. It's really the time between deals more than the amount saved that makes it feel like I got ripped off, personally.

Also, to be quite frank, I've seen many a post of people gleefully proclaiming they'll never spend more than a dollar on a filthy trash INDIE game and I really can't imagine they're a lucrative market to tap into.

Peltz said:
Aren't you (OP) an Indie dev? That adds legitimacy to your post if so.
Click to expand...

Some indie devs regularly put out free/$1 games. Part of the nature of indie is there's a wide variety of opinions on basically everything
 
Johndoey said:
You erroneously assume that a lower price has a direct 1:1 connection to higher sales and more profit, now as far as I can tell the isn't any major substantive evidence for your claims. See the issue is you could be correct that for certain games at certain times lowering the price would result I'm higher sales, but to assume this is always the case or even usually the case seems odd to me.
Click to expand...

This is true. You don't want to just price it as cheap as possible (free or $1) or as expensive as possible. You want to find that sweet spot where you sell a bunch of copies & you make good money from each copy. I'm just worried that a lot of indie developers are missing the sweet spot with the idea that if they price higher, they'll be more successful.

I feel like once you reach $20, you're no longer at an impulse buy level. Now you're competing directly against AAA games that came out a few months ago. People will buy your $20 game if they really want it and that's about it. Whereas at $15 or especially at $10, you're much more likely to get people who have some interest, see positive reviews, and decided to buy it on impulse.
 
Shard said:
Steam sales have forced the rising of prices on indie games so as to mitigate a race to the bottom.
Click to expand...

I think this is a good point. Devs probably think about which price point they want to be at during a Steam sale. And if the game sells the most units during that time, and there's the appearance of getting a good deal, then it may be advantageous to price higher in anticipation of Steam sales.
 
I am a consumer. I know less about the development of games than an actual developer like yourself and my experiences are purely anecdotal. I agree that more people buy games at $10 than $15. And I agree that pricing lower encourages people to buy games when they release instead of waiting for a sale.

But I'll echo what I said on Twitter:
XSGRlMV.jpg


And this is an issue not solely based on the price of these games. Indie games have always had an uphill battle being perceived as "real" games. I think it's this perception that encourages cheaper games and not the other way around, but I think this is a complicated issue.

I don't think indie games should be locked at $14.99 regardless of scope or content. I don't think players should decide an indie game is only worth $10 just because it's an indie game. I want people to want to pay $20, $30, whatever price for content that provides them with a desirable experience.

I do not want consumers to feel entitled to games at a price they have arbitrarily decided without even playing the game. Because I feel that, when that bias exists, it's based on prejudice more than anything else.

"$25 for an INDIE game? No indie game is worth that much. I'll wait for a sale."

I would have paid more than $20 for most of the indie games I've enjoyed.

And I would pay more than $20 for yours.
 
Peltz said:
Aren't you (OP) an Indie dev? That adds legitimacy to your post if so.
Click to expand...

Yes, and I believe his debut games were sold for an absolute steal on XBLIG, which helped lead to very high sales. I would say he knows what he's talking about when it comes to pricing appropriately.
 
I've bought plenty of indie games at $20 that were worth the money.

Axiom Verge was $20 and it's probably my game of the year so far. It was worth every penny. The quality and length more then justified it's $20 price tag.
 
ViolentP said:
I think cost should be relative to content.
Click to expand...

Because the hundreds of hours you'll spend exploring NMS' randomly generated planets is equivalent to a 5 hour game with hand crafted level design.

Does anyone even care about quality level design anymore? It's hard to find games like Shovel Knight these days, I mean maybe there are many but they're literally hard to find in the massive pile of shit.
 
Lots of great points. But I can't begrudge someone for charging what they think is fair for their time. I don't really know how much blood, sweat, and tears they put in. Ultimately the market will play itself out.
 
Free = in app purchases or ad revenue and designed around that model.

Lucrative on the right platform with the right idea backing them sure.

$20 is not a lot to ask for Ori and the Blind Forest or Limbo or Journey. These are games that if there were 2d equivalents in the SNES days they would be full priced $60 titles and be top tier product.

If anything indie game quality is on the rise and asking those devs who put in more work that your typical PS1 or even PS2 developer did to charge less just because is questionable.
 
I think AAA games should be cheaper. Indie games have what I see as a fair starting price and have enough sales that you can just wait if you want to save money.

AAA games are the ones that need a price cut.
 
Shard said:
Steam sales have forced the rising of prices on indie games so as to mitigate a race to the bottom.
Click to expand...

Almost every indie game gets to $5 in a year's time from release.

It's the like the Steam version of the Mean Value Theorem.

I'll throw another wrench into this-it takes a lot more to compete on Steam for mindshare as an indie developer than it used to. The products are honestly better. Why not charge more?
 
UncleSporky said:
Yes, and I believe his debut game was sold for an absolute steal on XBLIG, which helped lead to very high sales. I would say he knows what he's talking about when it comes to pricing appropriately.
Click to expand...

Let's not pretend there's one path to success. Shovel Knight and Axiom Verge are both from out of nowhere developers that produced fantastic games at a "high" price and did very well. No sequels, no established studio, no major sales.
 
I agree theres a lot of good stuff out now for...questionable prices Tbh.

Cosmic star heroine is one of the few Indies btw I'm highly anticipating. Love the aesthetic and promise.

(The other is eh shenmue)
 
Agreed, $20 Indie games mean I'm barely buying them anymore and they're out of my impulse purchase range. I am more likely to buy your games at $15 and if you add a PS+ discount on top of that I'll probably pick up your game on impulse if it looks interesting
 
Robert at Zeboyd Games said:
This is true. You don't want to just price it as cheap as possible (free or $1) or as expensive as possible. You want to find that sweet spot where you sell a bunch of copies & you make good money from each copy. I'm just worried that a lot of indie developers are missing the sweet spot with the idea that if they price higher, they'll be more successful.

I feel like once you reach $20, you're no longer at an impulse buy level. Now you're competing directly against AAA games that came out a few months ago. People will buy your $20 game if they really want it and that's about it. Whereas at $15 or especially at $10, you're much more likely to get people who have some interest, see positive reviews, and decided to buy it on impulse.
Click to expand...
This is the heart and soul of your argument and I agree with it completely, especially if its a fresh out the gate developer.
 
I think the onus is on the developer to price the game at what they think it is worth. And if they price it too high, well then that is their own fault.
 
$20 is out of impulse buy territory, especially since you can't resell or trade them. That and I know they will come down in price.
 
Fragamemnon said:
Almost every indie game gets to $5 in a year's time from release.

It's the like the Steam version of the Mean Value Theorem.

I'll throw another wrench into this-it takes a lot more to compete on Steam for mindshare as an indie developer than it used to. The products are honestly better. Why not charge more?
Click to expand...

Seeing as a pricing function is neither continuous, nor is a price below $5 always the end point, I fail to see how the mean value theorem is in any way relevant.

You answer your own question for the second part, by the way: Lower prices increase exposure.
 
I don't see any reason why being 'Indie' should have any bearing on the price. The value to the customer is derived from the product, not how it was produced.

For the right indie game I would happily spend as much, or more, than I would on a AAA game from a big publisher.

EDIT: Reworded for clarity.
 
Sir TapTap said:
Let's not pretend there's one path to success. Shovel Knight and Axiom Verge are both from out of nowhere developers that produced fantastic games at a "high" price and did very well. No sequels, no established studio, no major sales.
Click to expand...

Sure, there is not one path of success.

Shovel Knight was made by ex-Wayforward staff (i.e. they were experienced & talented with 2D games before starting). Before launch they had one of the most successful video game Kickstarters ever (over $300k which puts it in the Top 100). And well, the game is top-notch. It came out for $15 and did extremely well.

Axiom Verge is a success but according to Steamspy, it's only sold about 20k copies. And of course, it's sold some on Playstation as well (hopefully even more). It's a great game, the developer is awesome, and since it was almost entirely worked on by one guy, he should be very well off just from the existing sales (to say nothing of later discounts) but I can't help but think it would have done even better at a lower price.
 
Ok i guess. I pay what I think a game will be worth to me. Galax z and rapture? No problem paying 20 to play them day one... Well 18. Your cheaper prices haven't convinced me to buy any of your games to be honest.
 
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