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[zero shift]

Each game has also been longer & more complex than the one before, but the improvement in graphics has definitely been the single biggest time consuming element with each new game.

None of us has any experience making 3D games and we feel like we're getting pretty good with 2D games so we intend to keep making 2D games. I know my partner has talked about the possibility of trying out different 2D art styles in the future, but we haven't planned anything concrete there.

Interesting. How much more extra time would you calculate moving from the graphics from say Breath of Death to Cosmic Heroine be? Like an extra two months of work or so?

 

[slash000]

There's a few hundred assets in Breath7 (individual tiles, frames of animation for sprites, etc)

There are thousands of assets in CSH for these things.

Not sure what the question is but if we took BoDVII and "made it into CSH" in terms of quality, we'd have to overhaul everything from the engine to the map layouts because you can't just replace what's there and have it work. It all kinda fits together.

So it would take forever. A bit less than a year if we reused the engine and a bunch of assets? Doing it all again from scratch would easily take a year though. (to start a game like B7 entirely with nothing and get it up to where CSH is I mean)

 

[szaromir]

That's how I see it as well. Child of Light may not be an indie title (made by Ubisoft, albeit with a smaller team than most of their games) and it has its share of flaws, but it's still a rather good game with fantastic art & music and it was only $15. If your game isn't at least as good as Child of Light, you probably shouldn't even be considering a $20 price tag.

This seems silly for two reasons. Child of Light seemed to have been met with mixed reception (I didn't play the game nor am I interested in it, however I remember opinions of people who adored it, but also many abhorred it). Even if it was universally acclaimed, still only a small subset of games is directly comparable with it, therefore the "at least as good as Child of Light" doesn't make much sense.

Exactly. Games are constantly coming out and the quantity is increasing every year. The vast majority of games make a large percentage of their lifetime sales at launch. You should do everything in your power to make your launch as successful as possible. Saying "I'll release at a high price since it's easy to lower the price" doesn't work very well in practice. If you release at too high of a price & lower the price later, chances are nobody is going to care when you lower the price because attention spans are brief in this industry and by the time you've lowered your price, everyone has already moved on to the new hotness.

Oh and I'd like to thank everybody for being so civil in this discussion. I was a little worried at how this thread would go over when I started it, but I've been impressed with how polite everyone is being, despite disagreements.

Ultimately there's a finite, rather limited audience for most indie games regardless if you launch at $10 or $20. There is the fear and a real possibility that your game is only going to reach the very dedicated genre fans regardless of how much you charge for it. In that case, you fail to attract the wider audience you keep referring to and miss out on revenue from the dedicated audience. It's simply the safer option, even if it means lowering the chances of hitting the jackpot.

You yourself are not going to bet that the increased graphical fidelity and longer campaign of CSH are going to magically attract several times as many players as your previous games, instead you're opting to set the price as much as 3 times as high as you did for your previous games (and that's despite the risk being somewhat softened by raising some money on Kickstarter). Other developers also going for higher price brackets to offset the increased scopes of their projects shouldn't really surprise you.

 

[Robert at Zeboyd Games]

You yourself are not going to bet that the increased graphical fidelity and longer campaign of CSH are going to magically attract several times as many players as your previous games, instead you're opting to set the price as much as 3 times as high as you did for your previous games (and that's despite the risk being somewhat softened by raising some money on Kickstarter). Other developers also going for higher price brackets to offset the increased scopes of their projects shouldn't really surprise you.

I actually think there's a good chance that our new game will sell better than our previous games even at a price higher than our previous games' prices, if only because it's going to be on more serious platforms other than just Steam, but that's beside the point.

People have accused me of supporting the race to the bottom with this thread, but we've actually been raising our prices with new releases.

Our first RPG was $1
Our second RPG was $3 (and later released on Steam for the same price with our first RPG bundled together as a freebie)
Our third and fourth RPGs (which are part of the same series) were $5
And our upcoming RPG will be more than $5 and at or less than $15

Our strategy for pricing has always been to take what we think the game is worth personally and then price it lower than that. Make it so that people feel like they don't have to wait for a special sale to be able to get a great deal on the game because the game is always a great deal. You feel like your game is worth $60? Sell it for $40-50. Worth $20? Sell it for $10-$15. Worth $10? Sell it for $5.

As an indie developer, fan good will is one of your most valuable assets. Making your game, not just a great game, but a great deal is one easy way to build that good will.

 

[SonyToo!™]

As a gamer who enjoys retro / arcade games I welcome higher prices of digital games. Imo the £5 then £10 price caps of last gen on XBLA / PSN has been damaging to AA / mid tier games and development studios.

In a crowded marketplace, unless a game has novelty value (eg Geometry Wars, Castle Crashers & Zeboyd's own Cthulhu Saves the World and Breath of Death VII on the 360 XBLA/IG) to attract extra sales from mainstream gamers, the impulse buy £10 sweetspot isn't enough for studio made games like Hardcorps Uprising, otherwise Konami, Ubisoft, SEGA etc would be making lots of them,

Boutique shmup dev G.rev said that they lost money putting their arcade shmup on XBLA as same ppl who downloaded it for £10 would have payed 3 to 5 times that if it was physical. Skullgirls despite been imo one of the most undervalued games on digital didn't receive the allowances by gamers and reviewers for it's small roster and training mode compared to full priced FTGs that it should have. The expectation from many gamers / reviewers are that retro games are a rip off at full priced physical and should be a £10 download, putting devs between a rock and a hard place. Sure it left a gap in the market for indies with shoestring overheads to fill (good for the OP) but I'd like Xbox/PS & PC to be more like Nintendo platforms where niche / AA games are valued more.

I think cost should be relative to content.

Content PLUS quality, Imo gamers often wilfully ignore the latter, that's why games with tight crafted gameplay often don't sell while open world / procedurally generated grindy games do. My hope is that with higher indie game prices gamers will start to appreciate and demand quality more

Anywayz: Games should be priced whatever the developer wants them to be. $20 for Shantae or Outlast? Sure. $25 for Skullgirls 2? Go right ahead. People will just not buy them if they don't think its worth those prices and you'll start seeing discounts.

Sure Skullgirls 1 was only £10 but you don't think a sequel with the expanded roster is worth $25 when Street Fighter and other FTGs are $60?

 

[zero shift]

There's a few hundred assets in Breath7 (individual tiles, frames of animation for sprites, etc)

There are thousands of assets in CSH for these things.

Not sure what the question is but if we took BoDVII and "made it into CSH" in terms of quality, we'd have to overhaul everything from the engine to the map layouts because you can't just replace what's there and have it work. It all kinda fits together.

So it would take forever. A bit less than a year if we reused the engine and a bunch of assets? Doing it all again from scratch would easily take a year though. (to start a game like B7 entirely with nothing and get it up to where CSH is I mean)

My question was more or less if you took the BODVII sprites and tiles and made them into CSH tiles how long would it take. However your post brought upon the point that it isn't really that simple because more complex graphics means more complex map layouts, more assets, and reworking the engine showing that it isn't that simple.

 

[Robert at Zeboyd Games]

My question was more or less if you took the BODVII sprites and tiles and made them into CSH tiles how long would it take. However your post brought upon the point that it isn't really that simple because more complex graphics means more complex map layouts, more assets, and reworking the engine showing that it isn't that simple.

BoDVII main character sprites are 16x16 pixels and have 8 frames of animation (2 looping frames in each of the 4 directions).

The main character sprite in CSH is 16x32 pixels when standing (bigger for some animations) and has tons of frames of animation (haven't counted but pretty sure it's a few hundred).

So yeah, huge difference there.

BoDVII tiles are 16x16.

CSH doesn't use a tile-based map system. Each map is drawn as several large images, one for each layer (ground, foreground, shadow/lighting, and background).

So again, big difference there.

 

[Jupiter_Shrooms]

CSH doesn't use a tile-based map system. Each map is drawn as several large images, one for each layer (ground, foreground, shadow/lighting, and background).

Sorry for going a little OT, I recalled you said you were using 2DTK. I assumed that was for the tilemap functionality. Are you still using 2DTK or has that been abandoned?

I ask because I use 2DTK. Considered dropping it a while back.

 

[Robert at Zeboyd Games]

Sorry for going a little OT, I recalled you said you were using 2DTK. I assumed that was for the tilemap functionality. Are you still using 2DTK or has that been abandoned?

I ask because I use 2DTK. Considered dropping it a while back.

Still using 2DTK. Started using it before Unity added 2D functionality and didn't feel like relearning how to do graphics when 2DTK works fine.

 

[Jupiter_Shrooms]

Still using 2DTK. Started using it before Unity added 2D functionality and didn't feel like relearning how to do graphics when 2DTK works fine.

Makes sense. Thanks for the answer!

 

[Keihart]

I think that reasonably higher prices are good for indie games, because it makes niche games more profitable. So if your game is targeting a super niche audience and don't want to give up on production costs, sell it as high as you think you need to, to make it worth it.

I don't have a problem in fact with games that are too expensive, the consumer can just refuse tu buy it on launch and buy it on sale if the price is the problem. But when games get too cheap as a standard, then all games start getting devaluated.

So i think that indie devs should charge as much as they think they need to.

 

[Coen]

Everything up to $15 is in impulse-buy territory for me personally. Everything priced higher, even if it's something like 17,99, I consider and to be honest, usually decide against. Decisions wether to buy or add to wishlist are rarely made on the amount of content a game offers but rather on its concept. If its intriguing and something I haven't tried before, I'm much more willing to insta-buy something then if it's something that harkens back to the familiar, probably because I figure I can easily replay its predecessor until I wait for it to go on sale.

I recently bought Her Story because it was cheap and intriguing and it has been one of the best decisions of the year. Now something like King's Quest I have all but ignored thanks to its price. I haven't even got the foggiest if the game's even worth a damn because of it. So personally, my actions support your statement, although I can see that insta-buy threshold being very dependant on disposable income.

 

[Mr_Antimatter]

Honestly, it all depends on the game. I'd gladly shelled out 30 for a few heavily anticipated titles (like oddworld new and tasty), but generally shoot for the 15-20 range.

Content, anticipation for the title, quality, etc all factor into things.

If i'm not drooling over it, regardless of price, i'll just wait for a sale. My vita is filled with games i've picked up for a few bucks. Ditto for my steam and humble lists, not to mention all my psplus games.

A few times though i've ended up with multiple copies (I own three copies of thrine 2, somehow), or even rebuy a game on another platform after getting it free on psplus (Isaac: Rebirth for example).

As the lines blur between indies and small devs, and quality is all over the map, it's hard to put a hard price limit on an entire segment of developers.

 

[Coreda]

Some games are worth the asking price. Paid $25 for Shovel Knight (backer-tier fwiw) and it was absolutely worth it. There just are so few games like that hit all the right spots for me. Fez is another gem, and I could see a game like Cuphead being a favorite too if it delivers.

In general I agree that $5-15 is a better price point for most indie games and typically the price I'll bite at. Value can be a strange thing.

 

[mairsil]

Someone mentioned that they hate indie games feeling like they're stuck in the ghetto because of low prices. I don't feel that way at all. I personally find it amazing & feel so blessed that we've been able to release games that not only have people been able to buy & play but that have been played by more people than many, much more expensive to make games. I mean, our best selling game is owned by over half a million people. That's a very respectable number in our genre with a game that isn't Pokemon, Final Fantasy, or Dragon Quest. Yeah, we made a lot less money from those 500k+ owners than a game that was more expensive with those sales would have, but we also spent a lot less money on making the game so it evens out.

This post and a few other recent ones you've made on Gamasutra make me feel like I need to speak up. Put bluntly: you don't live in the same reality that the indie developers you are talking about do anymore. You have had phenomenal and well deserved success with your games. The vast, VAST majority of indies do not and will not ever have nearly the same amount of success as you have. For you to even try to compare your experiences to theirs (and mine) comes off as more insulting than productive. I know that isn't your intent, but I think that someone needs to point this out.

If you want to have an opinion, no problem. Just realize what's good for you is NOT what's good for everyone else. Coming from the XBLIG "ghetto", you of all people should appreciate the problems with restrictive pricing. Sure, you got away with a $3 game, but that was suicide for almost everyone else. I have 4 games on the platform and never once considered anything but $1 as a price point because of the economics of that marketplace.

I am a one-person developer and happy with my overall performance there, but that doesn't mean that I am happy that I had to price everything at bottom-dollar because everyone else did. I was able to choose better pricing for my 3DS games, mainly due to less marketplace saturation (though those games were very niche and didn't perform as well as I would have liked). I'm working on a PS4/Morpheus game that I might finally be able to put at a price point I think is deserving and fair. I might not get to $20, depending on content, but if I get there and I feel it is appropriate, that is what I am going to price it at. If this misguided belief that "indie" == "lower price is a must, regardless of content" turns into a price cap based on the number of people who worked on the game, then, once again, indies lose.

 

[Robert at Zeboyd Games]

This post and a few other recent ones you've made on Gamasutra make me feel like I need to speak up. Put bluntly: you don't live in the same reality that the indie developers you are talking about do anymore. You have had phenomenal and well deserved success with your games. The vast, VAST majority of indies do not and will not ever have nearly the same amount of success as you have. For you to even try to compare your experiences to theirs (and mine) comes off as more insulting than productive. I know that isn't your intent, but I think that someone needs to point this out.

If you want to have an opinion, no problem. Just realize what's good for you is NOT what's good for everyone else. Coming from the XBLIG "ghetto", you of all people should appreciate the problems with restrictive pricing. Sure, you got away with a $3 game, but that was suicide for almost everyone else. I have 4 games on the platform and never once considered anything but $1 as a price point because of the economics of that marketplace.

I am a one-person developer and happy with my overall performance there, but that doesn't mean that I am happy that I had to price everything at bottom-dollar because everyone else did. I was able to choose better pricing for my 3DS games, mainly due to less marketplace saturation (though those games were very niche and didn't perform as well as I would have liked). I'm working on a PS4/Morpheus game that I might finally be able to put at a price point I think is deserving and fair. I might not get to $20, depending on content, but if I get there and I feel it is appropriate, that is what I am going to price it at. If this misguided belief that "indie" == "lower price is a must, regardless of content" turns into a price cap based on the number of people who worked on the game, then, once again, indies lose.

I realize that we've had success which places us above the indie norm, but phenomenal success is an exaggeration. My first 2 games were bombs, it took me about 2.5 years before I could make games full time, and we had to do a Kickstarter in order to be able to afford our current project. With the exception of Bloodborne which was a gift from my wife and a dirt-cheap copy of Soul Sacrifice Delta that I grabbed with some leftover PSN credit, I don't think I've bought a single game all year in an effort to save money. I have a family of 8 (last year, we were surprised with twins) & I am far, far, from rich. I hope with our new game, I can stop struggling to make a living & be able to just make the games I want to (the dream of every indie).

What success we have seen has been a result of making good games at low prices. I know every situation is different but I can't help but think that there are others that could benefit from the same approach.

 

[Kieli]

That's how I see it as well. Child of Light may not be an indie title (made by Ubisoft, albeit with a smaller team than most of their games) and it has its share of flaws, but it's still a rather good game with fantastic art & music and it was only $15. If your game isn't at least as good as Child of Light, you probably shouldn't even be considering a $20 price tag.

This is completely nonsensical.

I purchased Terraria for $2.50 on Steam Sale and I consider it a fantastic game. Does that mean other games should not be able to be priced more than that if I don't personally derive more enjoyment out of it? Heck no.

Feel free to insert whatever game you want in lieu of Terraria and whatever arbitrary price-point.

 

[Green Yoshi]

800 MS Points was a perfect sweet spot for me. 1200 MS Points was still ok. But 19,99$ is too much for a small download game in my opinion.

Of course it always depends on the game. No Man's Sky is worth more than Don't Starve.

Some inde games as Toro for Xbox One (19,99$) are totally overpriced.

 

[mairsil]

I realize that we've had success which places us above the indie norm, but phenomenal success is an exaggeration.

No, you have had phenomenal success. The fact that you don't realize it is part of the reason that I had to speak out. How many indies can say that they have sold 500,000+ copies of a game? How many have sold that many across all of their games? Not many.

My first 2 games were bombs, it took me about 2.5 years before I could make games full time, and we had to do a Kickstarter in order to be able to afford our current project. With the exception of Bloodborne which was a gift from my wife and a dirt-cheap copy of Soul Sacrifice Delta that I grabbed with some leftover PSN credit, I don't think I've bought a single game all year in an effort to save money. I have a family of 8 (last year, we were surprised with twins) & I am far, far, from rich. I hope with our new game, I can stop struggling to make a living & be able to just make the games I want to (the dream of every indie).

Our finances will be drastically different, so I won't try to make comparisons. I also don't do this full time, since I am not in the position (yet) to do so. However, just because you are running at razor thin margins or not making much more than your costs, don't let that make you think you are not doing well overall. Many indies never make a profit and many more never sell a decent amount of games. My point is that you can be highly successful, but broke.

What success we have seen has been a result of making good games at low prices. I know every situation is different but I can't help but think that there are others that could benefit from the same approach.

I agree that there are some games/developers that would benefit from setting lower prices. That should be up to the developer though. Your statements were coming across as being more absolute; that ALL indies need to set lower prices, regardless of content. That I don't agree with.

 

[Robert at Zeboyd Games]

You need to be more ambitious if "razor thin margins" and "successful but broke" are your definitions of phenomenal success. I aspire to be phenomenally successful but I'm still working at it.

Your statements were coming across as being more absolute; that ALL indies need to set lower prices, regardless of content.

From the OP: "Games can do well at higher prices, but higher prices shouldn't be the norm for every good indie game." and then I listed two recent examples of $20 indie games where the higher price tag made a lot of sense and the games saw a lot of success at that price. Obviously not every indie game needs to be cheaper for maximum success.

 

[RpgN]

It's unfortunate that it appears there are members (including some developers) who did not read the OP or not focusing on what is being said.

The OP makes some very good points of the perceived value of games and what developers think they can charge for their games. Whether you like it or not, games are compared to one another, that includes all games, it doesn't matter if they are indie or AAA. When an indie game is competing with Child of Light or say Far Cry 4 that is on sale, while a gamer has interest in all those games but not enough money, which one is going to get picked? It doesn't matter if a developer thinks the price they are asking is worth it based on dev time calculation or personal feelings.

Before I used to buy all indie games that caught my interest on PSN due to their impulse price range and positive impressions. Then they kept getting more and more expensive over time, I stopped buying them. Now I only buy the best ones or most interesting when they're hugely discounted.

This is just an example that doesn't apply to everyone. As is apparent, there are members in this thread who are willing to pay $60 or more to get the games they want. I feel that those members are the minority. Sales are being missed of impulse buyers or ones who show interest but are scared off by the prices relative to their perceived worth.

I don't think the OP is advocating for a standard price for indie games (it's the opposite in fact). What's being said is, indie developers need to have an understanding of how consumers look at their games and what their comfortable level is at buying games for certain prices. It is important to keep that in mind along with the target group you are trying to reach. Are you comfortable at the possibility of only reaching hardcore gamers who are willing to pay more but end up sacrificing sales and mindshare?

 

[mairsil]

You need to be more ambitious if "razor thin margins" and "successful but broke" are your definitions of phenomenal success. I aspire to be phenomenally successful but I'm still working at it.

No, I think profits can be considered separately from success. Again, you can be successful (500K+ sales, seriously, do you not consider that to be at least the slightest bit above average for an indie developer?), but not make a dime. Number of units sold, critical acclaim, making the world a better place.. all ways that you can be successful without making money. You are successful. Whether or not you are rich is a different story.

Your vision of success obviously includes financial gain, which is fine, but does not change the fact that you are successful in other ways. I would now question: if you don't consider yourself all that successful, why would you put forth your pricing scheme as the best way to go? Have you considered that you might be more successful (monetarily) with higher prices? What would have happened if you put out CSTW at $5?

Personally, I think that I have been successful, even though I'm only looking at tens of thousands of games sold, not half a million. I've managed to get through the mean streets of XBLIG and moved onto Nintendo and Sony platforms. My margins are really low, basically just the dev hardware and a few assets here and there, and I don't have staff to worry about paying.

It's unfortunate that it appears there are members (including some developers) who did not read the OP or not focusing on what is being said.

Unfortunately, there is a little bit of pent up anger I have about some recent incidents that indie developers have caused lately (e.g. Sunset) and I may be coming across more aggressive than is intended.

The OP makes some very good points of the perceived value of games and what developers think they can charge for their games. Whether you like it or not, games are compared to one another, that includes all games, it doesn't matter if they are indie or AAA. When an indie game is competing with Child of Light or say Far Cry 4 that is on sale, while a gamer has interest in all those games but not enough money, which one is going to get picked? It doesn't matter if a developer thinks the price they are asking is worth it based on dev time calculation or personal feelings.

Before I used to buy all indie games that caught my interest on PSN due to their impulse price range and positive impressions. Then they kept getting more and more expensive over time, I stopped buying them. Now I only buy the best ones or most interesting when they're hugely discounted.

This is just an example that doesn't apply to everyone. As is apparent, there are members in this thread who are willing to pay $60 or more to get the games they want. I feel that those members are the minority. Sales are being missed of impulse buyers or ones who show interest but are scared off by the prices relative to their perceived worth.

I don't think the OP is advocating for a standard price for indie games (it's the opposite in fact). What's being said is, indie developers need to have an understanding of how consumers look at their games and what their comfortable level is at buying games for certain prices. It is important to keep that in mind along with the target group you are trying to reach. Are you comfortable at the possibility of only reaching hardcore gamers who are willing to pay more but end up sacrificing sales and mindshare?

Yes, Robert makes some good points about the perceived value of indie games. However, instead of trying to change the perception among players, which indie developers need, he would rather (in my interpretation of his comments) have all of us lower our prices. This race to the bottom ruined the XBLIG marketplace and, in my opinion, has permanently ruined the mobile marketplace (which is why I won't touch it at all). Instead of trying to convince indies that our games aren't worth it, we should be convincing players that our games are worth it.

 

[TouchMyBox]

I
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 sort of agree with you, but this point in particular is kinda silly. Of course you would never hear somebody say that, as that's not a fear that comes from one's rational mind. I think it's similar to nobody wanting to buy the last head of lettuce in the produce isle. Nobody is going to say aloud "Oh, this perfectly delicious-looking produce must have something wrong with it, therefore I'm not buying it", it's just behaviour that comes from the back of people's minds that they would probably correct if they were called out on it.

Of course I don't think someone who is already aware of a game would judge it based on its price, but in the back of my mind I'm kind of starting to just glaze over the $5 or so new releases on Steam which no major outlet has covered because the signal-to-noise ratio there is so poor. Higher price points have sadly become a way to differentiate a decent game from the hordes of minimal-effort Greenlight trash.

 

[Robert at Zeboyd Games]

Again, you can be successful (500K+ sales, seriously, do you not consider that to be at least the slightest bit above average for an indie developer?)

From a few posts above: "I realize that we've had success which places us above the indie norm"

I would now question: if you don't consider yourself all that successful, why would you put forth your pricing scheme as the best way to go?

I do consider us successful. I take issue at someone calling me phenomenally successful as a way of trying to paint me as out of touch and my opinions irrelevant. Phenomenally successful is stuff like Braid, Castle Crashers, Limbo, Mark of the Ninja, To the Moon, Transistor, and many, many more. Our games have gotten mostly positive reviews, sold well, and have made good money, but we're still very much in the trenches. We've had several moderate hits, but no single breakthrough game.

Unfortunately, there is a little bit of pent up anger I have about some recent incidents that indie developers have caused lately (e.g. Sunset) and I may be coming across more aggressive than is intended.

No, I understand this is a tender subject. And I'm disappointed that the Sunset studio is upset with how their game did.

Instead of trying to convince indies that our games aren't worth it, we should be convincing players that our games are worth it.

It's up to each individual developer to convince people that their games are worth buying. I'm just saying that it's easier to convince people that your games are worth buying if they're priced at a good (for the player) price rather than merely a fair price.

Of course I don't think someone who is already aware of a game would judge it based on its price, but in the back of my mind I'm kind of starting to just glaze over the $5 or so new releases on Steam which no major outlet has covered because the signal-to-noise ratio there is so poor. Higher price points have sadly become a way to differentiate a decent game from the hordes of minimal-effort Greenlight trash.

Marketing is even more important than pricing - if nobody has heard of your game, then like you said, chances are nobody will notice when it comes out, even if it's amazing. A low price can't save you if nobody wants to play your game in the first place.

 

[CrunchyFrog]

I think developers should just price their games at what their own perceived value is, and then the market will judge accordingly.

If there's anything the industry could benefit MOST from it's a more dynamic pricing scheme. I wouldn't even mind the occasional $70+ if the content justified it and would realistically allow better quality product and not the glitched rush jobs we've had in the past 2 years. Explore that $25-$45 spectrum for retail releases.

 

[SapientWolf]

Pricing is more of an art than a science. The thing to remember is that there aren't any absolutes. Price X might work the best for game A but not game B. I guess you have to ask yourself some questions:

• How are products of similar content and quality priced on the marketplace?
• How many similar games are out there, and how many choices do fans of the genre have?
• Is the product something with wide or niche appeal?
• ----If it's niche, does that niche put a high value on the product?
• How likely is it that a sale will boost revenue?
• How much press is the game likely going to have?
• How much disposable income does the target demographic have?
• Is there a way to create revenue outside of the initial point of sale?
• Will a low fanbase hurt the game's appeal in some appreciable way (like in an online multiplayer only game)?

Obviously, if you get it wrong it's easier to lower the price over time than raise it. The key is to have a justification for the price that you can back up with good reasoning. "It's good for indies as a whole" isn't exactly a good justification for an individual, because one company can't influence prices for the rest of the market unless they control the marketplace (like say Valve, Microsoft or Sony).

 

[mairsil]

I do consider us successful. I take issue at someone calling me phenomenally successful as a way of trying to paint me as out of touch and my opinions irrelevant. Phenomenally successful is stuff like Braid, Castle Crashers, Limbo, Mark of the Ninja, To the Moon, Transistor, and many, many more. Our games have gotten mostly positive reviews, sold well, and have made good money, but we're still very much in the trenches. We've had several moderate hits, but no single breakthrough game.

Perhaps this is where the disconnect is. From my perspective, you are phenomenally successful. You have a couple of well-done games with critical praise, some (relatively) well-known licenses and sold a huge number of games. I could see that from someone else's perspective, I may be seen as phenomenally successful: I have done about a dozen games on multiple platforms, sold probably north of 50K copies total and have the funds to continue developing.

So what do you think you would need to do for you to finally feel like you have achieved phenomenal success?

 

[somme]

Depends on the amount of the content and the game itself really. I'd happily spend over £100 to get my hands on No Man's Sky right now.

 

[Weltall Zero]

None of us has any experience making 3D games and we feel like we're getting pretty good with 2D games so we intend to keep making 2D games. I know my partner has talked about the possibility of trying out different 2D art styles in the future, but we haven't planned anything concrete there.

If at any point in the future somebody tries talking you into making 3D games, please punch them in the face on my behalf.

 

[Grakl]

Wrong thread