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[Tiktaalik]

This article focuses more on the casual portal side of the indie games business, but I think that the issue of indie games being too cheap is a shared one between casual indie games and IGF winning artsy indie games. Both have pressure to be cheap and both are often on portal services that take a cut of the price.

http://jeff-vogel.blogspot.com/2009/06/indie-games-still-too-cheap-getting.html

I wrote a couple of articles not long ago about how the expected price for Indie games is becoming really cheap. Too cheap to support a thriving, innovative Indie scene. I thought that pricing all games below 10 bucks on Amazon and XNA Community games, sets a dangerous standard and steals the freedom to influence prices that developers need. I got a reasonable amount of abuse for this, because, of course, people hate being told that the things they want are unsustainable.

Which brings us to the new development at Big Fish Games, one of the larger casual games portals ...

Their current pricing scheme, as I understand it, is that you can get any of their games for $6.99. This subscribes you to their service, which charges you that amount per month and gives you another game in return. Of course, you can pay the $6.99, get the game, and immediately unsubscribe from the service, which is what I suspect a number of people do.

So I decided to poke around for a bit and find out how standard this sort of pricing is. At Yahoo games ...

... and MSN games ...

... and GameHouse ...

and so on. $6.95 is currently the magic price. Generally, to get that price, you need to buy a subscription. In other words, use the developer's game as a loss leader to win their private route into your credit card.

So let's run some numbers. A typical deal on these portals is that the portal keeps, say, 10% of a sale for expenses and then pays a 40% royalty. (This is pretty close to what I generally get.) Which means each sale of a game on Big Fish would earn you roughly $2.50. You better hope you're earning more per copy elsewhere because otherwise, if you want a pretty meager payout for your work (say, $100K before expenses), you have to sell forty thousand games. You know how hard it is to move that many copies? PRETTY DARN HARD.

Now, this is the point where generally some Internet knucklehead says, "Well, they have the right to do whatever they want." Yeah, of course. And I have the right to point out the gruesome consequences of their exercising that right.

To have a chance of not getting murdered at those prices, you need to sell a monster pile of copies. This is exactly the situation that punishes serving niche markets, taking risks, and doing new things. And those are exactly the roles people are supposedly looking to Indie developers to fill.

I have been arguing that these low prices will result in a desolate and uncreative Indie games space. Look at the offerings at the casual portals, and I think you'll see that I have a point. PopCap provides some cool, innovative games (they're basically the Pixar/Blizzard of casual games), but otherwise the casual portals are a dry expanse of Bejewled/Zuma variants, simple puzzle games, and milking of established properties. Much like in Hollywood, the need to get a blockbuster to survive delivers a harsh blow to creativity.

Of course, it's easy to say, "But they're casual game fans. They don't want anything challenging. Scrabble and hidden object games are the limit for such simple creatures." I personally think that this is nonsense. But the way we're going, we'll never find out.

So What To Do About It?

First, support and encourage portals that don't force developers to sell their work for a pittance. Like Steam, Greenhouse, and MacGameStore.

Second, if you are writing a game of your own, don't let anyone steamroll you into giving your work away. If a portal is going to sell your work for $6.95, make sure you've written a game that can compete in that market. If not, at the very least, don't give them your newest freshest stuff. I'll let them sell an older game for that price for the advertising and exposure, but only after I've already made good money off of it.

What I care about is having a marketplace where a wide variety of Indies can write a wide variety of games and make a living. The casual portals have their place, but, if you aren't prepared for how little they're going to pay you, they're a trap.

Edit: I should have also mentioned Reflexive games, who are also being admirable in pricing Indies at a level where they can actually make money.

This issue is increasingly relevant due to the iPhone App store, which isn't mentioned in this article. Popcap's highly regarded Peggle debuted at a very cheap price of $4.99, but languished in 60th place on the list until it was price dropped to 99 cents. Only then did it reach the top 10.

It's a bit ironic for me to be criticizing the App store, since in Nintendo DSi threads I've been slamming that service and pointing to the App store as the path to follow, but while overall I like the direction of the App store over the overly slow and selected Nintendo store, there genuinely is a problem with the massive downward pricing pressure on the App store. It's not just the App store though. In any online downloadable store there seems to be incredibly unrealistic pricing expectations and a massive downward push on prices. Every time a notable downloadable game comes out there is criticism about price. When you look at it objectively, prices around $12 are a pittance, and yet that's considered expensive in the downloadable space. This is a problem.

Though highly polished independent games are frequently made by only one or two people, the costs are still frequently over $100,000. When you factor in marketing costs and also that the portals take a cut of the profits it's pretty obvious that these games can't all be 99 cents and hope to easily make a profit.

As this article states, the downward price pressure is in the long term going to push game creators into taking less risks. How on earth could you justify making a polished iPhone game if within two months you're going to be forced into price dropping down to 2.99 or less just to stay visible on the chart?

 

[SapientWolf]

These indie game portals create a crowded market where it's hard for an individual game to stand out from the crowd. Thus, they keep the prices low to encourage people to experiment. The only way out is to generate so much hype around your game that people will seek it out by name. That would lessen the sticker shock. If you feel you have a high quality product a port to the console donwloadable platforms wouldn't hurt either.

 

[jman2050]

Eh

I'm no economist but the idea of a "best of both worlds" approach of selling experimental unproven concepts while making money off them is an unrealistic proposition. If you want to make money selling games, then either make games that sell, originality be damned, or find a way to curtail your expenses.

The royalties for some of these services are pretty steep and unfair though, I'll admit. The App Store, however, is not one of them.

 

[SnakeswithLasers]

"Languished" in 60th place?

 

[usea]

The author never establishes a link between price and quality. He just assumes everybody agrees that lower prices create low quality games. I completely disagree with that premise.

I think that in relatively unorganized spaces such as indie game development, quality is a direct result of the individuals involved. Exceptionally creative and talented people are going to make great games, and it doesn't matter how much they sell those games for. They're not in it for the money. Those who do indie development for the money don't have to make quality games; everybody knows that quality isn't directly related to success.

 

[Tiktaalik]

"Languished" in 60th place?

Well it's a known fact that at that point in the list you're not doing stellar sales. As well in the casual/indie space Popcap is a top tier developer. 60th place would definitely be considered a bomb in my opinion.

The point is is that the way the store is designed around the top 10, you have very little visibility unless you're on that list, and that list is full of 99 cent apps.

 

[Firestorm]

"Languished" in 60th place?

60th place means you're not in the Top 10 list.
If you're not in the Top 10 list, it doesn't matter if you're 11th or 1000th, nobody knows you exist.

 

[coamithra]

And there's the problem. Games need to be pushed to the people that are interested in them.
Or said differently, people need to be able to find the games that they will enjoy.

 

[Slavik81]

60th place means you're not in the Top 10 list.
If you're not in the Top 10 list, it doesn't matter if you're 11th or 1000th, nobody knows you exist.

With regards to the Apple App Store, I tend to hear that the top 100 list is the real make-or-break list to be on.

 

[charlequin]

I understand and sympathize with the goal this article sets out, but I don't really think they've looked at the situation in enough depth to have good advice to hand out.

The fact is, indie developers do in fact have access to portals that will price their work at appropriate pricepoints rather than an across-the-board $7, and the article references this by mentioning Steam and Greenhouse. Both of these services also have relatively strong marketing presences due to their association with big names (Valve and Penny Arcade respectively), so it's not that people are passing them over because they're obscure and unheard of.

The problem is, I would guess, that there's a pre-existing and strong market of people who are interested in paying $7 for casual puzzle games, but not really a market of people prepped and ready to pay $10-20 for relatively full-featured indie games because this distribution model is pretty new and hasn't yet had a real killer app. That's unfortunate, but it's not a result of the casual-portal pricing; it's a result of the market only emerging recently and not yet having been built up effectively.

If you're not in the Top 10 list, it doesn't matter if you're 11th or 1000th, nobody knows you exist.

So why is the article nattering on about price points when the retarded thing you just described is clearly the biggest problem with the App Store model?

 

[Fourth Stooge]

I think the blog makes some fairly naive assumptions. The first assumption is that indie games are supposed to be profitable and that merely by setting a price point, the developer will receive an adequate return. The laws of supply and demand apply to games like any other commodity.

The second assumption is that indie developers have no responsibility to understand their market. Put simply, if most games are selling for $2.99, budget accordingly. Make a $2.99 game and keep your day job. Don't spend $300,000 on an iPhone game and expect a profit.

The third wrong asumption is that developing indie games is a career. It's not. For most it's a means of landing a real development deal or a job at a developer.

It's somehow become popular to romanticize the struggling "indie" developer. They have the same responsibilities as any other business.

 

[Sqorgar]

One of the side effects of this pricing, particularly on the iPhone, is that developers are shying from creating whole experiences - instead focusing on "fun sized" games that rely more on gimmicks and easily scalable gameplay mechanics (score/wave based). There's just no reason to aim for a full experience, and in fact, one is probably penalized greatly for it. I find this to be a particularly disturbing trend because the end result is a desire for shallow games that players don't spend more than a few minutes with.

It's not just games either. I released a few hundred comics from my old webcomic for $5 and was criticized for it being too expensive - the only complaint I received (my reader is a quality app and everybody loves my comic). Many of the other comics on the App Store can be measured in panels. I ended up making a few hundred bucks from it, but there's not a doubt in my mind that I would've made a small fortune if I had released it in twenty episodes of 20 or so comics for $1 each - even though it would cost the end user four times as much in the end for the exact same content. I think that's just screwed up.

 

[60_gig_PS3]

If your game is really that good you could put it in the ap store at $6.99 and it would sell just as many copies as it would on steam.

probably harder to find your game burried on steam than it would be in the ap store.

 

[Fewr]

This thread reminds me I need to buy Dangerous High School Girls as soon as I'm done with FFIV Wii.

 

[brain_stew]

If your game is really that good you could put it in the ap store at $6.99 and it would sell just as many copies as it would on steam.

probably harder to find your game burried on steam than it would be in the ap store.

Valve go to great lengths to highlight indie titles. They get just as much, if not more visibility and push through the store as retail titles do. Heck, even mod makers get a similar deal.

 

[Draft]

Most of these indie games are pretty shitty.

I'll buy a shitty game for $5 without a second thought.

I'll put some serious consideration into a $12 game, though.

Nature of the beast.

 

[60_gig_PS3]

Valve go to great lengths to highlight indie titles. They get just as much, if not more visibility and push through the store as retail titles do. Heck, even mod makers get a similar deal.

I guess I'm not sure what he means by "indie titles".
Is Zenonia an indy game? What about Flight Control? Both of those were on the front page of itunes store for at least a few weeks.

I just went to the front page of Steam and I'm not seeing too many indy titles. Just a bunch of $10+ retail PC games.

 

[ZealousD]

I think it's weird how some people think about pricing. They're more likely to think about what it costs to the developer rather than the actual value of the game. Lots of people brushed off Aquaria at $30 and even still brush it off at $20 even though it's 15+ hour game.

 

[brain_stew]

I guess I'm not sure what he means by "indie titles".
Is Zenonia an indy game? What about Flight Control? Both of those were on the front page of itunes store for at least a few weeks.

I just went to the front page of Steam and I'm not seeing too many indy titles. Just a bunch of $10+ retail PC games.

Judging by a quick look at Steam's homepage is hardly fair.

Just as an example, Tripwire would still be mod makers if not for Valve, yet their latest release has been in Steam's top 10 sellers list for a couple of months now and Valve went to huge lengths to promote their first title. They're now a ery successful studiop with multiple projects and a loyal fanbase.

We're not talking about making a few grand so someone can fund another small project here. We're talking about transforming a bunch of hobbyists into a very successful multi million dollar revenue outfit with multiple titles in the works and all in a very short time. None of that would have been possible without the push that Valve gave them. That's just one example, there's plenty more such as ACE team.

 

[Twig]

Most games are pretty shitty.

Mhm.

I see no reason why indie games should be any different from non-indie games.

 

[Visualante]

I think Vogel forgets that many casual games have very long tails and a word of mouth effect. Lower prices can be sustainable, look at Crayon Physics Deluxe (a game I purchased for $20), it was a bit overpriced compared to other indie titles out there.. and it failed to chart on Steam. Where as many cheaper indie titles, even the niche Blueberry Garden charted at 7 with a $5 price point. Even the darling and yet it moves lowered its price because it wasn't selling that well. I think there's an argument for cheap indie games becoming the standard, and AAA indie/casual games being the must have games akin to Assassin's Creed, Left4Dead, Super Mario or whatever.

The $7 portals are dumb, but I'd imagine being on Yahoo's homepage will open your game up to people outside the average audience.. release first on Steam or whatever, then when sales drop move over to a monthly service and try to max out sales some more.

The third wrong asumption is that developing indie games is a career. It's not. For most it's a means of landing a real development deal or a job at a developer.

Being a professional indie developer is becoming a viable career path for some.. and it would be nice to see that trend continue.

 

[60_gig_PS3]

Judging by a quick look at Steam's homepage is hardly fair.

Just as an example, Tripwire would still be mod makers if not for Valve, yet their latest release has been in Steam's top 10 sellers list for a couple of months now and Valve went to huge lengths to promote their first title. They're now a ery successful studiop with multiple projects and a loyal fanbase.

We're not talking about making a few grand so someone can fund another small project here. We're talking about transforming a bunch of hobbyists into a very successful multi million dollar revenue outfit with multiple titles in the works and all in a very short time. None of that would have been possible without the push that Valve gave them. That's just one example, there's plenty more such as ACE team.

They happen to make games that cater to the same audience as Valve's games.
I dont see how that proves that Steam is the answer for indie game developers who want to be creative.
seem like the opposite.
I see way more creativity coming out of itunes than I do out of Steam.
High budgets force developers to conform to some template that they know will sell.

 

[Shao Kahn Brewing a Stew]

Most of these indie games are pretty shitty.

I'll buy a shitty game for $5 without a second thought.

I'll put some serious consideration into a $12 game, though.

Nature of the beast.

QFT.

 

[Peronthious]

"Languished" in 60th place?

Sales figures most likely are similar to a graph of 1/x.

I would be very interested to see the sales figures for blueberry garden, hopefully the dev will at some point release some sort of information. That game seems to have launched in the ideal situation, a decently raised profile release on Steam and a $5 price point which I think was perfect for what I ended up getting, and is well within the impulse buy price for most people. I may have gone for $10, but that would have been pushing it; $5 was perfect. Other then not spreading it out to different portals - cross launch on greenhouse, gamersgate, and direct2drive, and possibly impulse, wouldn't have hurt - it seems like it had a good launch, logistically.

 

[The Faceless Master]

i'm not quite sure that i follow the logic. set a highj price for the game and people will buy it anyway? how does that make sense?

 

[shintoki]

Most of these indie games are pretty shitty.

I'll buy a shitty game for $5 without a second thought.

I'll put some serious consideration into a $12 game, though.

Nature of the beast.

Concur, raise the price and it moves away from impulse buy.

I've bought a bunch of XBLA games recently(Alien Homind, Castlevania SOTN, Bionic Commando, Peggle, Doom, Pac Man CE, Galaga Legions, and Doom). I paid a total of about 30$ for all of them. All impulse buys because I was able to get each one from 3-6$. I probably would've only bought 2 of them if it wasn't for the price decrease in them. That 5$ mark give or take is a great impulse buy mark :lol

 

[jwj442]

Well the author of this article has been making a living and even supporting a family off writing $25-$30 indie RPGs for years...I'm sure not many people can do this, but it's possible.

 

[Teknopathetic]

"Just as an example, Tripwire would still be mod makers if not for Valve, yet their latest release has been in Steam's top 10 sellers list for a couple of months now and Valve went to huge lengths to promote their first title. They're now a ery successful studiop with multiple projects and a loyal fanbase."


Technically, Tripwire would still be mod makers if it wasn't for Epic, not Valve.

 

[Campster]

Concur, raise the price and it moves away from impulse buy.

I've bought a bunch of XBLA games recently(Alien Homind, Castlevania SOTN, Bionic Commando, Peggle, Doom, Pac Man CE, Galaga Legions, and Doom). I paid a total of about 30$ for all of them. All impulse buys because I was able to get each one from 3-6$. I probably would've only bought 2 of them if it wasn't for the price decrease in them. That 5$ mark give or take is a great impulse buy mark :lol

But the problem is that an impulse buy is great for something like Peggle, but Braid or Aquaria or Gish suffer from that business model. High-volume low-margin is the impulse-buy motto, but by definition an obscure or extremely experimental indie title isn't going to be high volume.

Take Gish, for example. It sold 4,521 copies through April of 2007, and the game was released in 2004. It barely made $120,000 over three years for a team of three people. That's $15k/year per developer. Selling Gish for $5 would have netted them a scant quarter of those profits - 30,000 total, or $3k/year per developer. It's absolutely not a sustainable price point for independent development.

 

[Slavik81]

i'm not quite sure that i follow the logic. set a highj price for the game and people will buy it anyway? how does that make sense?

Sometimes price influences percieved value. If the quality of something is difficult to determine, a high price can sometimes influence customers to believe it's more valuable than if it were cheaper. Something like cat litter would be a particularly good canidate for that sort of strategy. I heard that Second Cup was once a small and unprofitable buisness before they rebranded, dramatically raising prices and marketing the quality of their coffee, despite that it was still the same stuff they'd sold at lower prices before. Supposedly, it was quite effective.

However, in this article, I don't see many justifications. Consumers are apprehensive about purchasing indie games because it's so easy to buy something worthless. If you don't like a game, it has zero value to you. Conversely, if you really like it, you could get orders of magnitude more value out of it than the price you paid.

That gamble really undermines indie game prices. Consumers like to buy from series and developers with a proven track record, to help ensure they don't end up with something worthless. To compete, indie games either need to market themselves very well, or be content with their lower prices.

 

[Campster]

Sometimes price influences percieved value. If the quality of something is difficult to determine, a high price can sometimes influence customers to believe it's more valuable than if it were cheaper. Something like cat litter would be a particularly good canidate for that sort of strategy. I heard that Second Cup was once a small and unprofitable buisness before they rebranded, dramatically raising prices and marketing the quality of their coffee, despite that it was still the same stuff they'd sold at lower prices before. Supposedly, it was quite effective.

However, in this article, I don't see many justifications. Consumers are apprehensive about purchasing indie games because it's so easy to buy something worthless. If you don't like a game, it has zero value to you. Conversely, if you really like it, you could get orders of magnitude more value out of it than the price you paid.

That gamble really undermines indie game prices. Consumers like to buy from series and developers with a proven track record, to help ensure they don't end up with something worthless. To compete, indie games either need to market themselves very well, or be content with their lower prices.

That's sort of a crappy argument, though. The same could be said for any non-indie game, and $60 is a lot bigger gamble than $20. Two-Worlds and Gears of War, Lair and Metal Gear Solid all released for the same price. Research is required to assure your purchase doesn't suck ahead of time for *any* product, and there are plenty of places on the internet to find reviews and opinions for even obscure games.

 

[Deleted member 17706]

You can argue all day long about how much indie games *should* be priced, but the fact of the matter is that your experimental game with very little recognition and even less advertisement is not going to sell at all if you set its price too high. The budget prices are what get people to try out unproven indie games and it is better to sell a lot at a lower price than barely any copies at a higher price (even if you end up making the same amount or a little less). If your experimental title is a big hit then even at a budget price that barely makes you a profit you will start to build a fan base and get recognized which should allow you move on to bigger and better things with potentially a lot more money involved.

I know this is probably a bad analogy, but to me this sounds similar to amateur film makers complaining about not being able to get their films shown in theatres nationwide and for the same entry price as big-budget Hollywood films.

 

[Gokurakumaru]

I think the blog makes some fairly naive assumptions. The first assumption is that indie games are supposed to be profitable and that merely by setting a price point, the developer will receive an adequate return. The laws of supply and demand apply to games like any other commodity.

The second assumption is that indie developers have no responsibility to understand their market. Put simply, if most games are selling for $2.99, budget accordingly. Make a $2.99 game and keep your day job. Don't spend $300,000 on an iPhone game and expect a profit.

The third wrong asumption is that developing indie games is a career. It's not. For most it's a means of landing a real development deal or a job at a developer.

It's somehow become popular to romanticize the struggling "indie" developer. They have the same responsibilities as any other business.

This. Who the hell is treating indie game development as a day job if they can't move more than 40k units? So basically this guy wants all the DD stores to change their pricing model so that 99c shovelware is sold for $10 in order to make his product look more attractive. Anybody else have a problem with how egocentric this idea is? Learn how to market your product instead of whining about the top 10 list on the Apple store.

It's not just games either. I released a few hundred comics from my old webcomic for $5 and was criticized for it being too expensive - the only complaint I received (my reader is a quality app and everybody loves my comic). Many of the other comics on the App Store can be measured in panels. I ended up making a few hundred bucks from it, but there's not a doubt in my mind that I would've made a small fortune if I had released it in twenty episodes of 20 or so comics for $1 each - even though it would cost the end user four times as much in the end for the exact same content. I think that's just screwed up.

Your problem here -- as Fourth Stooge alluded to -- is a sense of entitlement. How many man hours were put into your web comic and where do you get the idea this entitles you to a "small fortune" in return?

Being a professional indie developer is becoming a viable career path for some.. and it would be nice to see that trend continue.

You don't have to become a millionaire to have a career. I think that's where a lot of people in today's society have completely missed the mark.

 

[Zizbuka]

Rather than start a new thread, I'll ask this here. Did anyone else download the Graveyard demo (I think that's what it's called) from Steam? You basically walk (slooowly) through a graveyard and as someone on a bench a question. It ends and tells you if you buy it, you may randomly die.

Why would Valve let something like this on Steam? They really want $5 just to see if you die?

Come on gafers, which of you bought it?

 

[charlequin]

Take Gish, for example. It sold 4,521 copies through April of 2007, and the game was released in 2004. It barely made $120,000 over three years for a team of three people. That's $15k/year per developer.

How long did it take them to develop? If a team of three can release a $120k revenue game every year, that's $45k per developer, certainly not comparable to regular industry wages but certainly a living wage (and one that, unlike a position at a big developer, might not require 80+ hour weeks and constant crunchtime.)

That's sort of a crappy argument, though. The same could be said for any non-indie game, and $60 is a lot bigger gamble than $20.

How does that disprove anything? New IPs and innovative titles are tanking on consoles these days, one imagines in part because $60 is such a gamble on an unproven product.

 

[Zzoram]

I know this isn't indie, but The Sims 3 on iPhone is totally worth the $9.99, and would probably have fetched more if it was released on any other platform.

 

[Campster]

This. Who the hell is treating indie game development as a day job if they can't move more than 40k units? So basically this guy wants all the DD stores to change their pricing model so that 99c shovelware is sold for $10 in order to make his product look more attractive. Anybody else have a problem with how egocentric this idea is? Learn how to market your product instead of whining about the top 10 list on the Apple store.

Most of them?

Again, I would say Gish is a relatively recognized indie figure made by Edmund McMillian and co that won the IGF's Seamus McNally Grand Prize. It sold less than five thousand copies. I don't know how many copies Aquaria has sold for Bit-Blot or Blueberry Garden has sold for Erik Svedang, but I am willing to bet it's significantly less than 40k.

Besides, you're mis-reading his post - he's not saying to raise the cost of all games including shovelware. He's saying that experimental games made by unproven developers on brand new IPs are almost universally going to have low sales figures compared to safe genres and established brands, and to throw those indie games out at the same price point as Bejeweled 3 or Luxor 2 is just asking for trouble. Aquaria isn't going to move as many units as a Match 3 game, Fez isn't going to move as many units as a Breakout clone. By necessity they need to cost more if there's to be a sustainable model for doing business.

However, portals (and this includes PSN/WiiWare/XBoxLiveArcade) are generally real big on a one-price-fits-all market. This generally means a single price range, even if it's a price range that isn't ideal for all games.

How long did it take them to develop? If a team of three can release a $120k revenue game every year, that's $45k per developer, certainly not comparable to regular industry wages but certainly a living wage (and one that, unlike a position at a big developer, might not require 80+ hour weeks and constant crunchtime.)

They report a six month dev time, but again, that's $120k over three years. The game made an average of $40k/year, weighted more towards the first year. That sounds like a lot, but when you have three people asking for a yearly salary that's nothing.

Now granted, in an ideal world where they're making a game EVERY six months and ALL of them sell as well as Gish you'd have a sustainable business model after a year and a half or two years. But even in that ideal circumstance you're assuming that a small group of indies has the ability to self-fund for almost two years before they even start breaking even, which is almost never feasible.

 

[Dash Kappei]

To the OP:

Tell me about it :/

It seems that right now being an indie developer, unless you fork out a mega-hit and are ok aiming to break even, you should just look at it as a step to go shopping a job to the big brothers.

And I don't like that one bit.

The pricing scheme of the Apple Store is definitely hurting more than they're doing good such as giving exposure to the games, people were already having a hard time spending 20$ on something that it's just a couple of clicks away to be downloaded for free (ie stolen) and selling such properties for 99c is just plain retarded.

 

[Sqorgar]

Your problem here -- as Fourth Stooge alluded to -- is a sense of entitlement. How many man hours were put into your web comic and where do you get the idea this entitles you to a "small fortune" in return?

I think you misunderstood what I said. If I sold the EXACT SAME PRODUCT as smaller, cheaper episodes, I would've made small fortune simply because the psychology of the App Store buyer is such that it is easier to sell ten $1 apps than one $5 app.

There's no entitlement going on here. I've already made plenty of money off my webcomic back in the day. Plus it got me the notice of my favorite game designer as a kid, whom I now work for as a writer (which pays nicely too). Believe me, my webcomic has already made me a small fortune. I didn't expect to make that much more money by releasing an expensive ($5) app featuring a webcomic already available for free on the internet. Frankly, given the free thing, the amount of piracy the iPhone has, and the fact that it wasn't a game, I'm surprised that I made as much as I did.

 

[Gokurakumaru]

Besides, you're mis-reading his post - he's not saying to raise the cost of all games including shovelware. He's saying that experimental games made by unproven developers on brand new IPs are almost universally going to have low sales figures compared to safe genres and established brands, and to throw those indie games out at the same price point as Bejeweled 3 or Luxor 2 is just asking for trouble. Aquaria isn't going to move as many units as a Match 3 game, Fez isn't going to move as many units as a Breakout clone. By necessity they need to cost more if there's to be a sustainable model for doing business.

It may not be the article in the OP that states it, but his point is that indie developers stop supporting portals that force a low price, and popular opinion in this thread (and the opening post) is that the App Store forces that behavior just to have a chance of charting and becoming visible to the casual buyer. I'm arguing visibility is the responsibility of the developer. Games routinely flop due to lack of exposure at all price points. Conversely some publishers can make a profit on moving 10k units. Maybe he should pick his distribution channel better, advertise more or a combination of both. The $7 store is designed to attract people who'll impulse purchase at that price point. If these aren't his target market, what's his complaint exactly?

Now granted, in an ideal world where they're making a game EVERY six months and ALL of them sell as well as Gish you'd have a sustainable business model after a year and a half or two years. But even in that ideal circumstance you're assuming that a small group of indies has the ability to self-fund for almost two years before they even start breaking even, which is almost never feasible.

If they're a startup with no capital they should be developing on the side, part time. You've basically demonstrated with those big "EVERY" and "ALL" words that these people probably have no business quitting their day job in the first place. More power to them if they have a megahit and can afford to, but the problem is with the appeal or exposure of the game, not the price point.

 

[Gokurakumaru]

I think you misunderstood what I said. If I sold the EXACT SAME PRODUCT as smaller, cheaper episodes, I would've made small fortune simply because the psychology of the App Store buyer is such that it is easier to sell ten $1 apps than one $5 app.

Sorry, I misunderstood you. But your argument is basically that you could make more by charging less for the same product through economies of scale which is the opposite of what the OP and article are suggesting. What's messed up about that exactly? Sounds like a good result.

 

[60_gig_PS3]

To the OP:

Tell me about it :/

It seems that right now being an indie developer, unless you fork out a mega-hit and are ok aiming to break even, you should just look at it as a step to go shopping a job to the big brothers.

And I don't like that one bit.

The pricing scheme of the Apple Store is definitely hurting more than they're doing good such as giving exposure to the games, people were already having a hard time spending 20$ on something that it's just a couple of clicks away to be downloaded for free (ie stolen) and selling such properties for 99c is just plain retarded.

just wondering do you think your situation as a indie developer would be any better if every game on the ap store cost $10-$20?

 

[Dash Kappei]

just wondering do you think your situation as a indie developer would be any better if every game on the ap store cost $10-$20?

Well, I don't know about every game at $20, that would hurt too since you're not likely attracting the people who use the App store in the first place.
But hey, there's some substantial difference between 99c and $20.