Indie RPG pricing

[TripJack]

i think the most expensive indie rpg i've bought was a geneforge series key from Indie Royale for $2

so somewhere around there is about right i think

 

[7hm]

There is no price in the world that will sell 5000 copies of Underworld (in a reasonable amount of time). Sorry. Even free won't do it.

Not in a vacuum, no. If it were on Steam at $2.50... well... that's around $9,000 (after Valve's cut) he wouldn't otherwise have had.

Yes, I agree. If he were to get on Steam he would have to lower his price (though I wouldn't touch the base price too much, unless Valve made it a condition of entry). I would quibble with the amount you used, but Steam operates under a particular price metric. He's not on steam.

 

[commie]

7hm

The numerous butthurt and disgruntled Indie RPG devs out there whining about lack of sales pretty much proves the thesis that pricing their products according to what they think their game is worth rather than what the market thinks it's worth is a total failure.

You made a wrong assumption linking niche wargame pricing and Indie RPG's too. Demographics of the hard core Grognard are very different from the RPG gamer. Most wargamers that buy the overpriced Matrix stuff are in their mid-40's and 50's or even older, with a lot of disposable income and very little interest in any other type of game. If Matrix was charging such prices for Indie RPG's and that's all they sold, they would have gone out of business years ago.

 

[Overboard]

You don't ask people who don't own homes how to make your appliances more attractive to them. Or ask students why they aren't buying your luxury sedan.

Those are hilariously bad analogies, since neither are potential buyers.

price it accordingly.

Astoundingly, this is completely different from your vehement insistence on pricing the game TO THE MAX! Pricing it accordingly means pricing it to get maximum profits. Highest price you can fit on the tag doesn't equal to maximum profits.

There is no price in the world that will sell 5000 copies of Underworld (in a reasonable amount of time). Sorry. Even free won't do it.

Nice caveat there, although you have already been given an examples of how lower prices would bring in more sales. Also please don't talk about marketing when the only suggested strategy seems to be to charge top dollar and damn the lack of sales.

 

[7hm]

7hm

The numerous butthurt and disgruntled Indie RPG devs out there whining about lack of sales pretty much proves the thesis that pricing their products according to what they think their game is worth rather than what the market thinks it's worth is a total failure.

You made a wrong assumption linking niche wargame pricing and Indie RPG's too. Demographics of the hard core Grognard are very different from the RPG gamer. Most wargamers that buy the overpriced Matrix stuff are in their mid-40's and 50's or even older, with a lot of disposable income and very little interest in any other type of game. If Matrix was charging such prices for Indie RPG's and that's all they sold, they would have gone out of business years ago.

Are there numerous butthurt and disgruntled indie RPG devs who failed because of bad pricing schemes?

Seems to me like there are a lot of medium sized companies who spent way too much money chasing markets that didn't exist or (given how most of these companies operate) not managing their resources properly and failing as a result.

Very few developers fail because they price their game poorly. Most fail because they make shitty games.

You don't ask people who don't own homes how to make your appliances more attractive to them. Or ask students why they aren't buying your luxury sedan.

Those are hilariously bad analogies, since neither are potential buyers.

price it accordingly.

Astoundingly, this is completely different from your vehement insistence on pricing the game TO THE MAX! Pricing it accordingly means pricing it to get maximum profits. Highest price you can fit on the tag doesn't equal to maximum profits.

There is no price in the world that will sell 5000 copies of Underworld (in a reasonable amount of time). Sorry. Even free won't do it.

Nice caveat there, although you have already been given an examples of how lower prices would bring in more sales. Also please don't talk about marketing when the only suggested strategy seems to be to charge top dollar and damn the lack of sales.

Perhaps you didn't understand my implication here. People who do not play 2d blobbers have a very low likelihood of buying Underworld. They are not your target market. Just as students are not going to buy luxury vehicles. No can anology?
I think that the maximum you can possibly charge while still having customers is the appropriate price, at least as a starting point. I am not against reevaluating down the line or against limited sales.
Nice caveat? Underworld could conceivably have 5000 downloads in a year, I don't fucking know. That's not a particularly good model to work on for pricing though.
This is marketing man. You charge what YOUR market will bear. I am of the belief that the target market for indie RPGs will pay a lot more than it's been asked to pay in the past.

 

[Gord]

It's a somewhat complicated issue, imho.
There are a lot of factors to what pricepoint is deemed acceptable, like production values, content/length, surrounding hype, your niche, the buyer obviously, etc.
Generally for indie games of reasonable length and quality, 15-20 dollars seem a good starting point to me, although I personally lean closer to 15 and might therefore wait for a sale in the 10-15 range unless I'm already a bit hyped for it.
Eventually (maybe not as fast as felipepepe suggested) a sale or even permanent reduction in price might help increasing sales again. It's one of the strange habbits of many indie devs too keep their 20 year old games at forever the same high (for it's age) price.

I'm not excluding the possibility that a indie game might sell reasonably well in the 25 dollar or higher range, but it probably will need exeptionally high appeal (for an indie). Generally 25 seems a difficult pricepoint, btw.
Something about it is just a little bit too off-putting. Maybe because it's no longer being percieved as cheap, meaning you will have to really convince most people that you are offering a good product?
Take Frayed Knights. It debuted for almost 25 dollars, a price that seemed just a little bit too high for what it offered (to me and many others, at least). 15, or even the (compared to 25) psychologically more effective 19,99 would have helped a lot with sales, I'd wager.

 

[commie]

Are there numerous butthurt and disgruntled indie RPG devs who failed because of bad pricing schemes?

Jeff Vogel, the KoTC guy, the Frayed Knights guy are the more 'high profile' ones but there's a whole bunch of others who've come and gone over the years. Jeff whined long and hard about his integrity and how he'd never sell his games for less etc. but he gave in eventually when he realised his natural audience had been bled dry and he hasn't looked back, just now putting up his least successful game Nethergate on Steam for peanuts.

Jeff has seen the light it seems.

 

[felipepepe]

Are there numerous butthurt and disgruntled indie RPG devs who failed because of bad pricing schemes?

That's exactly what started this debate, especially KotC and Frayed Knights developers, that priced their games at >$20 and left it so since then...

The point is, although "Old-Skool RPGs" like dungeon-crawlers are niche, what is being offered is not enough to justify price tags for the consumers. As Alex said, I would pay $100 for a great game, but it has to be A GREAT GAME, that holy grail I've been dreaming upo for ages to justify that. Simply making a dungeon-crawler and going for a high price "because it's niche" won't do it.

AoD is a unique game that seems extremely promising, it offers something I wont find anywhere else and I think it's worth $25, but if you're making "yet another dungoen crawler", there are tons of other indie DC out there, not to mention a massive backlog of genre gems on GOG for less than $5... if you don't offer something new, special or unique, you're simply not worth a premium price tag, you're only appealing to people like Jeasun, that like DC, probably beated/played all the other DC available and still wants more.

 

[Overboard]

Perhaps you didn't understand my implication here. People who do not play 2d blobbers have a very low likelihood of buying Underworld. They are not your target market. Just as students are not going to buy luxury vehicles. No can anology?

People who do not play 2d blobbers do so by choice. Students who do not buy luxury vehicles do so for financial reasons. No can analogy?

There is no price in the world that will sell 5000 copies of Underworld (in a reasonable amount of time). Sorry. Even free won't do it.

Underworld could conceivably have 5000 downloads in a year, I don't fucking know.

This is marketing man. You charge what YOUR market will bear. I am of the belief that the target market for indie RPGs will pay a lot more than it's been asked to pay in the past.

Again, marketing isn't about charging the maximum price the market will bear. A basic course in marketing/business/economics would tell you this.

 

[7hm]

Generally 25 seems a difficult pricepoint, btw.
Something about it is just a little bit too off-putting. Maybe because it's no longer being percieved as cheap, meaning you will have to really convince most people that you are offering a good product?
Take Frayed Knights. It debuted for almost 25 dollars, a price that seemed just a little bit too high for what it offered (to me and many others, at least). 15, or even the (compared to 25) psychologically more effective 19,99 would have helped a lot with sales, I'd wager.

25 bucks is a tough price point. You're past the 19.99$ threshold. You're probably better off going to 29.95 or dropping down to 19.95 at that point. I would go up, obviously.

The other thing to keep in mind is that people really do equate price to quality, even if there is no true correlation. By having a higher price you also attract more attention to your product. Why is it priced so high? There has to be a reason. And it will hold more value during sales. When your base price is 30$ and you drop to 10$ you're having a HUGE sale. When it's 20$ and you drop to 10$ the sale is merely good.

I also would be very careful of sales. You don't want to anger people who bought at a higher price by dropping the price the next day. One way around this would be to offer things like Collector's Editions on your website. Include some extras like scanned maps or cluebooks that aren't included in the editions you sell on websites like Desura. And don't discount those CEs. That's actually my biggest issue with humble bundles. If you participate in them regularly the perceived value of your company's product goes down. Why pay full price if you can get it cheaper two weeks from now? CE vs Standard Edition gets around this.

 

[Achilles]

Looks play a big part in a game's perceived value, as does the games's type. Let's take a random example, Swords and Sorcery Underworld The game has a text-heavy interface, a small view screen for graphics and rather simplistic graphics and sound. In terms of the general audience, that fact alone classifies the game as "amateurish" and as such not worth of a high asking price. There really is no way around that these days, the bar has been raised in terms of production values and people expect quality graphics and sound even from $5 games. Some games can get around that problem by having a really low price and retro-styled visuals that effectively hide their low production values and trigger nostalgia.Having a game with a high price but low visual quality is an instant turn-off for the broader market.

Then you have the game type. RPGs (proper ones, gtfo out with your Mass Effects) are a niche genre. Turn-based blobbers, even more so. Your (it's an impersonal 'your' Charles-cgr, honest ) target group is already very small so setting a low price has the potential to dramatically cut your profits. So I understand the problem and I also realize that I probably didn't help at all :D

My 2 cents: Since you can't really count on sales from the broader market but only from a small group of dedicated players, it's probably more sensible to keep the price relatively high at first. Later you can drop the price and see how it goes, but I think having a really low price won't massively increase sales because of the graphics issue I mentioned earlier. Even if the game cost $2 and was on Steam, it wouldn't amass the sales of Cthulhu Save the Word because it doesn't have broad appeal or a retro-themed aesthetic.

 

[Gord]

25 bucks is a tough price point. You're past the 19.99$ threshold. You're probably better off going to 29.95 or dropping down to 19.95 at that point. I would go up, obviously.

The other thing to keep in mind is that people really do equate price to quality, even if there is no true correlation. By having a higher price you also attract more attention to your product. Why is it priced so high? There has to be a reason. And it will hold more value during sales. When your base price is 30$ and you drop to 10$ you're having a HUGE sale. When it's 20$ and you drop to 10$ the sale is merely good.

This is a dangerous gamble. Most peoples aren't as moronic as to think that more expensive=better. It will probably just look overpriced, nothing else.
Video games aren't bling articles you buy to impress someone, either.

I also would be very careful of sales. You don't want to anger people who bought at a higher price by dropping the price the next day.

Nobody says that you should start a sale one week after release. I'd wait at least 2-3 months, unless you have a special reason (indie pack, expansion/DLC, birth of you firstborn). Also the first sale shouldn't be too high either, maybe somewhere in the 25% range (top). Eventually though one should think about it, if only to create some buzz and attract new possible customers.

 

[7hm]

Again, marketing isn't about charging the maximum price the market will bear. A basic course in marketing/business/economics would tell you this.

Yes, it is. Not the maximum price to get a single customer. The maximum price to get a decent chunk of the market. Tiered pricing will allow you to get more of the market. I am in favour of tiered pricing. Always charge the most you can though. Always.

People who do not play 2d blobbers do so by choice. Students who do not buy luxury vehicles do so for financial reasons. No can analogy?

It's not your market, whether for financial reasons or for choice reasons. Don't target people who aren't your market.

Are there numerous butthurt and disgruntled indie RPG devs who failed because of bad pricing schemes?

That's exactly what started this debate, especially KotC and Frayed Knights developers, that priced their games at >$20 and left it so since then...

Jeff ran (and continues to run) a successful company for a decade and a half. He may complain in blogs but the fact he is still doing this indicates that his pricing was just fine. He changed his pricing only once a market was opened up to him that didn't exist in the past, and you'll notice that his products (outside of steam) are still priced high. His games on iOS and Android are priced very high for those markets.

Keeping your price steady for several years is only an issue if you've already offered the product to your entire target market. If not, there are other things you should do first before you change your price. (By offer - I mean they've looked at your product, and either decided it wasn't for them or bought it.) Usually advertising is a much larger issue. Can't sell it if people don't know about it.

This is a dangerous gamble. Most peoples aren't as moronic as to think that more expensive=better. It will probably just look overpriced, nothing else.
Video games aren't bling articles you buy to impress someone, either.

I don't think people are moronic. I think it's human nature to equate price to quality. Most people do it.

 

[Infinitron]

He changed his pricing several years after a market was opened up to him that didn't exist in the past

fixed

 

[felipepepe]

I don't think people are moronic. I think it's human nature to equate price to quality. Most people do it.

That logic doesn't work when they simply look at a screenshot and think the game looks cheap/amateurish... you could price Frayed Knights as high as you want, no one is gonna think it's because/equate high quality.

 

[Gord]

I don't think people are moronic. I think it's human nature to equate price to quality. Most people do it.

But you usually will use some additional way of judging the quality of the product. An intelligent customer will not use price as the only indicator.
If that results in some discrepancy between perceived and expected quality you will judge the product to be overpriced.

 

[commie]

You might have gotten away with charging $30 for a digital download a decade ago when mainstream devs were still charging 80-90 dollars for their AAA titles. In such an atmosphere, $30 looked incredibly good value. Shit, $30 was the bargain bin price point here in Australia back then so if you were selling a new Indie game for $30 it made sense.

Now however we have most mainstream titles being sold digitally at the $40 mark with a few AAA titles debuting at $60-70 for an extremely short period before dropping down to $30-40 level. When the average punter is faced with Divinity 2 for $30 and sees an Indie title at the same price point there is no way in the seven fucks of hell that he'll pick the indie title.

Legends of Grimrock sold pretty damn well for a crawler, far better than others in the genre. Why? Cause it was both pretty AND cheap. If it was $30 dollars I doubt that even its looks would have helped enough to cover the shortfall the higher price would have led to.

Other titles don't have the luxury of looks so devs charging twice as much for their game YEARS after release as what Grimrock retailed for at the start reaps predictable results.

Oh and Jeff may still sell his titles on his page for a high price but that's now more to give the impression that people are getting a great deal by buying them off Steam or GoG. His model worked for a long time when the whole era of Steam sales didn't exist, but obviously even he realised that that model wasn't working anymore which in his case was as much to do with having a bunch of aging games on offer that had already been bought by most people that were interested in them. His pricing was fine a long time ago, but Avadon for example had an initial price LESS than any of his other games did back when they were new. Why if his model was still good did he not charge $40-50 for Avadon which would have been more in line with what his other games cost taking into account inflation?

 

[7hm]

You might have gotten away with charging $30 for a digital download a decade ago when mainstream devs were still charging 80-90 dollars for their AAA titles. In such an atmosphere, $30 looked incredibly good value. Shit, $30 was the bargain bin price point here in Australia back then so if you were selling a new Indie game for $30 it made sense.

Now however we have most mainstream titles being sold digitally at the $40 mark with a few AAA titles debuting at $60-70 or an extremely short period before dropping down to $30-40 level. When the average punter is faced with Divinity 2 for $30 and sees an Indie title at the same price point there is no way in the seven fucks of hell that he'll pick the indie title.

Again, the average punter is not your market if you develop indie games. The average punter isn't going to randomly navigate to your website. The person coming to your website is motivated and if your game offers something unique, he may well spend more on your game than on a better looking title. The market determines the reaction. I think that the cartoony graphics from Underworld are more than fine. If you're on Steam, the market changes but you should still price the game high to increase perceived value.

Legends of Grimrock sold pretty damn well for a crawler, far better than others in the genre. Why? Cause it was both pretty AND cheap. If it was $30 dollars I doubt that even its looks would have helped enough to cover the shortfall the higher price would have led to.

Other titles don't have the luxury of looks so charging twice as much for their game YEARS after it was released than what Grimrock retailed for at release gathers predictable results.

I believe Grimrock could have come out at 30$ and still sold well. It had very favourable gaming press and the reaction post-release that I saw was largely people saying "Wow I'd be stupid not to buy such a good game at that price". That indicates they left money on the table. I think they priced it to where they thought the market would spend, and I think they were low. We can't know without replaying history though, so that's just my conjecture. I'm 100% sure Torchlight 2 left money on the table. That game could easily have been 30$.

Oh and Jeff may still sell his titles on his page for a high price but that's now more to give the impression that people are getting a great deal by buying them off Steam or GoG. His model worked for a long time when the whole era of Steam sales didn't exist, but obviously even he realised that that model wasn't working anymore which in his case was as much to do with having a bunch of aging games on offer that had already been bought by most people that were interested in them. His pricing was fine a long time ago, but Avadon for example had an initial price LESS than any of his other games did back when they were new. Why if his model was still good did he not charge $40-50 for Avadon which would have been more in line with what his other games cost taking into account inflation?

He didn't charge more for Avadon because he couldn't. He has multiple revenue streams to consider with Avadon. Further, Jeff changed the type of games he was making in order to attract a larger market. He then priced the game for that market. And the most impotant factor: he had the game on steam, where it was capable of actually attracting the larger market. He gambled on volume because he was in a position to gamble on volume. Most indie games are not.

But you usually will use some additional way of judging the quality of the product. An intelligent customer will not use price as the only indicator.
If that results in some discrepancy between percieved and expected quality you wil judge the product to be overpriced.

Yes, you will normally investigate further. But as a seller it helps you out that the initial price is higher. Only if there is a massive discrepancy between price and quality will it hurt you. Ie if your game is shit. And if it's shit, then none of what I'm arguing fucking matters anyway. Shit games are shit and you can sell them for whatever you want because nobody will buy them no matter what.
...
Back to an earlier point someone had about companies that failed (I can't find it now... had a list including BIS). Those companies almost universally failed because they were poorly run. Being a good developer doesn't mean you know how to run a business or can manage your way out of a paper bag and there are far too many developers who became managers. Having the best product doesn't guarantee you anything.

 

[Infinitron]

I believe Grimrock could have come out at 30$ and still sold well. It had very favourable gaming press and the reaction post-release that I saw was largely people saying "Wow I'd be stupid not to buy such a good game at that price". That indicates they left money on the table.

Actually, when people say that, they're usually lying. It's just a way of hyping up what they're purchasing and making themselves look like savvy consumers.

 

[7hm]

I believe Grimrock could have come out at 30$ and still sold well. It had very favourable gaming press and the reaction post-release that I saw was largely people saying "Wow I'd be stupid not to buy such a good game at that price". That indicates they left money on the table.

Actually, when people say that, they're usually lying. It's just a way of hyping up what they're purchasing and making themselves look like savvy consumers.

Possibly. Can't know now though. I think people did view Grimrock as being a good deal though.

Thing is, until an indie dev comes out with a higher than expected price and talks about the hard numbers after the fact we really won't know which strategy works better, and even then, those numbers would be pretty unique to that product. All of this is my own belief as to pricing strategies. I just don't think it's worth chasing sales volume for niche products.

 

[KoolNoodles]

Not an RPG(but with some elements of it), but Dominions 3 is an indie game that has always been around $50, with very few exceptions. I think they did a $10 off when Conquest of Elysium 3 came out or something.

It's an old game, and I remember reading the review and "Let's Play"(basically) of Dominions 2 in the old gaming mag Computer Gaming World. I loved the shit out of the concept and ideas but couldn't bring myself to buy Dominions 2 at the time(same price). I sufficed with playing the demo and keeping it on the backburner. When Dominions 3 came out, I got it shortly thereafter. By that time I had become much more jaded with the games industry, hadn't bought a game in years, CGW had folded, and it honestly felt like a "good" purchase. I was getting a wonderfully complex game, and supporting a developer who stuck to their guns. I'm fine with that.

Some indie games are not that good and should in turn lower their prices, but some should rightly charge a higher price for a good game. With so much AAA shit out there for upwards of $60(not counting DLC), and the limited fan-base some indie games will have anyways, I don't see a problem with a "small" or "niche" game charging AAA prices.

 

[mondblut]

Depends on the scope and/or production values of the game, duh. Take Dominions 3, it is independent as fuck, but has a price tag of 55-60$ which never lowered since the game was released 7 years ago.

(hah. ^ beat me by 3 minutes)

Some indie RPGs look professional enough to warrant a pricetag in 20-30 range. Grimrock obviously, and Grimoire too. Others look like they were made on a knee one gloomy winter evening, and few if anyone at all would shell anything more than a couple of bucks for them.

Too bad about games which play like the former yet look like the late. All I can say, if you're serious about your effort and serious about selling it, assure it looks the part. And if you don't believe your game is good enough to have acceptable sales and thus refuse to invest in it, why should anyone else?

 

[CappenVarra]

Well, as a guy who never sold anything, I think it's time for me to share my wisdom. Applies to the general case of an unknown dev releasing their first game, i.e. not really thinking about Charles here.

If you're making "outdated" (by mainstream standards) RPGs, you're obviously not in it for the money (otherwise you'd be chasing the latest fad). You're thinking about spending significant amounts of your time (=money) working on a game, and what you want to know is: a) do you have the ability to make something remotely playable b) are there people other than you who would ever want to play it?

And if the answer to both of those questions is 'no', it doesn't matter if you're charging $0.99 or $999, right? So finding the answer to those questions is (at first) much more important to you than whether you'll make $30 or $3000 total from selling the game. What you need to concentrate on is finding out it is worth it, i.e. should you be trying to make games and share them with other people at all?

So I'm thinking - why not make your first game really small, limited but sweet (for whatever kind of game you're trying to make), and FREE. If you're in it to sharpen your development and design skills for future use, giving the game away won't affect that at all - and it will be the fastest way to find out whether you're capable of making a game and whether anybody wants to play it. Also, keeping the scope of the game really limited will greatly increase the odds of it ever being completed. And if you succeed at making a decent small game you can be proud of, and which other like-minded people will like, with some basic promotion you'll also start discovering your potential market - and it will be much easier for you to know where to go from there.

If you're not happy with the game, you know you need to become much better at game development and design. If only 30 people in the world ever play the game you're giving away for free, you are obviously not ready for selling games, and have much to learn. Making the first game helps you learn, getting people to play it makes you learn, listening to player feedback makes you learn - and there's a crapload of stuff to learn if you're just starting out.

Then and only then - if your first, small, limited, free game is working out - start making another one. If you have a game a 1000 people tried and a forum where 100 people talked about it, you have a solid base from which to say "hey guys, I'm making another game, much better and bigger and whatnot, but it won't be free". And if you make a second game in the vein of the first one, but really better and bigger and whatnot, and give people a free demo they can play with for a few hours, you're giving them a good reason to buy it. If somebody liked the first one, they'll be able to see the improvements in the demo of the second one, and know what they're getting for their money. If they only ever play free stuff or pirate - you're not really losing a customer and the pricing doesn't matter.

And if the second game sells at some arbitrarily lowish or middlish price, you know you're doing something right and in which direction to proceed with the third one. So, perhaps I'm naive (and I have no experience to back it up), but I think such a "bootstrapping" approach can be used to grow both your game development ability and your market presence and the price of your games at the same rate. And if you're really really lucky, maybe one day "succeed" enough to be an acknowledged game maker and recoup your financial investment. And if you're making good games thousands of people have played / tried, I really don't think people who really want to play your new game will be daunted by a "hefty" price tag of $25 or whatever (and a backlog is what drove the most successful kickstarters etc.). And of course, it only makes sense to use your old games to create some noise about new ones - whether by reducing the price of old games or giving them away with the purchase of new ones or whatever else... But not because "hey I'm making a unique kind of game and there are thousands of people who would love to play it, but if I charge more than $9.99 I'm fucked" - mass market logic doesn't apply if you built your own market and dedicated follower base.

Alternatively, make a cutesy shovelware indie platformer, price at $4.99, and hope you become a fad on a popular distribution channel - but then it's not a question of knowing to make a good game or interact with your potential user base, but of kissing ass and raising the bullshit skill...

 

[felipepepe]

Stuff

That's how Super Meat Boy & Binding of Isaac came to be, the guy was making free flash games for more than 6 years before he released SMB, and already had a nice cult following at that time. Same thing with the guys behind Castle Crashers & Alien Hominid.

 

[Gord]

It's also how drug dealers recruit new customers at the schoolyard.