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Original post by Yvanhoe SpiderWeb's CEO posts a lot of informations on his blog about how he sets his pricing and how much he has to sell before becoming profitable : http://jeff-vogel.blogspot.com/2009/03/so-heres-how-many-games-i-sell.html He is doing single-player RPGs for a living. You should check it out.

Yep, that's a really good article - here's the second part. They've been making excellent old-school single-player RPGs since the early 90s.

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Original post by Trapper Zoid Quote: Original post by Konidias The only downside to iphone is it's hardware limitations That, and that everyone thinks your game is overpriced if you charge more than a dollar. I think the top-end price is about five bucks, and even then you'll get people complaining about the price. The iPhone looks like a viable market for very small and simple, disposable games, but you can't charge enough to make it viable for single player RPGs in my opinion. The aforementioned Jeff Vogel blog has an article on this. And unlike me, he's got the single player RPG developer cred to back his words up. [wink]

I've taken a look at iphone game sales and quite a lot of games sell anywhere from 4.99 to 9.99 and even higher if they are really good. Sure you won't get nearly as many sales, but with higher prices, you'll make up for it.

One way around the high price tag and the "you can't do large RPGs on iphone" problem would be to make your game broken up into chapters or sagas. This way you make one big game, then cut it up in to quarters or something. So you end up with "Super Cool RPG Saga 1" and sell that for 4.99. It has enough fun and content in it to last a while and then when that does well enough, you release "Super Cool RPG Saga 2" at 4.99, and so on and so forth.

The apple store is still relatively new as far as games go. This means that eventually the prices will adjust themselves. Right now people expect games for 99 cents... but as nicer and higher quality games come out at higher prices, people will pay more. A lot of big name game companies are getting into i-phone game development now, and that means they will probably have some pretty high prices on their games. Which people will most likely pay for... and if they are charging upwards of 19.99 and more, you can easily get away with 15.99 or 9.99.

Just something to think about.

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Original post by Konidias I've taken a look at iphone game sales and quite a lot of games sell anywhere from 4.99 to 9.99 and even higher if they are really good. Sure you won't get nearly as many sales, but with higher prices, you'll make up for it.

I thought $10 was the cap. Can you charge higher for an iPhone game?

I haven't looked too deeply into iPhone games, as I'm planning on sticking to PC (Win/Mac) to begin with. But from what I've read from developers who have, and from looking at the reviews on the iTunes store, it does seem there's an expectation that games will be $5 or less. About a quarter of the reviews for the higher priced Super Monkey Ball game seem to include its "high" price of $10 as a critical flaw (note: right now $8, but it launched higher.)

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One way around the high price tag and the "you can't do large RPGs on iphone" problem would be to make your game broken up into chapters or sagas. This way you make one big game, then cut it up in to quarters or something. So you end up with "Super Cool RPG Saga 1" and sell that for 4.99. It has enough fun and content in it to last a while and then when that does well enough, you release "Super Cool RPG Saga 2" at 4.99, and so on and so forth.

Micropayments and episodic content are something to think about, but if you're thinking of doing this as a career you still need to charge enough to survive. It's the making "enough fun and content for it to last a while" that's the issue. $5 really isn't that much. Splitting something like a traditional single player RPG into $5 chunks will play merry havoc on how you design it. You can't really have an open sprawling world to explore and then compartmentalise it into episodes.

I wouldn't wipe the whole iPhone platform off, but I don't think it's the gold rush it once was. Currently it seems the only real way to make money of the platform is to play the lottery that your game will soar up into the Top 10 list on the iTunes store, and that somewhat flies in the face of the traditional long term sale strategy for indies.

I think making a single player rpg is definitely a viable business strategy, just don't make the mistake of trying to make a oblivion clone since you can't compete with them for content amount and the genre doesn't offer much else.

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Original post by vchile Some genres just don't really last. Flight Sims used to be the bread and butter of PC gaming, but just aren't many about any more. There is MS's game, but besides that, very few. Unlike FPS's and even RPG's where there are dozens every year.

Funny you should mention MS Flight Simulator, since I believe that whole studio recently got shut down.

I also disagree with a great number of people in this thread (and Mr. Vogel from Spiderweb) about indie game pricing. Using Spiderweb as an example: they sell a few thousand copies of a new game at $28 a pop. For most of these customers, he could charge $50 and sell the same amount. They are mostly return customers who know exactly what they're getting. So his games sell most of their copies shortly after release, and then sales drop to a very small trickle. Why not try a limited time sale? As it is, people who were turned off by the price before will never buy your game. People who wouldn't pay $25 for Avernum nine years ago won't pay $25 now (yes, it is still priced at $25). Saying, "I make a profit, so there's nothing wrong with my pricing" doesn't make sense if you've never tried lowering it. And no, 10% off during October doesn't do it. I'd be willing to wager that 50% off for a few days with plenty of advance notice will boost profits a great deal more.

It's all about generating interest. Advertising (even unintentional advertising like blogging about your game sales) is one way to so, having a low price is another. To make matters more difficult for new developers, you don't have that initial fan base that Spiderweb has. So if you price high, you're basically relying on people with lots of disposable income that also actively check out the indie games market. That's a bad business plan in any economy, let alone this one.

vchile, I'm going to have to say, no to your question of whether single player RPGs are a dying breed. However, a variant to that question could be are certain types of single-player rpg's dying? The answer to that would be Yes.

SP RPG's are not dying. Look at Mass Effect, Dragon Age, Oblivion, Fallout 3, Gothic, etc. They certainly aren't being made as much as they used to be but they'll still be around for a while.

The thing that I'm concerned about is that the turn-based RPG breed is dying out. In fact, it died a while ago. Games like the original Fallout, Fallout Tactics, Final Fantasy Tactics, Arcanum, Temple of Elemental Evil, etc. are dead. I think this comes from today's young generation wanting instant gratification from everything. Everything has to move fast, shoot fast, blow up fast, and if there has to be a moment of silence, you've got games like Fallout 3 and Mass Effect that implement real time w/pause.

I think a lot of the older turn based games were turn based more for technical reasons than gameplay reasons

Disgaea was a "recent" turn based rpg that was phenominal. ("recent" because the big break in the series came out in 2003). And its success has made its developer a mainstay in the genre. They have PSP, DS and PS3 games released in the genre up to and through 2008. And I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if they're working on more games in the genre.

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Original post by ICUP The thing that I'm concerned about is that the turn-based RPG breed is dying out. In fact, it died a while ago. Games like the original Fallout, Fallout Tactics, Final Fantasy Tactics, Arcanum, Temple of Elemental Evil, etc. are dead.

Check out Silent Storm. It's not too old (2003). I just recently played through it, and had a hell of a time. You can shoot through the flooring/ceiling, and climb up and down the holes. You can set off bombs and blow huge spherical holes in buildings.

Characters have auditory perception, so you can see sounds, and locate targets based on those sounds, then fire through the walls to take them down. I remember spotting a sniper through sound near a window from the street down below it. When I fired to take him out, I accidentally blew apart the window ledge, and he fell through, smashing onto the street below, right beside me. Those sort of things happen a lot in that game.

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I think this comes from today's young generation wanting instant gratification from everything. Everything has to move fast, shoot fast, blow up fast, and if there has to be a moment of silence, you've got games like Fallout 3 and Mass Effect that implement real time w/pause.

You're probably right, but I think there's also some failure in marketing them. These kind of games shouldn't be buttered up with action-oriented words and 'overcolorified' with explosions on the back of the box or website to target these sort of kids/teens, and they almost always are. When people who like a quick fix see this, they compare the pictures/gameplay to something like Halo 3, snicker, and move on. When the type of people who want depth and strategy see this, they dismiss it as shallow. If the game is built on extreme detail and strategy, it's going to destroy it to market it with explosions and blood.

Just to extend on what I already posted, for example I don't feel fallout made very good use of the turn based aspect. A lot of combat strategy was killed by not being able to directly control your teammates and the fact most of the combat mechanics were just raw dice rolls as oppose to xcom were it actually calculated bullet paths against obstacles. This isn't necessarily a bad thing but I do feel fallout would have played just as good if it was a real time game.