My big point was though: if you are in the range of comparable titles, the price discussion is moot. You can bitch about game prices in general. You can no longer single out your title. Your competitors price decisions are actually supporting your own now.

You can also point out details that would make yours more valuable other ways. Effectively explain why your title is NOT comparable.

In my example above, one could argue that a live theater performance, a movie in the theater, and a show on netflix are all the same. It is a roughly 2 hour block of entertainment, and it is unfair that the rates should vary so wildly. All of them could present exactly the same story. If that is the only way you describe it, the price difference makes no sense: one is $75 per ticket, another $10 per ticket, another is an inexpensive subscription cost. You could argue since they all tell the same story -- the three shows may all be a retelling of "Romeo and Juliet" -- they should all be in the same price category.

However, there are other ways to break them down beyond the content of the story being told. There are other things of value in each format.

If I break them down in a way that to me they are similar value then I will argue they should be similarly priced.

If I break them down in a way that to me they have different value then I will argue they should be differently priced.

You and I may break them down differently. I may argue for similar price, you may argue for different price, neither is wrong.

I've lost the link, but Valve did some sneaky pricing experiments with counter-strike, where they raised and lowered it without any sale announcements/etc, and found it to be "elastic" -- that is, no matter what price they set, they made the same amount of money per week on it. When higher, they got less sales and when lower they got more. Either way, it balanced out perfectly to keep weekly revenue the same!
Probably doesn't hold up for games that haven't been consistently tending for a decade, but an interesting bit of marketing theory being demonstrated anyway

Here's the link - it seems they tried it with third-party games also. And publicized sales broke the elasticity in a positive way.

In my example above, one could argue that a live theater performance, a movie in the theater, and a show on netflix are all the same.

That's a very valid angle.

The general public understands that movies are bankrolled for an initial fixed sum, which they must recoup at the box office in order for future movies to be made. They understand that live theatrical performances are not bankrolled in the same way, and each performance represents an ongoing expense, which they must recoup at each ticket sale. At the same time, if they aren't willing/able to pay for those things, they can pay $8/month to Netflix or Amazon for a large quantity of ongoing entertainment, albeit a limited selection of generally less recent work.

Given that the general public understands this, it's not unreasonable to assume they either already appreciate, or can be educated as to, why the economics of Indie game development are fundamentally different to those of AAA studios, and may vary from studio to studio (much as they vary from act to act in the theatrical/dance/music world).

The facts are the same in games as in anything else in the arts: if the studio can't afford to keep a roof over its head, the studio closes, and we all miss out on the future games they may have built. However, unlike the rest of the arts, game studios are viewed as capitalist ventures that must pay for themselves, rather than cultural artefacts eligible for government grants and supported by donations...

But the point is: who is saying that a game costing 20 bucks really is worth more than 4 beers? Maybe someone likes his beer more than his games. Who is to say that 20 hours of gameplay equal to two hours of blockbuster movie?

Which is also true from game to game, so even comparing games among themselves is pears to apples, hence the need for some kind of a baseline.

Two games that are similar in features, won't have the same value to the end-user.

I think this is true for most people out there, hence why the normal span for Indie games on steam being around 5-15$... 20$ might be on the high side, as this price bracket is occupied normally by AA games from bigger studios and re-releases. You could argue that this game might actually be worth more than some AA re-releases of 20 year old RPG classics on PC... but again, one has a made a name for itself and has most probably a well known studio behind it, the other does not.

That's where Triple "I" comes in I think. Indies with some kind of a background but still taking a lot of design risks.

IF you are sure you have great quality, and want to do marketing with it, best thing is to let others spread to word. If you can, reach out to youtubers and lets players that might enjoy it, and let them gauge the quality of your game.
Failing that, you can try to impress people with a video or pics of your "quality features" (like the dev for this title did with the "whole level pics" to prove the size of the levels).
You can of course set your price higher because of your games quality.

I'm going to disagree here. Word of mouth rarely gets the job done. It's not uncommon for a true gem to fail to garner attention. Marketing is something critical that you can't just leave to players and youtubers to handle.

Which is to apologize

To apologize would be to admit you've actually done something wrong, but most likely, by putting the game to market, selling it, and getting a low of positive feedback from other players, how could you justify apologizing to one (or a few) user for something and actually believe it? I think you can professionally agree to disagree with their perspective on your game, you can relate to their frustration but you can't possibly apologize.

If High End graphics cards with a GTX 980 ti level of performance cost around 700$ (at least here in overpriced-land), how could you call the AMD equivalent that is almost as fast overpriced at 650$? Its not as fast, so the 700$ for the nvidia offering is still valid. But its quite close, so the 650$ also are not totally off.

That example is flawed in that, though the specs are complex, they are objective. Games are far more subjective to analyze. It would be impossible to gauge and compare games in a similar way.

My big point was though: if you are in the range of comparable titles, the price discussion is moot. You can bitch about game prices in general. You can no longer single out your title. Your competitors price decisions are actually supporting your own now.

So your solution would be to price your game accordingly to however other games are priced? I'm not clear on this making sense. And to be fair, there's always the 'first company' that steps it up once in a while, and I don't think it hurts their sales all that much in the end, and though they get slandered for it, every other company soon follows because, quite frankly, the cost of production increases over time (and inflation keeps on ticking) so you can't sells games at 60 forever... they get to 70, then 80... etc

Not sure 'lining up' is necessarily the best attitude, especially as an indie.

Of course, if you're speaking of the mobile market, disregard this entire discussion and make sure your game is 0,99, end of story.

So your solution would be to price your game accordingly to however other games are priced? I'm not clear on this making sense. And to be fair, there's always the 'first company' that steps it up once in a while, and I don't think it hurts their sales all that much in the end, and though they get slandered for it, every other company soon follows because, quite frankly, the cost of production increases over time (and inflation keeps on ticking) so you can't sells games at 60 forever... they get to 70, then 80... etc

Not sure 'lining up' is necessarily the best attitude, especially as an indie.

Well, over time, the price of AAA games have stayed more or less the same, they even became cheaper. Back in the nineties pretty much all games costed 100 bucks on consoles.

Granted, there was the price for the module involved, but even the PC game prices at that time was more like 80 bucks.

I am pretty sure game prices came down considerably, most probably because of digital distribution.

Will the price go up again at some point? I don't know. But most probably that will be a tough battle to fight, and needs to be spearheaded by the very companies that can afford pricing lower because of their bigger customer base in the first place.

As to disregarding your competition when it comes to prices: Of course, you can do that. If it is a good or bad idea depends solely on your brand and name IMO though.

If you are an unknown Indie, and price too high, you might not get away with it. Your marketing dollar is scarce as is, and now you have to spend MORE on marketing to overcome the bad press caused by your high price? I am not sure I would agree that the higher income per sale really is worth the damage to your overall sales. Not to mention the damage to your name, which is only becoming known to many people. Do you really want to become known as "that Indie that always asks WAY too much for his/her games"?

Lets not forget that most depend a lot on the sales spike in the first few days. If exactly during those days there is a trash campaign because of the price, and you have to focus your marketing effort on fighting that instead of promoting your game as usual, that might do a lot of damage... they do say "bad press is also press", but I am not sure that applies to game marketing too.

To apologize would be to admit you've actually done something wrong, but most likely, by putting the game to market, selling it, and getting a low of positive feedback from other players, how could you justify apologizing to one (or a few) user for something and actually believe it? I think you can professionally agree to disagree with their perspective on your game, you can relate to their frustration but you can't possibly apologize.

Good point... "apologizing" is most probably the wrong word. Taking their point of view into consideration, and just giving them some feedback to show that you value them as customers is the more appropriate approach.

After all, you most probably did nothing wrong. You just didn't meet THEIR expecations with your game, which isn't your fault (most of the time, without blantantly lying about game features and quality) .

I'm going to disagree here. Word of mouth rarely gets the job done. It's not uncommon for a true gem to fail to garner attention. Marketing is something critical that you can't just leave to players and youtubers to handle.

Yes... I was more referring to not trying to compare yours to other games yourself. I am trying to explain my point with 3 examples, 2 bad and a better one:

"Best game of the year" - is that a good marketing stunt? Don't think so....

"Better than game X" - you sure? Sounds quite subjective to me...

"Game features are X, Y and Z, and they are awesome!" - sounds better. Features are facts, and the hyperbole statement at the end is also subjective, but without trying to make a comparison.

That example is flawed in that, though the specs are complex, they are objective. Games are far more subjective to analyze. It would be impossible to gauge and compare games in a similar way.

True... still, given that players don't know about quality yet and you don't have a wellknown brand, your game will be compared based on genre and features until somebody puts up an unbiased review/comparison.

So while it might be flawed, until they played it or read a review by someone they trust, RPG X = RPG Y given same length and feature count, or RPG X > RPG Y if RPG X has 60 hours runtime, while RPG Y lasts for 20 hours, RPG X has an openworld 3 times as big as RPG Y ones, and has more features for most players.

Does it make sense? Not so much. But this is IMO how most humans think.

Might be not so much of an issue, given you can start with some good vids of youtubers making your game look way better than all the others in your genre. Then you might be able to justify that your game > all the other games in your genre and tier.

Or don't respond at all. There's no rule saying a developer needs to reply to some cheapskate looking for a refund.

This.

When in doubt, saying less is more, and not saying anything is best. Chances are good that if you say something, you lose. Also, such discussions can take up a lot of time, and your time is spent better in making the game more valuable.

That guy might be a troll, anything you say, you lose. That guy might be right, anything you object, you lose. That guy might be wrong and not a troll, but you fail at explaining, you lose. Your chance of "winning" are small, and even if you do win, it doesn't mean more people will buy your game. Better judge for yourself and see if maybe he is right, and your pricing idea is wrong, or if your product is flawed.

If something is wrong, you need to fix it, not argue. But someone will always complain, and you cannot make everybody happy... and if that is it, then so be it. Do nothing, say nothing.

It's somewhat unfair, but I almost fell off my chair laughing when the comparison with a Nickleback poster, a toilet plumger, and a sixpack of beer came up. You really shouldn't laugh at someone who is honestly trying to make a living and is doing a best effort at explaining why he is asking $20 for his product (and making some very valid points, but also some ridiculous ones). Anyway, half way down the post, it got so funny I couldn't help it, sorry.

To be fair, and I almost missed that point, this game is in "early access" stage, which means no more and no less than it's not finished. That makes it somewhat difficult. One can argue that anything someone might want to object to justify that it isn't worth the money is invalid, since this is not the final version. Thus, a valid answer might be: What do you complain about, you know the game isn't finished.

On the other hand, asking $20 for something that's not finished (and possibly might never be) could admittedly be perceived as a tidbit steep. Then again, people have been backing kickstarter projects that merely consisted of some ideas, a bit of concept art, and some (presumed) demo recording, exceeding $20 by far.

Having looked at some 30-40 seconds worth of youtube video gameplay, I must say that the game doesn't appeal to me because I don't like robots. But ignoring that detail, I'd say it's actually pretty nice. Lots of explosions, lots of action, no-suck graphics, and while the isometric-style background doesn't thrill me too much (though it's hard to find something better for that type of game!), I do like the rest a lot. The tiny headlights on the small "sniffing" robots really got me!

So... assuming that the game is really somewhat like that video and offers a couple of hours of entertainment, and for someone who likes robots, I'd say this is pretty awesome, and $20 is not too much.

1. "Best game of the year" - is that a good marketing stunt? Don't think so....
2. "Better than game X" - you sure? Sounds quite subjective to me...
3. "Game features are X, Y and Z, and they are awesome!" - sounds better. Features are facts, and the hyperbole statement at the end is also subjective, but without trying to make a comparison.

1. "'Best game of the year,' says respected reviewer" is simply conveying a reviewer's comment, and thus is supportable. But just calling it "best game of the year" yourself is not supportable. Don't do it.
2. Never compare your game to another game - it just gives press to the other game.
3. Absolutely talk about the features, but their awesomeness should be self-evident. Stay away from hyperbole altogether. Hyperbole stinks to high heaven!!!

When in doubt, saying less is more, and not saying anything is best. Chances are good that if you say something, you lose. Also, such discussions can take up a lot of time, and your time is spent better in making the game more valuable.

There is some truth behind this, still, I think the "no comment" politics many companys are employing is not really helping them with customers. ANY feedback is better than no feedback at all. To the general customer, it shows that you take them serious and do care.

Now, if your respond happens to go to the not-so-obvious-troll, he might continue trolling. At which point the troll becomes more obvious. At that point no feedback is needed anymore, as any reasonable human being can see now why you stopped responding. Points to you for interacting with the troll when it wasn't obvious yet he was trolling...

If the guy IS right, then don't object. You don't need to object just to be right. A simple "We are looking into it..." sometimes goes all the way (it would be good if you are actually looking into it at some point, or be open about NOT looking into it and maybe explain why if you aren't... but these are details). Being able to admit mistakes is a virtue not enough human beings seem to posses sadly...

If the guy is wrong and not a troll, a simple and well worded response should be enough. "We cannot do that because... " might be all that is needed. If he is not a troll, and you give a good reason, that will be the end of the discussion.

Now, as for comments like this where there is no right or wrong answer, I still think a short and to the point answer is the right way to go. No epic rant, no canned one liner either. Given you based your pricing decision on something other than "see what we can get away with" or "lets see what the dices roll today", why not try to give a very short insight into that?

If this example shows one thing, its that a) trollish sounding questions sometimes come from not-trolls (the original poster clearly was no troll, as his response to the devs reaction shows), b) that any reaction, even a not so good one, can lead to good results with some customers, and c) that the whole discussion can explode way outside its original confines when publically visible online (see this example, Steam -> Gamasutra -> Gamedev.net :) ).

Then lastly, there is the real concern of the poster hidden behind the pricing comment: The poster seems to be concerned about the value of his investion less because the game might not be worth it, but more because he cannot know if it will be worth it, as it is still unfinished. When you ask people to pay for an unfinished product you are asking them to believe in you. Obviously the dev hadn't done enough to convince this poster that he was able to provide a game worth 20$ when finished.

THAT would be what should be adressed above the question if the finished game is worth 20 bucks.

I do see that this might end up as a HUGE timesink, especially for small Indie devs that happen to tap into a large audience. But I disagree that it isn't worth SOME time and money to try and interact with your community. After all, most devs emphasize the "building your community is the most important thing" aspect of Indie marketing a lot. You cannot build a community without interacting, and responding to critisism is critical to that.

After all, when the Fez dev flipped the table on Fez 2 because of some dickish video by some youtubers, I guess he immidiatly lost half his community. Would these people still gladly buy his games if he used his famous earlier games for advertisment purposes? Or should he rather use a fake name now, or at least not mention Fez in the hope the whole table-flipping thing would remain under the rug?

To be fair, and I almost missed that point, this game is in "early access" stage, which means no more and no less than it's not finished. That makes it somewhat difficult. One can argue that anything someone might want to object to justify that it isn't worth the money is invalid, since this is not the final version. Thus, a valid answer might be: What do you complain about, you know the game isn't finished.

On the other hand, asking $20 for something that's not finished (and possibly might never be) could admittedly be perceived as a tidbit steep. Then again, people have been backing kickstarter projects that merely consisted of some ideas, a bit of concept art, and some (presumed) demo recording, exceeding $20 by far.



Having looked at some 30-40 seconds worth of youtube video gameplay, I must say that the game doesn't appeal to me because I don't like robots. But ignoring that detail, I'd say it's actually pretty nice. Lots of explosions, lots of action, no-suck graphics, and while the isometric-style background doesn't thrill me too much (though it's hard to find something better for that type of game!), I do like the rest a lot. The tiny headlights on the small "sniffing" robots really got me!

So... assuming that the game is really somewhat like that video and offers a couple of hours of entertainment, and for someone who likes robots, I'd say this is pretty awesome, and $20 is not too much.

Yeah, I am also kinda thorn. Wile I have no problems with the Mecha and do love the look and feel, I wouldn't want to invest into an unfinished project just like that.

I know crowdfunding and early access is the only way how some Indie stuff can be made, but my appetite on getting burned by buying games that turn out to be duds is not too big.

On the other hand, got burned by plenty AAA games lately... especially with games being QT Event ladden interactive movies instead of games as advertised (in which case I rage delete games from my disk... In the future, I shall use the new Steam returns function. QT Events need to die a quick death)...

That might have an influence too on my opinion.

Lots of angles, and I haven't had time to read the entire thread so forgive me if I'm retreading ground --

I think the very first thing to do is to understand the reasons behind the pricing complaints, and those can be myriad. For brevity, I'll refer to those being vocal about your "high prices" as complainers, though that has a more negative connotation than I mean it to.

What we're really talking about when we say that something is too expensive is that there's a disparity between perceived value (utility, entertainment, usability, subjective quality, etc) and actual cost; sometimes these traits are measured qualitatively in isolation (thus, not tying them to a price-point), often they are measured against other competitive products (thus, tying them to a competitive price-point). There are really only two permanent ways to deal with this perceived disparity -- raise the perceived value to match the actual cost, or lower the actual cost to match the perceived value. Temporary measures can also be employed, such as sales, freebees, or other promotions. Permanent solutions are costly (as in blood/sweat/tears/time/opportunity and/or financially) but done well can actually increase revenue on a longstanding basis. Temporary measures are often inexpensive, "costing" only as much as the unit-cost of the promotion eats into your margins -- it can be hard not to look at lost margin as lost revenue, but the two do not have a 1:1 relationship and retail is not usually a zero-sum game, and regardless I would assert that any reasonable promotion is *always* going to cost you less than implementing those permanent solutions. What you should take from that is when you get complaints that can be addressed by a temporary solution, its not cheating to take it and move on; permanent solutions are an investment, having all the usual costs and risks -- don't invest in rectifying fleeting complaints.

Because its an investment on your part, you really need to understand the problem and how to solve it; I don't mean having a formula in hand for the solution, but I do mean verifying to whatever extent you can that the solution path you'll embark on is the one that will increase customer satisfaction overall, however you measure that. Form hypothesis and test them, do A/B tests or betas if you can. But before getting the right solution, make sure you have the right problem! Maybe the complainers are disatisfied because they aren't seeing the value that's there -- perhaps because bad UI obscures it, or because the difficulty curve discourages them from ever reaching the really great content (or because your early content isn't engaging enough). Adding value is great but its the most costly thing you can do, bringing out latent value by polishing what you have can be equally effective and usually is not so costly. Sometimes perceived value is judged "unfairly", as when an otherwise great gameplay experience is marred by poor aesthetics (graphics, sound, etc) or more-fairly marred by bugs, which goes back to bringing out latent value -- If you can invest in better art assets or music or sound effects, or spend a week or two bug-bashing, it can be a relatively cost-effective way of making sure the true value of your product shines through unclouded.

Even with temporary solutions they don't always have to cut into margins -- For example, if you truly are certain that your product provides fair value but also have people complaining about your high price, consider a pay-what-you-want sale -- this gives the wouldbe/complainers an opportunity to pay a price they think is fair but also is good press and also gives those who are sure of its value a chance to throw you additional support (and you can even incentivise people to prefer to pay higher tiers). If you're confident of your own value proposition, there are probably people out there who are convinced you've undercharged, and they can help offset those who choose to pay less. Make those tiers human -- say your regular price is $1.99, have tiers at "$.99 -- Discount: Thank you for being our customer", "$1.99 -- Regular price: Thank you for supporting our game" and "$2.99 -- Booster price: Thank you for helping us make more great games". Valve's own Steam statistics have shown that revenues for high-quality games stay mostly the same regardless of pricepoint, and with not much appreciable impact on the long-tail of lifetime sales -- that is, outside of the launch window, a sales surge now does not generally imply a corresponding sales decline later (though I think that's mostly broad-appeal games, and games with very niche appeal might perform differently but I'm not sure if they have that data or if they broke it out as such).

Last but not least, I say don't be afraid to not address a battle you're bound to lose from the outset. Some people just believe that no casual or indie game should ever cost more than $1.99 (or even $.99 -- or even that all games aren't free-to-play with the option to grind through never paying a thing). The only thing you can do to appease these folks is to crater to their specific demands -- and even then most still won't buy your game because their indignation is usually more about their soapbox than what actually affects them personally -- that is, they want all games to be $.99 but that does not mean they'll buy your game if it were $.99. They've probably already pirated it, they've certainly moved on to complaining about another game. There are some people who will never be appeased, and all efforts you extend in their service are wasted. IMHO, They're certainly not worth any more than a marginally personalized copy/paste response, and its highly questionable whether they are worth even a fully-automated one.

Something not touched on here by most people is how to actually respond, as a person, to the comments on steam should this arise.

Personally, my response might have been something on the lines of "Thank you for your feedback regarding our price. We selected this price based on our best market research and have taken your thoughts on board."

This is the sort of thing I've used before when someone asks me to add a feature to a piece of software i am creating, and generally i think that feature is stupid, risky, or downright crazy. You are not committing to anything, and are saying that you didn't just come to your decisions lightly and haven't just thrown away someone's opinion.

In the end, what you say on steam and anywhere else about your game is about PR, image, and also customer service. The customer is always right, even when they're wrong. :)