Indie game pricing rambles

[kinougames]

I think you're not quite understanding what is being argued here. Who the heck do you know is selling an OELVN for $50? You can't "say anything for anybody selling $50 EVNs outside Japan" because they don't exist.

Although what you say is true now. Someone on this very forum did try to sell an EVN for $50. That's how this thread was started in the first place. However, probably in response to the comments made about his prices, the offending product has since been removed from his site (either that or you now need to register to see his products).

Hey hey now. I think we all realize the business practices going on down there. xD A bad product is bad no matter how much you charge for it (which is why you pay people craptons upfront to make sure it's good!). My point was that you should price according to current market quality (which includes all those things like artistic merit, writing skill, musical talent, game design and graphic design talent), and not be afraid to do so because you're a no-name. GUERILLA MARKETING MAN xD

Also, it doesn't necessarily take millions to make a professional level VN...which I think is probably a factor here, as far as costs.

[Strum]

No arguments from me, I agree with you totally. That's exactly how people should price their products, by checking out the competition in both price and quality.

Although it may not take millions to make a good VN, it certainly helps. By provide better tools for developers to work their magic.

[kinougames]

No arguments from me, I agree with you totally. That's exactly how people should price their products, by checking out the competition in both price and quality.

Although it may not take millions to make a good VN, it certainly helps. By provide better tools for developers to work their magic.

xD Money helps everything, but never underestimate the power of knowing people WITH money or skills. xD

[Topagae]

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[kinougames]

Question, biggest problem I face at the moment is the episodic nature of some games. Does the fact it's not a complete story make a 2-3 hour game less desirable/worth less? That's one of the big reasons I can't price that last game.

Story is a massive part of the quality of a game, and most people will easily can otherwise great games with a crap story (like me, in particular, and I've often abandoned games in which I could not easily enough get the story I wanted). However, a good story is nothing in a game without smooth gameplay and great art.

Personally, though people DO buy EVNs for $15-$20, I couldn't do it for a game that was only a couple hours long. That's not to say people won't, because they do. As far as the story not being complete...

Episodic games only work if each game has a full story. For example, if a story is made up of opening, development, pre-climax, climax, and resolution, you can't sell 5 episodes in which each one only contains one of those. Each story has to have all five, and then all pieces together have to have the "bigger" version of all 5. In this way, it becomes much, much more difficult to feasibly write one.

I'd suggest you get a serious editor on it to make sure each part can function as a whole story and makes sense over the entire set. If it does, then it should be okay to sell for $15 once it actually works, but you should also assume game length in quality, since the market does as well.

[Topagae]

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[kinougames]

Well yes, they do have their own self contained parts of a larger story, but the only data I have for episodic games are NOT visual novels, although they are close.

Like I said, I'd really hope an editor went over it, because these stories are a lot easier to mess up than others.

[Topagae]

"Neque porro quisquam est qui dolorem ipsum quia dolor sit amet, consectetur, adipisci velit..."

[DaFool]

The problem with episodic is the people who buy them might get pissed if you promised them 3 episodes and you only deliver 1 because the sales weren't so good. I think it's better to just keep the option open for a sequel, as long as you wrap up each experience to be self-contained and satisfying.

Back to the pricing thing, the length-as-value-for-dollar idea is still going strong despite the editorials written by dozens of developers denouncing the practice. Recent example is one complaint about Shank that it should only cost $7 not $15 because apparently $1 = 30 minutes of gameplay, so 3.5 hours playtime is only worth so much to them. (http://kotaku.com/5623385/shank-review-hell-cut-you)
So by that token a $20 game should hit 10 hours at a minimum. That's a tall order (approximately 200,000 words) unless you stick in some repetitive gameplay and make it a not-pure VN.

[Topagae]

"Neque porro quisquam est qui dolorem ipsum quia dolor sit amet, consectetur, adipisci velit..."

[jack_norton]

Back to the pricing thing, the length-as-value-for-dollar idea is still going strong despite the editorials written by dozens of developers denouncing the practice. Recent example is one complaint about Shank that it should only cost $7 not $15 because apparently $1 = 30 minutes of gameplay, so 3.5 hours playtime is only worth so much to them. (http://kotaku.com/5623385/shank-review-hell-cut-you)
So by that token a $20 game should hit 10 hours at a minimum. That's a tall order (approximately 200,000 words) unless you stick in some repetitive gameplay and make it a not-pure VN.

There's a subset of people that will always complain about everything. If a game has good art but is a bit short, it sucks because is short. If has interesting gameplay but average art, sucks because art is crap. And so on. If is free, "rules" anyway even if is a piece of s...
Usually those who complains like that, are people with lot of free time, and not much money. So they're the ones that infests forums, blog comments and talk, and developers erroneously think they're the majority, but in reality are a vocal minority. (note that I am NOT referring to people here, but on sites like kotaku, rockpapershotgun, slashdot, etc)
I honestly find hilarious measuring a game value based on length (as long as the game doesn't last 30minutes!).

[papillon]

It seems quite common for people - especially unproven developers - to launch 'episodic' series because they're hesitant about or lack the funds to commit to a full-length game at once, and then collapse because of low sales and never complete the series... making people even more nervous about buying future episodic games.

OTOH I've seen a *lot* of casual games do well in episodes. Generally, they *don't* tell anyone they're just the beginning of a series when they sell the first one, but instead carry a short, self-contained story with a strong to-be-continued hook at the end. This annoys a few people when they get to the end and realise it's not the end, but as long as the game was fun and they got a reasonably satisfying climax, it seems to get a lot of people psyched up to buy the next one.

[kinougames]

We have several editors, but that's not my question =\. My question is, does the very nature of episodic games make a VN that is episodic more or less valuable to a person?

I Suppose it might act just like my current set of data, it seems extremely variable by genre.

And if you read, you'll see I answered that question.

[Mirage]

There's a subset of people that will always complain about everything. If a game has good art but is a bit short, it sucks because is short. If has interesting gameplay but average art, sucks because art is crap. And so on. If is free, "rules" anyway even if is a piece of s...

Oh, even free stuff got trashed badly, too. It really doesn't matter whether you put price tag or not. My free games get the "lol, grammar sucks" "too short" "boring" "You suck, you can die" kind of comment. =P

On the note of length, I think it's very difficult to tell a short but good story. You need to be incredibly skillful to pull that off. I find it hard to relate with the characters or the story if everything is too short. A longer story can help fleshing out characters or setting.

Speaking of episodic, maybe trying out things like Higurashi? I thought the way the author sells it is pretty ingenious.

[kinougames]

There's a subset of people that will always complain about everything. If a game has good art but is a bit short, it sucks because is short. If has interesting gameplay but average art, sucks because art is crap. And so on. If is free, "rules" anyway even if is a piece of s...
Usually those who complains like that, are people with lot of free time, and not much money. So they're the ones that infests forums, blog comments and talk, and developers erroneously think they're the majority, but in reality are a vocal minority. (note that I am NOT referring to people here, but on sites like kotaku, rockpapershotgun, slashdot, etc)
I honestly find hilarious measuring a game value based on length (as long as the game doesn't last 30minutes!).

If a game is hella awesome and only an hour long and I paid $20, I wouldn't feel bad. But in the same tone, I'm not going to buy a game for $20 when I see it's an hour long, and I think I'd feel pretty here and there about buying a game I expected to take some time and then it didn't. I guess I could say that the value I place on the length depends on the quality of the other pieces.

Trace Memory was extremely short for an RPG DS game, maybe 5-6 hours, and I paid $30 for that and though I had this "meh, a little short" feeling from it, I didn't feel cheated because it had a great story and interesting gameplay. (Though other early DS games made me feel REAL cheated.)

I don't think that the ENTIRE value should be based on length (since who the heck wants to play a 25 million hour long Stick Figure VN Madness xD), but if two games are of equal quality as far as art and programming and gameplay, and one is longer, yeah, I'm gonna go for the longer one, easy, and wouldn't mind paying more for it.

Definitely, though, people will complain about everything, and they're loud. However, this shouldn't be a problem to developers who do their research!