Indie game pricing: The balance between fair and cheap!

This topic originated from a discussion about price points in games. However, due to the very helpfull and sometimes very emotional replies of some users, It became a help desk for all indie game developers that want to publish their games themselfs.

Error014 for example provided a very nice list of things one should check:
1) Are you running ads?
2) Are you sure you provided the necessary amount of PR? Posting trailers on YouTube is NOT enough. Sending press releases to many, many outlets would be a start. There are services for that, if you don't want to do it yourself.
I don't know your current sales, but I'm sure you'd see a nice spike if you get a favorably (maybe even bad or awful) review from bigger sites.
3) Have you made sure your website makes it easy and clear how to buy? Not for someone like you looking at it everyday, but for someone who's never been there before and is not web-savvy?
4) Are you closely analyzing your website-traffic and stats?
5) Are you providing Demos for your games?

Those a re a few things to consider. He also was kind enough to link us to this BLOG with alot of REALLY good information. Like those four links:
Indie Games pricing Issues
The wild economics of selling online
Two web sales mistakes you could be making right now
Let's kill the cheap and begging myth right now

Also, JibbSmart added three very useful links for self publishers.
GamePress Press releases - Create your own press release
Rock, Paper, Shotgun - Getting your game pre/reviewed
The Indie Database

Furhtermore, you can find some very helpfull and some not that much helpful tipps and opinions in the replies

interesting question !
i guess maybe you're right... because if you would have to choose between a bar of chocolate priced 1€uro and a bar of chocolate priced 10Cent.... i guess not many people would take the 10 cent bar of chocolate - and even then it would be seen as inferior ! To know that the 10 cent bar of chocolate is as good as a 1€uro bar of chocolate requires that you've already tasted both !
And commonly we only buy a 1 €uro bar of chocolate... Thus we would assume that there's something wrong with the 10 Cent bar of chocolate ...

Same thing with games on steam... if for example half life 2 is on there for 10 Cent, everybody would buy it instantly ! But if some unknown shooter would be there for 10 Cent not many people would buy it, because something has to be wrong with it...

I guess without knowledge we(at least i) are cautious and thus we can miss a good deal....

of course if you have knowledge about games and you buy a game for 19.99€ that's objectively (and also from the point of view of the developer) only worth 4.99€, then I'd be pretty pissed off (of course only because I know that the game isn't worth that much)...

Thus I guess, if you want to sell the game to people who have some knowledge about games, keep the price low
If you want to sell the game to people who only occasionally play games, raise the price

this interesting video is roughly about this topic :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FREh6GyHk1k

I have actually bought all 3 games, I enjoy them Which reminds me, I've been working on feedback on GRUNTS for you, I will get that to you some day soon.

regards,

That's interesting. I would've thought that $5 USD is cheap enough that I wouldn't be too bothered if I didn't end up enjoying the game, but enough that I know the distributor's not just making a desperate attempt to increase sales. Obviously I would assume it's an indie game, and in this case it is.

These days I rarely get games that cost any more than $10, the exceptions being AAA titles that have critical acclaim and have given me good reason to believe I'll sink a lot of time into them.

Jibb

So you guys think that by raising the price, people are more interested?

so what is a fair price then? ambages sells for 10 US dollars (roughly 8 euros) and grutns for 5 and mosnters for 2. i could raise the price to 7 dollars for grunts and maybe 5 for monsters?
i think it would be unfair to charge more than 10 dollars for ambages, although suggested price from the publisher (who never does anything with the game, a shame) would be 15 dollars...

I don´t think that raising up prices could be a key to become the wanted resonance. It would be more important to catch potential interests over some puplic games, physical products in the store available. Maybe you have then the luck that more people visit your page and buy some other stuff from you.
And if there is no pub who is willed to risk his money for your budget productions you will be stay the same independent in the infinity ocean of budget developers. And all of them just want the same... earn some bugs for free time or life.

I can see Ambages being priced at $15. Anything less than that is a bit too far in the cheap side IMO. Monsters should probably be priced at $10. I would say $10 for GRUNTS as well but seeing as how 4 more episodes are on the way for that game, that would add up to $50 for the whole series...

considering that apple just published another version of its os with virtually no additional features but an upgrade price of 25$, I think your games are too cheap. On the other hand, minecraft costs only 20$...

Why not try raising the price a bit and compare sales to before? I'd be interested in the outcome.

If you do raise the price, bust out a press-release giving players a 5 day (or so) grace period in which to buy the games before prices go up.

Jibb

there is the next point. i do trailers and videos, upload them, post them on various websites but since i dont have the budget for big ass advertising, the games fall beneath the radar of most people...

The right price is important, yeah. A friend of mine who is doing graphic design tried to sell his stuff for like 5 euro each, noone bought it. Just for fun he raised it to 30 euro and sold a lot.

I would not go over $9,99 though.

Also, a bit unusual, but you could try get people to "let's play" your games. Depending on who is doing it, it's really good advertising (reason why minecraft became so popular).

People like Paulsoaresjr on youtube do Indie Game Reviews, maybe if you ask him nicely and send him copies he would do a lets play of it

If it makes you feel any better, I just got through conducting an interview for FirstPersonShooters.net for GRUNTS and the interviewer will be submitting it to several news sites shortly.

Here's the interview:
http://firstpersonshooters.net/Games/GRUNTS/interview.html

Make it a permanent discount from a high price.

yeah, i got contacted about a review. i will send over a copy asap. so basically most of you agree that they are not expensive enough?

I haven't played them, so I can't tell you. For me a game like Neverwinter Nights is worth 60$ (~100h gameplay).

So much talk and none of you mentioned cliffki's blog?


Link.

This should give you all the information you need. Unlike most of us, he actually tried out various sale points, and knows what he's talking about. What did he find out? Well, the fact that his games are NOT following the "ever-cheaper"-approach might be a clue.

Things are, probably, even worse in the Appstore, I believe, and things might get dangerous if this continues over to the PC market. If people find quality games too expensive at TWO DOLLARS, there is something very wrong with the perceiption of value of those things.

--

Here are some links to start with:

1, 2, 3, 4.

A few more things that you should consider:
1) Are you running ads?
2) Are you sure you provided the necessary amount of PR? Posting trailers on YouTube is NOT enough. Sending press releases to many, many outlets would be a start. There are services for that, if you don't want to do it yourself.
I don't know your current sales, but I'm sure you'd see a nice spike if you get a favorably (maybe even bad or awful) review from bigger sites.
3) Have you made sure your website makes it easy and clear how to buy? Not for someone like you looking at it everyday, but for someone who's never been there before and is not web-savvy?
4) Are you closely analyzing your website-traffic and stats?
5) Are you providing Demos for your games?

etc. etc.

Games Press! Use Games Press!

Also, sites like Rock, Paper Shotgun really want to hear from developers and make it almost too easy to contact them.

Indie DB is a fantastic place to put your game. Lots of people use Indie DB, and they're there because they're looking for indie games. They tell people about them. And it gives you good traffic stats.

Jibb

Those are awesome links Error! Thanx a lot!

I am not running ads, because those are expensive. I dont have the cash for that.
I do however provide games for reviews. If the review gets written is another story though.
I HOPE my website is easy to understand. It would be good of somebody would actually check that?
I am keepeing an eye on traffic and it isnt spectacular, but demo downloads (which i provide) are quite good.

edit: this thread has turned into a real value for all of us. please@any mod, move this to game buisness and i will chage the title accordingly.

*done*
(I've also changed the whole topic title ;))

thanx alot!
i have adjusted my game prices, lets see if i have any change whatsoever.

grunts wills tay 5 bucks, but the other episodes will be more expensive. i amde that decision for two reasons: one: the demomis essentially episode 1. two: the next three episodes will be slightly larger. the last episode will be 5 bucks again. this way, the entire game WOULD retail for 35-40 dollars.

hmmm.... grunts is a very nice styled game.
The price is still too cheap. 9Euro would be right (new release) after one year change the price down to 4,50EUR, and 2 years after first release sell it for 1EUR. If you create an episode 2, you could sell packages....

as i have said, the first episode will stay as cheap simply because there is not much difference between this episode and the demo. he other episodes will go up to 10 dollars.

On my Twitter feed:From PCGamersWorld -- I don't think they're particularly big or well-known, but they are very active and often get news out before some of the bigger outlets. And they don't neglect indie games when it comes to press (or at least I like to think so, since they've always done good things with KarBOOM's press releases).

They're well worth following for those of you that use Twitter to keep up with gaming news.

Jibb

since the thread was splitted:

Thanks to games like grunz anyone of us releasing another indie game wont be able to charge what its worth, but will have to pay a price for the tag "indie" and all the other grunz games, that we meassure and rate differently and that we dont criticize correct, honest and fair.

the rest is in the useless "bash grunz" thread created to get rid of the uncomfortable truth

have a nice one

Personally, my limit is $5. I don't have time to play 1% of the games I actually own anyway... no worries though, I'll review G.R.U.N.T.S. soon...ish.

Jibb