Sorry for playing the "badman". I really wish you all the best, high selling rates and a big bank account. I deeply respect your abilities, your scripting knowledge and all the effort to finish your projects.

But after all, I personally think that it is not fair to route the discussion in the above way.

G.R.U.N.T.S is a stylish game but after checking out the style (you can do this in a few seconds) there is simply a shooter. And this shooter must be compared with the genereal shooter genre. And I don´t want to discuss this out.

So I do not believe that G.R.U.N.T.S will raise up selling by choosing different prices. As long as you produce the genres of mass market - even with a few modifications like using stange shaders - your products will always be compared with other masses of genres.

Do something different as an independent who calculates with financial success.

... And please... correct me in a few months if I was totally wrong


edit...
by the way...
In the study of economics you will learn that a price is an indicator for quality. But this rule depends on market sectors. And products of the mass market don´t play after this rule. The only system to promote mass market products ist to advertise them hardly. So there must be a specific will to buy a product from the mass market. Like using some specific forms, colors.


Edit by JustSid: This actually comes from the hijacked "indie game price" thread in the game design forum.

No. its definitely not like your everday shooter at all. Its by far the fucking worst nightmare i have played in the last 10years.

Seriously. You dare to realease something like that. I havent played anything else but "Grunz", but expecting people to pay money for it is quite a stretch.
Its a perfect example to show of all the mistakes you must not do when creating a fps game:
+contorls are horrible!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
+it awefuly slow for such a gfx and level design layout
+no ingame feedback whatsoever (tasks, enemies,...)
+while the gfx idea might look good on screens it creates massive headaches when playing
+all the funny talking bits....very anyoing very fast!
+.....endless list but not to go off topic here......

Pricing?
1.) Create a fucking game
2.) charge money for it

Bottom line; You dont sell much of this "thing" because its a horrible game.

You wont get any positive reviews because the game has soooooooooooooo many issues to be fixed first, it can hardly be called a game.


Before talking about funding, be sure who you are developing for. Find your market.
Different customers -> different funding and publishing.

A.) Chapter based games
Man, you dont have a stoty, no characters, no skills nothing to develop. Basicly there is no reason to play one episode. Why play two or more?!

B.) The humor
Some stuff said is funny, but the repeat cycle kills the joy very fast. Also its waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay not enough fun and humor in this game to make it a selling point.

c.) Mechanics
Every aspect of the game mechanics sucks. Controls, leveldesign, gameplay, motivation, feedback,.....
The bugs added to that are the games final head shot. (enemies disappear in the walls and floor and kill you, the get stuck everywhere, i can harldy tell if i hit something,....)


Another thing that bothers me a lot: The press and the pretaped press releases.
1.) the self created press releases are worth a dog poo
2.) The interviews with the developers are in no way informative or in any kind of journalistic nature.
At some point I had to read that gruntz has range combat and close combat enemies - unlike any other game. (WTF)
And therer are flying enemies - unlike in any other game (??????????????????)

This are the two main reasons why gamers dont give a shit about what these "journalists" write. If you are not even able to question such obvious bollocks - why bother listening to youre resume.

Getting back to selling and prizing: This kind of press is useless for you and the gamer.


The right prizing is the final piece of th product. IT should represent the work added into the game and the time and fun the gamer will have playing it.
For example: If you create a racing game with one car and one track you might sell it for one buck. If on the other hand the game features 200different cars and 20 tracks you might want to raise the price according to the content you offer.

For me this works well:
5-10euro -> a weekend of gaming fun
10-25 -> about 2 weeks
25-50 -> more then a month

The best price for indie games for me range between 10-20euros/dollars.

Also zero dollars doesnt mean the game has to be crap. Free to play or alternative funding methods (adverts, clicks aso) can work too quite well.


enough ranting.....this "game" has really pissed me off

for somebody who knows the game "so well" you make a great deal out of telling us all how much the game sucks. if you hate the controls so much and are not able to realize that you can adjust the controls to your liking, you just MIGHT want to re-think your aproach to gaming.

i enjoyed this rant alot. it made my day. obviously you dont like it very much. mayhaps this has something to do with personal issues with me? no? oh well. thanx for playing the demo and reading the interviews aswell as watching the trailers. you may dislike the game, but you surely took everything i released about it into account to form an educated review. you might want to work on your anger issues though

and now, back to the topic at hand, because once again, this isnt about my games anymore. it is a topic that should aid all of us.

i shall now proceed to copy the various helpful links some people posted into the original topic and edit the topic so that future visitors get some help.

I do not have any personal issues with you at all. I dont even know you.

The controls of the game suck because they dont work. I was not refering to button mapping or readjustments i could make ingame. Its about the fact, that i cant enter a room without being stuck into the doors and walls or that its a hercules task for the game character to climb a 3cm high teleporter platform or he gets stuck when running around in the "circle room" in level2 where he gets the key.
Its about control speed and mouse sensitivity changing depending on the frames per second. Its about jerky fps thanks to the level"design" and and and....

You MIGHT reconcider game development!


Sure, its a rant. I am fed up with "indie" game "developers" like you, that release tech demos as games and charge money for it, I am pissed at a community that has not the guts to tell you the truth and i hate such blindfolded "journalism" that swallows everything labeled "indie" without questioning it fair enough.

This does not help the indie game developer community at all. Its a wrong approach and a kick into the balls of the opportunity we might get as indies.
And i do dislike that a lot!

As said, prizing on the other hand depends on what you are offering.
Since you are offering nothing, you shouldnt charge anything.
Is your game too cheap? No, its way to expensive.

Can games be too cheap, so people wont buy it? No.
If that would be the case, we wouldnt have alternative software like Gimp, Painshop, Open Office, Blender, Gamestudio,....

Your game/demo sells your product. People that buy games are looking for entertainment and not how much they need to spend. If its too much, they might say "Nah", but they will never turn down a game they like because its cheap.

The price does not matter at all, when the product sucks!

cheers

I never played GRUNT, but I have to agree with Blattsalat about the massive headaches which I had after watching the video of it, and I really don't like it's design, but even so, this thread isn't about sPlKe's games, are they good or not. So guys, please stop this. Blattsalat@ if you really want to tell your oppinion about sPIke's games (or game) make a thread in Rants.

hmmm offtopic but i dont really know what to make of blattsalats post.... on one hand its blatantly offensive, but on the other hand did contain a large amount of good critique.... hmmm.

he does have some points, but some others are just bland ranting.
however i would REALLY appreciate it if we stop discussing my games and actually continue to discuss how to improve on game pricings and help everyone who sells their own games online...

I actually agree with blattsalat. His points were specific to the question and his tips were appropriate.

sid was kind enough to split the topics so bash away^^

You are going wrong when you think this is about bashing the game.

Its a fundemantal issue with indie games like yours and it fits perfectly into the "price discussion" going on. Because i think the whole discussion is wrong.

Lets start with the facts: The game is really bad. Not because of style issues, bad art and music or content or any other indy related problem (the lack of manpower or money), but because of one simple fact:
You didnot care to fix vital main problems of your game. Horrible control, none existent ai or gameplay, motivation or game mechanics,.....
Those are not issues you face because you lack time, money or manpower.
You just didnt care enough.

fact:
Noone would accept any of this bad and huge mistakes in any other AAA game.

The problem:
Right now indie game development is treated like a 8 year old kid showing a painting to its mother. Its nice but worthless. The AAA´s cant think less of us.
Every day the entire community has to fight for reputation.
We have to prove with every single release that we are game designers. Equally good and talanted, maybe lacking some bucks but compensating this with effort and ideas.
Games like grunz destroy this work. Not because they are just made but because of the way we treat those releases.

The press:
Does not critique us the way they are supposed to do. Hard and fair.
Being an indie game is no excuse for nothing. It should not grant us benefits nor should it cause negative effects.
But for this to happen we need to face the world as grown ups.

The huge issue now:
Now the part of the community and the thing that drives me really angry.
We have to stop acting like we are blindfolded when giving comments and critique.
If we want to be taken serious we have to be judged by the same parameters like the big ones. Not by ammount and quality but by the basic rules for games (controls, gameplay, ideas aso).
No matter if its the game, the producer or the magazine, we have to show that we wont allow broken standards, cheap bypasses and crap without pointing at them.


If you like it or not, all of us are part of the label "indie". And every game we release and create either helps this idea or hurts it.
It lowers or raises the prices we may charge and the reputation we get for being serious game designers.
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.


Its not about bashing games.
Its not about arguing if cheap prizes hurt your sales.

Its all about growing up from being that 8 year old kid and becoming independent game designers.

have a nice one