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[moi]

yes it is. that's exactly what it is.
Instead of selling one game for their rightful price of $10 or sthg, they're bundling like 6 games for a median price of $3.
The devs are doing a lot of money short term, but that's only short term. They're giving the audience the expectation that they should wait for the next bundle instead of actually buying games regularly. That is until the audience grows tired of bundles and they will probably stop buying games altogether because they'll have more games than they'll want to play.
also, as eres said, it's only a tiny minority of media darling devellopers that get into the bundle.
the media blitz is sucking all the PR air out of the room.
It's recession economy, except that it started outside of a recession.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

i agree with moi; devaluation doesn't mean 'doesn't make money' it means 'seen as lower value to customers'. if you sell 1 million copies of something at 10 cents each, you may make a lot of money, but it's still seen as a low-value item by the customers

[moi]

And now bundles are coming after bundles, like waves.

[Christian Knudsen]

The biggest example of the devaluation of indie games I can think of is Jeff Vogel. I don't think it's even a year ago that he wrote a blog post about how he would never lower the prices on his games and how the low-cost indie games are throwing the market into a downward spiral like the App Store. Now he's lowered the prices on all his games and are selling them at a price even lower than that on Steam.

[C.D Buckmaster]

I just realised that a large extent of my indie game collection was bought through ridiculous sales and bundles.

...I'm part of the problem.

[tametick]

This is the real issue. To me, it seems that the 'race to the bottom' devalutation of indie games (well, and games in general), via the App Store, Indie Bundles, relentless Steam Sales, and so on has done more harm than the economic mess we're in.

Whilst maybe 1% of indie devs do really well out of such things (with those running the stores/doing the bundles doing even better...), it's made things a whole lot harder for the other 99%.

I agree that that stuff mostly benefits the lucky few, but I still think we're better off today than a few years ago.

Overall the humble bundle and their ilk have also gotten a lot of people who never heard about indie games before to pay (albeit a small price) and play indie games & I think that contributed to making the overall market for indie games much bigger.

[PompiPompi]

The other day my brother saw Minecraft on the Android, he said "This game is very expensive", I was like "..."

[tametick]

The other day my brother saw Minecraft on the Android, he said "This game is very expensive", I was like "..."

How much does it cost?

[Triplefox]

The consumer is benefiting overall; a majority would not be buying any indie games, and now they're getting a sampling.

The issue is basically that most indies are in it for the "mak gam", not the "sell gam". To sell you have to achieve visibility and awareness, and that has become relatively harder because this is no longer an early-adopter field. But there are at least many avenues to getting the word out as there are mediums of communication - and even restricting yourself to Internet-based forms, that's a lot.

[Desert Dog]

The other day my brother saw Minecraft on the Android, he said "This game is very expensive", I was like "..."

How much does it cost?

About $6, google tells me. Which is pretty expensive for a mobile game.

[Zaphos]

The biggest example of the devaluation of indie games I can think of is Jeff Vogel. I don't think it's even a year ago that he wrote a blog post about how he would never lower the prices on his games and how the low-cost indie games are throwing the market into a downward spiral like the App Store. Now he's lowered the prices on all his games and are selling them at a price even lower than that on Steam.

I googled about and found a newish blog post on the lowered prices:
http://jeff-vogel.blogspot.com/2011/10/why-all-our-games-are-now-cheaper.html
and more on steam specifically:
http://jeff-vogel.blogspot.com/2011/08/avadon-is-out-on-steam.html

[Christian Knudsen]

Yeah, sorry, I should have linked them in my post.

[kasrak]

I read that in economic downturns, the sales of lipstick go up. From Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lipstick_effect

The underlying assumption is that consumers will buy luxury goods even if there is a crisis. When consumer trust in the economy is dwindling, consumers will buy goods that have less impact on their available funds.

So in the case of mobile games, maybe the economic downturn is helping them rather than hurting them. A consumer can pay $1-3 and get a game for the phone instead of a $50+ title for their consoles.

[larsiusprime]

If you read the article by Jeff, he's actually saying two things:

1) He's selling them for MORE on his site than on steam
2) He's making MORE money now at lower prices than before.

So yeah, he's lowering his price, but he's making MORE money.

[Christian Knudsen]

2)He's making MORE money now at lower prices than before.

Where does he say that?

[Evan Balster]

I heard someone remark at one point that economic downturn creates increased business for the entertainment industry because people turn to media for escape.  :\

[jotapeh]

I heard someone remark at one point that economic downturn creates increased business for the entertainment industry because people turn to media for escape.  :\

Same with the alcohol industry. Usually the increase is temporary. People look for an escape.. then run out of money.

[ubik]

You have to take into account just HOW MUCH entertainment value is available from games.

Look at Skyrim.  Apparently high priced.  But I got hundreds upon hundreds of hours of enjoyment out of Oblivion.  Already Skyrim works out to around a dollar an hour for me, if I never played it again-- and that's on a system from several years ago, it runs just fine.

If you can write a game with a high replay value, procedural content generation, a rewarding learning curve and plenty of variety, people will know that they're going to enjoy it for years to come.  And when you view things that way, the price of games doesn't seem that expensive at all.

I often think about old Apple II games nostalgically.  There were a number of them that were brutally difficult and had surprisingly deep gameplay.  That means that 25 years down the road I would still *almost* be playing them.  If, you know, they weren't Apple II games.

Fact is, people are always going to be looking for cheap entertainment for their kids.  The fact that people can't afford new systems actually helps indies because of the much lower system requirements.  

Life is what you make of it.  Sales are what YOU can accomplish, and the good stuff will rise to the top regardless of economic conditions.  This holds true for anything.  When I look at a lot of indie games I'm frankly astonished that they sell at all.  They're derivative and unoriginal, variations of a few small, safe genres with very little replay value.  When some guy is complaining, and then I look at his stuff and it's falling blocks or some variety of mahjongg, I just have to wonder how he expected to sell in the first place.

[increpare]

If you can write a game with a high replay value, procedural content generation, a rewarding learning curve and plenty of variety, people will know that they're going to enjoy it for years to come.  And when you view things that way, the price of games doesn't seem that expensive at all.

Not factoring in lost productivity there I see

[ubik]

Ha! That's a whole 'nother ball of wax... but since so many people are unemployed they have very little productivity to lose.