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[dEnamed]

In short:
* Games of similar quality being offered for free or on adbased systems.
* Old commercial games with much higher production values being offered at the same price.
* More and more Demos or Cashshop Games being uploaded to Flashportals that have gotten popular on ad-based games.

Really, the whole Kong Deal comes from the website recently reeling in on the whole Cashshop and Commercial Flashgames idea. It's been rubbing people the wrong way for some time now and VVVVVV getting a Badge just made the whole thing blow up. Greg getting into a hissy fit, all snide and angry didn't help either.
Kong naturally has a high interest in converting to commercial games and that's what they're doing at the moment. If you want to compare it to something, it's your favorite Punkband suddenly switching to Mainstream Hip Hop. They get more bucks, they get more fans but those that helped the Band get to that point are pissed and feel like they've been betrayed. Users are pissed at Kong and VVVVVV just so happens to pop up at the very wrong time.

Give the whole thing 2-3 years and no one will even raise an eyebrow. Especially when more Devs stop giving away quality games for free and reap the rewards for their hard work.

[SirNiko]

Give the whole thing 2-3 years and no one will even raise an eyebrow. Especially when more Devs stop giving away quality games for free and reap the rewards for their hard work.

Go back in time 20 years, and you would've paid 30-50 bucks for a game that isn't even as good as this. Now anyone can download gamemaker and start programming up a simple game for anyone to play. There's a glut in the market, and it's going to get bigger. That's going to drive down prices.

The only thing that's going to happen is that games are going to get cheaper and cheaper to buy, with the exception being the absolute top-of-line titles from major companies.

-SirNiko

[Melly]

We've been all over this before. Gamers have a completely screwed idea of how much money games are worth. You can spend more cash on eating a shitty meal at McDonalds than you spend on something like VVVVVV, which will last you far more, and you'll probably enjoy far more as well.

I'm a firm believer that Terry should maintain his price, as a way to tell people that games are worth a lot more than they pay for them at this point. If everybody gives in to pressure, then there will come a time when no indie developer will be able to support himself since everybody expects even polished games to cost something like 2 bucks, which is completely ridiculous.

I live in Brazil, and console games here are pretty much twice the price they are in the US. I recently had to pay the equivalent to 100 dollars on Bayonetta, and I think every single cent was worth it, even it being the inferior PS3 version. Because I took more enjoyment out of that game than I would on many things I could pay a similar price to.

In the end, what I'm saying is that every indie developer who puts effort into his work (not talking about the ones that crap out nothing but clones of more successful games) should really start raising their prices a little bit.

Of course, this doesn't stop Terry from doing, maybe, a one day crazy Pay What You Want sale like 2DBoy did. He just shouldn't lower the price permanently, at least for a good while still.

[ChevyRay]

THE PEOPLE HAVE SPOKEN 

Ugh. Commented.

Hahahaha fuck

Awesome. If I was Terry, these are definitely the people that I would want to make my game free for. Oh yes, these kind of honest, loyal gamers just can't be replaced by the next group of dumb goons to come along.

[Melly]

I really wonder what sense of self-entitlement drives people to cry out for a free VVVVVV when there is already a torrent of the game around (last I heard).

Also, I haven't checked, but I'd love it if someone could confirm to me if the supporters of that petition are underage. Not because of their age making them into whiny dicks, not that, but in the fact that they being underage means they must have a much tougher time buying games like this. Which leads to whining.

[SirNiko]

Also, I haven't checked, but I'd love it if someone could confirm to me if the supporters of that petition are underage. Not because of their age making them into whiny dicks, not that, but in the fact that they being underage means they must have a much tougher time buying games like this. Which leads to whining.

Under what age?

Kongregate's ToS requires you to be 13 or older to make an account. Not that that prevents people from simply lying about their age, but in theory that's the minimum.

-SirNiko

[Melly]

Under the age one can have a credit card to pay for things on the internet.

But I guess it's impossible to say. I'm pretty sure there are plenty of little kids on Kong, as there are anywhere where lying about your age is easy.

[Craig Stern]

When I released Telepath Psy Arena 2 as a pay-to-download game, my fans kinda freaked out at first. Notably, a lot of them don't have credit cards. I just had to gently reassure them that it was okay to ask their parents to buy it for them.

Well, that and I also had to explain why my games, which they played for hours and hours, could be worth spending $12.99 on when they paid far more for AAA titles that they played less.

[moi]

Everybody knows the type of comment they'll get on Kong and NG, and yet, they keep uploading to these websites. I WONDER WHY....

I say just enjoy the traffic and let the dogs bark.

[Iamthejuggler]

The last post seemd to be making sense until he said "VVVVVV is easily 10 hours of gameplay the first time you play through it" .... now i'm a pretty bad gamer and it came in at under 3 hours. Of course, i have since played through it twice and twice more with the world flipped.

I want to make a petition to get some dlc levels for vvvvvv, i'll gladly pay! 

[DWWilson]

I have a crude way of valuing entertainment which is $2 per hour of time. I don't care what it looks like or when it was released or how much was spent developing it. $2 = 1 hour. I'm pretty damn poor (working for minimum wage part time in New Zealand).

This is why I rent most games, because most big titles aren't worth $100, but many indie titles are worth < $25.

If I want to spend my time on it, its worth $2 for each of those hours. It's the only unit of measurement that is comparable across many different types of media that could all be considered entertainment. I think they call these things "complimentary goods or services" in marketing.

Because renting a movie costs about ~$5, and lasts for about 1-2 hours. A visit to the museum is about the same. Honestly, I'd pay ~$5 for VVVVVV, but I don't think I'd pay more than that.

That's why I'm intending on selling the next part of my game for $5, because its 2 hours worth minimum. Hell, I gave the first 3 hours away for free.

But yeah it sucks because you can't really make a decent living off that. Though people on XBLIG seem to do alright even at really low price points due to the total absence of piracy.

But I don't advocate anti-piracy, I just think that if you price low and be a good guy about it, people won't want to steal from you (as much). I think Trent Reznor is a big advocate of this. He actually made a really interesting point about this during an interview on digg.




He says that the way to make money through digital distribution is to have some service where you pay a small monthly subscription fee (like $10), and for that you can download as much as you want. The revenue gained would be split up among whoever had their stuff downloaded. He also says a lot of other stuff that would apply to our situation.

[Alexander Bruce]

For me, eating a block of chocolate takes about 20 minutes, and costs $5 for something decent. $15 for something that will give me several ours of fun is nothing considering that on any 3 random days, I could randomly buy a block of chocolate for $5.

[Calabi]

Wow, there are some crazy people, they really think he works for free?  Work is work, it requires effort and work, plus energy(food) and resources like time(in which you could be doing other things, better things, like sexing?).  A game is not fun to make(maybe?) no one makes it for their health.

I think indie devs need to man up and start charging real prices, instead of caving to whiny kids that havent got a clue about anything, and want the world to be free, with no clue that if that was true they would be grubbing around in shit. 

There will always be people that say that, but they would still buy the game if there friends bought it or if it was good and their were reasons to buy it.

[Craig Stern]

I think indie devs need to man up and start charging real prices, instead of caving to whiny kids that havent got a clue about anything, and want the world to be free, with no clue that if that was true they would be grubbing around in shit. 

I agree. We have to train these kids so they get used to indie games costing actual money. It'll be like a Pavlovian experiment.

[Melly]

@DWWilson

You can't measure value simply on time spent. That's just silly. If that was the case WoW should cost a hundred dollars a month at least, despite 80% of what you do there is stand around or grind.

It's not the time, it's how much you took from the experience, how enjoyable that time was, etc. Or do you believe that a game filled with nothing but senseless padding is worth more than a tightly designed, shorter game because it just takes longer, more boring hours to complete?

[TheDustin]

As an analogy: I spent twenty five dollars on two animated shorts made by Don Hertzfeldt (of 'mah shpoons too big' Rejected fame). The total time between the two is 40 minutes, so in essence I spent a dollar for every two minutes of running time. I purchased this instead of, say, the entire Majin Buu saga of DBZ because I was concerned with quality instead of quantity. The dude hand crafts each frame by hand, and experiments with camera techniques and animation tricks. A lot of love went into making it and I enjoy it, so I gave Hertzfeldt my money. The same thing applies with Terry and V^6.

[Bood_war]

You know, (a lot of) people pay $1 for 2-7 minutes of music, but complain at $15 for 2+ hours of game.

[Melly]

It's all completely ridiculous, really.

[dEnamed]

No it's not completely ridiculous. It's pragmatic. Freeware Games and old fall from Grace commercial games are a tough market to compete with. I doubt people are having a problem paying 15$ for 2 hours. They have a problem paying that when they can get something quite similiar for free or something that offers so much more for the same amount of money.
It's really quite simple and neither retarded nor stupid nor ridiculous.

Of course the Developers are entitled to their money and the game is worth whatever price they ask for it. But they're up against a quite impossible market. I'd bet small games are bought on an morale basis, because I want to support that guy over there. That's what I do, at least. They're rarely bought on a "worth its money" basis, because once you start looking at it that way, you're buying a donkey to compete in a horse race championship. The other way around, it's about principle, appreciation and support.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

i have some sympathy with those who say it's priced too high, and i do kinda wish terry had spent a little more time making it longer / adding more variety, but the main reason for its price is that indie games are priced like indie games (15$-20$ launch price), regardless of how long they are.

if time mattered, rpgs would cost more than fps games. but games cost the same at launch regardless of game length; amount of content doesn't matter.

nor does quality: if quality mattered, good games would cost more than bad ones. but games that get a 90 average on metafilter are priced exactly the same as games that get a 50 average on metafilter. games cost the same at launch regardless of quality.

the only real metric that's kind of universal about price is that *new games cost more than old games*. vvvvvv is new, so it's relatively expensive compared to older games.

when you release a new game, even an indie game, you are *not* competing with every older game, with games that were released 5 years ago and are now 20% of their launch price. you're competing only with other new games. vvvvvv isn't competing with gunstar heroes, which you can get for 10$ or something on xbla. it's competing with other commercial indie games released in early 2010.