I think Gone Home is an amazing work, and while many people may be fine spending $20 on it, there's going to be a definite point where lowering the price is going to get you a higher net profit. We're literally talking about art, where "adding" to it isn't some fungible increase in value. The price is the factor that can most readily be changed. That's what I'm discussing.
And that's the misconception I'm talking about
. Price has a surprisingly low effect on sales, except if you go over/under certain established breakpoints ($20 seems to be the accepted high end for an indie game, $30 already raises eyebrows). Or more accurately -- the boost from lowering the price rarely outweighs the loss in revenue per copy.
When I was just starting out, I did several experiments with this. Including the big no-no of making my game more expensive a few months after the launch (while also breaking the magical barrier of $20). The outcome? Increase in revenue close to increase in price. I also tried cutting prices in half for older or less successful games only to find out than they still aren't selling (but now I earn even less per copy).
My experience is mirrored by quite a lot of other indies, because hey, we all didn't know what we were doing at first. Very few of us came from business backgrounds, so we had to learn through mistakes. Now the consensus is to ask for as much as you can in your given genre/segment, make sure the game is "worth" that price, and leave discounting for sales and bundles.
This is doubly true for niche/art games. Let's say you have a mass-market product like Angry Birds, where pretty much anyone on the planet is a potential player. Your main goal becomes to make sure the game reaches as many of those people as possible and is super accessible at the same time. In this case, the price may be one of the factors, as you're essentially looking at an infinite market pool. It's why f2p is so successful in the casual segment.
With something like Tale of Tales stuff, you know from the get go that your audience is quite limited, but also more informed and dedicated. Your goal is to provide a worthwhile experience for those people and make sure they've heard about it in the first place. Price is a secondary factor in this case, but you need it relatively high to stay afloat despite your limited player pool. It's even a good idea to have a way for fans to support you with more money if they wish to. ToT did it through Kickstarter. We personally implemented an optional $5 "tip" on top of the game's $20 price tag. $5 is more than some entire games cost, yet around 25% of our direct sales audience opts for it.
Dunno what else I could add. Feel free to not believe it and even prove me wrong with your own releases, but also consider that having a lower price is not something the game selling crowd haven't thought of or experimented with before.
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