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[Modog]

Congrats for the project 

[jamesprimate]

Hey! So im know youre already getting feedback on this, but wanted to share my experience. ive been peeking on the devlog for a while (very charming animation and story) and was looking forward to picking up honey rose on steam! I even went to the steam page once or twice after it was released when i noticed the thread bump here, but seeing the extensive and vaguely-worded list of DLC options just made me go "ehhhhh" and back away slowly. the thought was "ill look up what this means sometime, maybe..." and then just never did of course.

after reading the past few posts here I got the gyst and picked up one of the DLCs, but it was definitely definitely a barrier to entry for me. if it had been a single price i would have quickly dropped $10 or $15 or whatever without even thinking twice about it, and im 1000% sure im not alone in that. if i hadn't already been following the devlog and seen this bump today it likely would never have come up again!

so anyway, take what you will from this but i hope you guys find something that works! yall put a lot of effort and love into this game, so it would be sad to see it not get the audience that it should due to something so mundane as awkward monetization models. good luck!  

[Pehesse]

Congrats for the project 

Many thanks :-D

Hey! So im know youre already getting feedback on this, but wanted to share my experience. ive been peeking on the devlog for a while (very charming animation and story) and was looking forward to picking up honey rose on steam! I even went to the steam page once or twice after it was released when i noticed the thread bump here, but seeing the extensive and vaguely-worded list of DLC options just made me go "ehhhhh" and back away slowly. the thought was "ill look up what this means sometime, maybe..." and then just never did of course.

after reading the past few posts here I got the gyst and picked up one of the DLCs, but it was definitely definitely a barrier to entry for me. if it had been a single price i would have quickly dropped $10 or $15 or whatever without even thinking twice about it, and im 1000% sure im not alone in that. if i hadn't already been following the devlog and seen this bump today it likely would never have come up again!

so anyway, take what you will from this but i hope you guys find something that works! yall put a lot of effort and love into this game, so it would be sad to see it not get the audience that it should due to something so mundane as awkward monetization models. good luck!  

Oh, thanks a lot for your feedback! Sounds like I need to rephrase the information on the storepage to make it a lot clearer, then! I'll get to work on it ASAP :-)

[Fenrir]

Hey,

I don't know if you spotted it, but be sure to have a look to the latest issue of Canard PC, they're talking about the game! Congrats!

[Pehesse]

Hey,

I don't know if you spotted it, but be sure to have a look to the latest issue of Canard PC, they're talking about the game! Congrats!

I saw!! In fact, they went the extra mile and sent me a copy of the magazine, I can't begin to tell you how much I appreciate it :-D :-D And thank *you* for pointing me to it either way!

I think this is the only printed article so far, at least to my knowledge? Either way, I'm keeping it as a treasure now :-D

[Pehesse]

New week, new stats!

[Pehesse]

It's Steam Sale time, and I thought I'd talk a bit about the current compromise I've found after some discussion on the game's community forum on Steam!

The main problem with the "pay-what-you-liked" model was that it would not be able to participate in sales by virtue of having a wide range of different pricepoints already. The performance so far being what it is (meaning: *way* below expectations), I wanted to see if I couldn't find a way to update the model without waiting too long, and without compromising the original design intent.

I believe the solution that has been suggested, and is now implemented, is rather fun and in line with the original thought process: the "impulse" tier, originally at 7.99, is now discounted by 75%, reducing it to the "Sales" tier amount and reflecting its namesake during sales time. None of the other tiers are discounted, and if at all possible, I don't intend for them to ever be. I'm hoping simply by discounting this single "impulse" tier, this will allow the game to be registered as "participating" in the overall Sale as far as Steam is concerned, meaning potential visibily increase. We'll see how that goes - I'll be posting about the results after the sale no matter how it goes!

(I haven't been posting about the results for some time as they've been completely stagnant, and posting updates about the lack of progress was getting to be quite upsetting - but this sales period should be an interesting event to observe, no matter the result!)

[ZenSoturi]

I think main problem is trying to force pay-what-you-want model when the platform does not support it. Also I think that the amount of pay option is not good thing. I guess the logic is that there is option for everyone, “if you don’t have enough to drop 20$ you can drop 5$”. It is common misconception that lot of options is good. But when you have lot of options it usually leads in people not choosing anything. Maybe better option would have been to have free version and just one paid version.

Even better, I think, would have been if you asked fixed price. I think pay-what-you-want is good for something really experimental or for supporting game-jam games and so on. But if you really do an effort in making games then you should just ask money for it. Your game looked like commercial and professional game. Doing pay-what-you-want on something like this gives me little feeling that you were afraid to ask money for it, or come up with price point, and just hoped that people would make the price point decision for you. But I guess this is great learning experience for more exotic pricing models.

On problem of having lot of options:

There is a paradox in that "people who lack choices seem to want them and often will fight for them"; yet at the same time, "people find that making many choices can be [psychologically] aversive."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decision_fatigue

[Pehesse]

I think main problem is trying to force pay-what-you-want model when the platform does not support it. Also I think that the amount of pay option is not good thing. I guess the logic is that there is option for everyone, “if you don’t have enough to drop 20$ you can drop 5$”. It is common misconception that lot of options is good. But when you have lot of options it usually leads in people not choosing anything. Maybe better option would have been to have free version and just one paid version.

Even better, I think, would have been if you asked fixed price. I think pay-what-you-want is good for something really experimental or for supporting game-jam games and so on. But if you really do an effort in making games then you should just ask money for it. Your game looked like commercial and professional game. Doing pay-what-you-want on something like this gives me little feeling that you were afraid to ask money for it, or come up with price point, and just hoped that people would make the price point decision for you. But I guess this is great learning experience for more exotic pricing models.

On problem of having lot of options:

There is a paradox in that "people who lack choices seem to want them and often will fight for them"; yet at the same time, "people find that making many choices can be [psychologically] aversive."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decision_fatigue

Thanks for your thoughts!

I believe you're right in your analysis of what went wrong with the model, however if you read what I wrote about it you'll find my decision to use it stems from more than what you think/wrote.

The whole aim for the model in the first place was to offer a chance for players to voice support for an alternative revenue system that would dissociate "pay" and "play", and allow each individual player a chance to determine value for themselves, instead of having a single fixed pricepoint, which wouldn't be right for many (either too little, or too much). I still believe this to be of paramount importance, even if my solution wasn't the best. I'll look into redesigning it and improve it for my next release - not because I'm afraid of putting value on my work (in fact, I value it enough to dedicate years of my life to it, and risk losing it all if it doesn't sell) but because I believe it's important we find other ways to remunerate creators for the well-being of the medium going forward, as the current practices lead to growing mistrust and dissent between game makers and their audience.

I have considered a redesign that would only ask a single, set price instead of a wide range of pricepoints, but that would go against the spirit of what I'm trying to achieve, which is to allow people to determine for themselves the exact value of the experience they had.

What I need to figure out is how to offer that whole range of choice, without visibly offering too many separate "options", to avoid falling into the psychological trappings you underline!

[Pehesse]

I'm still waiting for the current Steam Sale to end to post about their results (though there won't be much to talk about), but for the project's third anniversary, I wanted to recap a bit what happened since release! It's basically what has been discussed here already, but all in one place and with some pictures, so if you're interested, it's here: http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/PierreSylvainCoq/20161128/286325/Honey_Rose_postmortem_and_the_rules_of_engagement.php

[jordanchin]

Nice to see all of your hard work laid out like this. Congrats!

I'm still waiting for the current Steam Sale to end to post about their results (though there won't be much to talk about), but for the project's third anniversary, I wanted to recap a bit what happened since release! It's basically what has been discussed here already, but all in one place and with some pictures, so if you're interested, it's here: http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/PierreSylvainCoq/20161128/286325/Honey_Rose_postmortem_and_the_rules_of_engagement.php

[Pehesse]

Nice to see all of your hard work laid out like this. Congrats!

I'm still waiting for the current Steam Sale to end to post about their results (though there won't be much to talk about), but for the project's third anniversary, I wanted to recap a bit what happened since release! It's basically what has been discussed here already, but all in one place and with some pictures, so if you're interested, it's here: http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/PierreSylvainCoq/20161128/286325/Honey_Rose_postmortem_and_the_rules_of_engagement.php

Haha, thanks a lot, and glad to see you here, Jordan :-D

[Pehesse]

As I had said, here are Honey's Steam stats post-steam sale!






Not much to add, aa I think they're pretty telling as it is :-D
That pretty much closes the book on Honey! Thanks a lot to you all for everything so far, and I hope Pachacuti will reach greater heights :-)