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[AdamAtomic]

http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/AdamSaltsman/20091206/3743/Bytes_The_099_Problem.php

inspired by a very funny toucharcade thread, but hopefully shaped into something slightly more fruitful!

[PsySal]

Awesome, great read. I think this kind of wraps back to an important point, which is not to be too motivated by greed, but be practical!

[GregWS]

Read this last night; well written, and it's something that definitely needed to be said! 

[jrjellybeans]

Yeah, great article!

Not entering into the iphone market and having no plans to enter it anyways, it always seemed to me that the iphone market was a little broke.

I just never understood how it made sense to sell a game for a dollar.

[Stegersaurus]

I'm not on the iPhone, but on the XBox Indie Games channel we've been pushing our prices down as well. But on the XBox we have a bit of extra data, because every game gets a trial version. The issue is that by not being in the top 10 on the XBox, your trial rate tends to be pretty low and even in the top 10 you may have a MUCH higher conversion rate for your games at $1 versus $3 or $5. The issue isn't just from a developer standpoint, but from an expectations standpoint where players expect an extreme sense of value for low cost. For example someone recently put out a fairly strong racing game which was of the style of Wipeout. At $5 the game fell fast, but the developer re-released the game with cut-down ships and tracks and charged $1. I don't know how much that helped them but even I've seen shifts in conversion rates for my own older games, which had a significant pop in conversion rates when I switched prices from $2.50 to $1 after 3 months on the market (we can't change price on a whim like on iPhone). Even if the conversion rate isn't 3 times as high as the $1 price point, it's harder to maintain a top-spot for downloads when the consumer has the expectation of $1 games.

That said, I've spent >6 months on my latest game, and the amount of time it would have to stay in the top 10 at $1 to make back my investment cost is not realistic, so my game Battle Beat it going up for $5, but my next game is going to ideally be shorted (1 month?) and I'm not sure what's my strategy for pricing there...

[Swattkidd]

I am not very experienced or anything like that with the indie game scene but it seems like somehow the app store gave the "mainstream" gamers the impression that indie games are only worth pocket change...which is why xbox live indie games and all of that are priced really low...maybe. 

[mona.adele]

Yeah, great article!

Not entering into the iphone market and having no plans to enter it anyways, it always seemed to me that the iphone market was a little broke.

I just never understood how it made sense to sell a game for a dollar.

I can see where it wouldn't be much of a problem if you only spent a couple of weeks on a very basic app. But once you get into the domain of polished, fully operational and genuinely fun games, you're looking at a turnaround of one to six months, sometimes longer. Selling it for $1 at that point is just unrealistic.

Thanks for linking this, it's a good read.

[jrjellybeans]

I can see where it wouldn't be much of a problem if you only spent a couple of weeks on a very basic app. But once you get into the domain of polished, fully operational and genuinely fun games, you're looking at a turnaround of one to six months, sometimes longer. Selling it for $1 at that point is just unrealistic.

Yeah, but that's the thing, most of those apps aren't made in a couple of weeks, I thought.

In any case, the same thing ends of happening that has happened in the Casual Games PC market:

1.  You make a hit game and spend 2 months on it.
2.  Someone else clones your games and adds features to it.  They spend 3 months on it and sell it at the same price (or cheaper).
3.  You create the sequel.  Because of the competition you have to spend 5 months and charge it even cheaper...

And on and on.

At the end of the day, it just seems like a no win situation in terms of a sustainable future (unless you can keep pumping out games)...

The alternative is to make solid (niche) games and sell them at a high price.

[mona.adele]

I can see where it wouldn't be much of a problem if you only spent a couple of weeks on a very basic app. But once you get into the domain of polished, fully operational and genuinely fun games, you're looking at a turnaround of one to six months, sometimes longer. Selling it for $1 at that point is just unrealistic.

Yeah, but that's the thing, most of those apps aren't made in a couple of weeks, I thought.

In any case, the same thing ends of happening that has happened in the Casual Games PC market:

1.  You make a hit game and spend 2 months on it.
2.  Someone else clones your games and adds features to it.  They spend 3 months on it and sell it at the same price (or cheaper).
3.  You create the sequel.  Because of the competition you have to spend 5 months and charge it even cheaper...

And on and on.

At the end of the day, it just seems like a no win situation in terms of a sustainable future (unless you can keep pumping out games)...

The alternative is to make solid (niche) games and sell them at a high price.

Yeah, I was talking more along the lines of simpler apps that have one basic gimmick. Any actual game will take longer.

re: clone wars-- there's a thread right below this one concerning that. And there's an alternative that is in line with what I constantly tell my clients to do: enforce the hell out of your IP. Competition is great, and I'm not saying "be an IP Troll a la Langdell", but that doesn't mean you should just lie down when someone's made a blatant rip-off of your game. If they're only using the same rules, etc. then yeah, it's probably fair play. You don't have much of a case. But if they're basically counterfeiting your product it's a problem.


http://underdevelopmentlaw.com/ip-enforcement-for-independent-game-developers/