My comment was more to illustrate that I don't understand how people can arrive at such expectations/attitude. Should have stated that clearly right away... True, you're right on that one. Only had one case where I bought an "all-future content" package, and for that one further development never happened. So I can't really comment on how frequent this approach fails. Fury's "early bird pricing" sounds about right, but it lacks the "you pay more later for more content" part. It would fit a game that e.g. has an introductory price of $2, and raises it to $4 after a month. ColeDaddy's "Progressive Pricing" fits the bill, I'd say. Ideally we'd find something equally catchy as "freemium" , and then fill it with meaning: obviously the word for this doesn't exist yet, so someone needs to make it up and define it (just like it happened for "freemium"). Can't come up with anything good, though...
Correct. But the whole Humble Bundle is a sword with two edges. When your game gets picked for one, you're gonna make some money. But it does make tons of gamers wait until games that appealed to them appear in a bundle. We're never gonna make the bundle thing or the sales tactics go away. But if we could only have some kind of a stamp on games that will never walk that path, you'd take away the fear of 'I'm not gonna shell out 4$ for this now, as it'll probably be on sale for 99 cents in a month or two'. That fear would be replaced with a "If I get this now, I'm getting the best deal, and the extra content will be free for me". The thing is, enough indie gamers are going to have to do it at once, and we'd need a unified message towards mobile gaming press. And we also need their support in getting that message out. Some of the best names I've heard here are: Progressive Pricing (but the PP name is gonna be laughed at) Early Bird Pricing (EBP sounds okay, but it misses the 'you'll pay more later' message) Pay Now or Pay More (PNPM sounds cool, but might be too long) Maybe we should make the PP one PSP, Progressive Scale Pricing. Anyway, thanks for all the answers up until now. Please add more if you can. And if you're an indie dev, answer me this: - Would you participate in this? - What about the idea of setting up a group effort an putting an label on all icons of games that participate?
Re: prices and sales on Android, I think Kepa mentioned in the WS thread that they don't really control the pricing there. Whereas on iOS, Rocketcat can do what they want and devil take the hindmost.
Yeah. we would need some rules. Like no publisher that can change the price. As we need to be 100% sure the pricing strategy wil never be altered. What would you guys think of doing this strategy on iOS, and leaving devs free on other platforms? (personally, I'm no fan. But I'm no fan of Android as a platform either, so...)
I don't think this is actually required tbh. Much as I'm a vocal dissenter on the overly cheap price expectations, that's just a question of scale. Whenever we make expansions/updates to our existing premium titles, they fall into one of two categories. 1) Bug fixes, feature tweaks, new gameplay modes, etc. We give these away to support the game and are happy to do so. I don't think anyone should really be expected to pay more just because I added a high-score table etc. 2) New content. Typically this means more campaigns in our little war games range in our case. We charge iap for these and never attract any complaints about our doing so. Content costs to make and people who understand economics and support the game already are fine to pay more for more. It also keeps it cheap to lower the barrier to entry. If people want the base experience they can still get that for a couple of bucks. If they want all that the game has to offer after a series of expansions, they can spend a few more bucks and get that too, paying only when they make the decision to. Best of both worlds. An escalating base price just rules people out of the market once it's happened a few times and that doesn't benefit anyone. Premium sales methods are fine as they are imo, just need to tweak upwards across the board for games that are more than quickie timewasters. You're also not going to sell this idea to "the masses" no matter how you dress it up. Look at the words used already, "escalation", "inflation", "rising prices". Nobody wants that, so you don't want to draw attention to it even if fully justified. Basically, "The price keeps going up" is not a USP! It can be a reasonable thing to do if the increase is justified, but it's not what you want to be shouting from a soap box. If that's your best feature, you're in trouble!
Also, don't be scared about IAP, especially if its a non-consumeable one for extra content. There is such a disconnect between what you hear on forums like this and what the market actually pays for that it's actually very funny to watch. For every single all caps "ITS A RIP OFF" you'll see, there were a million people silently purchasing an IAP that day, not feeling the need to voice their opinion in public. Gamers just get on with playing the games and spending money when they feel like it.
As an indie with an upcoming game I'm still torn between paid and free. If I thought there would be exposure then free would be my choice, but it is looking like paid is the way for games that only sell at launch and then go under the radar. So my suggestion for a name is: P1 Major updates: P2, etc. and perhaps starting at P3 if game is ripe! It's not like those pesky publishers can undercut us with "P-zero" either - though I could with 'Tetroms' as it actually does cost zero...and an update is around the corner where it will remain at P0. Hm does sound like poo and probably is if you don't find the groove.
What about Progressive Update Pricing? PUP is cute, and the inclusion of the word 'update' highlights that it's extra content driving the price increase. Only problem is it doesn't inherently convey the fact that anyone who has bought the game doesn't pay for new updates, and people might mistakenly assume the opposite. Plus people might think it stands for PAY UP! Buy Now, Save Later? BNSL. Hmmm. I think Rubicon makes some good points, however, particularly in regards to the importance keeping a low barrier to entry vs a progressively higher barrier. But I freely admit I have zero experience in the premium arena, so... I dunno ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Just a further point to add. Don't assume that just because one company is doing this that it's automatically a good idea to be copied. Personally I feel it's a mistake, but it will be hard to prove either way as they don't know what they would've earned going the iap expansions route. When we tried our games at a higher price point (just $4.99 instead of $2.99), sales fell off a cliff and we halved our income until we put it back.
I don't get this. You've stated in other posts that Premium game sales on iOS are abysmal, but now you state 'Premium sales methods are fine as they are imo'. Maybe I explained this wrong. It wouldn't be the goal to 'sell it to the masses'. We don't need the Masses, we need to get the old school gamers on board. That small market should be ours, and they should feel at home on Mobile. As now, they see mobile as a place where they get screwed all the time. As almost every Premium game they bought went x $0,99 a short time after they did. So the USP is not that the price will keep going up. The USP is that this should be a Seal of Quality, like on the old NES games. Great indies banding together, putting everything they got into each game, and standing ground price-wise. And NOT screw over the early adopter. As those are the biggest fans, and they ALWAYS get f*cked. Which really isn't fair.
Have you released free + IAP or F2P games before? As I can tell you, F2P games and Free + IAP games also drop underneath the radar shortly after they've been released. Those who don't, are been pushed up constantly through paid installs. But that stuff costs A LOT of money. And it's a risk you can only take if you've soft launched and proved to yourself that you can put 30k or so in, and are sure of a bigger return than what you've put in. If you're an unknown indie dev,the way to make enough gamers pay, is to break your game and offer a fix if they pay. At that point, the 95% of people who will never pay just see your brand and an broken game. Only the 5% see what your game can really be. Honestly, I don't see that as a solid ground to build on.
There is no contradiction there. The numbers are definitely too low across the board, but the pricing method itself isn't the reason for that. Visibility is the main issue with getting big sales numbers at any price.
A premium game on desktop platform with premium price like many current games on desktop, people will buy I guess without much noise. But why similar premium games on tablets with premium price, people tend not to buy? Is it because of the perception that tablets are not a serious gaming platform? I see my ipad as a serious game platform and hope for many good games like those on desktop to be available in tablets and a premium price is what I expected on tablets too.
Hm... Visibility certainly is one aspect. But I think it isn't the only one. I think you can get a lot more sales in your launch period if you'd fix the "I'm gonna wait until this goes on sale" problem. Now, we'll only know the truth if we try. Maybe it makes a big difference, maybe it's only marginal. But the bigger the support (great indie-devs joining, as well as mobile press spreading the word), the more successful it will be. @lilgac: If you pay premium for a lot of games, what goes through your mind when you see another 99cent promotion shortly after you've paid 3 or 4 dollar for it?
I hardly see a drastic drop in price for the games I have, one that is shortly after though unless maybe it's just before some holiday sales. I believe those who encounter such situations will surely make noises. But this is what pulls down the premium market for mobile/ tablets? I don't know..but curious will this happen in desktop gaming? Bought a game and shortly the developer cut the price drastically? Monster hunter, xcom etc, I don't see them cutting drastically and I see no reason why they should.and, if they did, not going to be good for mobile gaming right?, or at least for serious gaming. Am curious why the big difference/ expectations in pricing of games for desktop/game consoles vs tablet/ mobile. Is it primarily because of consumers expectations that it has to be cheap/ free for mobile cos it's "mobile, cut down version/ less powerful etc" or it's developers intent to get huge consumers on board in mobile market, hence free/ cheap/ IAPs etc?
I think it's more about differentials. They see some other big game at $2.99 and words like "greedy" spring to mind for some/most and customers completely forget that the absolute numbers are so small it counts as pocket change in any other conversation. As a developer I find this bloody annoying as you can imagine. The main reason I can't sell a BAFTA nominated game of the year at, say, $6.99 is not because most people don't think $6.99 is a fair price for such a game, but that there's another war game elsewhere for $2.99 that might not even be as good. I go into this in much greater detail in a big blog post I made about F2P and why it's now a thing. http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/PaulJohnson/20130702/195491/Ranting_about_Free_to_Play_its_not_what_you_think.php
