Universal Sorcery! - (by inkle)

Discussion in 'iPhone and iPad Games' started by Sanuku, May 1, 2013.

  1. Greyskull

    Greyskull Well-Known Member

    Dec 13, 2009
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    Photographer/Social Sciences adjunct/sweet sweet l
    Fort Lauderdale
    Most decent games are more than .99 cents. In fact, just about the only time I buy 99 cent games is if it's a sale. I don't buy iap, so there's that.
     
  2. Bool Zero

    Bool Zero Well-Known Member

    Dec 14, 2010
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    Soooo... When do the rest of the gamebooks come out because I have disposable income ready to throw at the dev after playing this!

    And can someone make the Grailquest and Freeway Warrior series into app form already!
     
  3. iPadisGreat

    iPadisGreat Well-Known Member

    Dec 10, 2012
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    Me too. I bought the reprints a few years back...
     
  4. drelbs

    drelbs Well-Known Member

    Jun 25, 2009
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    Ooh, that sucks - I hadn't realized it got pulled from the store. Then again, I've been playing FL2 Gold (which has both books) Love FL to pieces, but the app is HUGE and I can only wonder how big it would be with all 6 (12!) books stuffed in there. :eek:
     
  5. thevagrant

    thevagrant Well-Known Member

    Jun 8, 2009
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    Grailquest is coming from Tin MAn somewhere in the future.

    http://tinmangames.com.au/blog/?p=3271


    As for Freeway Warrior... god I love this book. Someone please port it, please...
     
  6. Athos

    Athos Well-Known Member

    May 21, 2011
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    This looks nice but I'll probably wait till more chapters are released to scoop it up. Not a $$$ thing just like with Walking Dead I waited till it was all out to play it all at once.

    When something isn't up for discussion it doesn't mean you disagree LOL

    1) I wish this iPhone game were cheaper because I want to buy more with less money

    2) I wish we could start drowning all babies with green eyes because they give me the creeps

    See #2 is more in the not up for discussion realm.
     
  7. BeefJerky

    BeefJerky Well-Known Member

    Jun 4, 2009
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    This looks awesome but I am also curious as to when the rest are coming out. Have they said? I really don't want to get this and to have them not actually finish the series (this is not the first time this Sorcery book has been adapted for the App Store). Have they committed to all four?
     
  8. thevagrant

    thevagrant Well-Known Member

    Jun 8, 2009
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    Khare is set for a relase this summer, but as always I guess it depends on the sales... Let's all buy and gift!
     
  9. Dahak

    Dahak Well-Known Member

    Jun 4, 2010
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    Library circulation rep
    Beaufort, SC
    Different Steve Jackson. The creator of Sorcery! (and Fighting Fantasy) is the British Steve Jackson, and also the co-founder of Games Workshop. GURPS was created by the American Steve Jackson, who also created Car Wars, Munchkin, Ogre/GEV and the Fantasy Trip. To confuse matters, the American SJ also wrote two of the Fighting Fantasy gamebooks...
     
  10. Montanx

    Montanx Well-Known Member

    Mar 3, 2012
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    San Diego
    I expect this to be good considering this is the guy that wrote The Lord of the rings trilogy and the Hobbit. :p
     
  11. MidianGTX

    MidianGTX Well-Known Member

    Jun 16, 2009
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    He's dead on about it not being a fair price though. It can be discussed, but it's pretty damn greedy to expect games of this quality to be slaved over for hundreds or even thousands of hours, only to throw one dollar at the team and say "that's what it's worth".
     
  12. Appletini

    Appletini Well-Known Member

    Jan 8, 2011
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    Ankh-Morpork
    Erm, no, the statement I made was correct: I didn't say that Smozi's idea that things would be "more fair" if this series of gamebooks were $1 each isn't up for discussion, I stated that the fact that such a price point would be less fair isn't up for discussion, largely because it isn't - such a price point would be less fair, and demonstrably harmful to the developers.

    There's no legitimate argument to be made in favour of the claim that $1 would be a more appropriate price point, because the actual evidence we have indicates a strong likelihood that the total apps sold at that price to a decidedly niche market wouldn't even make back the money spent on developing them in the first place, and certainly wouldn't encourage a developer to keep developing.

    As an example, we've already seen Tin Man Games, the biggest name in iOS gamebooks, raise their app prices across the board (to a higher price point than Sorcery!, even, so people should perhaps be a little happier with this game's pricing), specifically citing the niche market and unsustainability of the lower prices as the reason for this. Somebody arguing that any of these games (or developers) would be better served with a standard $1 price point is arguing from a position of pure consumer greed, and clearly taking no element of the equation into account other than their own wants.

    There are a number of reasons why such requests for lower prices and sales are frowned upon here: one of which is because they're immensely tacky and insulting, and another being because they're just wholly unproductive. If you want a much more direct reason why this would be considered "not up for discussion", though, it's simply because such "Should be cheaper!" price complaints are against forum posting guidelines and make moderators cry twin waterfalls, like Pedro.
     
  13. Bool Zero

    Bool Zero Well-Known Member

    Dec 14, 2010
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    Cool to know, and knowing is half the battle... Now I have even more reason to keep track of what Tinman Games is developing! I had no idea they had Grailquest, and I can see them doing great things with the tongue in cheek fantasy stylings of that series!
     
  14. drloony

    drloony Well-Known Member

    Jul 19, 2012
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    The other point of issue on this subject is that the developers themselves devalue their own product. Like the aforementioned Tin Man, who semi-regularly lowers the price of their apps to 50-75% of their regular price. Many consumers, myself at least, will not pay full price for most of their stuff, even though I happily would, I'm sad to say. So you can't blame people to ask for a sale when the developers change their prices so frequently.
    This is the nature of the App Store right now and I don't really think you can blame it on any particular party. Not the developers for trying to survive, or the consumers for following the trend.
    Most of these books are well worth the "premium" price, you get what you pay for. But should a select few of us pay triple the price so that the developer can continue provide us the entertainment?
    Since Sorcery is something new I am on board and hopefully we will see this series thrive. I haven't played it yet so can't comment on the game itself
     
  15. Athos

    Athos Well-Known Member

    May 21, 2011
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    #135 Athos, May 2, 2013
    Last edited: May 2, 2013
    I got no dog in this race, in fact I'm more with you than against. I'd like to see iPhone games cost more. Heck I recently spent 35 bones on Zaccaria pinball.

    BUT

    EDIT *god I wrote something argumentative but I don't even know why since I basically agree with you*

    nothing to see here <_< >_>
     
  16. witedahlia

    witedahlia Well-Known Member

    Jul 28, 2012
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    Thanks for the link. You rawk!
     
  17. Appletini

    Appletini Well-Known Member

    Jan 8, 2011
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    Ankh-Morpork
    The new half-price that TMG lower their games to is now close to the old normal price, for the reasons previously mentioned, and the bigger sales are usually done in concert with their new releases. Not one of their full gamebooks has come out at $1, let alone remained there permanently, as was the recommendation here for the Sorcery! series. inkle also have this solitary full-scale gamebook, not a stable of paid apps they can dip back and forth to woo customers.

    Well, clearly you wouldn't happily pay full price, as you've literally just admitted in that very sentence that you won't. Nothing's preventing you from paying full price; you can't have it both ways.

    It doesn't actually matter what any given developer might do or have done in terms of price changes, and it is certainly not appropriate to ask a completely different developer for sales or try to otherwise pressure them into lowering their app price with, "But developer X lowered their price!" This is especially distasteful when it comes from those who rather transparently try to frame their recommendation as somehow being in the developer's best interest rather than their own.

    Speaking of developers, though, I do think more should follow the example The Coding Monkeys set with Carcassonne, i.e. explicitly stating that their app would and will never go on sale, and then following through with that. Carcassonne costs US$9.99, and TCM have stated that it will never drop in price (and it never has, not once; in fact, it increased to its current price); that hasn't stopped it being massively popular even with people unfamiliar with the original board game.

    People here actually seem more likely to buy an app if they can be assured that their only options are to buy the game at full price or go without, partially because they know there's no point waiting, and partially because they know there's no chance they're going to end up feeling "screwed over" by buying something that drops in price by 90% the very next day.

    If the possibility of a sale is on the cards, however, people tend to wait because history shows their patience will bear fruit. In turn, because these people wait instead of buying, the developers see reduced sales, then panic and lower the app price to generate a quick boost, missing out on cash they should have earned and risking getting trapped in a cycle.

    $1/$2 apps aren't the result of some inevitable and inescapable "nature of the app store" at all, though; that's just a convenient, lazy and outdated excuse people fall back on when they want to push to have things made cheaper for them. As I've mentioned before, paying attention to user attitudes on TA over the years when compared to other places shows that people here are generally more in touch with the realities of development and less likely now to classify a given app as "expensive", where they might have done so even a year ago. What we really need here now is to have more developers actively and openly taking the possibility of sales and price drops off the table in order to ruffle the moochers and boost consumer confidence.

    If you read the comments over at BGG, on the other hand, you'll still see quite a few time-lost people swooning and fainting at US$4.99 apps like they just walked in to find their father reclining naked with the family dog and a jar of peanut butter. Seeing Idolm@ster would make them physically explode.

    Nobody's paying "triple the price" for this game, because nobody's paying $15 for a copy, nor is its price $1.66; the game costs $4.99, and that's what people are paying - literally "the price" and nothing else. You cannot point to a hypothetical reduced figure and then claim that based on that, the normal price is too high, or that an (invented) sale price is somehow now the "real" price/value, and that people paying the true asking price are actually getting ripped off in order to subsidise others.

    If a $3 app drops to $1 for a day six months after release, it doesn't actually mean that the app's real price was $1 all along, and that anybody who paid $3 for it is a sucker who actually paid three times what they should have.

    Neat. ^_^
     
  18. Misguided

    Misguided Well-Known Member

    Jan 27, 2009
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    I think I still have my original copy of this...great game.

     
  19. drloony

    drloony Well-Known Member

    Jul 19, 2012
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    No it doesn't. But how many times do you jump to pay the extra money? Many people here buy numerous apps every month and have back catalogs of games to play. When the numbers get multiplied it ends up being fairly substantial. Discretion must be used and to do otherwise would just be plain frivolous. I do happily pay full price in some instances but not in others, so it's give and take, I can't help if some developers end up on the short end.
    Bottom line, if we really wanna play something we should pay for it, to expect it for free or "wait for a sale" is the wrong attitude, it does end up that way sometimes, but it shouldn't be advocated I suppose.
     
  20. MidianGTX

    MidianGTX Well-Known Member

    Jun 16, 2009
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    I couldn't wait for a game if I wanted to. If I'm excited about it, I'm getting it at midnight on the day of release. I don't care what happens to the price afterwards, I thought it was a fair deal when I hit the "buy" button and nothing changes that.

    The only games I ever get on sale or for free are the ones that I somehow missed or wasn't interested in, but feel obliged to give a chance and a review to when the developer is friendly enough to be giving it away.
     

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