Uh do you guys realize you could've made three dollars working at a sweat shop with the time you've wasted debating the cost of this game?
For the record: You're the one who bumped this thread. I can agree with this. It's still possible to make a lot of money with a $2 game, though. I also agree with this. The apps in the store may be underpriced, but Canabalt is not worth $3 if you can get Jet Car Stunts for $2. End of story. For $3, players shouldn't have to use a thread here for a leaderboard. Personally, I'm just shocked by the fact that a simple, 1 button, jumping game would be priced at $3. It may be a fun game, but I don't think it's more fun than geoSpark which is only $0.99. I have nothing against your review of Canabalt. I wouldn't have even known about Canabalt if it weren't for your review. I just think the price is a tad high. That is all. And we can agree to disagree.
But by that logic don't there exist some 99 cent games that are polished with ton of content thereby making every game on the app store "worth" no more than 99 cents?
Which games? geoSpark? Pocket God? If they had released those games at $2, I highly doubt anyone would have complained. You can get games anywhere. Type "free flash games" into Google and you'll get over a million results. Delicious foods and coffees, on the other hand, are not as easy to come by. This is one reason why they cost more than iPhone games. And the iPhone may have some nice games, but it's not an idea platform for gaming. The screen is smaller than the average TV, and virtual joysticks / d-pads are still a problem for most people because their big ass thumbs cover too much of the screen. Developers probably started offering games at low prices to compensate for these drawbacks. That isn't the case with me. Here's a list of the most expensive apps I've bought: - Dungeon Hunger - $6.99 - Ravensword - $6.99 - Fritz Chess - $6.99 - Firmware 3.0 - $9.95 Have you played this? http://mirrorsedge2d.com That is the game that inspired Canabalt, and it owns. LOL! Amen. Hodapp bumped this thread. No one had relied to it since 11-17-2009.
Jet Car Stunts is WAY underpriced, that game is frickin rad and is easily worth $5 or $10, I don't care if you're freedog or not. It's classy and exciting and fun and wonderfully engineered! It's so rad it hurts. I wish I made it. Drop 7 should be $10. Square Ball should probably be $10 too. On a brighter note, as we've been continually posting to both our personal and our company twitter accounts (available below), we have been working full-time on an update since launch. I am happy to say that as far as we know we have all the kinks out, all the new content in, and fully functional leaderboards. We're just doing a little extra QA to make sure it's really there! With any luck it'll be out by Christmas There have been delays, but they're all for the better, we will have some really awesome stuff to announce in January!! my twitter - http://twitter.com/adamatomic company twitter - http://twitter.com/semisecret We should have a proper blog together by January as well, with RSS and all that, so we can keep everyone updated a little better about our internal progress, new projects, new tools, etc. In the meantime, we try to post relevant news on a semi-regular basis to the company twitter. follow my personal twitter at your own risk! EDIT - Mirror's Edge (and the 2D version) were more counter-inspirations than anything else. Surprises a lot of people but I was massively disappointed by Mirror's Edge. Canabalt's inspiration was primarily Super Mario Bros., followed by (in no particular order) war of the worlds, district 9, district b13, flashback, another (out of this) world, prince of persia, the mad men animated intro, and the nintendo game boy!
So, you're trying to set a new pricing standard in the app store? I was a bit surprised by the price of Jet Car Stunts. It is underpriced. I was expecting at least a $4.99 price tag, which I would have gladly paid. I was also surprised by the price of your game. I was expecting a $0.99 or $1.99 price tag, and, from the looks of the poll (created by DaveMc99), 53.66% were expecting something similar. If you add more content, the complaints about the price will likely go away, and Hodapp won't feel a need to bump this thread again. That's good to hear. Thanks for the update.
I am also looking forward to the update with leaderboards as I have to admit, I did lose interest in the game without that key feature I will start playing again..........I need leaderboards to keep my interest in a score based game like this Thought you forgot about us !! +/- a dollar or two ............no one should care that much !!! But hey, it's free advertising for you guys and your game. It's all publicity in the end.
Here is an article I just wrote, partly for friends, partly for the armchair economists here http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/AdamSaltsman/20091206/3743/Bytes_The_099_Problem.php I know it's easy to see it from the consumer side, but this might help show it from the developer side a little bit I hope!
Great article. I was also unsure of what price to put my app, and i didn't want to just make it 99c automatically.
Hi, Thanks for posting the link to your article. Nice to read some of the thinking, regarding the development and pricing of your game. David
0.99 works for a lot of stuff I think, but for what we do specifically it just doesn't make sense. A few people collaborating on new IP and new gameplay for a few months...pricing at 0.99 is just too risky, even with our microscopic overhead. for smaller projects or if you have a marketing juggernaut on your side and you're doing a top 10 run, 0.99 might be just right. for larger projects...haha I dunno what they're supposed to do if people think 2.99 is a lot for us, we've found a kind of sweet spot where we can make a game that is a good size in a decent amount of time and enough people pay us our astronomical asking price that we get by...beyond that I really don't know what to say
With an online leaderboard and achievements (OpenFeint), the promise to be an active developer (regular updates) and a 99cent price right from the launch the game had the potential to hit the top 10. But it's certainly worth its price.
Of course a game that takes that long, and takes that much effort, should cost more than $0.99. But Canabalt, on the other hand, was made in 5 days, and it only has 1 button... Bejeweled 2 is the #1 game in the app store right now, and it's $2.99. Implode, a game by an independent studio, is $1.99, and it's #4. And Monopoly is #5 at $4.99. Your game still costs too much... $1.99 would have been fine. $2.99 is just greedy for a game this simple.
Is it? Because I think its actually good that it was priced for this amount. I like the devs and the quality that they put into the game, and they are just trying to show its worth.
So you think that things should be priced based solely on how long they took to develop and not based on the quality? Weird. If someone makes something great in a lesser amount of time than most people, that really just makes them more bad ass. Adam's a great developer and it makes me feel pretty damn good to give him an extra buck for providing me with well-polished, unique entertainment value. I also know that that extra buck is going to make a helluva lot more of a difference than it would with say "Bejeweled 2", a port of a sequel of a game created by a large company that no doubt has substantial marketing dollars behind it. I guess what it really comes down to is - do you want to support interesting, new and well-made things with an extra DOLLAR? (i.e. 4 quarters i.e. practically no difference on your end of the deal) Or do you want to buy whatever's being marketed into your lap by large companies for one dollar less. Its a pretty clear and simple choice for a lot of people.
The original Flash version of Canabalt was made in 5 (long) days, but the time we've put into the iPhone version, as of this latest update, is roughly the 6 man-months that I talk about in the article. Also, it is totally OK with me if you think it costs too much; enough people disagree that we're able to continue actually funding our operation the point of the article was, of course, not to provide data points to take out of context but to explain that the market isn't large enough to support one dollar games outside of the highest, most competitive levels of the store; levels that are hard to reach without a large marketing budget, something small companies don't always have.
I also thought Canabalt was too much, but then I got over it and moved on with my life. Retro Racer does indeed sound good, will keep an eye out for it.
