Game Design, Programming and running a one-man games business…

Pricing for gratuitous tank battles

cliffski

I am not sure what the right price for gratuitous tank battles should be, even this close to release, so I’m going to dump my brain here, to help me think.

Gratuitous Space Battles was $22.95 on release, and as I recall a bit cheaper in beta/pre-order ($19.95 I think).

There is a lot of downward pressure on games pricing. people expect to get indie games for less than the price of a large coffee, which is silly, and frankly, a bit of an insult.

It’s a few years since GSB. There has been inflation since, about 5% in the UK. My bills sure keep going up.

GTB is a MUCH more fully-featured game than GSB was at launch, or even is now. GTB has achievements, a built-in editor, multiple game modes, better visuals, and more content. It is also more polished in every respect.

Nobody knew what to make of GSB, so it was a bit of a risk for many buyers. People know roughly what to expect from a positech strategy game now, so maybe they are less scared of parting with ‘large pizza + some beer’ music for one of my games.

None of this brings me to any specific conclusion, but I can say without any doubt that anyone who thinks it will be *less* than $19.95 is being optimistic :D GTB is a HUGE game. It’s taken quite a few people a hell of a long time to make. I guess I better decide soon…

One thing is certain: even if the game is $0.01 people will shout at me for being worse than hitler and call me stupid for getting the price *wrong*. Bah.

51 thoughts on Pricing for gratuitous tank battles

  1. Doesn’t matter what you sell it at direct. If it’s going on Steam then it’ll be up there for around £14.99 and drop to about £7.00 after a month or so. Not to mention the odd weekend when they’ll price it at 50% off as a weekend special. I don’t know if you can actually control that or not. Suspect it might limit your early sales as people might wait it out hoping for a cheapy.

  2. No way will it drop to £7 after a month. Go check the steam price of GSB now, over a year after release.
    Not ALL games get sold for $0.02 on steam. And many of the really higher priced ones make the most money, contrary to common perception.

  3. Actually a price of $19.95 to $25.95 doesn’t seem unreasonable to me, though of course i am just pulling prices of the top of my head that seem within my average game budget, not necessarily any guess-ta-mate of all the effort and time you have put into the game.

    I do know this, that i love GSB :) And so, will pay just about whatever you ask for GTB. :) So, charge what you feel is fair to you and your fans will understand.

    New people coming to the Positech games may not see it right off, but if they play one of your games they will. :)

    Just my rather out of the loop, amatuerish opinion, :)

    Take care and hope to see GTB soon. :)

    -Teal

  4. You could sell the beta to the first 500 or so people that buy it for cheap, like 10 bucks. That way it’ll get spread fast, people will recommend it, and there will be alot of material on youtube.

    It’ll (probably) be the best way to get publicity and willing buyers as soon as possible. Once you’re run out of “low-price-betas”, just release it to Steam and raise the price to 20 or 30 bucks. I know I’d pay 40, but that’s just me.

    And I love your games, so yeah.

  5. @Elric: GTB would sell more than 500 on the first day at $60… I don’t think a special to begin with is the way to go.

    Pre-order discount, sure.

    Opening day discount? Not for Cliff’s games.

  6. Just to keep brainstorming… Whats the right price? I would guess that it’s the one where the price multiplied by the amount of buyers shields the biggest number. In case of multiple combinations giving the same value, then the lowest, as to increase market penetration.

    The problem is that it’s impossible to know what that magic price is, therefore, the best tactic would probably be somewhat mixed. Disregarding my actual position on the subject* and also discarding regional pricing witch I hate, I would say that you should price it as high as possible, maybe 30 dollars (half the price of a AAA title). After that, when most of the user base will not hate you for it, lower it to 15 or something similar and leave it there till the occasional sale. I mean, you do not want to be the type of game that ends up at 25% of its original price because it sucked (there are many examples on Steam).

    On the other hand, this tactic means that your game will not get a lot of (initial) exposure, but reinforces the idea that it’s a quality game. Also, since it is kind of a niche game, the pricing can be higher, as no COD fans will leave their shooters to try it anyway.

    What I would advice (and force you to do if I could) is to include some sort of preorder bonuses, maybe not discounts (though 10% is common, and you appear in the discounted section of Steam, witch must account for something) but definitively something extra that doesn’t break the multiplayer, maybe skins, just to give the idea that you either get it now or you might lose something.

    * Argentina had like 50% inflation following the economical regrowth in the last few years and a deflating peso to prevent imports from taking over local production, meaning that 20 dollars is to me more like a very expensive pizza and beer.

  7. Personnally, I don’t have the budget to afford indie games for more than 10$, as awesome as it is. I really like indie game I gladly encorage the guys like you who goes indie!

    The thing is that I don’t have alot of money and I want to encourage lots of indie dev so I just can’t afford more than 10$. If it’s going to be more than that, I will have to wait until it goes on sale… :(

  8. I think you could probably sell it initially for $30/£20 or even $40/£25. I know I’d buy it at that price! ;)

    As Hernan said, some kind of non-gameplay changing bonus would be cool for pre-orders. You could even have a Deluxe/Limited Edition with more skins that is sold for a slightly higher price (and you can upgrade to it from a standard edition).
    So it would be something like £22 for Deluxe, £20 for standard plus £3.99 to upgrade to Deluxe from Standard (i.e. as DLC).
    Personally I’m not a big fan of Limited Editions and DLC on the day of release, but it might encourage some people to spend that little bit more.

  9. I’m inclined to agree with Niall et al.
    Personally, anything above $35 has these days been automatically chucked into the ‘wait until sale on steam’ category.

    Unfortunately, you’re not the only one whose bills have skyrocketed over the last couple years :-/
    Which of course means that you’ll also be constantly competing against the AAA titles that are on outrageous sale (hence me picking up Saints Row 3 for $20 today instead of anything else).

    Several titles on steam lately have had an initial week 1 10% off deal.. however I’d really like to know if that’s had much of an impact.. I know I haven’t bitten on em, in fact it kinda just reminds you that some day it’ll be on sale for 25% or more off…

    Can’t wait for someone to have the guts to do an experiment where every copy sells for one penny more than the previous copy. :-D

  10. Just a quick thought on market penetration as I have no idea how many copies you are used to selling on your games on average. But several best sellers from other devs come to mind, like Terraria, and also Magicka. I keep hearing the numbers for those games are in the over hundred thousand range, and Terraria, at least before they said they were no longer going to update it, :( was over a million.

    Both of those were, or at least are $9.99 on Steam.

    I don’t know if you want to sell your game for $10, but i suspect you could possibly sell twice as many copies as you have for GSB, but of course that is only a guess, and you could conceivably sell even more than twice as many.

    If you sell for $19.99 you could still sell at least to perhaps 90 percent plus of your GSB fan base, but these of course are just guesses.

    Though to be honest, I suspect the higher the initial price, the fewer copies you will sell right at first.

    Best thing might be to talk to several other Indie Devs that you may know, or are acquainted with and ask them how they price their games and why, and what looked to be a good selling point for them.

    Just some ideas, hope it helps.

  11. Cliff – You should ask the hive mind. :) Throw up a thread in the Steam forums with a poll – explain the feature set of the new game, what it does, how it plays, throw in a youtube link and ask the players how much they’d be willing to pay…

  12. I’m not sure putting a question like this out to public opinion is wise. Gamers (and people in general) have shown that what they say and what they do are very different. Take the ‘boycott MW2’ Steam group, for example, famously shown to have half of the members playing that game on release day. Similarly, all a pre-order bonus will do is advance sales at the cost of having to code a little extra – it won’t actually make more money (unless you’re expecting terrible reviews I suppose, which I imagine you aren’t).

    A few people have noted that you’re not the only person whose bills have gone up. People have less money today so convincing them to part with it is going to be harder the more you charge. It sounds like you’re trying to justify a price to yourself that you think is a little high, and if you think it’s a little high then the general public certainly will as they haven’t the investment in and knowledge of the game you have. Whatever you do settle on, I hope you hit that sweet spot.

  13. IMHO, the launching price of GTP is not so important.
    If you wait a couple of years you’ll be able to buy a much cheaper, with more features and with less bugs version of the game.
    You’ll be also able to find suggestions, walkthrough, mods made by the early buyers.
    This a good strategy for an armchair general like me! ;-)

  14. non-gameplay influencing pre-order bonuses would be quite easy, in that, for example, I could have a special embellishment on the username of players who pre-ordered, which nobody else could get. That would just be for bragging rights, but not affect gameplay, and maybe it would be cool.
    I’m not sure I really have much time between now and my planned release date to implement and thoroughly test something like that… Hmmm…

  15. I think that the advice Jeff Vogel gives in his (old) document about shareware is still relevant: if you price GTB $25 and it sells less than your expectations then you are still able to lower it, even multiple times. The opposite is not true: if you realize you’ve been too pessimistic and priced GTB too low, you would encounter lot of difficulties to make new customers accept a higher price – it’s already quite difficult to price your next game higher than the previous one…
    BTW: $25/24.95 is a good starting point.

  16. I think $20 for even a “high profile” game is about the right price. I think game prices of $50-$60 is ridiculous especially since they also expect you to buy all the DLC (usually small bits added to the game for almost the cost of the entire game itself), I’m buying this in the end no matter what, but I think $20 would be the price I want to pay. No matter what you do, please don’t play that cents bullshit and make it an even amount. No 19.95, no 24.95, make it 20 or 25. Cents is bullshit…

  17. Oh I forgot to mention, I know it sounds counter intuitive, but based on statistics, the lower the cost of the game, usually the more it sells because people buy lower price things more so they can have money left over for other things. The phrase “It’s only” comes to mind as a common excuse.

  20. What’s the right price? Well I’ll be able to answer that when I’ve played the demo. Right now from your videos and screen-shots I think your 20-25$ range is very realistic. Especially if you are planning DLC.

  21. I think I’ll elaborate a bit more. I totally agree with Albert1; you can always lower the price. From your post, it seems 25$ might be even lower than what you are thinking. I think you shouldn’t hit the 30$ mark, but if that’s what your thinking, 28.95$ seems a lot less scary for me as a buyer (lol, the human brain is so funny).

    On Steam, Rayman Origins is coming out at 29.99$. It’s 2D, old school and has had great reviews. So I think it’s a good example of what a non-AAA (let’s forget indie or not for a second) niche games can expect. Again, they can always lower the price.

    As for the 10% initial discounts, that seems completely ridiculous to me. Take for example Vessel. Saving 2$ on a game will not make me shift from a buy/not buy position. I tried the demo and I didn’t buy, discount or not. I could see a 75% discount make me change my mind, but in the end the early adopters will buy if they like your game.

    Finally, if 25-28$ is still too low, and you don’t feel comfortable about that price, something that has already appealed to me as a consumer is a huge discount (50-75%) on the developers older games. So you might get many sales on GSB from people who like GTB and are thinking: “I like this game a lot, this Cliffski guy makes awesome games, OH look! his older game is on a tremendous discount! I just can’t pass over that opportunity. BUY!”. It makes so much more sense, since if you like the new Positech game, you’ll probably like the older ones too.

    Cheers

  22. I would like the ability to pay more on release to get a version that will give me all DLC when/if there is any DLC.

  23. Make it a 25$ dollar game and offer a copy of GSB on the first week/month or any other game you feel more comfortable with.

    After that keep it at 25$, the initial shock is passed due to the sale of two games, and after one month people will see lots of people playing and buy it at 25$.

    For me above 25$-30$ is too much for any game (including AAA), I pay anything between that interval (20€ – 25€) but don´t expect me to shell more of my money on games. Like you said my bills skyrocketed and in Portugal just this year we’re having inflation in the order of 5% (actually more like 10%).

  24. 30€-35€ with preorder discount and if you put it on steam, there will be those 50% off specials and whatnot. Also eventually you can lower the price like over a year or two to around 15-25€.

  25. I would go the “dungeon defender” route and price it at 15$. $15 is the sweet spot for most people. Dungeon defender went on to sell over a million copies. Price matters don’t think it doesn’t.

    I am a hardcore gamer and I had trouble paying full price for GSB because compared to budget AAA titles, I can get a AAA title from years gone by for less then you charge full price for GSB. Indie games can’t compete with AAA budgets of AAA games that are now in the bargain bin therefore you have to price appropriately.

    Is your game really as good as Saints row the third? or Deus Ex human revolution? Both games have been dropped to $24.99 in steam sales.

    Gamers make these kinds of comparisons you can’t help it, why should they choose a indie title with limited gameplay (just through sheer lower dev costs and lack of manpower) borrowing heavily from tower defense when they can get AAA on sale?

  26. @BOB, you are wrong. A good game is a good game, indie or not. A bad/overpriced game is a bad or overpriced game.

  27. @socapex

    You’re not dealing with facts and reality. The mass of consumers have a limited amount of money to spend, you’re competing for their $. Therefore indie game pricing is a legitimate concern vs other games competing for those same limited dollars.

  28. > It’s a few years since GSB. There has been inflation since, about 5% in the UK. My bills sure keep going up.

    Ok, but thanks to the fact that you live in the UK, your income (mostly in $ I assume) have increase by a massive 25% thanks to current change rate. So, you see at the end, the UK crisis is utterly beneficial to you.

    http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=USDGBP=X&t=5y&l=on&z=m&q=l&c=

  31. I was talking since the crisis witch really hit the pounds around mid 2008. At that time, $1 gave you 50p. Today, $1 give you 62p. That 25% increase. :)

  32. I’m agreeing with the $25 price point. That seems reasonable.

    Also the main problem with the theory about AAA studio games is that toe to toe they are competing, however, if you’re making a different enough game you aren’t competing as much. Think of the build a lot franchise. The games aren’t competing against 3D shooting games. (At least not in the same regard).

  33. Cliff,
    Just give you my opinion an average audience, just take whatever you feel relevant here. (I am not a fan – never buy your game directly except in they offer 1 humble bundle 4 to me but I do visit your blog regularly to check if great offer I should consider)

    1) Offer more incentive to your loyal fans.
    Unlike others downloading illegally, they are the group who support you even from the very beginning – beta state. Identify and reward them with 50% discount preorder, do heavy publicity and encourage people to preorder, remember people who preorder have trust in you, and some risk involved for them if you “run away half way etc” (Just joking – no offense, I am sorry:P)

    2) Make 2 Editions: Standard and Extended
    Despite your fan base support and general liking towards you. Their buying power may vary depending on country currency, personal finacial status etc.
    2 editions will be just nice. Link your fans with Extended edition purchase, example make their name / their great ideas appear in the game – do at least something that pirated gamers cant really get it when duplicate. In short offer more value – frequent update etc.

    3) Price high (probably USD 25 for full release of standard edition)
    Cheap or pirated (total free) great games are everywhere today, I personally feel you cant beat them in anyway. Higher price will really helps you on your bills in long run, distinguished yourselves from average developers.

    Just my 2 cents.

    * By the way, Torchlight 2 is also in my consideration – USD 19.95 for such great deal of effort they put in to their game

  34. Hi Cliff,

    From what I’ve read & seen, a launch price of around $25 would be appropriate, but how about a pre-order / beta discounted price of $15 – $20 for us loyal fanbois?

    I think the Mode 7 guys did something similar with Frozen Synapse, further sweetening the deal with name checks in the credits and photos of beta purchasers.

    Good luck with it, whatever you decide.

    I.

  35. Why does everyone assume Indy games have to be cheaply priced? I think a good game deserves a higher price. I personally think $25 is a sweet spot, especially since I’m betting on DLC in the future. To be honest I will still buy it day one, even if it was a bit more expensive.

    Bottom line: Cliff should charge what he wants. Only he knows the true value of his own work.

  36. I just wanted to throw out a wild idea. Can you imagine a Gratuitous game with micro-payments? Give people the core of the game for lower cost and charge for premium components to use in vehicles. Personally I sucked at GSB, and would have loved a little bit of an advantage.

    I’m only suggesting there is more then one payment model for games. Maybe Cliff could make more money and still keep the cost down for people on a budget.

  37. 1. I would do some more research into the idea that lower prices can help your game achieve greater sales. If you could really, really get a million sales, then you would want to do it, even at $10 a pop. I have a feeling that a lower price MIGHT be important to break out of the niche market you are now in.

    2. Having argued for (maybe) a lower price, also think about a differentiated price so that you can take money from people who do not care about the money so much. Starbucks does this…you can get a $3 coffee, or you can pay $6 for a fancy one (which I do). A ‘Gold’ version, or DLC, can be used to take money from those who are prepared to pay more.

  38. while it may not be hugely popular with many players, there are companies out there that are charging in excess of $40, $50 and $60 US dollars for their games. One which i have been looking forward to this year is Sins of a Solar Empire Rebellion. They are charging $39.99 for it as a digital download, providing of course that if i lose my copy, or uninstall it on accident, that i can with my trusty serial number, or confirmation number as receipt of sale, be able to download it again and put it back on my machine.

    $39.99 might be a rather good price tag for GTB, and of course with the Steam package, we can re-download it if we need. That would allow you a price you may feel reflects the professional quality of GTB and all the hard work you have put into it, while still allowing wiggle room as the year wears on and the inevitable Steam sales will reduce the price, it may mean a longer wait to increase the size of the player base from what GSB may enjoy now, but the sales will no doubt increase sales.

    It also might mean you can recoup production costs for GTB quicker as well. Meaning of course that once it is paid for, the residual sales are profit and hopefully will give you room to pay bills and a few luxuries if you care to and even perhaps some captial to start thinking about a new project.

    Just a few thoughts,

    Chris

  39. I think Alan Wake for pc should be a clear example of what a fair price can do…

    62k of 70K backers for double fine adventure offered up to 30 USD for a game that doesn’t already exist yet…

    And what about Bastion?

    It’s a matter of fact, 20/25 USD is a fair price (not only for GTB).

  40. I think the best thing to do is find similar products in the marketplace and give GTB a similar price. $25-$30 might not seem like a lot of money, but that can be over twice as costly as the majority of indie DD titles. Comparison exaggerates the price difference.

    But if the feature set is more similar to what you would find in retail then $25-$30 would seem like a bargain.

  41. As I review similar games I have purchased recently I don’t see how you can go over $19.99

    Dungeon Defenders, Orcs Must Die, Sanctum, Bastion, SPAZ, Anomaly warzone earth, revenge of the titans, frozen synapse (20 on release, almost free in a bundle, 25 now) all of these have been awesome games in my opinion and cost around $10-$20 and have had deep discounts soon after release. Even Terraria and trine 2 only $15 on release and torchlight 2 is expected to cost $20 as well.

    I’m just saying that for an indie game even for only $24.99 is on the high side and stands out like a sore thumb in the sea of $19.99 games. I doubt there are even 5 indie games on steam that cost over $20. If people see indie + tower defense + $25/$30 I don’t think they’ll click on it.

    $25/$30 price points seem to be no-mans land in gaming. I might as well save up and buy a AAA title for 40/50 or buy some cheap indie games for 10/15.

    20 preorder/25 release would be a good idea, but you say you are close to release so maybe not. If you are releasing soon and it will be on Steam why isn’t it in the coming soon section? I figure putting your game there is like free advertising gold.

  42. You’ve often pointed it out yourself: The price drop started by Humble Bundle (and copied by Royal Bundle and many more) is significant. I can hardly justify speding 20$ on a game any more, when I know I can buy five good games for 1$ three times a year. Sure, I buy the occasional Skyrim and Deus Ex HR, but there is no expectation of them being cheaper than full price. I’m actually amazed at how quickly DXHR was discounted. On the other hand, release-day buyers will buy at release day anyway. The discount gets people like me to open their wallet.

    That said: I have no good idea. I completely believe you that 25$ isn’t too cheap for GTB, but I think that it might look too expensive to many.

    My slightly evil suggestion: Start incredibly high, but assume you only sell during sales, to catch the penny-pinchers with their guard down. “45$, 60% off” looks way better than “19.99$”, despite being just about the same. My idea being: Use psychology to make people believe they get a great deal and can pull one over you, but in reality plan to sell every single copy at 50% off.

    Something like:
    – Official Price: 45$
    – First day release sale: 25% off
    – Every two months a sale at increasing 30%, 40%, 50%, 60% for two days or so.

  43. I want to add something: Do a “developer sale” on release, where you put all your games at -25%, including GSB. The publicity stunt alone is probably worth it.

  44. I never really got into GSB but I loved the concept. I’m a big fan of tower defense games and when I saw the beta trailer, I was sold. It looks like the tower defense game that I have been waiting for! I am considering a purchase right now.

  45. There’s an entire branch of psychology which studies how people respond to price/value – it might help to read-up-on-it before setting a price for anything in future :)

    There are a load of books on the topic – most of them are quite dry and hard to read but the shortest one which actually contains all the info is probably this one

    http://www.amazon.com/Priceless-Myth-Fair-Value-Advantage/dp/080909469X

    although it’s still a BIT dry and not the easiest read ever!!

    Summary: People are incapable of determining the price/value of anything in isolation – people always compare things and see which is cheaper/better value BUT the tools they use to compare things are easily manipulated.

    Just saying “my last game was $19 and this one is better and inflation happened so this one is $23? is really the worst possible thing you can do – you might as well put “MORE EXPENSIVE THAN THE LAST ONE” on the sticker… ;)

    You really have to learn how to manipulate how people see your game – what they compare it to (and even create competition for it) and build it’s “value” that way.

  46. I’ve read pretty much every book on pricing pyschology you can buy :D
    I’m not just randomly picking a price. I have over 15 years of experience of selling games direct online, and fifteen years worth of sales data at dozens of different pricing points.
    $22.95 is the sweet spot in this case :D

  47. It may well be Cliff – but part of setting-out-your stall is putting it into the right context and getting people to compare it to other things which seem worth less and your top post here doesn’t do that as well as I think it could :)

    You have many pluspoints to your way of making games – your games are far more complete than many games (e.g. they aren’t fixed later with patches or even DLC which costs money) – your production levels are higher than many ‘indies’ and so on.

    Just saying “inflation and it’s a bigger game = last game’s price * 120%” is unsexy!!

    Hell you could have sold it on it’s production being renewable for starters!! :)

  48. Well… that depends the context in which you think the blog post is made :D The real meat and potatoes of it is the comments here. People reading the blog are obviously interested in the game, and refreshingly, seem very open to a $22.95 price point (or even higher). People who generally post online in forums etc, tend to be time-rich and money-poor, and so obviously skew towards expectations of lower prices.

    Ultimately, psychology or not (and I’ve tried a few experiments, check out the GSB Nomads buy page to see the most fun), it all comes down to data. For example, check Democracy 2 (http://www.positech.co.uk/democracy2) Everyone who doesn’t buy it thinks it’s a fairly ugly, low budget game that should probably be cheap. But I know for a *fact* that lowering the price dramatically reduces not only the revenue, but the actual sales.

    There are a ton of indie games cheaper than GTB, and a ton of free TD games, which might on the surface appear to be competing, but actually it’s a different type of product entirely. The final price point for GTB is based on GSB comparative-sales at price levels data :D

    I do *love* buying psychology books though. The whole anchoring thing is especially weird, and fascinating.

  49. cliffski- “But I know for a *fact* that lowering the price dramatically reduces not only the revenue, but the actual sales.”

    This seems counterintuitive to me. I strongly suspect that indie devs make more money on Steam sales than they do during the rest of the year. Many have said as much.

    Steam’s top seller list is ranked by revenue, and I see $10-$15 titles beating more pricier games all the time. I believe that is because they are impulse purchases.

  50. steam sales come with a phenomenal amount of press attention, page hits and PR. the only way to isolate price as a factor is to do unannounced *blind* price changes. I’ve done that, and sales (as well as revenue) fall.

    Many games do great on impulse sales. Democracy 2 is a deep, complex strategy game, as are GTB and GSB. As a result, they are less susceptible to impulse buying.

Comments are currently closed.