http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/20...-steam-spy

This guy says indie game devs are hurting themselves by charging a very small fee for their work, especially if they're not a single-person team, because the low cost of the game might imply that the games are not good enough to charge more for them.

On the other hand, there's also the notion that slapping a higher price tag on indie games might drive away people that are predisposed to think indie games lack polish compared to more mainstream games and thus not worth that much even if they're interested in the game.

Where do you guys stand?

indie devs are absolutely undercharging themselves because they cant afford not to

Generally yeah. I wonder if minecraft always costing more than $10 is why it got taken more seriously LOL

seriously tho when i think about releasing games myself i cant imagine charging much for them because i just dont see people buying them at a reasonable price and i want people to play them

Well yeah, Yrr, but iirc you're a single-person development team. What if you had 10 other people working for you? An office? Actual marketing costs?

What would be the price you'd think people would be willing to pay, and how much would you be faced with not seeing any returns?

honestly thats one of the major things preventing me forming/joining a team

i guess indie games hope that if its cheap it'll somehow go viral cuz they dont have any ad budget and video game discovery kind of sucks (does anyone even like steam's system lol)

i honestly can't think of any indie games i'd buy at a higher price so maybe they're hedging their bets correctly

This post was last modified: Aug 19, 2017 at 6:11 AM by T-man.

i honestly can't think of any indie games i'd buy at a higher price so maybe they're hedging their bets correctly

Nailed it. I just can't bring myself to pay top dollar for an indie game. I would really love to get Minecraft or CaveStroy for the Switch, but I'm not about to drop 30 dollars for either one. 20 bucks (give or take five dollars) is definitely the sweet spot of indie game pricing and perfect for impulse purchases.

if your income for a game doesnt let you eat avocado toast then you're not charging enough

i honestly can't think of any indie games i'd buy at a higher price so maybe they're hedging their bets correctly

Nailed it. I just can't bring myself to pay top dollar for an indie game. I would really love to get Minecraft or CaveStroy for the Switch, but I'm not about to drop 30 dollars for either one. 20 bucks (give or take five dollars) is definitely the sweet spot of indie game pricing and perfect for impulse purchases.

I think this is what the point of this thread is. Why won't you pay full price for either of those games? Why do you feel that they are charging 50% more than they should be? Nintendo is selling their own games on the switch for $60 which is 3x more than what you are comfortable paying for an indie game yet you're fine with that.

This post was last modified: Aug 19, 2017 at 4:36 PM by Aidan.

at the point of this thread is. Why won't you pay full price for either of those games? Why do you feel that they are charging 50% more than they should be? Nintendo is selling their own games on the switch for $60 which is 3x more than what you are comfortable paying for an indie game yet you're fine with that.

it's hard to compare apples to apples re:indie games to big budget games but here we go

when i look at something like breath of the wild i see the desire to live up to the zelda name, i see the entire dev team trying their best to polish everything, i see a game that feels generally good to play, i see mechanics that are well thought out and beneficial to the overall experience
when i look at minecraft i see a game that implements all of its features with the bare minimum of care and attention, and with no big picture consideration of how x feature affects y mechanic, or even whether the game will be fun

is minecraft even technically indie any more, now that its owned by microsoft?

is minecraft even technically indie any more, now that its owned by microsoft?

i don't think it is but then again the game hasn't really changed much since Microsoft bought it other then being on more platforms

I think this is what the point of this thread is. Why won't you pay full price for either of those games? Why do you feel that they are charging 50% more than they should be? Nintendo is selling their own games on the switch for $60 which is 3x more than what you are comfortable paying for an indie game yet you're fine with that.

nintendo also has to pay several multitudes more money to the large amount of staff working on the game than a crew of indie devs needs for upkeep, not to mention marketing budgets. it just doesn't make sense for an indie game to need to be $60, whereas it makes perfect sense for a big budget AAA title.

indie games are also generally held to a far lower quality standard, in part BECAUSE of their pricetags. if a game is only a few hours long and has some bugs that a proper QA team would have caught, you won't be as mad because you only paid so much for it, and wind up praising it significantly higher for what the crew managed to pull off rather than what they didn't, all because of the different perceptions that indie pricetags and development situations will bring

I feel like the only people who don't get it are indie devs, probably because they're too close to the situation. Just because you think your game is worth more doesn't mean it actually is, and that can be for a multitude of reasons. Games don't exist in a vacuum, so pricing needs to be competitive. If you're, I dunno, Undertale and you think you can get away with charging Breath of the Wild money you are delusional. I feel indie games are kept down by their scope and presentation. Indie games are usually comparatively short and their gameplay and art is almost always in the second dimension. The fact that so many indie games are 2D might be the biggest reason they are locked in the 20 dollar price range. Hat in Time could probably get away with being 30 or 40 bucks, but Guacamelee can't.

The question is really how much work can they afford to put in if they can only get so much back out of it.

However much the final product is worth, the work put in is worth a lot too.

also what the fuck is this "3d is inherently worth more" bullshit

This post was last modified: Aug 19, 2017 at 6:37 PM by T-man.

also what the fuck is this "3d is inherently worth more" bullshit

I mean,

It is.

You can kick and scream about it, but 2D games are absolutely perceived as less sophisticated and I don't see that changing.

The question is really how much work can they afford to put in if they can only get so much back out of it.

However much the final product is worth, the work put in is worth a lot too.

As a consumer, that's



I can spend a month making a shoddy table, but it isn't automatically worth the price of a well-crafted table made by professionals because I worked really hard.

This post was last modified: Aug 19, 2017 at 6:41 PM by Yrrzy.

I can spend a month making a shoddy table, but it isn't automatically worth the price of a well-crafted table made by professionals because I worked really hard.

implying this is what consumers are looking for in games lmao

game dev is undervalued, people arent buying well-crafted games, theyre buying games with big budgets and marketing behind them

this is why indie dev is so undervalued, its not the quality, its not the presentation, its the idea that the big name stuff is inherently better crafted because its bigger budget and better marketed