@DrFinkelstein
I get that $60 for a game is a little absurd, unless it's like GTA or Skyrim or something, but I'm all for the middle-range games that cost like $5 to $15, stuff like Gone Home or Guacamelee or Steamworld Dig, these are quality games that were made with TLC and shouldn't be thrown into the $.99 bargain bin like they're worthless throw-away trash like some F2P match-3 game or something!

@deathly_hallows

In the consumer's defense, we are constantly offered low deals on things like this. You also mentioned PS+ or whatever that service is. It's not just that consumers are becoming less likely to pay more for games, but we're also not having to. Plus with the whole publishers versus developer thing, many of us probably don't know or assume very much goes to the actual creators and thus it's not something that's probably very instilled in the consumer's mindset.

@deathly_hallows
Better to support one developer for $8 than to support 9,999 developers for $1 each, got it

A game's worth is determined by each customer, not the developer. If SteamWorld Dig is worth $4 to me, it benefits Image & Form to put it on sale so they get my $4 and my attention, because otherwise they'd get nothing. Sell your games to the customers who think it's worth full price, then sell it to the customers who think it's worth half-price, then sell it to the customers who think it's worth quarter-price, then throw it in a Humble Bundle. Why limit yourself to the customers who are willing to pay what YOU think it's worth? That's leaving money on the table and limiting your audience.

I too used to be really worried that the Steam sale model would drive down the collective perceived worth of games, resulting in more developers not making good on their time and creativity investment. But the evidence thus far has been overwhelmingly in favor of these things, from indies to mid-sized developers, even to the AAA publishers. People still seem to be spending the same amount of cash, they're just spreading it around to more games and are willing to take risks on these lower-priced purchases instead of just throwing their cash to the AAA games they know they're going to like.

For example...
DrFinkelstein said:

As for Steamworld Dig, if I hadn't had the deal, I don't know if I ever would have bit. Steamworld Dig though, I realize now, is totally worth the eight bucks had I had to pay it.

Look what we have here! Fink probably wouldn't have bought SteamWorld Dig at full price. Now not only does Image & Form have his revenue from the discount, they also gained a customer willing to pay full price for the sequel!


I'm less concerned with pricing schemes and more concerned that eventually the booming competition is going to be too much for the market to support, leaving a ton of indies struggling to find customers for perfectly good games. Steam adds like five games every day, and they seem intent on opening the floodgates further in the future. How long before there are more developers than the customer base can possibly support? That's what's ailing the mobile market, not the price schemes. (Well, that and the fact that only the mega-hits get support from the smartphone companies. And a widespread lack of quality, har)

@deathly_hallows

F'ckin A exactly! The worst thing ever to happen to the videogaming business model is the entired android/iphone/steam market.

People brag about buying alll the quality titles for next to nothing, then more than likely never playing 90% of them. Then, they expect the games they download, across all platforms to be dirt cheap. Hopefully, one day all those business models fail horribly.

At least I can feel good that I never have, nor ever will support any of those above mentioned platforms, regardless of the outcome.

@deathly_hallows

I guess it's safe to say you never buy used games or play free games because that wouldn't support the developer's hard work and creativity? Less than 10 years ago I hadn't seriously played PC games for a long time. I had a 360 and barely bought anything for it because the games were too expensive for me and I could have easily just gone Nintendo only. Steam and it's deals got me back into PC gaming and now I support the industry way more than I used to.

Meanwhile tons of evidence points to the fact that these lower price points get more people to buy the games and increase revenues. So the developers are happy, I'm happy, and you don't have anything to do with it.

And by the way, I always play at least one game from all the bundles I get. The rest are for a rainy day.

And how about you put some of your concern towards people who are paid less than minimum wage to manual labor in this country? Or how about the children working in sweat shops in third world countries? No, better use my money to support guys with fun office jobs who can make one game and get paid for it for life!

@DrFinkelstein

In the first area that you enter which you have to return to later to unlock the final room, there's a wall trick jump you can use to access a room you shouldn't enter yet. Doing so gives you access to a few minerals which sells for quite a bit and lets you upgrade your pickaxe so that you can dig waaay faster.

As for skipping upgrades, I'm honestly not sure if there's any that are worth skipping to save more time. I got everything and made note of which rooms had orbs as those are quite hard to find at times.

nate38 said:

Look what we have here! Fink probably wouldn't have bought SteamWorld Dig at full price. Now not only does Image & Form have his revenue from the discount, they also gained a customer willing to pay full price for the sequel!

That's totally true. As I work towards the end of this one, I am constantly wondering if they'll make a sequel. If so, I'll bite immediately.

gamewizard65 said:

At least I can feel good that I never have, nor ever will support any of those above mentioned platforms, regardless of the outcome.

Per nate38's point, in the end the developer gets nothing from you. Not full price. Not discounted. Nothing. If a game is only on the phones and/or Steam and you'd like it, you're missing out and so are they. You should consider looking into Steam. You know while they do have sales, they often (like right now) sell most games at their normal price. You could buy them then.

I totally see the concern here with the really cheap models of pricing but then again, some developers want that because as another person pointed out, while they might get only x amount of people at x price, they might get way more people at x-y. Y being the discount. Thus the end result is higher.

Plus another positive I could see in the good sales like Steam has is that someone could buy the game cheap for a friend of theirs. So I own Steamworld Dig not but if I saw it for half price or something, I might be inclined to buy it on a whim again for a friend just so they would pretty much be guilted into trying it. I'd do this because I love the game and want to spread that love. Around Secret Santa time a few weeks ago, I bought a ton of games I don't even give a shit about because I wanted to have some spare gifts for folks. The price was right where I didn't really miss the couple of bucks. So I could be charitable but also support developers and all for a reasonable dollar. I see that as a win-win-win. The other scenario would have been that I would have either bought less games as gifts or none at all. One regular priced game could have been as much as all the gifts I bought in their entirety. Thus that would have stifled the whole word-of-mouth kind of thing, which benefits the developer.

This is all kind of complex but personally I see Steam and their sales as totally justified, partially because of the quality of games they sell. Now on the Android Market and iPhone, 'almost anyone' can make a game it feels like and so you have a lot of shit out there for cheap that satisfies on a simple quick level but has no substance or is not worth more anyway. That market can kinda make things funky but in my opinion, gamers like us especially can tell the difference and our dollars speak for us.

@VofEscaflowne

There's a Steam achievement that rewards skipping/breaking two of the upgrades. I doubt I'll try to beat it again for a super short time just for the achievement, but I dunno maybe it'd be a fun attempt. Not really sure yet. I've enjoyed taking my time.

Completed! That was a fun fun ride! Took me eight hours and forty-nine minutes to complete my first run, but then again I am pretty sure I nabbed every last coin and orb (except for a few gems that got crushed).

I had $23,649 in gold, 197 orbs, and fully upgraded. I had four deaths but all were mere accidents as I was learning how the physics and game worked. Well wait, no the last one was a trap I fell for.

What fun that was. I know deathly put a thread way when this released on 3DS telling us about how much of a sleeper hit it was, but he wasn't kidding. It was awesome and I had no idea these past ten months.

This was a game I will remember for quite a while. The final boss battle was really cool too. Simple but totally felt right in the context of the game world. What a way to end it. I would have appreciated a bit more of a closure situation but at least we got to find out what happened to joe when he went into the mine. Poor bastard.

deathly_hallows said:

@nate38
Yeah for $0.99 you can buy 9,999 Steam games that you will never have to play and will just rot in your collection. Or for $8 you can buy a single amazing game, play it, have fun, support the developers, and support the 3DS.

Seriously WTF is happening to this world? Nothing has value now, no matter how good a game is it's only worth pennies because that's what Valve charges? I'm not 100% convinced this is good for the industry or for devs, not in the long run.

PS+ is just as bad, if Sony isn't careful gamers are going to just stop buying games on any PS platform, why pay money when you can wait 3 months and it's free?

It's a race to the bottom!

Hi guys, I'm one of the guys that made SteamWorld Dig - and new here, so bear with me. The race to the bottom is actually a huge problem for the game industry - it *does* hollow out the perceived value of games, and makes it hard for many developers to make a living - even ones that "deserve to survive." ;) At the same time, digital downloading is a revolution; so many copies of each game are being played these days, but it's also very hard to find nuggets in the dirt.

I don't believe that consumers are to blame for wanting to buy cheap, the fault lies rather with us spineless devs that don't dare to price our games appropriately. The first guy who decided to price his quality game at $1-2 should be found, put on trial - and found guilty. ;)

@imageform
I have nothing to say on this particular matter at the moment, but I want to say goddagens, and that it's great to see you guys fraternising with the fans like this. Makes me even happier about having bought SteamWorld Dig off the eShop. Looking forward to the next game.

@nate38
@DrFinkelstein

Agreed. Recent example; Steam: PixelJunk Eden doubles to-date income in 8 hours.

tl;dr: PixelJunk Eden goes on Flash sale (75% off) for 8 hours during Steam Holiday Sale. It more than doubles its to-date sales since the game arrived on Steam 2 years ago.

@imageform

Wow, did one of you guys just post here?

I have no problem buying games at a higher price when it means supporting devs that I feel deserve it. Too bad not everyone feels that way

@imageform

Could low price schemes cause long term problems with the industry? It's possible, but if it happens take it up with capitalism, where the developers are incentivized to worry about their personal profits over the overall marketplace and consumers are incentivized to save at any opportunity. Don't blame developers or consumers for just playing their part in the system rationally.

@New Forms

It didn't just double sales, it doubled revenues, despite the fact that they made a quarter on the dollar for each sale.

Jargon said:

@imageform

Could low price schemes cause long term problems with the industry? It's possible, but if it happens take it up with capitalism, where the developers are incentivized to worry about their personal profits over the overall marketplace and consumers are incentivized to save at any opportunity. Don't blame developers or consumers for just playing their part in the system rationally.

Thanks, that's simply put and true. And you know, I think the race to the bottom *does* cause long-term problems for the game industry. It's interesting to put it in a broader perspective like you do, I only have my own narrow field of vision. An aggressive Steam sale can make a game like PixelJunk Eden double its revenue, and that's good for both the developer and the consumer.

But I was thinking more of rock-bottom, the problem of F2P, when you don't have rebates in your arsenal - and which I believe are a direct consequence of us devs not charging what our games are worth. When you don't charge up-front for your game but rely on monetizing your consumers instead, other mechanisms come into play. Look at the App Store of today and where it's (been) going. There are lots of good games there already, but the top grossing charts are freezing up, and only 0.25% of the total App Store revenues go to newcomers - devs putting out their first title. Games become shops, and if you join the F2P race you will have to make fairly simple or "convenient" games, so that your players stay in the loop and don't jump to the next (also free) game when going gets tough. F2P has one fantastic advantage - it makes piracy less interesting, but more often than not, a game that costs $0 is perceived to be worth roughly just as much - not only in the eyes of a pirate.

If games cost nothing, we'll get a slew of them until we're fed up being collectors instead of gamers. Luckily this has only happened to Facebook, Android and iOS so far. And there's just no way that we'll see the same things happen to more traditional platforms, or...?

Oh brother, the ranting... sorry! Happy gaming everyone! :)

@imageform

Yea, F2P is a different can of worms for sure. It'll be interesting to see where things go with all this stuff.

Anyway welcome to the board, and congrats on making what is, by all accounts I've heard, an awesome game.

@Jargon

It very much is an awesome game!

@imageform

Welcome to Negative World! I'm not sure how you found us, or this thread in particular (Twitter maybe?), but I am delighted you came to discuss the pricing model with us.

Jargon said:

@deathly_hallows

I guess it's safe to say you never buy used games or play free games because that wouldn't support the developer's hard work and creativity?

I don't buy hundreds of games per year only to leave them unplayed in my Steam collection, I buy a relatively small number of games that I'm reasonably sure I will play to completion, therefor I don't mind paying $8.99 (I looked it up) for a fantastic eShop game that ended up being in my top 5 for the year. It's a different mentality.

imageform said:

I don't believe that consumers are to blame for wanting to buy cheap, the fault lies rather with us spineless devs that don't dare to price our games appropriately. The first guy who decided to price his quality game at $1-2 should be found, put on trial - and found guilty. ;)

Welcome, and true that! I realize it's sometimes a quick way for a dev to make a boatload of cash in the short term, but it's sets a terrible precedent. Gamers today seem to be willing to pay $50 for Mario 3D World or $60 for GTA but a game by a small indie developer on a digital distribution platform is by default only worth $1 or $2. I find that backwards, especially since it's often the "indies" who are making the most interesting games! Essentially we're telling the most creative and passionate developers in our industry that their games are relatively worthless compared to big-budget "AAA" titles that are in many cases designed by focus groups and meant to appeal to the lowest common denominator.

Also, I'm obviously a huge fan of the game, you guys rock keep up the good work!

nate38 said:

Look what we have here! Fink probably wouldn't have bought SteamWorld Dig at full price. Now not only does Image & Form have his revenue from the discount, they also gained a customer willing to pay full price for the sequel!

It's not my fault Fink ignored the other thread!

I told you guys to jump on this months ago! It's not like I was the lone freak in the wilderness either it's received high review scores and tons of praise from major outlets/podcast like Kotaku/Bombcast/Weekend Confirmed.

deathly_hallows said:

Jargon said:

@deathly_hallows

I guess it's safe to say you never buy used games or play free games because that wouldn't support the developer's hard work and creativity?

I don't buy hundreds of games per year only to leave them unplayed in my Steam collection, I buy a relatively small number of games that I'm reasonably sure I will play to completion, therefor I don't mind paying $8.99 (I looked it up) for a fantastic eShop game that ended up being in my top 5 for the year. It's a different mentality.

imageform said:

I don't believe that consumers are to blame for wanting to buy cheap, the fault lies rather with us spineless devs that don't dare to price our games appropriately. The first guy who decided to price his quality game at $1-2 should be found, put on trial - and found guilty. ;)

Welcome, and true that! I realize it's sometimes a quick way for a dev to make a boatload of cash in the short term, but it's sets a terrible precedent. Gamers today seem to be willing to pay $50 for Mario 3D World or $60 for GTA but a game by a small indie developer on a digital distribution platform is by default only worth $1 or $2. I find that backwards, especially since it's often the "indies" who are making the most interesting games! Essentially we're telling the most creative and passionate developers in our industry that their games are relatively worthless compared to big-budget "AAA" titles that are in many cases designed by focus groups and meant to appeal to the lowest common denominator.

Also, I'm obviously a huge fan of the game, you guys rock keep up the good work!

Thanks guys, great to be here! Really a lot happening on the Nintendo indie scene! :)

@imageform Hey welcome to the site! I guess you could say I run this place. Some of us are huge fans of indie gaming here, especially when it makes its way over to Nintendo platforms, so if you ever want to get on the podcast or something and talk about your game / being an indie developer / whatever else you feel like, just let me know, we'll make it happen.

Anyway, about the topic at hand, now that I'm getting deeper into indie game development myself TOP SECRET PROJECT and talking to a lot of the developers and such, I'm seeing that a bunch are worried about the pricing schemes on smartphones and even Steam and how it can devalue a great game. It's almost becoming a "given" now on smartphones that if you want your best chance of success you need F2P and a bunch of ways to milk the players through iaps once they have your game, but:

A. Not everyone, especially indie developers with a real sense of vision, wants to design a game around iaps, especially the most sinister iaps which are like anti-good-game-design

B. It's getting harder for a smaller indie developer to compete against some of these bigger F2P software houses that can release their halfassed games free and just advertise the F out of them

In fact, a lot of what I'm hearing lately is that the whole unknown indie developer making a successful iPhone game is becoming less and less a real possibility. There is just a glut of free games and the bigger companies are the ones who have the power to get people to notice their free game in the midst of the thousands of others.

On Steam you have a much better chance of selling your game for actual money, but even there it seems things are pushing towards the uber cheap to free model. Still, if you just want to make a normal game and not milk everyone with iaps, Steam is way better than the smartphone markets. You can actually change money upfront on Steam.

A lot of indie developers are now trying to find markets outside of smartphones and Steam. At the moment consoles / handhelds still allow for "traditional" (for lack of a better word) pricing schemes, but... that might be changing too.

My eyes kind of burn and are watery, lol. I just had lunch and then for the hell of it tried a speed run of the game.

Beat it in 2 hours 8 minutes. Nearly a quarter of my first run I finished last night. Then again, I didn't try to collect everything or whatever. Still, I feel damn good about succeeding to beat it that quickly, and with no deaths. I need to step away from the Mac. Completely immersed. I don't know where the time just went.