i am noky these are my random musings…

The Price of Gaming: Noky Tackles the Recent Chatter

There has recently been a lot of talk about pricing in the casual gaming market. I think it's a fair topic to discuss, however I think things are being blown out of proportion.

Lets tackle the first article from Make It Big In Games.

Jeff Tunnell makes a lot of good points throughout the article. The market seems to be more receptive toward games at lower price points. However, I think where he gets a bit "delusional" (and I use that word very loosely) is when he considers the idea of successful games emerging at ridiculously low prices of under $4. Quality innovation does not happen at that low of a price point. I believe you would have to move too many units to generate a profit. I can't even begin to generate hypothetical numbers but I would imagine you'd have to move near to 100,000 units just to pay yourself a reasonable salary. Of course the problem gets worse as the price point drops.

"In this market, the right price for a game is $0, and I believe that is where all game prices are heading."

Free games? Not profitable from a current distribution standpoint. The main way free games generate revenue is through advertising which usually happens by driving site traffic and getting banner impressions. In-game ads are an option but is that where we want to take gaming? A glorified billboard? I'll pass thank you. I'm not adamantly against any sort of advertising in-game but in order to pay for development it would have to a lot more significant that I'm willing to accept at this point in my life. Maybe my mind will change with age.

So the future of casual gaming is a bunch of competing ad-machine portals? Instead of buying seperate consoles we buy seperate portal subscriptions? Looking at the console situation now, I'm going to have to say I doubt it'll turn out that way.

I think in order to understand Mr. Tunnell he should propose how the industry could posssibly survive at these price points. Developers don't necessarily want to charge as much as possible, they really just want to eat a good meal at the end of the day. Supply and demand is a nice way to reason but there are too many assumptions made with that model in order for it to be the end all of an argument. This market is not perfectly competitive.

Next up: Maciej Biedrzyeki of Code Minion.

Now, this post is already a bit long but I'm going to try and be concise here.

Basically, he tackles the argument just like I do: questioning the survival of developers. However, he has a couple of troubling notes.

"Additionally the games could be shorter – who has the time and money to
create long games with 10+ hours of gameplay and sell them for less
than 10 USD?"

No one does. You create your game with 10+ hours of gameplay and then you sell it for 20 USD. How does that work? Because not all games are created equal. As long as the game is worth the investment, people will pay. It's when prices are hiked to that upper tier that they become a problem. Premium content will always exist and it should be priced with a premium.

In the same vein, Maceij calls for standards in pricing. In a way, I agree there needs to be some agreement of pricing levels but they need to have their disparity. Larger budget and scope games should be priced higher. Then again, that's why the distinction between AAA titles and casual games exist. So just between casual titles, there should be some sort of understood price points. That kind of gets in to price fixing so I'm not sure I'm completely convinced but right now it sounds like a good idea.