This is quite an interesting topic, especially as we are struggling to get players ourselves, but I have to disagree with a few of the points you made marmin.Originally Posted by marmin
Well --
To charge money for a game, it has to be:
= totally bug free
= has good documentation
= really fun to play and has decent graphics.
= not too difficult, not boring after a few plays.
even then, I would not charge more than let's say 6 or 7 euro's.
I've seen lots of Indy games who charge $19.95 and are esssentially clones of old games. i have nothing against this, all games nowadays are clones of old games in essence. The buyer must get the feeling that is has taken a lot of work and is not a rip off.
Only if one is a genius in Advertising on ecna pull the trick and let people buy it.
How much would you pay for an indie game? discuss.
Firstly, 'bug free'. I have yet to play a PC game that has been bug free on release. Providing paying customers have an easy update method that doesn't take days to download patches, bugs in the initial release shouldn't present a problem. Personally, I'm far more forgiving of bugs in indie games, simply because of the scale of the project compared to the big guns like Valve for example. That said, I don't object to patching (I have a nice fast connection), but I do object if the patch breaks things, like save games as has just happened when I patched Painkiller.
My second major disagreement is with the statement about the game being really fun to play and having decent graphics. The first part, I absolutely agree with, but decent graphics do not make a good game. They can help if the game itself is lacking, by adding the wow factor. But as far as graphics quality is concerned I'd say your view on this depends largely on your age. If you were raised on 8 bit classics such as the Atari, Spectrum and Commodore 64, then personally I think you're decision to buy is less likely to be swayed by swanky graphics as you'll be able to remember when having 16 colours on screen was a major achievement. Classic or retro style games can be amazing when they are done with modern techniques.. Pom Pom Games springs to mind.
Your last point... not too difficult, not boring after a few plays... I would say this depends on the game and your target audience. I for one wouldn't play a game again that I could complete without really stretching myself. I'll use HalfLife 2 as an example. I'm currently on my third run through. The first time, I started on medium difficulty, got a feel for the controls and the environmental factors, then restarted on hard and completed the game on hard. Now I run through on easy, just for the fun of it, and it still spooks me out and catches me unawares in the same places.
As for price, I'm a strong believer in low level pricing. One of the reasons I believe piracy is so rampant is the sometimes extortionate prices charged by publishers, that said, the price should reflect the amount of work thats gone into the game. I had no objections to paying top whack for HalfLife 2 for example, simply because of the time its taken, the amount of work and the expectation that it was going to be amazing based on playing the original HalfLife, but theres no way I'd pay that for an indie game, without first being able to play a good sized demo. If it wowed me, I'd pay. If not, I wouldn't. But pricing, like many other aspects of marketing will need to be determined by the demographics of the target audience. Younger players for example may not have as much spare cash and as such, are more likely to pirate the game, than say someone like me who has a full time job.
Ultimately, much of how you advertise and market your game will depend on your target demographic, which may itself depend on the type of game. Younger people will, IMHO, be swayed by fancy graphics, Dolby x.y surround sound, whereas people of my age are more likely to be swayed by a game that offers a serious challenge and good solid gameplay/storyline, and this should be reflected in your advertising/marketing strategy.
One option for advertising, especially in a community such as this, is banner exchange. We will all get slightly different demographics as far as our website visitors are concerned, so maybe we, as a community should get our heads together and advertise our products on each others sites. This could be done with a simple static page, or it could be done with a banner ad system, that rotates the ads automagically.
The other key option is print advertising in gaming mags... something which many of us on our own, may not be able to justify, but again, what about a collaborative effort. A bunch of peeps club together and buy an ad space and present an ad featuring their products. Of course, mags present another oppourtunity... reviews, but then this could also be achieved with a community effort. I'm sure many peeps have personal websites... some of which will be linked to their 'business' sites. We could collaborate as a community to write real reviews of each others products.
Of course, depending on the type of game, you could get mentions on websites. MPOGD for example, if the game is on-line and has multiplayer capabilities. When we were listed, they were perhaps our biggest referrer outside our own websites.
The one thing you absolutely cannot rely on, as we have found, is word of mouth, but that may just depend on the type of game. We're at a sticky point because we want enough players to make the game interesting, but we're finding that peeps aren't telling their friends about the game until they've played it, so we're in a catch 22. But even when the game was running, we never achieved more than a trickle of new players... why, because we didn't advertise. We simply couldn't afford to and this is where the big guns have the upper hand.
Another factor that is adversely affecting the ability of indies to get their games onto store shelves is the disappearance of the indie game stores. They are all big stores, owned by big companies, and trying to get a product on their shelves is quite difficult as we found with PC World.
Overall, at this time, the traditional retail delivery of games, IMHO is the exclusive realms of the big guns, simply because they have the financial muscle to effectively control what stores put on their shevles. For indies like us, the best way to get your product to the customer is posisbly on-line delivery via a company that doesn't want to charge you masses of money for the privilege. In terms of advertising, a collaborative effort is possibly the way to go. Stick banners for all our products on all our sites and/or get together and buy some ad space in a big gaming mag.
Didn't expect to write that much, but thats my personal take on the situation regarding marketing and advertising.
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