On Braid and Pricing

Putting it down to people being “cheap” is idiotically simplistic. It varies from game to game.

Take Greydog games, like WMMA, Total Extreme Wrestling etc… They go for $30 or higher. I personally don’t consider them worth even a third of that. The interface is archaic and clunky. Well, there’s a lot of issues, but that’s for another time.

On the other side I paid $10 for Audiosurf. I would have gladly paid $30. In fact I was shocked it was ONLY $10!

It has nothing to do with cheapness, and everything to do with relative worth to the individual. People just throw out the “people are cheap” nonsense because they’re unable or unwilling to form a coherent, deeper opinion. No, much easier to just throw out petty insults and make yourself look unintelligent.

You’re all missing the point: Braid should’ve been released for free and made its money selling virtual hats!

15 bucks for a good game?
HELL NO!!
I’m goin out to buy Halo Wars for 50 dollars!

I dont think xbox live is the right venue for indie games. I mean, just the fact that it’s called an arcade gives the impression that all the games on there are short little, throw-aways. People just buy games on there for shits & giggles. If they want a ‘real’ game, they’ll just buy Halo 3. That kinda mindset’s a real bitch.

Won’t be buying Braid for 1200 points when Castle Crashers is just around the corner and Bionic Commando is here next week for 800 points.

Braid didn’t impress me.

I really think the pricing fervor is one of those thing that will die down after a few weeks, and currently it’s kind of masking the significance of everything else about the game.

This is a project done by two guys that is getting some of the most positive critical reaction by gamers and the game press that I can remember. This only bodes well for the medium, and the potential for one or two man games to get the kind of exposure acceptance as a commercially produced title on a large scale.

I can’t believe this is even an issue. I assume that most people here enjoy the freedoms provided by a society driven by a(n) (apparently) market economy. One of the rules in that market is consumers vote with their dollars. Think it’s not worth $15 bucks Stfu and don’t buy it. Think it’s worth $15 bucks? Stfu and pay for it! That’s how trade works!

Judging by the fact that there is even a discussion around this issue, it seems there are apparently people out there who think its both worth $15 bucks and not worth $15 bucks. To these people I say “grow the fuck up” and “be greatful the fact that the game was completed and is here for you to play”

I’m surprised no one’s mentioned this yet…

The decision of price – especially when it comes to anything in the entertainment industry – is “what they think they can get away with.” For example: Patapon was full price in Japan but a budget priced game in the US, as the publishers did not think people would understand it as well, so they did this to lower the entry barrier. Psychologically, people will expect a game to be crap if it’s too cheap, and this can negatively affect sales as well.

The simple fact that this controversy exists at all proves that a poor judgment was made on how much they could get away with for a modern 2d platformer on a console system, despite how good it is and despite how much work and love went into it. Price has everything to do with expectations, platform and marketing and nothing to do with quality.

(This also explains why there are so many horrible, yet fully-priced licensed games.)

Damn it, so I’m gonna have to pay 5 Dollars more for BC:R! 5 Dollars!

Hehe sorry, I couldn’t resist. But I’m actually looking forward to that, likely my first purchase via Steam.

Sorry for the double post, but consider this: if Braid was a DS game and it was $15, everyone and their grandmothers would be running out to buy it.

As someone on GameFAQs said: “I wouldn’t complain about the price of the Mona Lisa just because there isn’t much to look at.”
(Yeah, that’s an exaggeration, but it gets the point across.)

I don’t know (or particularly care, since I don’t own a 360) whether Braid’s worth the money.

But I just wanted to say that the duration of enjoyable play time is [i]one[/i] perfectly valid metric for evaluating the monetary value of a game. Games vary in both second-to-second enjoyment and sustainability of such a degree of enjoyment that the time investment of playing it is worthwile. Consider Manhunt, a simple field game (started in Canada I believe) I played as a kid in the UK. One individual starts as the hunter, and tagged (or tackled in my favourite variant) players become hunters themselves. The winner is the last non-hunter player remaining. It was invariably great fun. Although the enjoyment was often low-level because of the large degree of stealth involved, each game seemed worthwile regardless of length, and I played it numerous times without becoming bored. There was an inexhaustable amount of possibility despite the simple mechanics.

Compare that to snowball fights. They’re usually pretty exhilirating, but the possibilities dry up pretty quick; I can’t imagine playing a single match for more than a few minutes. Neither can I imagine having them multiple times in a single winter. I guess some people prefer to play many games even if each never please for long, and others would rather cling to a precious few that always stay [i]somewhat[/i] fresh. Which is “better”?

@Flamebait: We played that game, lions and antelopes we called it. It got banned on account of a few broken bones. Good times.

I bought Braid before trying the demo. Ive played through world 3 and 4, and I am enjoying it. Its like a cross between super mario and proffesor Layton. The problem with replay value and puzzle games is that the fun in the game is figuring stuff out on your own. Once you figure it out, its not fun anymore. Its limiting in terms of traditionally marketable replayability, but it sure as hell gets talking. So it could be argued that the extent of the game goes beyond the actual game, kinda like portal did. Naval gazing aside, its a fun game and worth 15$.

If you are a poor student gamer, what are you doing purchasing new games anyways. Don’t you gotta study?

Flamebait, that comparison doesn’t work. Snowball fighting isn’t a game; there’s no real rules, no way to “win”.

I agree 100& with Paul Eres – I just can’t see how there’s supposedly so much replay value in SoTN. Now don’t get me wrong, it was still a fun game to play, AT FIRST.
If that’s the kind of “replay value” that we’re looking for, should FFVII be priced “over 9000 dullahs & your mutha”, becouse the massive amounts of random encounters and raising up your stats by looking for them, hours and hours of text on the screen, the battle animations you can’t skip, and the game takes a quite a bit of time to complete anyway.. Hey wait did I have fun when I played that game? god!? fuck, no!
To me 15$ isn’t bad at all compared to that – NO, I don’t want to play a game that lasts forever.
And to compare prizes most FPS games are more expensive and last as little during singleplayer-campaing or in end drag and become over-repeatitive. They have the multiplayer though so I forgive them for now… Except for you HALO.. ..BAD HALO! BACK TO THE CORNER!

OH PLEASE guys, if you don’t want to spend 15$ it’s ok, but FUCK DAMN IT don’t try to say stuff like “it’s too short for 15$” because a game value is not on how much walking beetween an interesting point and another they throw on a level… there are plenty of crappy long games out there, spend 30$ on one of these and be happy

Four damned fun hours for $15 represents good value for money. If you spend less than four hours playing a single game you are either a god or have the attention span of a gnat and deserve only to watch mindless daytime television for the rest of your miserable unfulfilled lives.

Perhaps it’s a bad example but isn’t that missing my point somewhat?

“Braid… seems to me to not be at all about replayability, and some people seem to put that very strongly in their equation of how much a game should cost. I think that’s what we’re used at, as we were brought up by escapist-sub-hollywood-movie-style- vicarious-living videogames where the point is “for how long can I get away from reality with it before tedium sets in””.

The obvious way to interpret those words is that the motive behind considering replay value important is to achieve the greatest duration of escapism possible. What exactly is “escapism” anyway? In SimFarm players manage a farm, is that “sub-hollywood-movie-style”? In fact, *any* game where the mechanics are based on a more or less unadulterated real world could be considered “escapist”, and you can’t even begin to argue that all such games are bad in themselves or for the medium. Consider that players are only engaged by realistic games because they represent a part of reality unexplored by these individuals, or allow experimentation that’s immoral, impractical, and that carries grave consequences in real life; they’re fundamentally based partly in “escapism” as they avoid the mundaneity of day-to-day life. I know you never explicitly stated anything contrary to what I’m arguing, but you *did* make the associations “replayability->escapism; escapism->bad”.

To answer your question, I can’t say for certain because I stopped reading heavily several years ago. But I don’t think I’d purchase a book, partly on account of the highly limited time of enjoyment I would get out of the deal. Even when I did read it was books people gave me, books I borrowed, books from the library, books at other people’s houses… Anyway, I’ve found that aside from entertainment, books provide ideas that make up the author’s belief system, which they try to instil in the reader. I find absolutely nothing wrong with that; an important aspect of our species has been the exchange of complex ideas since the beginning. But to *pay* to listen to someone on a soapbox seems pretty ridiculous to me. I’d play Braid for the entertainment and ideas, but only pay for the former.

*Kongming*: plenty of electronic games don’t have victory conditions either. Are they not actually “games”? And there are unwritten and unspoken rules in snowball fights: players throw only snowballs, not heavier objects; and often it’s played in teams. Besides, you could replace “snowball fights” with any real-world game, the argument wouldn’t change.

*Eclipse*: not all highly replayable games achieve it by such cheap means. And not everyone is arguing that “Braid would’ve been better value if it was longer”, did it occur to you that some people just think “Braid is too short for the money”? There’s a huge difference.

I spend $15 a day on cigarettes alone.

If you got all of the puzzle pieces in an hour and a half, that’s incredible.

This is a well known pricing phenomenon. People use ‘expected’ prices for commodity disposable media (like movies, music and most single player games). At some point historically the price is set, either by an industry consortium, a service provider or heaven forbid, the free market. At this point, the consumer feels like the producers have made a promise to them. “X value for Y dollars”. Each game they purchase that follows this pattern reinforces the value promise.

When a product is priced higher than the average, consumers feel betrayed. It is like you’ve been paying $10 for a hit of heroin and then your dealer raises the price to $15. Such greedy behavior is naturally seen as outrageous by some buyers. It is an emotional, not logical reaction and you can’t argue with it.

Now, this all puts content producers in a bind since it gives them zero pricing power. They can only have one price and they can’t easily adjust higher or lower.

When you only have a single price, you lose a lot of money. If you price a game at 15 dollars, you lose everyone who would have paid up to 14 dollars for the game. You also lose the the additional money from the people who would have paid more than 15 dollars.

So the mere fact that you have to set a single price point is screwing you out of cash.

Most consumer products don’t carry a single price. Instead they have price tiers. Take spark plugs. You can buy the el cheapo spark plugs, the ‘standard’ spark plugs, or the ‘advanced’ spark plugs. The first one is cheap, the second one averages cost, and the last one is surprisingly expensive. Consumers will self select which tier they want to buy into. The result is that you capture more dollars overall. You get the cheapskate’s cash, you get the average joe’s cash and you get the rich man’s cash.

Tiered pricing has some interesting side effects. It turns out that most people judge prices relative to one another, not by some objective scale. If they see those three sparkplugs, they’ll have a natural aversion to the extreme ends of the pricing scale. So most people will end up purchasing the one in the middle.

One of the problems with being a 1200 point game on a system where most comparison products are 800, is that you are at the extreme end. They need some 2400 point bundles to make Braid look reasonable.

What does this all mean for something like games?
– You could release multiple price points, a basic version, a standard version and an advanced version. Give them different prices. You’ll make more money than if you just had a single price product.
– Price the middle tier higher than the expected price. For example, basic = 19.95, standard = 24.95, and advanced = = 34.95. A surprising number of people will spring for the 24.95 version.
– Experiment with pricing. You are goddamn indies and you have the power to set the right price for your game. Just because the giant mega portals have a once size fits all pricing policy, doesn’t mean that you can’t try something different on your website. Why be pricing sheep?

So who is doing this right now? I know of at least one group of highly profitable independent 3rd party game developers that have already broken out of the standardized pricing trap set by portals and game services. Any guesses who they might be?

Think Puzzle Pirates. They are run free-to-play MMOs funded by microtransactions. Think about it.
– Complete power to set prices. You want a $10,000 wedding package? Done.
– Pricing tiers. There are thousands of prices on virtual goods. People can pay as little as they want or as much as they want.

It’s that ‘other’ billion dollar game industry that is growing at rates that make the console and PC retail market look like a bunch of US automakers.

take care
Danc.

If the game had been longer, it might have become repetitive. No indie game deserves to be like PSU single-player.

“Still haven’t been convinced by anything anybody has said. I played through the Trial again just trying to get some sort of buzz that some people are feeling but it’s not there.”

I don’t think anyone’s trying to say that if you don’t like it, you should spend $15 on it. If you don’t like a game, you shouldn’t play it even if it’s free. :)

Comments: tl;dr. Doubt most of them even are remotely interesting.

The game looks awesome. Makes me wish I had a 360. It’s also quite hilarious that people start pissing everywhere over 15 bucks. Fifteen god damned bucks… man…

Flamebait, no, those are not, technically speaking, games. There’s a reason we call that kind of software sandbox games. You may want to avail yourself of a dictionary and some game theory books; rules and victory conditions are not exactly contested as qualifiers for “game” status.

Also, given all the times I’ve had massive chunks of ice thrown at me in a snowball fight or been attacked by my erstwhile teammates, I wouldn’t say snowball fights have any unspoken rules. Even if they *did*, it still doesn’t change the fact that there’s no way to win. It’s like splashing somebody at the swimming pool.

Finally…
“Besides, you could replace “snowball fights” with any real-world game, the argument wouldn’t change.”
I’m not going to make your argument for you. How could I, when I think it’s wrong? You’ll have to come up with an actual game to use as an example on your own. Good luck with that, because I don’t think you’ll be able to.

Uhh… Aquaria’s not an XBLA game.