Sol_HSA wrote:petri wrote:Thanks guys for your support and kind words but we want as many people to play our game as possible so the game will be cheaper than a full priced AAA game.
Soo.. from a quick glance, "full priced AAA game" is 59,99e on steam.. 58e then?
Personally, I'm always afraid my friends under-price their games, but I totally see ~60e being far too high price.
60e? Are you kidding? Even half of that would be too much. Steam is not a place that encourages highly priced out-of-the-bushes indie releases.
What we're looking at with LoG is basically:
- A small four-man team of professionals
- They have very limited resources and visibility as of now
- Little to no marketing or advertising (see above)
- Roughly 8 months of work I think (which is reasonable enough, but just a comparison to most AAA games that are developed for 2-4 years)
- Only viral marketing through their website and youtube page, with some word of mouth
- It's their first release (and this is why you have to be so careful with it! It's your future, your bloodline, it's your everything so far!)
- Reviving a genre that has been out of spotlight for years
As you can imagine, putting the game with a price of 59,99e on Steam would be crippling to their company. Kind of like shooting yourself in the leg. With a price like that, their only target would be us, their niche in the market, the old school RPG fans and people who love dungeon crawlers. I don't think that's enough to guarantee their survival as an enterprise.
Okay, so Valve owns Steam, right? Therefore they decide who gets to shine brightest. It's their service, so of course they can do that. They can make your game disappear from the radar completely if they want to. They also have the power to make you the center of attention. And that's what everyone aims for.
Valve has many marketing specialists monitoring Steam, and if you want their attention, you need a game that has the potential to sell. An indie game, or for that matter ANY game that is not made by one of the industry giants, with skyhigh price would NOT sell very well. Relying on a niche market on a place like Steam would be pointless; the specialists would simply scoff at something like that and bury your game somewhere deep, where no man can ever find it again.
Give them, both the customers and the rest of the gaming industry a good impression. Be modest and reasonable, give your product a sensible price. Unlike many people might think, luck isn't always everything in the industry. It isn't about gambling. This is all stuff that you have to be careful and rational with, because honestly, there's no use digging your own grave.
