Raising the price on indie games?

How much do they seem worth to you?

Recently I wrote an article about No Man's Sky launching in the $60 AAA range of retail prices. Its right here and if you haven't read it, now might be a good time as it holds some relevance to this new subject that's cropped up. I wouldn't be surprise if the timing wasn't just a coincidence to. The article was on publishers thoughts about raising indie prices, which of course 2/3rds of them said "yes" to... because these are publishers. The one team saying "nah" was a hybrid small developer that has made their own projects in addition to publishers and porting others. So I think I trust them as creators and marketers more so than T17 that... really hasn't done the best with their own franchises before turning to publishing others. However I'm getting ahead of myself. The question here is about the price of indie games. We live in a weird time where hating on AAA is popular yet we all buy and love to hear about them anyway, and glorifying indie games as something amazing is become very common. Its a huge part of what sold the recent consoles as well. So is there a reason we're still seeing them and expecting them around the $10-20 average range, or are they really ready to jump to higher costs? Well, I feel like the bad guy trying to say this, but I think there's some genuinely good reason to keep those games down in price.

Well okay so for starts let me say that for the most part, I look at games per value in mostly the same light. At face value, a game is a game, and so its up to whichever one is better. Nothing about and indie game is bad by just being labeled as an indie game. As a matter of fact if you really wanted to drag the subject out, I'd even say most of the indie label is a screwed up lie since many are in fact getting published by a publisher (I'm especially looking at you Journey). Its just a different and simpler process than say Ubisoft publishing a new Assassins Creed. The way I value a game comes down to two steps: Does it have something I want that much + how much was put into it. That last one is harder for people to comprehend, but the two are more attached than they seem. We already fuss plenty at AAA for making online only stripped games at $60 for the same reason. We should be seeing competitive prices, and you're not following that principle if you were to run off and make a unity minecraft game and sell it for $60. Its as I said in the No Man's Sky situation, if I feel your game didn't take as much work as a AAA game, I'm not going to expect to pay as much for it. So that already sets back quite a good number of indie games, since they can't slap together million dollar games out of thin air... and just as I also said in that article, I wouldn't necessarily want them to anyway. Now the first point was much easier to understand: Quality gameplay at a suiting price. Simple enough, so a "good" indie game can just rocket its price up, right? Well... let me twist the question around: How many indie games that you have, would you have paid $30-60 for - without playing them first? My answer:

• Serious Sam at $30 or $40. Especially if it came as the full franchise. Maybe this is a slight lie though, because in competition with everything around me, I found myself merely jumping on it during a humble bundle sale for the whole collection and paying less than $10. Still in theory, I'd put their worth around $40.
• Garry's mod at the same range, IF it came with all the prop content (which is probably not legally possible unless they worked something out with Valve).
• Does Shadow Warrior count as Indie? If so, yeah that works.

Yup, its a small list. Maybe that's because I just don't play a lot of indie games, nor have the high end PC for a big selection of the more expensive ones (Lychdom battlemage may be worth $30+ to me, but I knew it wouldn't run on PC, so we'll see what I do as it comes out later this month on PS4). Still this is my list of indie games I can think of that I've played, and saw enough potential in before-hand that I would pay high for them. I would love to put Torchlight 2 up there, but in truth there's no way I'd pay that much for an ARPG top-down game without any direct control (mouse click to move). That right there, is the track to my logic behind why this list is so barren.

You can kind of see it to. Serious Sam fits in more with the right side

That logic with Torchlight 2 expands big time to other games. Heck if I were to honestly confess now, I'm one of really many people who don't even buy most indie games at their standard price. Its because just about each and every one (even the "good" or "ground-breaking" ones) have some strange quirk about them. You're going to find some weird controls, some weird layout, some notable corners cut or short length, or maybe its in a genre that just plain isn't worth or needing full budget and big price treatment. I sure hope you weren't planning on selling me Never Alone, or Fez for $40+ for side-scrolling puzzles. Likewise as amazing, heart-felt, ground-breaking, and instant-classic lifting status as Journey raised I wouldn't have paid more than $20 for it because from the beginning it was marketed as minimalistic and short. If I hadn't known how beautiful it was going to be before-hand, you weren't going to convince me to pay a high price to take that kind of risk. The same applies to how many weird indie games do stuff like omit or change up such basic features. I held off on Tinker until it was $5 (technically less as a game, it was bundled) because it was riding off of 3D platformer fame without a JUMP button. Yes let me say that again, 3D platformer, no jump button, and oh yeah it had mediocre reviews to with universal dislike for its combat system.

That's not just Tinker though (which is still a fun game by the way), but games all over the place carry wacky traits like that. Sometimes it sounds amazing, as that's obviously why they're made to begin with. If I had a computer, I'd slap down money for Super Hot's time freeze gunplay. Likewise I'm sure platformer fans were foaming at the mouth with Fez's interesting premise. Then there's Crypt of the Necrodancer, which... you should just go and look up if you don't know it, its a crazy idea. However for people like that, there are also guys sitting off to the side questioning if that'll be the thing that kills the experience. You can't make them put down a lot of money without hearing of a sale, but they'll easily be persuaded by Uncharted 4 which they know if they like or not by now, has extras, multiplayer, and a lengthy campaign with fun challenges worth replaying it through. And you want to put Super Hot up to that? Its main premise is so alien, short enough that even fans question it at $20, and its minimalistic art direction is... well, minimalist. Yeah, no thanks to raising the price on that. $20 or even $15 is just fine right there. We're still talking about the "good ones" to. The lesser ones aren't so much about being different, but rather just being very cheap or smaller filler experiences. My key point is that you've got to remember these "amazing ideas" and experiences so unique within indie don't come free, like they do for the critics who hype them up as such. Its instead coming in at a price at the same time as more expensive games we already know we love and care about, and you're fighting to sell us on these weird and quirky tales made cheaper and shorter instead. So its natural to expect them to be cheaper. Those three games I listed, all had the one fact in common that they were so easy and familiar to understand and had the right kind of content, that by merely looking at them I may want them more than the typical market stuff. Plus, Shadow Warrior had a retail release, so that helps me want it.

A beautiful bullet hell, but still just a bullet hell game

Whenever I do find an indie game that is worth its price at launch, its usually there to suit me at that level. Its not too expensive for what its offering, has something about its presentation that grabs me, and has tolerable or even amazing sounding gameplay. However once again I will point you to that list of three if you ask me "what if it were priced higher?". Take for examples Stories coming up at the same time as R&C. As it is, I'm just one small step from pre-ordering it. I really am ready to just buy and tear into that game, and love it to bits. Every piece of it feels perfect from a premise standpoint as I've spoken of it before. You double its price to $30? Heh, looks like I got to re-check my savings and think about this some more. Maybe its a big game, and that's good... right? I better look up some stuff about it, form expectations, and analyze this game to make sure its the right type of game. Oh... I guess maybe X might impact the game badly. And the writing might fall short later. Oh, I see how this mechanic will play out, maybe I don't want that. Oh this preview guy said it was just "okay". You know, maybe I don't want this game so much anymore, and I'll skip on Lychdom as well because now I have to hold money back for when Stories goes on sale and I just don't know what'll happen. Ratchet & clank will be good enough for now. End of scenario.

See, we do this crap all the time when it comes to AAA because its high and expensive. We need a break from that nonsense. I thought we had the indie market there for us as a relief and breath of fresh air? I thought it was all about selling us cheaper more standout experiences, or passion projects, or weird niche things that appeal to us and we can just enjoy without worrying? Stories is all about that, fit perfectly for me, and I couldn't be more blindly and childishly excited for it as April 12th approaches and I can grab it for a comfortable $15. Its a game I can just be happy about for existing, rather than being frightened that I'll lose something by buying it. I got $20 on my PSN account now, and because I'll have a smooth $5 left over from buying it, I am encouraged to spend that leftover (+ probably a couple added onto it just to meet a price of the 2nd indie game) on another more cheaper indie game. See, now I've supported two indies for a cheaper price instead of avoiding two because of one of their costs

Even looks like a graphic novel I'd buy in an instant!

In the end though the true answer to the situation stays ambiguous and probably ever-changing. Indies aren't technically held back by anything that I'm aware of. They can set their price models, their content, and usually give away free stuff but they can charge for that too. Its just that those prices need to suit the worth. I don't think No Man's Sky will be worth $60 as I already went over, so I'm not buying that. I don't think hardly any of the indie games I've gone into would have been worth that much to me. But if you think you've got hot-stuff, give it a try. The Witness didn't do but too bad at $40 despite the super niche product and high piracy rate. You just need to really know your market, and your own product's value. In the end I suppose publisher Rising Star's Mathers was at least half-right on his poorly worded observation. It is a buyer's market, and you're competing for people to buy your project above all others and pricing it to their expectations. That's not "entitlement" though, that's called freedom and capitalism. You can't force us to buy your games at a ridiculous price, sorry your feelings are hurt about that Rising Star.