Are we paying more for less?

[Endoperez]

JaydedOne said:
I'm still trying to figure out what "less" is actually supposed to mean here. I'm not paying "more" to begin with. $54.95 is about standard median price between my XBox 360, computer and PS2 purchases. So I'm paying about average.

I think he refers to the other games in general, not to Dominions II. "More for less", or "more money for something that won't be as polished and bug-free and won't get its bugs squashed as quickly as a bigger company could make it happen".

"More" isn't about the starting price, but the price you can eventually buy the game at. I don't have any consoles, but I've understood that it's standard market practise for everything to considerably drop in price as time goes by, from consoles to games to accessories.
"Less" isn't about the improvements from DomII in this case, as far as I've understood Talleyrand's intent.

However, as other posters have noted:
1) Shrapnel Games does very good work in customer service, even though (or because?) they are a small company.
2) Dominions II was enjoyable for a long time, and Dominions 3 will probably be the same. The series beats many competitors in this amount, but as I haven't actually played many strategy games besides Dominions, I can't comment on that.

The manual is a hefty issue. I actually predicted this earlier in this thread. The manual lists summons, items and spells, and I understand it does this much better than Dominions II manual did. I understand it also offers simple strategies and playing hints and goes into more detaile when explaining the mechanics; could anyone who actually has the paper manual comment on this?
The game can be hard to get into. The manual makes it easier to get into the game, making more people who buy the game able to enjoy it. Perhaps it's better this way than if the game was sold without the manual, and people were left confused?



BigJMoney is right. The only troll in here is in Leif's avatar. I enjoy this discussion, even though there are too few people arguing against Shrapnel's policy to make this really enjoyable debate.

[Saxon]

Thank you to the kind poster who stated that Talley is not a troll. I thought twice about posting, as the bulk of readers are very much against him. However, I support Talley.

The discussion has focused on Dominions and could have included SEIV, which was another excellent game. The majority of buyers will agree they are excellent products and probably worth the price. With that said, despite owning Dom 1 and 2, I have yet to order Dom 3 and certainly refused to pre-order it. Why?

Shrapnel’s pricing policy applies to all their games; they keep prices high and rarely relent. I put my faith in Shrapnel and pre ordered Coliseum and bought the War Engine blind. The prices were high, but I figured Shrapnel only backed good games. I was wrong.

Some of the games are of very low quality and one of the recent releases is far outclassed by a freeware game in exactly the same niche. Yet the prices remain high. Essentially, Shrapnel uses the same strategy for all their games, regardless of the quality. I deeply honour their right to make money and wish them luck (due to their support of good games) but I do not trust them any more. I will wait until I am sure the game is good (as seen in the forums) and I have a chance to play the demo.

My second point has been touched on by others. Old games do go down in price on the market. Victoria, EUII, and Hearts of Iron are all games in a similar niche and all have their prices decline over time. I get similar replay value from them as I do from Dom II, yet got them at much lower prices. Paradox provides excellent patches and support, equal to or better than anything else on the market. Again, while I honour Shrapnel’s right to make money, my experience with the rest of the games market is that prices decline, no matter the quality of the product.

If Shrapnel can buck the market and make a living, well, good for them. That doesn’t make me approve of their pricing system or want to take part in it. From the good reviews of Dom 3, I will have a look at the demo and I might get the game. But the pricing model they use on all of their games ensures that I will think a lot harder about it than otherwise. Maybe I am that person right at the intersections of the pricing curve, the marginal one who will go either way. Or maybe my past experience of their pricing model has made me a much pickier buyer of their products.

[JPSeraph]

I still remember dishing out $80 for Dungeon Master on SNES and loving that game to death. So $55 doesn't seem like too much for a game - the first game in years - that really evokes that same sense of discovery and recaptures the joy of those early gaming experiences.

Most everything since the early days has been streamlined interfaces, pretty graphics, crap gameplay, and no actual improvement on the great ideas that were floating around not so long ago and seem all but lost in today's Hollywoodesque gaming market.

And then I stumbled upon Dominions a couple of months ago. $55 is nothing, and as so many have said, it's probably Shrapnel's optimal selling price.

I wouldn't pay $5 for Disciples 2 on Amazon, but I gladly paid $35 for Dominions 2 even knowing that Dominions 3 was just around the corner. That's value.

[DominionsFan]

JPSeraph said:

I wouldn't pay $5 for Disciples 2 on Amazon, but I gladly paid $35 for Dominions 2 even knowing that Dominions 3 was just around the corner. That's value.

Yep. Since Doms 3. is an unique game on the strategy market, I don't see any problems with the high price of the game.
Not to mention that I can tell you the same like JPSeraph.
I wouldn't pay 5 euros for NHL 07 for example, but I would glady pay 100$ for Dominions 3.

[marc420]

A couple of comments on this discussion ...

$55 is a very high price for a game. That price will certainly effect my decision whether to buy or not. Since I already own Dom2, much of my decision making will be whether the game is sufficiently better than Dom 2 to justify spending $55 to buy it, or if I'd rather not just fire up Dom2 and play it again.

Please don't tell me that this price is this high because of a manual and the decision to print it for each purchase. If that is the case, then Shrapnel really should offer two purchase options ... one with a printed manual, and one where the manual comes with the game in electronic form.

I would never ever buy a game because someone says there's a big thick manual. I've bought a lot of games in my life, and rarely is the manual even touched a week after buying the game. Regardless of the thickness of the manual, it has been a long, long, long time since I've seen one where the content justified paying much attention to it. Typically the content level of game manuals is extremely low.

An example of what I mean would be many, many pages devoted to such complicated and intricate topics such as pressing the button marked "New Game" to start a new game, pressing the button marked "Save Game" to save a game you are playing, etc. Usually the thickness of the manual comes from the fact that not only was text needed to explain these functions in depth, but screen shots are also required!

When someone tells me I'm paying $55 for a manual, I know from personal experience that I'm extremely unlikely to read it more than once, and that after a week it will be laying around my house unread. Eventually it will get picked up from the floor near the computer, where it will be sitting gathering dust and serving as a coaster, and be placed on a bookshelf.

Oh well, main reason I came here was to see if there was a demo out. I didn't know the price, but that makes it even more important for me to see the demo before buying. And like I said, the main question I'll have is whether its worth $55 to go from Dom2 to Dom3. And I'd have to say I'm starting out sceptical about that one.

And since Shrapnel has the policy of not lowering the price over time, then it means that if the game fails that test, then I'm unlikely also to buy it in the future. There is a certain logic in offering the game for a lower price as time passes after release. I may or may not feel the game is worth $55 to upgrade Dom2 to Dom3, but there have been many games I've bought for $9 or $19 later. It becomes a different decision at that price.

Oh well, this being a game message board, I'm sure I'll be flamed for daring to have my own opinions and judgements and for not just running lemming-like to give my money to other people.

And oh yeah, its pre-Christmas. Given the huge amount of junk pushed on the market by other game companies at this time of year (I'm not saying that this is true for this game, after all there's no demo to see yet), I've become very sceptical about buying any game that's released between now and Christmas. Its definitely the time of year to remind myself to go into "game buying quarantine" mode. And then just wait and see what's out and what state it is in.

The bean counters at any game company want games released and on the shelves by a certain date for this time of year. In some (ie, many) companies (maybe or maybe not these guys) that's been known to override any logical decisions about whether the game is really ready to release. By doing this, the game industry as a whole has made me very, very sceptical about buying any newly released game at this time of year.

[Endoperez]

marc420 said:Oh well, this being a game message board, I'm sure I'll be flamed for daring to have my own opinions and judgements and for not just running lemming-like to give my money to other people.

And oh yeah, its pre-Christmas. Given the huge amount of junk pushed on the market by other game companies at this time of year (I'm not saying that this is true for this game, after all there's no demo to see yet), I've become very sceptical about buying any game that's released between now and Christmas. Its definitely the time of year to remind myself to go into "game buying quarantine" mode. And then just wait and see what's out and what state it is in.

The bean counters at any game company want games released and on the shelves by a certain date for this time of year. In some (ie, many) companies (maybe or maybe not these guys) that's been known to override any logical decisions about whether the game is really ready to release. By doing this, the game industry as a whole has made me very, very sceptical about buying any newly released game at this time of year.

Very nice post. I certainly hope you aren't flamed, but I'm afraid your message will be flooded.

The Pre-Christmas release is also a good point. I don't think anyone else brought it up yet. I think many feel this is an extra Christmas rather than a great Christmas gift, though... In the materialistic sense of the word, of course.

[marc420]

With regards to music, I know of bands that made a great deal of money by letting music be downloaded or traded for free. Then they make their money by selling concert tickets to the people who liked what they heard.

Ever hear of the Grateful Dead? In terms of concert tickets, they were annually either the highest grossing band in the world, or very near the top of the list. At their peak, they could easily sell out 80,000 seat football stadiums for multiple shows several days in a row in the same city, with little or no marketing or advertising costs.

What they did was early on they decided it was perfectly ok for fans to bring recording gear to concerts and record their shows. And that as long as these recordings weren't being sold for money or profit, that it was perfectly ok for fans to share and trade these recordings. So these recordings always circulated amongst their fans, and to friends of fans as an introduction to their music. When Mp3 and the internet came along, they were all freely available there ... as long as the websited didn't charge for them. You couldn't even have advertising on your site if you had their music up there. But if you just put it up for free and weren't making any money from it, the band was very happy to let anyone do that.

They also always kept their ticket prices near the minimum possible price. For someone who bought tickets to different bands that came around, the Grateful Dead usually ran at about half to two thirds the price of other shows. And they've never hit the triple digit gouge pricing of other shows ... unless its a charity benefit and even then that price usually includes a reception with the band before the show.

All of this sounds counter-productive ... give your music away for free, price your shows as cheaply as possible instead of as expensively as possible. It sounds crazy ... until you see 200,000 fans all trying to get tickets in an 80,000 seat stadium ... and again with almost zero costs in local marketing or advertising of the show. Because of the decisions they'd made that seemed very counter-productive, about all they had to do was to rent the stadium and haul their gear and crew around. Set up to play, then watch the people flow in and the money hit the till. That, combined with the fact that they produced amazingly good music, made those guys all very, very wealthy. (they also kept most the middle-men out ... they either were their own concert producers\promoters ... or they worked with people they knew and liked in different cities. Even today, they are one of the very few groups of musicians that still own the rights to publish their own music as audio, video or sheet music.)

The middle-men part might be relevant to this discussion. Remember, there's two companies that need to try to make money from your Dom3 purchase, not just one.

Just a note that there are other models for making money out there rather than "grab as much money as possible on every transaction". Don't know if that applies here ... just adding some thoughts that came to me while reading the discussion above.

[DominionsFan]

Actually a couple of very good games will be released until X-mas. marc420, your statement is not very correct.

[Warhammer]

I agree, I have never bought a game just because it has a manual, but I have opted to not buy games because the manual was terrible. Shrapnel made a business decision and opted to print the manual. Also, there are costs that are associated with a digital release as well. Often times there are issues therein, which causes much more damage to the company than charging more for a regular release (I have been there with both SI Games and Stardock, luckily for them in both cases the games rocked after I got everything sorted out).

However, you mentioned something that is very smart. Wait for the demo, and then decide whether or not the game is worth $55. I played the Dom2 Demo recently and have been playing it to death. For me, the $55 is worth it because I do not have Dom 2. However, I can understand the debate if someone does own Dom 2 in waiting before they decide to drop $55 on a game. I love FM2006, but am probably going to skip FM2007 for the same reason.

Regarding the decision of Shrapnel to not reduce price on their games, it is a decision that is up to them. They have decided that their business model is best suited by not cutting price. Cutting price is typically indicative of a poor business model because you bought too much supply and must dump it to recoup some of the expense of making it.

[Gandalf Parker]

I wasnt sure why they didnt cut the price of Dom2 about 6 months ago. I think they could have benefited by cutting it down to almost production costs and building up the player base in preparation for Dom3.

But thats about the only point I can really concede on. Digital isnt ready yet, and Dominions is a major item for Shrapnel so I wouldnt experiment with digital on a Dom release.

As for costs, keep in mind that besides a profit for Johan and Kristoffer, Shrapnel needs to make a profit AFTER costs. Besides production costs Shrapnel has multiple employees. At least 7 that I know of and thats just department heads. Scott Krol is one that many dont know of but he does the PR releases. I set up auto-emails when things that interest me hit the newswires and Ive seen steady traffic concerning Dominions 3 and Rising Star. Scott is doing great work for the developers.

Also there are the servers. The ShrapnelGames main server, the ShrapnelCommunity one (these forums), GamersFront (the store), backups, mail, accounting.

Its not like its a 50 cent CD (as one person said). And its not greed. Read the "About Us" page on ShrapnelGames.com and get a feel for the companys direction.