Are we paying more for less?

[Caduceus]

Let's try his tactic. How many "discount" games do you buy a year? How many of those are you still playing three years after its release?

If you put $5 in a jar each month instead of buying a $20 disposable title-of-the-month and then dropped the $55 on Dominions 3 in a year, you'd have $185. You can tweak these numbers any way you want, of course. But, I think most of us are tired of getting burned with flash-in-the-pan games.

[NTJedi]

Caduceus said:
But, I think most of us are tired of getting burned with flash-in-the-pan games.

I completely agree... within the last 2 years so many games blazingly advertise their great graphics yet when playing the game or the demo it becomes clear the game has very little content, replay value, artificial intelligence and/or stability(bugs). Just taking a glance at screenshots from gamespot.com so many games just advertise their graphics... so pathetic.
The dominions series may not look fancy on the outside but under the hood it's got power.

[Theonlystd]

Warhammer said:

That's their loss then. Some people refuse to buy games, or refuse to buy undiscounted games, etc. That is their own decision and you can't reduce the price of your good to appease a small fragment of your customer base.

There not a majoirty.. But there not a tiny minority either...

Caduceus said:
Let's try his tactic. How many "discount" games do you buy a year? How many of those are you still playing three years after its release?

If you put $5 in a jar each month instead of buying a $20 disposable title-of-the-month and then dropped the $55 on Dominions 3 in a year, you'd have $185. You can tweak these numbers any way you want, of course. But, I think most of us are tired of getting burned with flash-in-the-pan games.

I have Eu2,Crusader Kings,Hoi,Hoi2,Victoria



I only payed more than 20 for one of them


Pic up the Civ games as discount also... The vast majority of the games i buy are at 20 dollars.. By time the game gets down to 20 i'll have a good idea at the quality of the game and it'll be decently patched up



The only reason i've got dominion is cause sadly i know they'll prolly never significantly lower the price.. And this is just the kind of game im always looking for and know that illwinter will come threw with the patchs.

But i doubt most poeple will have the same kind of hankering for this type of game as i do.. Or as know the kind of support illwinter will give

[Leif_-]

Talleyrand said:
I was torn by the desire to support an independent developer and publisher making good strategy games, but also not feeling the parties were justified in charging so much for their product: a product with such poor production values.

In the realm of information-based products (books, movies, music, computer games) as opposed to products that are primarily physical (cars, refrigerators, danish pastries), there is hardly ever any connection between production values and price. You don't pay less to see "The Blair Witch Project" than you do "Star Wars Episode III", even though the first movie had almost no budget or special effects. Production value in these fields are used to attract a greater number of customers, rather than to excuse a higher price.

So I would check in every couple of months or so just to see if Shrapnel had lowered the price, so I could finally purchase it. Did they ever lower it? No, and now Dominions 2 has disappeared from their online store, to be replaced by the even more expensive Dominions 3.

I genuinely want to understand this. Practical business says that you charge what the market will bear for your product. Demand is higher upon initial release so you are justified in charging a higher price, but after some time you try to cater to those customers who were on the fence and will only purchase the product when the price comes down.

There are two reasons why normal games are sold at a refund after a while. The first is that their perceived value in the market has gone down, because newer and, in theory, improved games have entered the market at their old games. Who'd buy a one year old copy of Generic FPS for $50 when they instead can by the recently released Quarter Life II for the same price?

Dominions, however, is a niche game and only competes with other games in the niche, so this effect is pretty much non-existant. The number of out-of-niche games that's been released since the first publishing of Dominions II doesn't affect its perceived value at all, and the number of in-nice-games that's been released over the last three years is quite small and not really significant.

The second reason why normal games are sold at a discount after a while is because they're sold primarily through brick-and-mortar shops who need to shift stock and maximise the use of their shelf space. After a while a store will sell a game for no gain, or even at a loss, just to free up stock space for newer, more profitable games.

Shrapnel, being an exclusive web-shop, doesn't have to worry about that. They don't need to get Dominions II out of the building to make room for Horse and Musket, so they have no reason to settle for a low or even negative profit per sale.

I as a perspective customer am stuck with the dilemna of wanting to play a strategy game with lots of depth and choices, but not feeling the production values warrant a $55 price tag. Am I alone?

No, of course not. A lot of people will feel that the game doesn't warrant its price tag. But that's always the case. The optimal price in a supply/demand graph will always leave some fraction of people feeling it's too expensive. For some products it will even leave the majority feeling it's too expensive.

The question isn't so much whether there are people who feel the price is excessive, as whether this is the price that maximises the total profit. It might not be; Shrapnel might have made a mistake with their pricing, but I don't think there's any reason to suspect that's the case.

[DominionsFan]

Actually I've seen many people arguing about the price.
My opinion is this:

- Dominions 2 was the best turn based strategy, what was ever created. This is not just a subjective opinion. Everyone who took a look at the game was like "wow! fantastic gameplay!" I remember, that when I introduced this game to my mates here, they were like "Eh? What is this? Look at this graphics!" Then I invited them to take a look at the game on my comp. They loved it. After that point they didn't care about graphics. The gameplay and the complexity of the game sucked them in. There are so many different strategies available, that the game never became boring for us.
Dominions 3. will have many new additions. Also don't forget that the developer support is excellent. Basically they try to add everything what is possible. They care what the fans are saying.

- The price might be high. Now this is a bit subjective thing if you ask me. 60$...seriously this is nothing for a game like this. I was paying many hundreds of dollars for paint programs. Dominions is a special game for hardcore strategy fans. If you don't want to pay 60$ for the best turn based strategy game..what can I say? It's a big fault.
I can understand that some people or families don't have too much money [I think B0rsuk mentioned that he earns 330$/month for example, and that is really like nothing], but somehow everyone can spare 60$ I guess, to buy this awesome game.
What can you buy for 60$? You can't even buy a mediocre quality bottle of whiskey.

[Leif_-]

Speaking of Dominions3 costs... is it really worth it ?

It is for me, but it might not be for you. There's really no other answer than that.

[Warhammer]

Endoperez said:

He is arguing that it is more than just a small fragment of the customer base. There probably are many people who weren't sure about whether they should buy Dominions II or not. The fact that Dominions 3 has a hefty and pricy manual might actually make them even more wary, especially as DomII manual wasn't that great. I hope I never have to decide about marketing. It seems to be very complicated business.

Unfortunately, the actual customer base for Dom3 is much smaller than the typical game market. Most of the top selling games are sports sims, not strategy games. On top of that, this is a turn based strategy game, so you have lost the RTS players, etc. Not only that, but you only have sales through online sources, which reduces your customer base even more due to customers not knowing about the product, etc.

Now, once you figure out who your core customer base is, you have to figure out how much you can charge, and given what our likes and dislikes are, $55 is a fair price. Even if you lower the cost to $40, you are not going to sell enough copies to make up the loss in sales that the $15 drop in price will result in.

I'm in marketing so I understand all this stuff!

[Endoperez]

Endoperez said:
He is arguing that it is more than just a small fragment of the customer base. There probably are many people who weren't sure about whether they should buy Dominions II or not. The fact that Dominions 3 has a hefty and pricy manual might actually make them even more wary, especially as DomII manual wasn't that great. I hope I never have to decide about marketing. It seems to be very complicated business.

Warhammer said:That's their loss then. Some people refuse to buy games, or refuse to buy undiscounted games, etc. That is their own decision and you can't reduce the price of your good to appease a small fragment of your customer base.

Warhammer said:Unfortunately, the actual customer base for Dom3 is much smaller than the typical game market. Most of the top selling games are sports sims, not strategy games. On top of that, this is a turn based strategy game, so you have lost the RTS players, etc. Not only that, but you only have sales through online sources, which reduces your customer base even more due to customers not knowing about the product, etc.

Now, once you figure out who your core customer base is, you have to figure out how much you can charge, and given what our likes and dislikes are, $55 is a fair price. Even if you lower the cost to $40, you are not going to sell enough copies to make up the loss in sales that the $15 drop in price will result in.

I'm in marketing so I understand all this stuff!

Now THAT's a good, informative post, and just to the point! I hope you don't mind me reorganizing your posts like this.

[Meglobob]

I personally liked the Dom2 demo, probably the most I have ever played a demo ever, when I got to turn 40 I just deceided have I won this game or not? It was more than enough to convince me to buy Dom3, after looking at the forums and finding out Dom3 was basically the same game but bigger, better. As I did not own Dom2, it was easy to buy Dom3.

However when it comes to indulging my favourite hobbey money is not the main issue with me. It's quality, how much play am I going to get, replayabilty value et... i would prefer to pay $60+ for a game I will play for 6 months+, then $40 for a game that lasts barely a week.

Also compare computer games with other entertainment, a book or dvd? A computer game wins every time for value, especially a 4xstrategy game with virtually endless replayability.

[DominionsFan]

Meglobob said:
i would prefer to pay $60+ for a game I will play for 6 months+, then $40 for a game that lasts barely a week.

This is the key sentence.
I bought tons of games really, and I dropped them all after 2-4 weeks. Dominions 2. is still on my comp and I am playing it when I can, and the same is true about like 25 people here who I know. [Local players here I mean.. ]