Riders of Asgard - Steam Store Live...

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@karl182 and I are happy to announce that the Steam Store for Riders of Asgard is now live and can be viewed here: http://store.steampowered.com/app/552370

The demo build has been submitted to Steam for approval and we are planning on releasing the demo on the 23rd January 2017.

The final build of the game is planned to be released on the 31st march 2017 at a R 219.00 price point. We will do a launch discount of 15%.

So it is full systems go for Riders of Asgard and it has been one hell of a learning experience so far. Our other projects are now being planned and we have a couple of artists doing some prototypes for us, but our main focus now is the end goal and the final release on Steam.

The final version will contain the following extra features over the Demo:
- 10 levels to play (Demo currently has 3).
- More unlocks for your characters so you can make your character your own.
- 30 achievements with more to come as we progress.
- Steam Online Multiplayer with Lobby.
- Steam VOIP while in-game.

We are also hoping there will be time to do at least two more characters, but these are not priority and will be added in on a future update. The goal for Riders of Asgard has always been to make a game we enjoy playing, get to grips with the whole Steam thing, and learn from the experience ... if we manage to make some money in the process than that is a bonus.

Thanks for all the feedback we received and all the help provided, we are always eager for more feedback and so feel free to download the demo when it is available and join us on the community hub: http://steamcommunity.com/app/552370

Comments

  • Congratulations!

    How did you arrive at that price point?
    Thanked by 1karl182
  • Nice one! Along with the question above, do you have rough numbers of what you want to/need to sell?
    Thanked by 1karl182
  • edited
    Congratulations! How did you arrive at that price point?
    Thanks. As stated earlier, @karl182 and I are not trying to recover the money spent on this project. It was 100% done as a learning experience and any money we do make is a bonus.

    We chose R219.00 (which equates to approximately $19.99 on the Steam system) as we feel that is what the game is worth and what we believe the game can be comfortably sold at.

    The game is polished enough, has enough content, and is (according to us) worth the price point. It is also a way to test the waters on the price of the game.


    roguecode said:
    Nice one! Along with the question above, do you have rough numbers of what you want to/need to sell?
    Thanks. As stated, there is no quantity that will break even, this project is not about that, it is more what we feel we would like to sell. If we sell 5000 units in 6 months, we will consider the project a success and we are extremely happy with that.

    Anything more will be wildly above our expectations and any money made after @karl182 gets his share will be dumped in to Gobbo Games for future projects ... I personally will not be taking any money from this project.




    So my question back to you guys, knowing this project is purely a learning experience:
    1). Do you think the price point is fair?
    2). Do you think my units are achievable?
    Thanked by 2karl182 roguecode
  • quintond said:

    1). Do you think the price point is fair?
    I think it will depend on a lot of factors. Games that are more complete like CSGO go for cheaper but they obviously make money with skins etc as well. R219 isn't too expensive compared to games that are R450+ but its not the cheapest either especially for someone that isn't 100% a fan of bike stunt games.
    quintond said:

    2). Do you think my units are achievable?
    Probably going to depend heavily on marketing. Game looks solid enough to sell that many copies but I guess it all boils down to how many people it reaches.

    Good luck with it, game is looking great! Very unique theme for this type of game :)





    Thanked by 1karl182
  • edited
    quintond said:

    So my question back to you guys, knowing this project is purely a learning experience:
    1). Do you think the price point is fair?
    2). Do you think my units are achievable?
    From a gamer's perspective and admitting that I'm not a huge fan of the genre, I wouldn't pay more than R150 for the game. Also I consider gameplay time for a single play-through as vital in terms of how much a game's base value is, you just can not sell a game with a few hours of gameplay at over R200, at R200+, there should be more than 10 hours there. There are exceptions to this, mostly for games that break ground or excel at certain aspects.

    The game does look great and professional, however at R200+ I don't think you should be claiming "we don't plan to make a profit off this", it's relatively expensive imo.

    I wish you the best of luck and hope that you will share some sale stats with us once the game is released.

    Thanked by 1karl182
  • edited
    critic said:
    The game does look great and professional, however at R200+ I don't think you should be claiming "we don't plan to make a profit off this", it's relatively expensive imo.
    Let me just clarify ... my statement means that we don't need to make a profit or reach a minimum amount of sales in order to consider the game a success. We have nothing riding on the numbers and the business is not relying on selling x amount in so many months in order to survive.

    As a business ... obviously we want to make money ... but that is not the driving factor for the game. This game has been an opportunity to learn what is involved with Greenlight, Steam support, Steamworks ins and outs, Marketing, Promotions, Press Releases ... things we did not have experience with before and now do because we have been through it. The best way to learn is to do ... we are doing it and if the game makes money than yay for us ... but ultimately we now know what is involved that when we do the next project we have a clearer understanding of what is involved and what the costs will be.

    The amount of time and money sunk in to this project would probably require us to sell ten times the amount of units we have mentioned ... I have not worked it out because it is irrelevant to this project.
  • critic said:

    From a gamer's perspective and admitting that I'm not a huge fan of the genre, I wouldn't pay more than R150 for the game. Also I consider gameplay time for a single play-through as vital in terms of how much a game's base value is, you just can not sell a game with a few hours of gameplay at over R200, at R200+, there should be more than 10 hours there. There are exceptions to this, mostly for games that break ground or excel at certain aspects.
    I agree that there should be enough gameplay time for the price. Feedback we have gotten from players that enjoy the type of game, and analytics data show that the Design of the game offers a lot of replayability even with the limited content available in the demo, so I think players won't feel ripped off even having paid full price.

    The type of game and the way the structure it set up, makes it so that you can't really "complete the game". There are a lot of things to unlock and it should take the the player at least a few hours to unlock everything.
    But even after having unlocked everything, the depth of the mechanics allow the player to keep playing and increase their own skill.
    I have found that improving your own skill in these types of games is where the real satisfaction and pay-off lies.

    I also think that it's easy for us as devs to take the amount of work into consideration, and then want to ask more for the game that people are willing to pay. Buyers don't know what went into the game and mostly judge it's worth by the Look, gameplay and content. So we tried to look at the game from the outside and forget all the work that went into it, and try and judge it's worth that way.

    That said, it is very hard to settle on a price, and we are seeing all this as a learning experience.
    Rather than playing it safe, we are trying to make a "researched guess" as to what we think it is worth and going with that.
    I think what @quinton means is that we are seeing this first as a learning experience, and the price isn't set higher just to make more money. After considering a lot of factors like play time, replayability, play-time from analytics, overall look, quality, and quantity of content, we feel that is is a fair price.(and this way it becomes an exercise in judging your own game's worth as well)
    Whether buyers will feel the same remains to be seen, and we will be sure keep you updated with how it goes, so that you can learn more with us as well. :)

    We obviously want the game to succeed and I am very proud of the work we have done, but we haven't gone into any dept by making the game and thus we have this opportunity to learn from all aspects.

    Thank you very much for all the feedback we have received so far.

    Karl
    Thanked by 1quintond
  • Sorry if that came out hostile, but my remark was a mere issue of pedantics. Kind of an equivalent of a 18 year old getting a BMW as his first car and then claiming, it's just to learn how to drive. I mean no insult, just wish you would position yourself in a more aggressive (probably not the right word) manner, where you are actually pushing a expensive indie game instead of the humble vibe of a learning experience. You are looking at an expenditure of a million? or somewhere around there, being a bit more stern with this could be a good thing.
    Thanked by 1karl182
  • I really, really like your approach to using this game as a learning exercise and I honestly wish more devs would do the same, given the opportunity. What's especially good is that the game is clearly defined with a limited scope, which has no doubt helped you be able to get it done!

    This game looks great and I will buy it, despite it not being on console - where I will buy it again if you release it on XBox. Why? Because it's made here and I want to support local devs making good games.

    In terms of price, I would compare it to something like Trials Fusion. That's $19.99 on XB1 and R189 on Steam. As far as quantity of gameplay goes, how would it stack up? Replayability/mastery is one area that always interests me in something like this, that constant pushing to shave 0.01 seconds off your best time. For that, anything around R200 is perfectly fine. at R250+ I start to question a little bit if I really want it. Anything on PC above R300 has to be something I really, really love. I am happy to pay more for games on console because I know they're going to work and my couch is way more comfortable than my office. That being said I rarely buy games at launch either and am happy to wait for price drops - except for locally made games where I will always pay full price at launch. It's a somewhat skewed perspective as I'm applying a different metric to games made here vs elsewhere, but it's a really, really small (extra) price to pay.

    Best of luck with it. I'm sure it's going to do well for you.

  • Zaphire said:

    Games that are more complete like CSGO go for cheaper
    For better or for worse, I've tried to help myself from thinking this way. Unless your game is like $3.99, there will always be games for the same price point that offer more content etc. I think a better thing to think of is what other games of the same type/style are around your price point. But even then, older games will drop in price and skew this.

    Quin, about if the price point is fair - I think it is probably OK, but is at the top of the acceptable price range. And gives you lots of room for sales.
    Thanked by 2quintond karl182
  • critic said:
    Sorry if that came out hostile, but my remark was a mere issue of pedantics. Kind of an equivalent of a 18 year old getting a BMW as his first car and then claiming, it's just to learn how to drive. I mean no insult, just wish you would position yourself in a more aggressive (probably not the right word) manner, where you are actually pushing a expensive indie game instead of the humble vibe of a learning experience. You are looking at an expenditure of a million? or somewhere around there, being a bit more stern with this could be a good thing.
    I think 5000 units is pretty big for us ... if we do more than that then I would be ecstatic and would definitely consider the game a financial success. Will we recoup our costs at 5000 units ... no we won't, but as @karl182 mentioned ... we have incurred no debt in making this game.

    We have funded the game from our own pockets while still doing our normal day jobs and we never set out for the game to be a commercial success or even commercially viable ... that would put too much pressure on us and that is when things start going the route of "Red Poncho".

    Once we know where we stand after launch day we will have a better understanding of what the next project will be and how it will be priced. The current price is based on games like Trials Fusion which is on R189.00 ... but our game has a few things that Trials Fusion doesn't including two major mechanics that they don't ... add to that all the multiplayer options, the leader boards and finally the visual upgrades ... we feel that R210.00 is reasonable to pay.

    We are committed to provide new content for 6 months after the release (longer if the game is a success) and then re-evaluate where we stand on what we do next.
    Thanked by 2karl182 DavidHecker
  • edited
    5k units at R219 is around R1mil, take off the Steam take and tax, it's still over R500k, it's a lot of money to spend on a game for a 2 man team...

    A pretty big deal for SA.
  • @critic No worries, you didn't come across as hostile. We are not taking any of this lightly, but as @quinton says, we have the opportunity to take a risk and doing it the way we think is right rather than playing it safe.
    We are definitely doing everything we can to make sure that the game is a success at the current price point, and we did not intend for our attitude to come across as not really caring. :)

    @DavidHecker thank you very much! The game is set up in such a way as to allow for full controller support, so if you have a PC hooked up to your TV(like I have) it is easy to sit back and play the game comfortably from your couch. As for comparing it to Trials, there obviously is a resemblance, but Riders of Asgard is inspired more by the old Tony Hawk and Dave Mirra games in gameplay. In Riders of Asgard there isn't really and end to the Levels that you need to reach, as you can go left and right, and transfer to different lanes as well. This makes the gameplay much more open and allows players to play it in different ways. I have found different routes after playing for hours, that I never specifically intended to be there while designing the level, so there is a lot of freedom. :)

    @roguecode it is very hard to compare these different types of games, as like you say, CSGO has a lot of focus on alternative revenue stream like cosmetic items. And like you say similar games drop in price and mess up those comparisons as well.
    So it's is up to us to convince people that the game is worth the asking price, and we are trying hard to make every aspect of the game do that.

    Like @quinton says we are committed to provide more content as well. We are not leaving anything out of the First release, and it will include all the content we initially planned for version 1.0 to have.
    We have however gotten a lot of great feedback and ideas from players, and we are going to be testing and implementing a lot of that into future updates.
    But we decided early not to expand the scope of v1.0 too much, as I think this could easily to getting lost and never finishing the game.

    Thanks again.

    Karl
    Thanked by 1critic
  • I do care about the game being a success ... and I hope I am not coming across as not caring ... what I am trying to say is that it is not my primary focus ... my primary focus is learning from the entire process.

    Gobbo Games is a business and operates like that, the deal I have with @karl182 (as it was his initial concept) means that after Steam takes their 30%, Gobbo Games takes 10% (which includes the %5 for Epic) and the rest goes to @karl182. There is no way from a business point of view that this is a viable business deal ... but the experience learnt and the benefit from releasing a game under the Gobbo Games banner is worth more to me than the money.

    Just the time spent on marketing on social media is more than the 10% ... but now Gobbo Games knows what is involved and how much time and effort it takes and now we can better budget for our next project when we have to be a commercial success and where people's jobs might be on the line.

    I would rather go in to the next project with open eyes and learn from our experiences then do what most Indies do and just dive in head first.

    Sorry to explain the details of our deal @karl182, but I feel like I need to make sure that everyone understands where Gobbo Games is coming from with regards to this whole project.
    Thanked by 2critic karl182
  • edited
    Thanks for the discussion! I asked because my initial impression is also that the price is quite steep. I think so even more now, having read your answers.

    1. It seems you won't starve if this doesn't make money. It won't stop you from making more games in the future, and it won't make you feel like you've accomplished less. That's a great position to be in, having day jobs and stuff. (Though obviously it'd be awesome to have the choice of doing this full time, I assume.)

    2. Assuming the same amount of revenue, I think it's better to have more players. More players means more people who're already aware of your brand as a developer, and more people who, assuming they like your first game, will buy your second game.

    3. If players do buy your game, and then think it's overpriced, then that leaves a bad taste and damages your brand in terms of future titles. If they buy your game and feel it's underpriced, they feel great and feel like they got value for money, and are more likely to pay attention to future titles from you. A higher price brings higher expectations all-round.

    4. If you're comparing to Trials Fusions: firstly, it's one of the sequels in a series of games, so it had an established brand and, to some degree, "guaranteed" sales. It also looks like the game has several zones, and several levels in each zone, resulting in some 60 or so levels. The impression I get from looking at Trials is that, compared to Riders, it just looks more "expensive" in terms of art direction. Having played neither game (I've only briefly played the first Trials game that was, I think, on XBLA), I would expect Trials to be priced higher than Riders.

    5. Counting "hours of gameplay" is certainly one often-used metric for estimating value for a game. But, aside from what I believe to be the minority of players who're completionists (and titles that are obviously multiplayer), I think people generally value those hours in terms of one campaign, one play-through, one difficulty, because we all know it's unlikely that we'll finish a game (based on the number of games we own vs the number we've finished).

    Obviously, in the long term and collectively, we as a game industry shouldn't be underpricing games, because the concepts of "over" and "under" pricing are relative to the average game, and we don't want that to drop. And ideally, you'd be pricing your game at the highest a player would spend while being happy with their purchase. But without having giant market research teams that can try and give you that magic number, I'd argue that it's better to lean toward having overall more, happier players, and that might well make you more profitable.

    My initial impression was that this would be a $9.99 game. (And, to be honest, just the logo makes it feel like a $5 game to me. I'd really consider re-thinking that, though I don't know how attached to it you or your existing player base are, and there isn't much time left.)

    There are lots more nuanced points to consider for higher and lower price points, but I hope this helps you!
    Thanked by 1critic
  • edited
    This game looks great and I will buy it, despite it not being on console - where I will buy it again if you release it on XBox. Why? Because it's made here and I want to support local devs making good games.
    We are planning of looking at a port to XBox and/or PS in the future ... we have no idea what the costs involved will be and how to go about getting the dev kits ... but I am sure we will figure it out.



    Thanks everyone ... I will have a chat with @karl182 and see what he wants to do with the price point and the logo.
  • Really interesting work ! Looks really solid.
    Thanked by 2quintond karl182
  • Thanks @BlueDesertDio ... much appreciated. 8-}

    Thanked by 1karl182
  • Just an added note that the Demo is now available through the Steam store ... so feel free to take the game for a spin if you want. 8-}
    Thanked by 2karl182 roguecode
  • edited
    So after discussing the matter with @karl182 and talking to some of my contacts in the industry from the US, UK, and Europe (these are people who are currently working for triple AAA studios or are working on or have worked on Indie games and released them) via some private forums I belong to.

    They all agreed that R219 (i.e. $19.99) was a very reasonable price point but felt that the game would benefit better from a R159 (i.e. $14.99) price point.

    Here is some of their reasoning behind their proposals: http://steamspy.com/tag/sports/indie

    @karl182 and I discussed it at length and we have agreed to propose the new price to Valve and take it from there. Thank you everyone for your input, it is greatly appreciated.

    On a side note, with the release of the demo yesterday, we had the following traffic come through:
    - Steam Store Page - 2214 sessions
    - Steam Wishlist - 198 players
    - Game Sessions - 631sessions
  • Thanks for the insight. Not all of us have gone through the greenlight process and this is definitely giving us more insight into the matter. Keep us updated :)
    Thanked by 2quintond karl182
  • Been following this for a while and it looks great and polished. Congrats on releasing, and I think it's really smart that you're using it as a learning experience :).

    I hope you don't mind if I unpack the whole pricing discussion a bit more - I'm not here to criticise your price point, I'm just interested in discussing price points, because we're constantly thinking about it for Semblance.

    From what I've read and thought about pricing, these are my main perspectives I'm coming from:

    1. Pricing is about a value proposition and value acceptance. If players don't accept the proposition, then they won't buy the game.

    2. Pricing thus, is also about value signalling. Players expect a $60 game to be very high quality, and expect $1 dollar/free game to be less so. Because of this, the indie games that sell best sit at $12 (can't find the article for this). So your price point is good for that.

    I think the problem we're facing in the games industry is that players are accepting/expecting much more value, for less price. For example, I really think both Broforce and Genital Jousting should be valued at $5 more each. They both have online multiplayer, a ton of features, great polish, and gorgeous art. But the pricing for them is probably spot on, because the value acceptance of players is much lower these days. Especially for anything under $60.

    Personally, for Semblance, we're looking at pricing between $5-10, probably $7.99, but this is based on Ink's business model. That's for 2-3 hours of gameplay, an innovative mechanic, and good polish (how polished the game looks/feels will be a big deciding factor in the pricing for us). We're value signalling with this price that it's a short little game, but it has higher polish than most.

    We also use Steamspy a lot, but I think it can be a bit misleading sometimes. We like to look at games by most recent, which paints a much different picture. Looking at that link through this, it looks like most games with decent download numbers (>5000), sit at $5-10.

    Anyway, just some random thoughts. Hope the release goes well :)
    Thanked by 1critic
  • edited
    @Bensonance While I agree with the value proposition point - what about just general negative perception of something with a very low price? You're saying you could charge as low as $5 for Semblance, but that prices it with a lot pretty crappy titles doesn't it?
    When I see a $4.99 game that isn't on sale, I'll assume it probably isn't worth my time.
    Thanked by 1Bensonance
  • @roguecode Definitely! That's the second half of price signalling - if you go too low - people expect it to be bad/low quality. But in some ways that can play into your advantage. Ink sold 200 000 copies at that price point, probably because people didn't quite expect it to be so good when they played it.

    That's why we want to lean a bit closer to $10 than $5, to avoid that signalling.

    I agree and disagree with you on your last point. have you really never seen a polished $5 game? You wouldn't buy Mu Cartographer? I think your marketing and polish on the storefront has to be really good and high to get past the basic effect of the value signalling. Once you get past it, people see it's a top heavy value proposition.

    This is all theory and spitballing though, lol :)

    Thanked by 1roguecode
  • Right, my last statement was definitely a generalization of what my brain jumps to when I see that. Wasn't intending to say that I would never click into then or that I've never seen a good $5 game, which is obviously not true as you've stated.
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