Mobile Pricing
Having recently released A Day in the Woods to mobile - and with plans to release Ginjah eventually as well - we've been having a lot of conversations not only in our own team but also with other devs about pricing games on mobile. No one actually seems to have an answer, but I figure the more voices we add to this conversation the more insight we'll all gain.
For one thing, there's always the question of going premium or free. And then, if the free option is selected, do you just give the game away or add in app purchases and the like?
Interestingly enough, we actually have quite a range of pricing models from just the SA games on the app store - with Snail Boy having released as a free-to-play with in-app purchases, Dead Run released at $2, A Day in the Woods at $5 and Desktop Dungeons and Vietnam 65 at $10. Interestingly enough, originally, A Day in the Woods we had marked for $3. We've had some people say our $5 is too expensive, is just right, and is a bargain for what you're getting. So, it's difficult to know whether we got the pricing right at all.
Recently, I came across this (not exactly new) article where the devs have approached the problem differently: http://www.pocketgamer.biz/comment-and-opinion/60005/why-wayward-souls-1-price-increase-per-update-is-driving-sales/
As well as this: http://gamasutra.com/blogs/DanAdelman/20150227/237639/On_Indie_Game_Pricing.php
So, yeah, I'd be really interested in hearing more opinions on this matter.
Edit: I'll be adding links to this top post as I find them
http://www.helpscout.net/blog/pricing-strategies/
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2014/01/16/rohrer-isnt-wrong-about-sales-but-he-also-isnt-right/
For one thing, there's always the question of going premium or free. And then, if the free option is selected, do you just give the game away or add in app purchases and the like?
Interestingly enough, we actually have quite a range of pricing models from just the SA games on the app store - with Snail Boy having released as a free-to-play with in-app purchases, Dead Run released at $2, A Day in the Woods at $5 and Desktop Dungeons and Vietnam 65 at $10. Interestingly enough, originally, A Day in the Woods we had marked for $3. We've had some people say our $5 is too expensive, is just right, and is a bargain for what you're getting. So, it's difficult to know whether we got the pricing right at all.
Recently, I came across this (not exactly new) article where the devs have approached the problem differently: http://www.pocketgamer.biz/comment-and-opinion/60005/why-wayward-souls-1-price-increase-per-update-is-driving-sales/
As well as this: http://gamasutra.com/blogs/DanAdelman/20150227/237639/On_Indie_Game_Pricing.php
So, yeah, I'd be really interested in hearing more opinions on this matter.
Edit: I'll be adding links to this top post as I find them
http://www.helpscout.net/blog/pricing-strategies/
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2014/01/16/rohrer-isnt-wrong-about-sales-but-he-also-isnt-right/
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Comments
I think pricing is super hard because it's highly dependent on the game and its audience. If you've got a game that targets a particular niche that is unlikely to be filled by another game, then you can charge a lot more. V65's game design, as far as I know, is pretty special (based on several reviews I've read on wargaming sites). It aims for a type of strategy/feeling that you don't really get from other strategy war games. It's not trying to get everyone to play it, so it can focus on its specific niche audience, and offer a specific experience at a premium. I think DD is similar there.
Apple gamers are generally much more likely to purchase premium titles than Android gamers. There's also the perception that Apple apps are of a higher quality, so I think that when people own both an iOS and Android device, other things equal they're probably likely to purchase the iOS version. I think one exception is when it comes to titles that are trying to sell graphics. Just like with PCs, there is an Android niche where people compare their phone specs and over/underclock their processors and stuff. If your game's trying to sell tech features, like fancy shaders and stuff, it may sell better at a premium on Android.
I believe that on mobile, App Annie offers a (paid) service that gives some pretty good estimates for various stats on the App Store. (I'm not aware of a similar thing for Android, but I haven't looked.)
I believe that Dead Run was $2 because there was some talk or article or something that said that the difference between Free and $1 was enormous, but that once someone was willing to pay 1$, they were super, super likely to be willing to pay $2.
I heard some talk before about mobile games generally being priced at about $1 per hour of play-time, but that was ages ago and I think there are loads of other factors that make me hesitant to use that as a baseline.
Making money through advertising is stupidly hard. You've either got to have a ridiculously large install base (which is super, super hard), or you've got to ship a game on a shoestring budget (easyish, but not satisfying because it's guaranteed to be crap, and if you're not enjoying your work you might as well not being working in games, because there are much more financially lucrative career paths...). My impression is that games that make money through advertising try to get a lot of installs through appealing app icons and trailers, and keep people around just long enough with a really easy-to-make mechanic to see a few ads, before being abandoned in order to use whatever ad-money the game made on the next (crappy) game, or a skin of the same game, or whatever.
I think the fact that people have complained that A Day in the Woods is too cheap, perfect and too expensive is some evidence as to how consumers themselves don't actually know what the "right" price is. Digital goods have always had that struggle, I think, because of how each additional copy sold costs almost nothing, making it very difficult to compare a bunch of duplicated bits of data with a physical cup of coffee. So some people will think it should be pretty much free because of how each additional sale costs the developer/publisher almost nothing, while others perceive value in the experience itself and are willing to pay for it because of that.
I think a big part of our marketing material should be to push that part where the experience is valuable, where what you're offering is something better than a cup of coffee, and cost a hell of a lot more to make -- and, ideally, offers something that your competitors aren't doing right.
free = in-app purchases
$0.99 = cheap/bad, should’ve been free
$1.99 = it’s ok, but why wasn’t it $0.99
$2.99 = this product is worth it
$4.99 = premium game, probably limited number of levels
$6.99 = premium+, probably very repayable or amazing story
$9.99 and up = usually AAA titles and well know game brands repurposed for mobile. Worth it for the nostalgia, but is it really worth it as a mobile experience?
Are these views completely correct? Hell no. I've done countless comparisons on what is available at the various price points and consumers really are cheap skates when it comes to mobile games. The value in the list above, for me, is that this is a general perception. It's difficult to quantify to joe.gamer.88 that you've spent a year making something and therefore it has to cost $x.xx The consumer will always make a choice on the value proposition from their standpoint and that's really key.
An interesting additional bit is that a lot of parents I've spoken to (our next title is squarely aimed at 5-12 year olds) is that they often completely ignore free games. For a lot of them the ideal price point is in the $1.99 to $2.99 range and they'll often buy without thinking too much about it. At $4.99 they start to really question the overall value.
Again, your mileage may vary depending on your target audience, but these are the things I've learned looking at it for our particular slice of the market.
What a lot of it comes down to is the game itself and the numbers. Games can get different amount of eyeballs on it depending on many different factors, so... It's almost impossible to say definitively this is better or that is better.
Free-to-play games are made to be monetise a small percentage of people among the hopefully droves of people who download things just because it's free. Premium relies on a completely different set of criteria to get traction...
An important thing in premium is comparison - people will compare two games in a similar price range, and that's what's driving down the prices... Massive companies are able to support incredibly well-made and polished games at super low prices, and everyone who shows up next to them or higher (in price) without the same hype/polish, they'll simply be disregarded. And that's just... fair, really.
Tough one.
Is there a difference in price perception when it's an educational game, as opposed to just for fun? As @DavidHecker says, parents can be an important influence.
Whenever we start a new project I look at as many similar games/apps that I can find and weigh up the price of each versus the features they offer, then compare that to my feature list, therefore underscoring my value proposition. I also spend a lot of time on App Annie to see how well those apps and games have done in terms of rankings and reviews to get a sense of what the users actually felt. This kind of research is invaluable to me and has heavily influenced what our next title (to be announced soon!) will be priced at. If my game has more features and is (objectively) better looking than others at the same price point, I should be able to stick out and get more sales. Should. Hopefully. Possibly. Maybe.
We put A Day in the Woods on sale for $3.99 for the Halloween update and saw a small spike in sales.
We put A Day in the Woods on sale for $1.99 on Android for Christmas and saw a small spike in sales.
We (accidentally, as it was meant to be the same price as Android) put A Day in the Woods on sale for $0.99 for Christmas and saw a spike that near equals our launch spike in terms of sales.
My take out from this is that we priced our game a little too high initially, and that people do seem to buy for $0.99 rather than overlooking those titles.
A:To prove that you can and use it as a portfolio, especially when you start a studio. You need to remove the barrier to entry to gain a community or fan base for your games!
Other than than all the rules above apply, but as a small indie studio I would warn against free 2 play and rather go the premium more expensive route, since that is what you can afford in terms of time and value.
Time, because free 2 play games needs so much more integrations for ads and IAP and analytics for the IAP, etc. which you could have spent on game content. Also the long tail on F2P requires so much updates and extra content which you could spend on game design or a new title (which can be a huge team sanity boost).
*This is my theory, I'm not saying we got it right ourselves, but I'm surprised nobody else mentioned this already.