Steam sales: How deep discounts really affect your games
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Was a pretty good read, and I have on several occasions had people say to me I should boycott these sales :P
-------------------Valve's Steam sales have always proven a great time for consumers to score some cheap PC games, but over the past several months, there's been some debate over whether these promotions are good for game developers. Some have argued that the major discounts devalue games, and end up hurting the industry in the long run.
Was a pretty good read, and I have on several occasions had people say to me I should boycott these sales :P
Comments
Sales allow a game to reach people who wouldn't normally buy it. Who else does normally buy games: pirates and people who buy second hand.
The increase in sales can save a small company Introversion and DEFCON.
The cheap sale can easily move a game from a person's buy list to a person's play list. So when you release a sequel people know the quality of your products: at $60 Borderlands 2 pre-order is the top selling game on Steam.
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Just had to throw these out since they weren't in the article.
No it hasn't, has it?
Markets are always going to change though... I mean, renting videos and buying albums in store will probably be things of the past soon enough. It's just evolution. And well, yeah PC (and console) games are a very different market from the mobile one.
And frankly, I'm very unimpressed with the mobile market as a whole. I think that people don't pay more than R10 for most mobile games because they usually aren't even worth that much. But that is a completely different argument. :)
@Karuji - Yeah and I'm loving this fact. If you ask me this allows smaller studio's and single man teams (perhaps only mobile?) to bring something to market and in the process offer innovative new games. A lot of big studios seem to really lack imagination. Down with FPS!
An interesting notion with @Aequitas pointed out to me a while back is that while people feel fine paying $1 for an iPhone game they feel just as fine paying $5 for an iPad game. It actually relates to the psychology of the screen size since the iPad has a larger screen you feel you are getting more for your money.
A weird personal tangent is I gobble Android games. If I see a recommendation on twitter I buy it. My favourite games have all cost more than a dollar, but for some reason I find FF3 at R140 rather expensive.
@Tachyon to be honest I still find PC to be king of innovative games. I mean the internet is a great place.
I'm not that much of a fan of mobile only. Most mobile games can be played just as well, if not easier, on PC. Games like Infinity Blade are great because they actually understand the platform they work on. On of interesting things I read recently was that Nintendo opted for a pressure system over a resistive one for the Wii U because of the response time. iPads have something in the range of a 100-250ms lag on input. So understanding the medium is really important.
And while I agree with the sentiment of down with the FPS. I think that is only because CoD is viewed at the epitome of FPS. I mean Portal and Mirror's Edge are both really great FPS games. And I am really amped for Borderlands 2. So down with the realistic military shooters, and give me more cool stuff ;)
To be slightly on topic with this post I hope everyone has Borderlands, or bought it on Steam this weekend past. It was on sale :P
I'm a unique player in that I'll mostly likely only snap up games, even the stuff I like, on a sale (PS3 or iPad/iPhone mainly). Most of my collection were 2nd hand buys. But I've dropped over $150 on Assassin's Creed Recollection on iPad. It's my niche, I like it, and I find value in it. So it all depends on perceived value management by the studio in question.
Unoriginal, big-budget games (what I'm assuming the "FPS" calls above are referring to) are just that, popcorn movies. They are big-budget and impressive and cater to that market. We can't really do without them either cos as much as I love my iPad, I still love my Tekkens and Modern Warfare (the first 2, and only sometimes, probably not enough to buy them though, but I'm not "everyone". Clearly.)
To be honest I believe the industry could survive without Call of Duty and its ilk. While undoubtedly it has brought more people into gaming I don't enjoy what it does, but I also hate Angry Birds. But if a CoD gamer plays on Steam, and picks up Borderlands since they are both FPS games and enjoys it and expands their gaming interests I'll call that a good game all around.
I don't know why you would tout the idea of a one man team over a groups of indie developers, but whatever suites your lexicon best so be it.
Take Tiny Hawk for example I neat game but it's sitting in the 10-100 purchases range. The Android, iPhone, and WP7 market places are saturated to the point were it is nigh impossible to achieve reasonable sales.
I would say just make a good game instead of believing that mobile is a really good thing. If you look at Kongregate there is a decent amount of new game discovery.
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In short you're going to be competing with the well established big boys of the platform (Angry Birds and its ilk). And chances of discovery on these markets is slim. The internet has been around for a lot longer than the smart phone, and there is a lot more innovation going on there.
And hey if you make a really good game, get on Steam, and get picked up in a sale, who knows ;)
Look, generalising with little data isn't a great idea. Build games, then study how people play those games to find out the best ways to earn a living with them. If people don't enjoy playing them, you're not going to sell them. If people enjoy playing them for a short period, don't try to use a free-to-play model. If people like coming back time and time again, see if you can figure out expansions. The best thing you can do is prototype and put your game in front of people to figure out everything from your market to your business value. If you start out with preconceived notions, you're not going to be able to act on the real opportunities.
I was alluding to the fact that big budget games require expensive prices, just as cheap games need tools of marketing which $1 price is one of.
@dislekcia - Do you not think it's worthwhile to know your platform before attempting a game? For eg. my puzzle replica. If I was aiming to release this (obviously im not) I don't see the point of a platform like steam.
Does platform not also determine what kind of games are made? I won't be playing FPS or classic RTS on mobile.
Your point is noted though, making games which are fun is the primary focus?
Platform determines the game - there's no mouse on mobile and there's no touch on desktop. So what? It determines what a game can do mechanically, but it doesn't determine what kind of game it can do :)
Budget and genre can mean nothing. There are a good many people who think Diablo III is crap when Diablo is the game that basically founded the Action RPG style (substitute genre for style.)
@Tachyon
Are there a lot of games on Steam: yes.
Can one easily get exposure on Steam: not all the time.
Is it saturated: no.
Steam is a gated platform. You have to be 'worthy' to enter it, with Android and iOS I simply pay my dev fee and I can pop as much crap onto the market and hope I make money. I can do that with Steam. I can also get good exposure with Steam sales which can lead to more people knowing about my game and an increase in revenue, besides from the revenue from the sale itself.
But to answers the saturation question. There are an order of magnitude less title on Steam than there are on Android or iOS.
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Also what @dislekcia said 100 times over.