Re: what about the future?
 

Heehee. Yes that, and other methods, were covered a while ago at this site....
http://cafethotz.blogspot.com/
abit less general than the site you posted but more personal :)

Re: what about the future?
 

"In forums for PoDs"

There is a forum for the prince of death? :D

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Edit
Stealth advertisment methods also sometimes fail if you are discovered. (Recently a certain dutch sales website was discovered to use dummy accounts to increase the ratings on their own products. (The idiots used the same account to buy multiple television sets and washing machines, of which you only need one :)).

Re: what about the future?
 

I don't particularly know how well D+D 4e is doing since i disconnected from the game about when 4e was released. The internet seems to think its doing quite well as an RPG, but not necessarily very well compared to the 3E release (which was off-the-charts good). No idea how 4E's initial release compares to 4Es 2nd wave of core books.

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Re: boardgames vs. Computer games.

Boardgames have a large material cost. Especially as games with a higher toy value appeal more to a larger audience, and that toy value costs money in production.

The difference is that computer games have very little material cost, so there is profit to be made all the way down, as it were. My guess is that boardgames don't have too far to go down before they lose profitability, especially as unit sales for boardgames are typically lower than for computer games of equal popularity, since only one person needs to own a boardgame for many to play.

Re: what about the future?
 

I died and got raised as a demi-lich.

Re: what about the future?
 

actually, it makes perfect sense economically... your problem is that you're dismissing the supply vs demand issue on "infinite supply" of computer games. not only is this false in reality(they still take money to produce, even though it's much cheaper than say board games), supply is not just about the actual making of the game but also about the competition.

moreover, time is also a crucial factor that you don't really address in your own economical equations. there's a reason why "we expect" prices to go down over time, it's only sensible even under economical logic. why do car prices go down every year? why do pretty much any other products go down in prices over the years? the older a product is, the further way the company gets from the "cover their expenses" stage to the "pure profit" stage. when all the expenses have been covered the company should logically start reducing their prices, or else they're just overly greedy and will usually be unsuccessful in the long run. even giant corporations like Blizzard lowered the prices of their games, as well as make gold editions(for example Starcraft+Broodwars expansion) which costs just a bit over original Starcraft when it was released, but now you also get the expansion with it.

false again. board games also drop in price, it's just that they drop less because they have far less to drop into, due to increased expenses over computer games.

false, as I've started saying above. also keep in mind that new products are valued higher than old products, and it doesn't matter whether you're talking about cars, furniture, computer games, computers(as in hardware), TVs, or whatever else you want. of course there are exceptions, such as classic models or antiquities(mainly in furniture) but every rule(logic, etc) has exceptions...

you're mixing 2 different things here. companies that lower prices in order to destroy the competition, don't do it over the years, they do it mainly with their new products. moreover they sell their items in loss prices for a limited amount of time, in order to crush the competition. than when the competition is destroyed they raise their prices considerably, and of course release other products and product lines in full prices, now that they have no competition remaining. this method is now illegal by the way, but it's still being used due to the hardship of actually proving the existence of loss prices.

Re: what about the future?
 

I am probably am very niche here, having bought two games of which I only play dom3 (maybe a third from a bin).

That said, we are facing an audience for this game that does not have the luxury to select between a dozen products, I have not seen anything comparable to dom3 for years, have you?

This is vastly different to most of the examples (TVs, cars, etc.) where development is extremely fast, meaning a product is outdated upon introduction. This is not the case for dom3 after so many years. If you have not understood, this game lives because it wraps up mythology from the whole planet packages that into a $50 product and let you play god! WTF about graphics, sound, UI, AI, I think it is a great deal.

Sure everything could be better, but you know, I still enjoy fending off impossible AIs, and I would enjoy multiplayer much more if I had the time on a regular basis. Of course I am annoyed by transferring blood slaves one by one and the like.

I think dom3 is a product that attracts certain people and there are not many competitors. You could increase sales mainly by increasing the number of people who have heard about it, but that is easier said than done.

I think sales are important since they create the incentive to actually buy the product instead of pondering for another six months, not creating more customers.

In short, supply and demand is not applicable because demand is limited, supply not. But demand is limited in the sense that you either want it or not want it, pricing is mostly irrelevant in this target group, as long as it stays reasonable.

Re: what about the future?
 

Many products don't drop in price over time, if we're talking about product lines as opposed to actual things. Sure, two year old cars are cheaper than this year's model, but that's because the actual thing is two years old and used and thus is not likely to last as long. If they just keep making them to the same design the price doesn't drop.

Clearance sales and discontinued products aside, furniture stays at about the same price as long as it's being produced. Chairs that were designed 2 years ago aren't half the price of this year's chairs.

Electronics are a special case. The same specs do keep getting cheaper, but that's because the tech keeps getting better. Not only do higher performance versions keep coming out, but it gets cheaper to make the lower performance hardware. Software often follows this pattern, since new versions keep being made to exploit the new hardware.

Re: what about the future?
 

Also, these examples tend to things that you can advertise pretty much anywhere.

Saying "advertise and you will sell more" is a general truth, but when you get to something like Dom3.. where would you advertise? General, or targetted? And again we are back to talking niche.

I have a few ideas (and have used some) but what would someone recommend? True, when you search in google for Dominions 3 you dont get an ad at the side for where to buy Dom3. But since Shrapnel comes out top in the search, why would you pay for that?

Forums where potential dom3 players hang out? Find one. Its either so general that the result is likely to be small, or its so specific that Dom3 is already well known and brought up in conversations. You can boost those for free without paying to add a pop-ad to the site.

Game magazines in the real world? Do you really think the amount of money that costs is worth the gamble? Easy to say with someone elses money. If someone is so sure Id recommend they go for it.

Re: what about the future?
 

fantasma, first of all I was replying on the reduction of computer game prices in general, not specifically about Dominions3. hence many of the examples I gave don't apply to Dominions3, being in the very niche category that it is in... with that being said, you're still wrong on several accounts.

wrong, the audience you're talking about is a very very small group. Dominions3 doesn't rely on the audience you're referring to, or else it would still be losing money over the production fees, sallies, etc... dominions3 targets quite a variety of people, here are a few examples:
1. hardcore TBS freaks
2. casual games who don't have a lot of time on their hands for long multiplayer sessions, yet still enjoy multiplayer a lot more than mindless battles against crappy AIs
3. strategy freaks in general(both RTS and TBS) who can appreciate good games despite having bad graphics, sound, UI, etc
4. older people, many with families already, that are not your typical "gamers".
5. people who utterly dislike the whole "click fest" of most modern games(no matter the genre).

these are just examples, there are more, and obviously some(or even most) people fall into more than 1 category.

no offense, but this was just pathetic fanboy material... Dominions3 was very much outdated even on its release date on 2004. it has awful graphics(compared to other games in 2004), unimaginative sound, very bad UI, etc. heck, just look at how little Dominions3 taxes your hardware to notice that it's very much outdated.

Dominions3 is appealing because of its concept, and because it aims for populations that don't care much about high end graphics and sound, which are the focus of most modern games. Dominions3 cares about the quality of its content instead, which is too rare these days :(

with that being said, there are still other game companies that also try to live up to the same standards as Shrapnel. the Civilization series is a good example, Stardock(and the now infamous Elemental) is another. there are still innovations even within this very limited concept, so Shrapnel just can't afford to keep Dominions3 at the same price it was on release, when for the same money you can get newer games that are a lot more appealing in many ways.

well, good for you. but most people don't enjoy fending off hordes of mindless AI that you can easily destroy with a few Earthquakes, Rain of Stones, etc. the real challenge lies within multiplayer, and the deficiencies of Dominions3 are certainly annoying(mainly the bad UI) but we still like this game because despite of them it's still a great game.

I partially agree with you here, but only partially. at 55$(the price I bought it for just a few months before they finally released the digital download) the price of Dominions3 is way too high, heck new "standard" games go for 30-50$, and these have a lot more expenses than Dominions3 had(massive game engine, state of the art graphics, better sound and UI, etc), not to mention they're new(max 1-2 year old), not 6 years old. moreover there are people, that Dominions3 appeals to, that spending 55$ on an old computer game is just too much, but they would have bought it for less. moreover the people interested in this genre have mostly heard about Dominions3 already, from various sources, it's not like Dominions3 doesn't have any publicity/public awareness...

totally agree with you, but I ask you to take it a step further. instead of inducing sales they should just lower the price globally, to get the same effect, just more powerful.

in short, supply and demand is still very much relevant. the people you imply this concept doesn't imply to are a minority within the total customer base of Dominions3. the majority of the customer base do have alternatives.

first of all we're talking about actual products here, in this case dominions3. not the whole product line, which in this case would be all of Shrapnel's games, all TBS games, etc. second of all, even for product lines, there are still innovations that are made every day which eventually impact the line, sometimes it takes more than a few years but it does happen. again, classic models and antiquities aside...

lets take a basic example you claim stays steady, furniture: say you got an office chair from 5 years ago. today you have office chairs which are a lot more comfortable, have better angles, better back padding, handles, etc. why would you still buy the lesser chair from 5 years ago instead of a new chair? the only reason you'd do so is if the 5 year old office chair is significantly cheaper than a new office chair. now, how will the price be significantly lower? line production fees, raw materials, salaries, etc haven't increased over the years, the only field in which an increase in producing cost would be in engineering innovations, but those are not nearly enough to justify a significantly higher price than a state of the art office chair of 5 years ago.

maybe not half the price, and maybe a bit more than 2 year difference, but saying furniture prices stay the same is just false. refer to example above.

electronics is not a special case, it's simply the extreme side of the phenomenon. technology advancements usually make all production lines cheaper, the only difference is how much cheaper they become and how much better they allow the final product to be. heck, the whole point of technological progress is to make production as a whole cheaper, otherwise there would be no economical logic behind investing money in making better technologies in the first place...

Re: what about the future?
 

Now you are making a little mistake here imho. You take furniture in general, and pick one example of a high end product, for which there are replacements etc. And try to invalidate his whole claim. But it was about furniture in general. Not the high end products. A simple folding chair which costs 5 bucks 10 years ago, still costs 5 bucks now. (Modulo, inflation, costs of plastics etc). A piece of high grade wooden furniture to (to let your grandchildren inherit) still costs the same now as it did 10 years ago. In general furniture prices stay the same. (Sure high end innovative stuff such as expensive office chairs is a counter example. Or fasionable furniture (don't know how people call the furniture fasion industry). But all of these invalidate the previous generation. So that is why the previous generation drops in price).

There are loads of different reasons to improve technology, making production cheaper is one of them. Radical innovation (which tends to make new products more expensive) is another one. Gradual innovation tends to either make products more affordable, or better. Sometimes companies just create new products because a "New" sticker on the product increases sales. (That is why shampoo bottles tend to chance colors and bottle types every few years. Most of it is just marketing. If anybody is interested, I have recent story about this (about shampoo :))).

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Just FYI, I also think Dom3 is a bit to expensive. But according to Tim (don't mind if I call you Tim?). It makes little difference if it sold cheaper. And I assume that he has done the numbers. I don't think he would mind more money.