[Talleyrand]

I am not saying this is a bad series. If I thought it was I wouldn't be here right now, nor would I have wasted my time checking the Shrapnel store over and over again waiting for the Dominions 2 price to drop. Endoperez understood what I was trying to get at perfectly. Production values are simply the costs put in to make a game and with Illwinter being an exceptionally small studio with not many people in its employ, I find it difficult to pay premium prices for their products, as good as those products might be. Graphics are just one component that go into a game and are only a fraction of the total production values that I'm talking about. The fact is, if you bought a Dominions game you paid premium prices for it (and by that I mean higher-than-industry average). Not only have they charged premium prices for their games upon initial release but they have also refused to lower the price of those games even years after first shipping. Niche is no excuse, people expect game prices to fall.

This thread is just a plea to Shrapnel to be more reasonable in their pricing policies. I won't advertise for other companies on a message board of a rival publisher, but suffice to say Shrapnel isn't the only publisher devoted to producing quality strategy titles, and those other publishers are much more consistent with keeping their prices at a minimal for their customers. I think their growing success shows that business model works best. Is Dominions anymore of a niche game than say Europa Universalis, or Supreme Ruler 2010? In my opinion, no, and if you have played those games you would agree. Shrapnel is more of a niche because it has less market share. But maybe that's more because they have no presence in retail stores and because people are only aware of Shrapnel and Dominions through word-of-mouth, a good addition to traditional marketing but not a substitute for it. And of course the high price point we've been discussing doesn't help matters.

As much as I want to support Illwinter and Shrapnel, I can't bring myself to pay a premium for their products, and in that I think we both lose. Am I in the minority? Well that is the million dollar question, isn't it?