Dominions II - Low Budget and Overpriced? I think not.

[Keir Maxwell]

Originally posted by Lord Hammer:
I have been playing Dom2 since the release only as the different Undead armies against 6 or 7 ai races so far one or two at a time and EVERY game has been radically different plus i still have 10 ai opponents/races to go against. Then i will pick another race to play as...well, do the math: i have only scratched the surface of this deep game...a small percentage of gaming goodness. Replay value is not a strong enough word for Dominions 2...it's a handful of games all in one package.
. . .
i shudder at the thought of not having found Dominions 2

Well put. In terms of a someone new to Dominions I think you have said it all - Dominions 2 is an incredible buy because of the amount you get.

I think some people who upgraded from Dom1 to Dom2 are not so happy as they already had a great game and hoped that Dom2 was going to be slick with it.

I'm very happy because I have a new Dom to play with and there is so much about it I love. For me only games of the ilk of Neverwinter Nights, Stars! and Ultima Online can really be compared to Dominions in terms of value for money. Dominons2 is suberb value for money for me.

cheers

Keir

[Sammual]

For the Last month there have been 3 days where I did not play Dom2 for at LEAST 3 hours. On weekends I put in at least 4 hours. In terms of 'bang for the buck' only Everquest has Dom2 beat (Give me another month and ask if Dom2 beat EQ in bang for the buck yet).

Sammual

[Endoperez]

Originally posted by olaf73:
Low budget=low price

At least that is the way it usually works for video/computer games. So that is why people (myself included) bring it up when discussing Dominions 2.

olaf

No, I have to correct you.
Low Budget => Low Quality => Low Price
That is the norm, that is how it usually works. Luckily, as Illwinter are an exception and made Dom2 with low budget (in money, not in work), this low budget game is of very high quality and, because of that, actually worth more than a bad big budget game.
It's still your choice, though: do you want to support the publishers and sellers of decent games to publish and sell those games, or Illwinter and Shrapnel to make and sell great games? You should also notice that games in the bargain bins only bring money for the shops and publishers... That's why Shrapnel doesn't let Dom2 to go down there.

[Gandalf Parker]

Originally posted by olaf73:
Low budget=low price
At least that is the way it usually works for video/computer games. So that is why people (myself included) bring it up when discussing Dominions 2.

Understandable but I think its usually that low budget means it COULD be low priced. Dom1 was. And we all continually bombarded the devs with requests to bring the game (graphics, music, interface) more in line with the mainstream games.

Dom2 seems to be an effort at moving in that direction. OK some of its not there yet but its the chicken-vs-egg thing. They will need to make some real money BEFORE being able to move this little hobby project into a more central thing in their lives (or hire others). If I remember correctly they both have families and jobs. Picture THAT conversation. "But the players said..."

Anyway Im still happy to have sent in my support for Dominions. And I do feel I got my money worth.

[ December 25, 2003, 13:34: Message edited by: Gandalf Parker ]

[sfsuphysics]

Originally posted by Saber Cherry:

So. Can anyone tell me why they continually bring up the "low budget" status of Dominions as a relevant factor to its pricing? I'd love to hear a coherent, rational explanation. -Cherry

(back from an Xmas flu that hurt)

I think the reason why so many will bring up 'low budget' is because the first thought that comes to mind when playing this probably is something like "did I have a copy of dos5.0 to run this?" Seriously, it looks like you'd have to fiddle with high-mem for days to get it to run type of game (read: wrong decade). Now before anyone gets their panties in a twist about eye candy, you have to admit that a certain amount of eye candy is required for sanity purposes. Now I loathe FPS games and most console games so dont stick me into that boat that I know some of you were itching to type away. This game to me seems like a medieval Version of Risk is all. Sure its decently fun, granted I dont think its as fun as a majority here think, but getting opinions about the game from here is slightly biased (usually). Maybe because the game is incompletish? No editing possible? Well thats a feature a lot of these types of games require, not 'wait for the patch' type responses.

I dunno, maybe its because of the multi-platform aspect of it that the graphics look the way they do, you need the code to work for multiple platforms you usually lose on custom platform techniques, similar to how I had much higher expectations for Moo3. This is not to say that Dom2 is a 'low budget' game, it just looks like it was made in the 80's (or maybe early 90's), this you can not argue (unless you're on a solaris machine then this is top of the line graphics for a game). Most game stuff you can't see, and even though I have no idea how hard it is to program a good challenging AI or whatever, it doesn't look too much indepth either.

Anyways that's my 2 cents.
Happy New Year to all

[Wendigo]

[quote]Originally posted by sfsuphysics:

Originally posted by Saber Cherry:
[qb]
This game to me seems like a medieval Version of Risk is all.

You are comparing chess with tic-tac-toe, both games are played on a province based map where you move armies, and that's were the resemblance ends, same as the semblance between tic-tac-toe & chess goes no further than the type of board.

[ December 30, 2003, 07:19: Message edited by: Wendigo ]

[Saxon]

Looking at this from a different view might be interesting. Most folks are arguing from their own individual view point, which is normal. However, what if we look at it from a theoretical economics view point? This means looking at how most people in the market view it and why some people are willing to pay more.

First, everyone values things differently. As such, a dress might have a huge value to my girlfriend, but next to zero for me. She will be willing to pay more than I am for the same item. Now, if it is her birthday tomorrow, the value of that dress might change for me, perhaps making it worth even more to me than it is to her. In short, every item has a price for every individual, it is relative.

In the case of Dom II, many of the people posting think they got a great deal at $50. Of course they do! Those of us on the Boards think the game is great, otherwise we would not be investing so much effort in typing and reading all this material. We are not a good sample of the larger world. You do not see my Mom on here, she thinks the game is worthless!

Moving to the market, is Dom II well priced? Roughly speaking, the market price is the average price of what the sellers are willing to take and what the buyers are willing to give. If it is priced too high by the seller, only those who really want the object will buy it. If it is priced too low, lots of people will by it, as they get something they want, but do not want to pay much for. Now, marketing, consumer knowledge and all sorts of other things come into play in the real world, but I will leave that out of this simple model.

Is the price right? We do not know the sales figures, nor do we know if there are a lot of people who would like the game, but are only willing to pay $40. We also do not know all the costs that go into producing the product. Shrapnel probably knows and they also have experience. Would a price cut really increase sales? In theory yes, but in reality, maybe not.

My guess is that sales are pretty low, they are targeting the “niche market”, those of us who really want this sort of game and are willing to pay. We would like to get it for less, but we will pay the premium. As an aside, for niche markets, lowering the price does not automatically mean more sales. There are only so many people interested in the niche, so selling the game at $1 does not equal mass market sales.

We can think of Dom II in terms of my odd old aunt who loves buying hand-woven rugs. They are more expensive than machine made rugs, they are not as well made and they do not look very nice, but she likes them. Dom II is like a craft product, a hand made product. It is not as flashy as Warcraft III and it does not have the sales of Quake III, but it does have something special. Something special like Space Empires IV, another hand crafted game.

So, it is probably over priced in pure market terms, but they are not aiming for the pure computer game market. They are over at the specialty and “craft fair” games, where the price would be higher. Only the people seeing the sales figures know if the price is right from that point of view, but it probably pretty close. Mainstream games often sell at $40 and $50 and we should expect a niche game to be a bit higher. As the quality (graphics mainly) is lower, we knock some off and come up with about $50.

From my point of view, it was money very well spent. As such, I shall stop pontificating!