Are we paying more for less?

[JPSeraph]

I still remember dishing out $80 for Dungeon Master on SNES and loving that game to death. So $55 doesn't seem like too much for a game - the first game in years - that really evokes that same sense of discovery and recaptures the joy of those early gaming experiences.

Most everything since the early days has been streamlined interfaces, pretty graphics, crap gameplay, and no actual improvement on the great ideas that were floating around not so long ago and seem all but lost in today's Hollywoodesque gaming market.

And then I stumbled upon Dominions a couple of months ago. $55 is nothing, and as so many have said, it's probably Shrapnel's optimal selling price.

I wouldn't pay $5 for Disciples 2 on Amazon, but I gladly paid $35 for Dominions 2 even knowing that Dominions 3 was just around the corner. That's value.

[DominionsFan]

JPSeraph said:

I wouldn't pay $5 for Disciples 2 on Amazon, but I gladly paid $35 for Dominions 2 even knowing that Dominions 3 was just around the corner. That's value.

Yep. Since Doms 3. is an unique game on the strategy market, I don't see any problems with the high price of the game.
Not to mention that I can tell you the same like JPSeraph.
I wouldn't pay 5 euros for NHL 07 for example, but I would glady pay 100$ for Dominions 3.

[marc420]

A couple of comments on this discussion ...

$55 is a very high price for a game. That price will certainly effect my decision whether to buy or not. Since I already own Dom2, much of my decision making will be whether the game is sufficiently better than Dom 2 to justify spending $55 to buy it, or if I'd rather not just fire up Dom2 and play it again.

Please don't tell me that this price is this high because of a manual and the decision to print it for each purchase. If that is the case, then Shrapnel really should offer two purchase options ... one with a printed manual, and one where the manual comes with the game in electronic form.

I would never ever buy a game because someone says there's a big thick manual. I've bought a lot of games in my life, and rarely is the manual even touched a week after buying the game. Regardless of the thickness of the manual, it has been a long, long, long time since I've seen one where the content justified paying much attention to it. Typically the content level of game manuals is extremely low.

An example of what I mean would be many, many pages devoted to such complicated and intricate topics such as pressing the button marked "New Game" to start a new game, pressing the button marked "Save Game" to save a game you are playing, etc. Usually the thickness of the manual comes from the fact that not only was text needed to explain these functions in depth, but screen shots are also required!

When someone tells me I'm paying $55 for a manual, I know from personal experience that I'm extremely unlikely to read it more than once, and that after a week it will be laying around my house unread. Eventually it will get picked up from the floor near the computer, where it will be sitting gathering dust and serving as a coaster, and be placed on a bookshelf.

Oh well, main reason I came here was to see if there was a demo out. I didn't know the price, but that makes it even more important for me to see the demo before buying. And like I said, the main question I'll have is whether its worth $55 to go from Dom2 to Dom3. And I'd have to say I'm starting out sceptical about that one.

And since Shrapnel has the policy of not lowering the price over time, then it means that if the game fails that test, then I'm unlikely also to buy it in the future. There is a certain logic in offering the game for a lower price as time passes after release. I may or may not feel the game is worth $55 to upgrade Dom2 to Dom3, but there have been many games I've bought for $9 or $19 later. It becomes a different decision at that price.

Oh well, this being a game message board, I'm sure I'll be flamed for daring to have my own opinions and judgements and for not just running lemming-like to give my money to other people.

And oh yeah, its pre-Christmas. Given the huge amount of junk pushed on the market by other game companies at this time of year (I'm not saying that this is true for this game, after all there's no demo to see yet), I've become very sceptical about buying any game that's released between now and Christmas. Its definitely the time of year to remind myself to go into "game buying quarantine" mode. And then just wait and see what's out and what state it is in.

The bean counters at any game company want games released and on the shelves by a certain date for this time of year. In some (ie, many) companies (maybe or maybe not these guys) that's been known to override any logical decisions about whether the game is really ready to release. By doing this, the game industry as a whole has made me very, very sceptical about buying any newly released game at this time of year.

[Endoperez]

marc420 said:Oh well, this being a game message board, I'm sure I'll be flamed for daring to have my own opinions and judgements and for not just running lemming-like to give my money to other people.

And oh yeah, its pre-Christmas. Given the huge amount of junk pushed on the market by other game companies at this time of year (I'm not saying that this is true for this game, after all there's no demo to see yet), I've become very sceptical about buying any game that's released between now and Christmas. Its definitely the time of year to remind myself to go into "game buying quarantine" mode. And then just wait and see what's out and what state it is in.

The bean counters at any game company want games released and on the shelves by a certain date for this time of year. In some (ie, many) companies (maybe or maybe not these guys) that's been known to override any logical decisions about whether the game is really ready to release. By doing this, the game industry as a whole has made me very, very sceptical about buying any newly released game at this time of year.

Very nice post. I certainly hope you aren't flamed, but I'm afraid your message will be flooded.

The Pre-Christmas release is also a good point. I don't think anyone else brought it up yet. I think many feel this is an extra Christmas rather than a great Christmas gift, though... In the materialistic sense of the word, of course.

[marc420]

With regards to music, I know of bands that made a great deal of money by letting music be downloaded or traded for free. Then they make their money by selling concert tickets to the people who liked what they heard.

Ever hear of the Grateful Dead? In terms of concert tickets, they were annually either the highest grossing band in the world, or very near the top of the list. At their peak, they could easily sell out 80,000 seat football stadiums for multiple shows several days in a row in the same city, with little or no marketing or advertising costs.

What they did was early on they decided it was perfectly ok for fans to bring recording gear to concerts and record their shows. And that as long as these recordings weren't being sold for money or profit, that it was perfectly ok for fans to share and trade these recordings. So these recordings always circulated amongst their fans, and to friends of fans as an introduction to their music. When Mp3 and the internet came along, they were all freely available there ... as long as the websited didn't charge for them. You couldn't even have advertising on your site if you had their music up there. But if you just put it up for free and weren't making any money from it, the band was very happy to let anyone do that.

They also always kept their ticket prices near the minimum possible price. For someone who bought tickets to different bands that came around, the Grateful Dead usually ran at about half to two thirds the price of other shows. And they've never hit the triple digit gouge pricing of other shows ... unless its a charity benefit and even then that price usually includes a reception with the band before the show.

All of this sounds counter-productive ... give your music away for free, price your shows as cheaply as possible instead of as expensively as possible. It sounds crazy ... until you see 200,000 fans all trying to get tickets in an 80,000 seat stadium ... and again with almost zero costs in local marketing or advertising of the show. Because of the decisions they'd made that seemed very counter-productive, about all they had to do was to rent the stadium and haul their gear and crew around. Set up to play, then watch the people flow in and the money hit the till. That, combined with the fact that they produced amazingly good music, made those guys all very, very wealthy. (they also kept most the middle-men out ... they either were their own concert producers\promoters ... or they worked with people they knew and liked in different cities. Even today, they are one of the very few groups of musicians that still own the rights to publish their own music as audio, video or sheet music.)

The middle-men part might be relevant to this discussion. Remember, there's two companies that need to try to make money from your Dom3 purchase, not just one.

Just a note that there are other models for making money out there rather than "grab as much money as possible on every transaction". Don't know if that applies here ... just adding some thoughts that came to me while reading the discussion above.

[DominionsFan]

Actually a couple of very good games will be released until X-mas. marc420, your statement is not very correct.

[Warhammer]

I agree, I have never bought a game just because it has a manual, but I have opted to not buy games because the manual was terrible. Shrapnel made a business decision and opted to print the manual. Also, there are costs that are associated with a digital release as well. Often times there are issues therein, which causes much more damage to the company than charging more for a regular release (I have been there with both SI Games and Stardock, luckily for them in both cases the games rocked after I got everything sorted out).

However, you mentioned something that is very smart. Wait for the demo, and then decide whether or not the game is worth $55. I played the Dom2 Demo recently and have been playing it to death. For me, the $55 is worth it because I do not have Dom 2. However, I can understand the debate if someone does own Dom 2 in waiting before they decide to drop $55 on a game. I love FM2006, but am probably going to skip FM2007 for the same reason.

Regarding the decision of Shrapnel to not reduce price on their games, it is a decision that is up to them. They have decided that their business model is best suited by not cutting price. Cutting price is typically indicative of a poor business model because you bought too much supply and must dump it to recoup some of the expense of making it.

[Gandalf Parker]

I wasnt sure why they didnt cut the price of Dom2 about 6 months ago. I think they could have benefited by cutting it down to almost production costs and building up the player base in preparation for Dom3.

But thats about the only point I can really concede on. Digital isnt ready yet, and Dominions is a major item for Shrapnel so I wouldnt experiment with digital on a Dom release.

As for costs, keep in mind that besides a profit for Johan and Kristoffer, Shrapnel needs to make a profit AFTER costs. Besides production costs Shrapnel has multiple employees. At least 7 that I know of and thats just department heads. Scott Krol is one that many dont know of but he does the PR releases. I set up auto-emails when things that interest me hit the newswires and Ive seen steady traffic concerning Dominions 3 and Rising Star. Scott is doing great work for the developers.

Also there are the servers. The ShrapnelGames main server, the ShrapnelCommunity one (these forums), GamersFront (the store), backups, mail, accounting.

Its not like its a 50 cent CD (as one person said). And its not greed. Read the "About Us" page on ShrapnelGames.com and get a feel for the companys direction.

[Agrajag]

Gandalf Parker said:
Its not like its a 50 cent CD (as one person said).

I think you took my post out of context.
What I said was that the cost of making a game CD itself are very (very!) low, unlike costs for a manual, which can be many many times more expensive. This is to say that the cost of actually producing a copy of dominions 3 is probably much higher than other commercial games with crappy manuals.
Obviously, on top of that there's employee's wages, paying Illwinter and other costs.

Another point I'd like to make (specifically to marc420) is that the Dominions 3 manual is very different from other manuals. It isn't the usual 10 pages of "Press the left mouse button to 'click'".
This is what I know about the manual from what has been said on the forum:
1) IIRC it was written by game guru Bruce Geryk.
2) It contains pages of reference sheets and lists that are very handy in playing the game. Viewing every item in the game for example can be very helpful when deciding if you want to empower that mage for forging.
3) It explains the game mechanics, which is obviously very useful.
And I suppose there's lots of other stuff I don't know about (or that my puny brain has filtered out)

All of these help to make sure this manual is a keeper, rather than a coaster.

[Terl]

I bought Dom2 at regular price after reading many glowing recommendations from Gandalf Parker on this and other forums. About a month after I got Dom 2 they announced Dom 3 pre-orders. I gladly purchased it (got it day before yesterday, woot!).

I have no problems with the pricing when I look at the hours and hours of enjoyment I have had with Dom 2 and will have with 3.

For fun per dollar the game is a bargain