what about the future?

[Soyweiser]

Originally Posted by Valerius

It seems to me you could make a good argument that you'd sell more copies if you changed nations to the archetypes most people would expect.

Buying the IP, and then throwing it out. Now that would be a design mistake. **** the code, the IP from dominions is worth the money. (With IP, I mean the backstory of the nations, the different nations themselves, the different sites, the magic system (spell names and effects), the images etc).

And why? Because with the IP comes a community of fans. (Yippy, that is you and me!).

[Squirrelloid]

Originally Posted by Soyweiser

I think professional discs are a bit more expensive. Iirc you need to make a master disc, and make professional copies from that one. For both you need specialized equipment. Which tend to be expensive. Sure the costs of one disc is cheap. But the whole setup tends to have large costs up front. Sure, after a certain amound of games sold you get the expense back. But still.

I'll note that large capital investments like that are tax deductible for corporations.

Also, Dom3 is not the only game Shrapnel produces, and should not be expected to make up the cost of said equipment on its own. Realistically, the cost of said equipment per disc sold across all their games is probably less than a dollar, but I can't swear to that one.

Its certainly not a material cost for the game. Its a capital investment, and is accounted differently.

(And lets not forget that when buying a game you normally not only pay for the physical disk, you also pay for development, tech support, shipping, housing, websites, shrapnel also wants to eat, etc). People tend to forget these costs, which usually amount to a lot.

I believe that shipping is paid for separately from that price tag =p

They shouldn't need to do that much warehousing just for Dom3, so storage costs are presumably low, especially on a per unit basis.

They run a single website which accomodates all their games. Like capital investments, its not dom3's job to pay for that on its own, and the actual cost per disc shipped is probably under a dollar.

Actually, most of these things are kind of like capital investments in that its not dom3's job to pay for all of it. (Except development, which I already talked about at length, and that should have been paid off already). I agree these are legitimate expenses. Selling an old game at $50 does not help pay for these things. No sale is no money made at all.

And while I personally think 50$ is still a bit much. I doubt more sales would be made if the price is lower. (I think the specials do improve sales, but that has to do with buyers psychology). Dom3 isn't a real impulse buy kind of game. It is a niche game, those tend to be more expensive. (And tend to draw a more 'select' crowd).

I might argue that dominions3 is such a niche game because the price is so high. I mean, dom3 has a lot of boardgame and wargame type appeal. There are (at least) millions of boardgamers and hundreds of thousands of wargamers out there. The niche doesn't have to be as small as it is. Part of this is probably a failure of advertising (or lack thereof). But part of this is almost certainly the large price tag on an old game - why pay $50 for dom3 when you could pay about the same for something brand new with killer graphics? At $20/unit you still see something like $18 gross profits (price - material cost) which can go towards salaries, paying off capital investments, etc... And you'll probably move a lot more units. For every person who buys it at $50, there's probably 10 who would try it at $15-20. And since the only real cost per unit is the materials cost, well, you do the math.

[Gandalf Parker]

Your math is great. But alot of the info seems based on the larger game corps. The advertise and shelfware groups. Thats a very different business plan involving large contracts, advanced monies, spending on ads, bulk purchasing, 3rd party sales, etc. Its a gamble on future sales.

Nothing is wrong with that. But if you read the history of Shrapnel thats kindof what Shrapnel was created to offer an alternative to. Instead of years of payback for advanced outlay before the devs see any profit checks; Shrapnel sticks to low outlay, publicity instead of advertising, distribution instead of shelfware. It allows them to take chances on games that the other guys wouldnt touch. Shrapnel is here for niche non-shelfware games.

Thats only some of it. Not really my area. Maybe you want to say that Illwinter should move to a mainstream game company, not that Shrapnel should become one. If you look at the entire game list, I dont think most of those would be here under that arrangment. But everyone involved seem happy. Ive only known of 2 developers to leave. One to try it on his own, and one to try the bigboys (after one game he came back)

[Soyweiser]

Originally Posted by Squirrelloid

I believe that shipping is paid for separately from that price tag =p

Damn you are right there. I think I was more thinking along the lines of the constant costs for shipping each product. (The packaging, the guy putting the stuff in the packaging etc, which is part of the shipping costs, but I don't think that is paid from the additional shipping expenses (Or at least that is what I think)). But you are still right . My bad.

According to: http://positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/?p=827

You also pay something like 10% payment processing, 20% tax (at least in the UK, don't know in the US (shrapnel is US right?)). So that is an additional 30% of each sale that will not be profit. (Sure, the 30% remains constant if you sell your game for 1$ or 50$. But still).

Ps: Totally unrelated, but cliffski is great. I wish more small developers released their sales stats.

Originally Posted by Squirrelloid

For every person who buys it at $50, there's probably 10 who would try it at $15-20.

This I doubt. I read a large blogpost by some indy dev a while ago who very eloquently wrote why this isn't always true, and the process of gradually lowering the prices doesn't always lead to more sales. Sadly I cannot find it. . But this remains a matter of opinion. Only shrapnel can try to test this theory.

Originally Posted by Squirrelloid

Why pay $50 for dom3 when you could pay about the same for something brand new with killer graphics?

Because Dom3 has the depth other new killer graphics games lack. It is rather unique in it's scope and type of gameplay.

[Gandalf Parker]

Originally Posted by Soyweiser

Buying the IP, and then throwing it out. Now that would be a design mistake. **** the code, the IP from dominions is worth the money. (With IP, I mean the backstory of the nations, the different nations themselves, the different sites, the magic system (spell names and effects), the images etc).

And why? Because with the IP comes a community of fans. (Yippy, that is you and me!).

I totally agree. Dominions is the fun-time project of one creative programmer, and one creative teacher of ReligioMythos. I think anyone would be hard stretched to pick it up and expand it without falling back on old standards that we have all seen 100's of times in other games.

[Soyweiser]

Originally Posted by Soyweiser

I read a large blogpost by some indy dev a while ago who very eloquently wrote why this isn't always true, and the process of gradually lowering the prices doesn't always lead to more sales.

I think it was Jeff Vogel. At least this what I could find regarding the subject doing a quick search.

http://jeff-vogel.blogspot.com/2009/...more-pt-1.html

Originally Posted by Jeff Vogel

"Back then, new games sold for $50. So Exile was $25, which was a very common price for shareware games back then.

A few years later, I started sending the registered version on a CD (instead of E-mailing a registration code). I charged $30 for a CD. Sales changed very little.

Two years later, I went back to an E-mailed code system and lowered the price back down to $25. Sales changed very little.

Three years ago, I looked at all of our expenses (credit card fees, postage, insurance, etc) and went "Holy crap! We need to raise prices to account for this." We raised our price to $28 (still about half the price of comparable products on store shelves). Since then, our money intake has actually increased. We're doing quite well now."

True, Jeff makes very niche games. SP RPG's, with substandard graphics, but I think his type of audience is comparable to the Dom3 crowd.

And you could argue that Jeff releases a new game every few years, and thus the comparison isn't totally correct. (And I would have to agree with you there).

I just don't think that reducing the price by two thirds would really increase the amount of sales ten-fold.

I doubt I'm allowed to say this, but I'm actually sad that popular bittorrent sites don't keep good logs of the amount of times the torrents are downloaded. It would make it easier to determine the pirate popularity of Dom3. World of Goo had a 90% piracy rate, in that case it was possible that a increase in sales by lowering the price. Don't know about Dom3.

[Gandalf Parker]

My online sales experience is more in areas like posters and tshirts and ebooks. But there are some very interesting psych studies, and reports by biz majors, about pricing. In some cases, raising the price of an item actually amounted in more sales. And why certain numbers actually work better than others for prices (just based on peoples preferences). Im not sure it applies here, but the discussions there are great about the real world vs what you think SHOULD happen when dealing with the mass public. The same occurs in those forums with things like art vs scribbles, cute vs shock, sites with many offerings or just a few.

What people think should work, doesnt always.
(isnt there a Spock quote for that?)

[Gandalf Parker]

Originally Posted by Soyweiser

I doubt I'm allowed to say this, but I'm actually sad that popular bittorrent sites don't keep good logs of the amount of times the torrents are downloaded. It would make it easier to determine the pirate popularity of Dom3. World of Goo had a 90% piracy rate, in that case it was possible that a increase in sales by lowering the price. Don't know about Dom3.

That slightly steps into an area I actually voiced an opinion but didnt win out.
I wanted the protection of Dom3 to follow the protection of Dom1. Full game with a ceiling.

It would have allowed review sites to distribute the game, torrent sites to distribute the game, fans to distribute the game. Then Shrapnel would be able to offer online ordering of the unlock codes with very little overhead.

There are many many pros/cons to that and I agree with the way they went (at that time way back then). But Id be willing to pitch it again with some of the new changes to the online world.

[Soyweiser]

Originally Posted by Gandalf Parker

I wanted the protection of Dom3 to follow the protection of Dom1. Full game with a ceiling.

Damn, at the risk of sounding like a fanboy (which I ain't, I just read his blog). But apparently that is what Jeff (Spiderweb software) does. See: http://jeff-vogel.blogspot.com/2010/...-business.html.

Originally Posted by Gandalf Parker

Then Shrapnel would be able to offer online ordering of the unlock codes with very little overhead.

This would also work to a degree. The current copy protection tends to go off if people are using the same key across different pcs. (Right? That is what I recall). So as one of the large appeals of Dom3 is the multiplayer. This would stop people from easily sharing their keys.

[Valerius]

Originally Posted by Soyweiser

Buying the IP, and then throwing it out. Now that would be a design mistake. **** the code, the IP from dominions is worth the money. (With IP, I mean the backstory of the nations, the different nations themselves, the different sites, the magic system (spell names and effects), the images etc).

And why? Because with the IP comes a community of fans. (Yippy, that is you and me!).

It doesn't seem a stretch to me to imagine someone buying the IP with the intention of staying true to the game but then asking how to expand beyond a loyal, but niche, audience. Perhaps a few changes here and there to the nations might give a broader audience something they can immediately recognize and relate to. And what about that overly complex magic system - how about if that is trimmed down to make it more accessible. And if those changes succeeded in gaining them more sales than they lost from alienated players of D3 then it would make sense.

This is pure speculation of course and it's possible this wouldn't happen but think about various game franchises and how some installments of those franchises are viewed negatively. Perhaps because of changes in game mechanics, or UI, or the intangible "feel" of the game. I might be more surprised if a new version of Dominions by a different developer maintained the spirit of the game than if it didn't.