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

[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!

[UNIVAC]

[quote]Originally posted by 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.

---

Well, board game, strategy, conquest, turn-based,...the basics are the same, not the complexity, of course.But thats not the important part of what sfsuphysics was saying

[Saarud]

I really like the fact that Dominions 2 is a low budget product. If more would be invested into the game they would have to make Dominions 2 appeal to a larger mass which undoubtly would lead to a dumb down of the gameplay, otherwise the great mass wouldn't enjoy the game.

Now to survive as a small developer company and continue to develop great deep strategy games on a small niche market they might have to charge abit more than otherwise for their products.

I for one would churn up more money for this great product as I think the developers for sure have earned it but mostly because I want them to continue to make strategy games.

Ok then again I would happily pay much money for a game with ascII graphic as long as the gameplay is good. But that might just be me.

[Unknown_Enemy]

nice graphics, good music and other eyescandy are a real bonus that I like to enjoy.

However, they are not enought to motivate a decision to buy, which will be solely based on gameplay. That seems a commun trait with wargamers.

[Lord Hammer]

Originally posted by Unknown_Enemy:
nice graphics, good music and other eyescandy are a real bonus that I like to enjoy.

However, they are not enought to motivate a decision to buy, which will be solely based on gameplay. That seems a commun trait with wargamers.

Well, it's good to know you'll be buying it then, enjoy! From one wargamer to another...it's a slippery slope Dom2 is .

[olaf73]

I'd wager that if the game was $10-15 cheaper, had good comprehensive docs and in game tutorial it would sell twice as many copies.

olaf

[DarkStar]

If the game was $10-15 cheaper, had good comprehensive docs and in game tutorial, I wouldn't have given it a second thought, and would have placed my order the moment I finished the demo.

For me the fact I played the demo before the walkthru was done, and was lost and confused playing most of the time really put a bad taste in my mouth. That with the really bad UI design, was too much for me to take, for the $50 price tag.

I'm sure I'll end up getting it at some point...

[PhilD]

Originally posted by olaf73:
I'd wager that if the game was $10-15 cheaper, had good comprehensive docs and in game tutorial it would sell twice as many copies.

olaf

Honestly, I don't think so. At $35, it would still be more expensive than some new games, so wouldn't be perceived as "not a big deal"; and the target audience (people who like complex, rich games with more emphasis on content than state-of-the-art look) probably isn't so much looking at the price tag.

It might sell a few more copies, but I'm confident the total sales volume would be less; since producing copies isn't free, that would mean even less profit (or even a loss) for Shrapnel.

[UNIVAC]

I agree with Darkstar