Dom 3 price...

[capnq]

vanedor said:Sure, the manual might be worth some money... but what about selling a version of the game *without* the manual for 40$?

Because unlike the waste of dead trees that most computer game manuals consist of, the Dom3 manual is a worthwhile investment. I've seen commercial "strategy guides" with less useful information in them than the Dom3 manual includes.

Dom2 had the most heavily used manual of any computer game I've ever owned; I can't imagine choosing your research path without referring to it. The Dom3 manual is even better; the improved formatting of the reference tables is letting me try strategies that I didn't have enough information to think of in Dom2.

(The reason for the "angry" face on this post is that cheapskate gamers whining about games being too expensive is a pet peeve of mine. Games are a luxury item, people. If you don't want to pay for quality, the mainstream publishers put out plenty of cheap yet overpriced shovelware for you to misspend your gaming budget on.)

[Agema]

I didn't think the price was bad. But then, at $1.9 = £1, $55 is about the same as a shop-bought game, the exchange rate works in my favour. I'd expect to pay less for an electronic download and .pdf manual (I prefer CD/DVD and paper manual anyway).

[haileris]

As someone pointed out earlier, games such as Dom3 are great value when compared to other forms of entertainment such as films or DVD's.
However, I was somewhat disappointed with Dom3 as I don't think it resolved some of the major issues with Dom2, for instance the micromanagement and unintuitive (to me!) interface and I didn't think it was *that* much of a difference to warrant $55.

Its a good buy but I would consider other options if you are only a moderate fan of the previous version (although to be honest there isn't too many other games in this category that stand out at the moment, at least new ones.)

[Taqwus]

Agema said:
I didn't think the price was bad. But then, at $1.9 = £1, $55 is about the same as a shop-bought game, the exchange rate works in my favour. I'd expect to pay less for an electronic download and .pdf manual (I prefer CD/DVD and paper manual anyway).

You're not only paying for the mere physical products, whose cost is probably unusually high due to limited publishing run, but you're also paying for an unusually high level of quality support.

Dominions 3 was released in May '06, and the developers and reps of the publisher not only can be found still participating in the forum, but also continuing development work that adds more than bug fixes. From a 'normal' publishing house, you'd probably have never seen many of the post-launch fixes and content without paying for multiple 'expansion packs', if ever. You probably also wouldn't have seen quite the support for mods, because -that- much ability to mod makes it harder to sell aforementioned expansions.