So no Dominions 4?

[JimMorrison]

God I am not even going to bother quoting you this time. Kraftwerk, it makes me sad that you used such a cool name, because you truly are utterly clueless. It's like you're going through some crappy economics course in a community college, from a guy who thinks the biggest favor that he can do for you is to plug you in to the mainstream economy with both feet on the ground.

I hate to break it to you, but first off, Dominions (as has been stated earlier) is in fact, art. It is not a chair that you pay materials+ for, it is conceptual expression, and you will pay whatever it is worth to you, or not. If your friends won't try the demo to see if they want to buy it, then there is no reason whatsoever to assume that lowering the price will in fact incentivize them.

I'm going to skip your blather about cheaper indie titles, did it ever occur to you that they HAD to lower prices to stimulate sales, whereas you are being told by all comers that Dominions in fact does NOT have to lower prices to stimulate sales?

Then we get to the Starbucks fallacy. You're actually eroding your own argument here, and you don't even realize it. You see, Starbucks is Bioshock, and Oblivion. Dominions, is the little coffee shop up the block from your house, with the amazing pastries. You see, in the world of coffee, people are starting to turn away from the mass produced "lowest common denominator" garbage. Coffee (read: espresso) drinkers (I am one of them) are snobs, and Starbucks isn't cool enough anymore. Dominions players tend to be a bit snobby as well (though we hide it here, since we're all the cream at the top ), and it's only a matter of time before you grow up and you realize that all the mass marketed media that you're gorging on, really isn't very substantial. Somewhere around the time you realize you should come back here and apologize for stinking up the boards, your buddies will just buy the damned game for $60.

That is, if you're not working overtime every week as a dishwasher to support your 19 year old wife and three kids.

Now see, I promised myself I wouldn't get nasty, and look what you made come out of my fingers..... < sigh >

[Kraftwerk]

Then we get to the Starbucks fallacy. You're actually eroding your own argument here, and you don't even realize it. You see, Starbucks is Bioshock, and Oblivion. Dominions, is the little coffee shop up the block from your house, with the amazing pastries. You see, in the world of coffee, people are starting to turn away from the mass produced "lowest common denominator" garbage. Coffee (read: espresso) drinkers (I am one of them) are snobs, and Starbucks isn't cool enough anymore. Dominions players tend to be a bit snobby as well (though we hide it here, since we're all the cream at the top ), and it's only a matter of time before you grow up and you realize that all the mass marketed media that you're gorging on, really isn't very substantial. Somewhere around the time you realize you should come back here and apologize for stinking up the boards, your buddies will just buy the damned game for $60.

That is, if you're not working overtime every week as a dishwasher to support your 19 year old wife and three kids.

Now see, I promised myself I wouldn't get nasty, and look what you made come out of my fingers..... < sigh >

But at the local coffee shop, coffee is 15 cents a cup. At starbucks its 6 friggin dollars. So I dont get that. And shove the high and mighty mass media this and that, ma and pop mumbo jumbo, everything is mass media, this forum, the shirts you wear, the car you drive, the billboards you pass by, youre just as bombarded by it, and involved in its proliferation as anyone you want to point fingers at.

Fact is, the coffee in the cup is the same coffee. The bits and bytes are the same in every piece of software. You dont want to be subjected to scrutiny against mass produced products? Dont compete in a free market. Lifes tough, the markets are harsh, and the lowest common denominator at the end of the day, is where the bargain is, and in a world increasingly wary of spending its dollar, the lower common denominator is whats going to sell.

You dont pay out the wazoo for a print of a painting, theyre all about the same regardless of the artistic content.

For someone who apparently likes Kraftwerk, youd think youd know abit more about (or like) Andy Warhols POP! movement that kraftwerk was a result of. You can mass produce art and sell it for a reasonable price.

You dont have to be snobby smug intellectual to appreaciate it either. You can be a plain plum dumb consumer, and have just as much right to purchase a product at a reasonable price as anyone else, regardless of your level of appreciation.

Art is a product.

[Endoperez]

Kraftwerk said:
Your example is actually proof of what im saying. If you charge 8 dollars for something, people are more inclined to pay for it than if you charge 60 for it. While it might work to charge 60 dollars for a ticket to ID4 and put it on at just as many screens as S&S, something tells me alot of people wouldnt see a movie that costs considerably more than other movies of the same or BETTER quality.

You get more playtime out of Dominions than out of games that only last for 30 hours or so, and those are considered long. The difference in this case is like watching a decent movie and buying a DVD collection with several movies, or rather, several seasons of a TV series. If you like the genre, you will probably want the DVD collection, even if it costs more, both to show that you think it's worth the price and to enjoy actually watching the series.

Bottom line, the price keeps people from buying it. This isnt the first time this has come up over the years, and it wont be the last.

The price hurts the community. Every month, someone shelfs this game. If there arent warm fresh bodies, eventually the community dies, and you end up like Master of Magic. A game people DL for free, a decade later, because the community dried up, where the developers could still be getting checks , and the community could still be actively creating mods and purchasing the game, and hopefully, providing an opportunity for a sequel.

Interestingly, while this has come up several times there has always been a community to discuss in these threads. It won't last, of course. We lose people all the time, and they don't always come back. There are very few games that last a decade. I can only think of StarCraft as a game that's actively played and created content for, and frankly, I don't expect a team of two people to do as good job as Blizzard did for one of their most successful games ever.

Seriously, if you guys arent going to make a dominions 4, why should i even convince friends of mine to purchase this game? So you can retire to florida? Put gas in your tank? Why should we pay new release price for a old game, when a current version isnt being worked on, wheres the money going? A greedy publisher? Solid gold champagne glasses? For serious....why should you get far more than somethings worth.

Its like buying a beer at a bar. Sure its three times as expensive as a store, but theyre providing an atmosphere, and a promise of many more beers than you could buy at one time on tap. What are you providing for the 15 more dollars your charging over the competition.

Illwinter is working on a new project. It isn't Dominions 4 because the old codebase is a mess. Most of the things that can be done, have been, and the rest are either minor or very hard to implement, or both.

In addition for developing something else, Illwinter is also improving the current version. See here:
http://ulm.illwinter.com/dom3/dom3progress.html

Shrapnel Games often holds sales for various holidays. I don't remember how much they take off the price, but I haven't noticed a heap of new registered members appearing after all those sales, so it seems there weren't substantially more sales even with the reduced price.

There's even a distinct feeling in these forums that could be compared to the friendly atmosphere found in a bar, and the manual is very useful, even though it's value has been lowered when new patches have kept changing and adding content.


I do agree that some people won't buy the game because they find it too expensive. People play the demo of Dom3, DomII and even Dom:PPP!!! Why would they play the first version, with horrible user-interface even compared to the current ones, even worse in the balance department, with ugly maps and no mods that could be used even if they did have the full version?

Because it doesn't have a turn limit, and they have 14 nations to choose from.

That, alone, is enough for them. The first version of this series looks and plays like it was released at the same time as Master of Magic. Even with research limited to level 4, even if most nations lose their best mages, even if the AI will be unaffected by the limits and will crush them in a prolonged game with superior spells, it's worth playing. I first encountered this on the Dwarf Fortress forums, so it does take a specific kind of people, but I was still shocked that even the demo of the first Dominions game is considered a good game.

I don't know how much they would pay for Dominions 3. I only know that in that bay12games thread, one person bought the full Dom3 version, after speaking about the game for a while.

[HoneyBadger]

Hell with playing it after 2 years, I haven't even been able to play Dom3 for months and I'm still posting to this forum almost every day! How's that for getting my money's worth?

Mind you, I'm all for Dominions 4 I'll shell out 75$ for a pre-order just as soon as they announce it, even if it doesn't come out for 3 years. I'd go as high as $150, but it'd have to wait for my birthday or Christmas or something, because I'm poor like that.

[Leif_-]

Kraftwerk said:
So S&S that AMC only paid a million to put on at its numerous locations, will only appear on 1 maybe 2 screens where as ID4 that cost them maybe 5 million to put on at their locations, will get 4 to maybe even 8 screens.

Actually, theatres don't buy movies. The business model is more along the lines of the studio renting screens from the theatre in return for a (rather small) fraction of the ticket price. Then the theatre makes a significant part of its revenue from selling concessions.

That's a little besides the point, though, which is this: for works of art such as movies, music, computer games and similar, the price is not determined by the cost of production. Rather, the price is determined by the consumers and what they percieve the value is, and the budget for production is then determined from this. This makes sense, because -- unlike physical products -- the worth of the product to the individual consumer is not directly linked to the cost of production. It doesn't matter if a game cost hundreds of millions to make: if the game is good it's good, if it's ****e, it's ****e, regardless of cost.

Your example is actually proof of what im saying. If you charge 8 dollars for something, people are more inclined to pay for it than if you charge 60 for it.

True for widgets and nails. Not true for "soft" areas such as entertainment or fashion. For some types of products (surprisingly many, in fact), lowering the price can be a kiss of death, resulting in fewer sales. There's a reason why pepole buy poor $50 games from the shelf rather than good $15 games from the bargain bin: perceived value.

Bottom line, the price keeps people from buying it.

Sure, the (relative) high price leads to some people deciding not to buy it. That would be the true no matter what the price was, as long as it was over $0. Don't you think Shrapnel knows the basics[1] supply and demand curve, and how to find the optimum price point? Remember, the optimum price point is the point that maximises your profit, and not your units sold.

[1] Not to say simplistic

This isnt the first time this has come up over the years, and it wont be the last.

Carthago delenda est!

Weeds keep coming up repeatedly over the years too. That doesn't make them flowers.

The price hurts the community.

The evidence does not appear to support the statement.

Every month, someone shelfs this game. If there arent warm fresh bodies, eventually the community dies, and you end up like Master of Magic. A game people DL for free, a decade later, because the community dried up, where the developers could still be getting checks , and the community could still be actively creating mods and purchasing the game, and hopefully, providing an opportunity for a sequel.

If it's the price that hurts the community, how come the MoM community is still dead, despite people downloading it for free? Simple: It's not the price.

Seriously, if you guys arent going to make a dominions 4, why should i even convince friends of mine to purchase this game?

Because it's a good game that's fun to play? Would you be hesitant to recommend a good book or a movie, just because there might not be a sequel? No? Then why does it matter for a game?

So you can retire to florida? Put gas in your tank? Why should we pay new release price for a old game, when a current version isnt being worked on, wheres the money going?

If you buy an Elvis CD, where's that money going? Not towards any new Elvis recordings, that for sure. Does that mean your money is wasted? Of course not.

Here's how it works: You pay your money, you get the game, you play the game. If the game is good, you've got your money's worth. If the game isn't good, you haven't. Wash. Rinse. Repeat.

A greedy publisher? Solid gold champagne glasses? For serious....why should you get far more than somethings worth.

See, that's just it. Dominions 3 is worth $55. Yes, it's more than some other games, but then Dominions 3 is better than those other games.

Of course, if you don't like Dominions 3, then the game won't be worth $55 to you. 'course, then it won't be worth $15 either, so that's not an argument. Overall, though, it seems most of the people who're likely to buy a turn based, rough-around-the-edges strategy games do think that Dominions 3 is worth the asking price.

What are you providing for the 15 more dollars your charging over the competition.

All of this And even more, that they haven't mentioned.

Simply put: they're better than the competition, the provide more than the competition and so they can charge more than the competition. Isn't economics grand?

[JimMorrison]

Leif_- said:
...If you buy an Elvis CD, where's that money going? Not towards any new Elvis recordings, that for sure. Does that mean your money is wasted? Of course not...

I dunno, throwing good money away to hear Elvis..... Could be a waste of money after all.

[Kraftwerk]

The MoM community is alive and kicking, theres multiple clones in the works, as well as mods and new strategy guides and a user improvement patch.

Games like Master of Magic, Jagged Alliance 2, that didnt receive much commercial success at the time, are now shining examples of how the pirate community actually helps the pc game community. Besides pc gaming being a for profit business, its also a part of history, and a community as a whole thats seperate, but equal, to the console gamer or board gamer community. A nod given to preservation of this community, as the galactic civs guys did by not using copy protection, or valves contribution of steam, have only helped their products fly off the shelves. Concern with art and customer satisfaction as a first and formost helps those products sell.

Games where the companies at the time either didnt market them correctly, or at all in some cases, that were quality pieces of work, have been resurrected by the warez and pirate communities not only as pieces of nostalgia (heck i think they still actually try and sell jagged alliance 2) but as new games with user created fix'it'up patches and sometimes, entire new campaigns, gamemodes, expansions, etc.

Now if the makers of these games had the insight companies like iD and epic had back then, to spend the money splattering cheap demo discs all over every electronics store in every major city, and allowed a mod community access to as much of the game as they needed to completely alter the gameplay, theyd have games that were commercial successes like Doom and Duke.

Those titles were developed on the cheap, in garages, just like this one.

There is nothing different in terms of quality between this, and doom, or hexen, or any other smashing commercial success.

The difference is availability, this isnt in stores, visibility, its an old game, it isnt being reviewed anymore, not alot you can do about that, especially if you dont actively seek out press, and lastly, cost, doom, cost you a few dollars for the first episode, and 30 dollars for the rest of the game, unless you had BBB access, you got the first episode free. Then you had the option eventually to purchase the box in stores (episodic content, multiple releases in various mediums?! omg they used ideas from the two largest commercial marketing successes in the entertainment industry, george lucas and everything starwars, how many versions of those movies are there? the fans just buy every one of them even tho they already have one, and this one adds like 4 new seconds of film, and valve, with the steam system for delivering episodic content.

The price, the marketing, the availability, its all the stone age with you guys.

[Leif_-]

Kraftwerk said:
The MoM community is alive and kicking,

Would Sir please make up Sir's mind? First the MoM community dried up because people weren't buying the game any more, and now it's alive and kicking because people aren't buying the game any more. You simply can't have it both ways. Real life isn't like Dominions: there's actually a limit to the good stuff.

Concern with art and customer satisfaction as a first and formost helps those products sell.

Dominions 3 is selling and selling well. The Dominions 3 community is alive and thriving. Those are the fact of the matter; they won't go away just because they're inconvenient to your argument.

The difference is availability, this isnt in stores, visibility, its an old game, it isnt being reviewed anymore,

E pur si muove. And yet it sells. Funny, that.

The price, the marketing, the availability, its all the stone age with you guys.

And yet it sells.

[Dragar]

Kraftwerk,

Agreed that Dom 3 will never be a mass market game without lower pricing, advertising, publicity, better production values etc. The thing is, with a game like this, it would unlikely be a big hit anyway, the learning curve is too great, it's too slow and not visual enough for a typical consumer.

Illwinter and shrapnel could put in a lot of time and money and get a cheaper, better produced game out to a lot of people, but would the increase in revenue cover the costs and the extra time? Remember that the Illwinter guys develop in their spare time. To hit the mainstream Dom 3 would need a major rework in terms of production, graphics and SP playability, and then a heap of promotional activity.

From their (and shrapnel's) point of view, a cheap to produce game is still pulling in decent revenues at moderate sales with high mark-up two years after release... what's not to like? It’s a nice cash cow building a loyal base while they develop their next product. If in the future they want to take it more seriously they can build Dom 4 and launch it, with a ready made community to test, troubleshoot, create map/scenario content and help drive it.

I'm also guessing that Illwinter get a larger piece of the pie than if they went through a major developer.

From Shrapnel's point of view its even sweeter - as their biggest selling product it must be giving them a lot of their new customers and developers, with follow through to other game sales.

Bigger isn't always more profitable, high margins on moderate sales with low cost is a perfectly acceptable business model.

[MaxWilson]

Kraftwerk said:
The price hurts the community. Every month, someone shelfs this game. If there arent warm fresh bodies, eventually the community dies, and you end up like Master of Magic.

Heh, heh, heh. And that's a BAD thing? Master of Magic still had active forums and discussion groups 10 years after its release and more. It wasn't selling any more copies, but that's because the publisher had stopped selling it. Not a bad title to emulate.

-Max