So no Dominions 4?

[JimMorrison]

Lingchih said:

I like their Dead Man ale. Their Mori Moto pilsener is really good too. As well as their Imperial Stout. All are pricey.

Sorry, I used to live in Oregon, and am a big fan of the Rogue brewery.

You should get the Morimoto Soba if you can, it is -amazing-. Also a big fan of the Brutal Bitter, and their Rogue-N-Berry used to be hands down the best berry beer you could get in America, til they cut it because it wasn't as good as Belgian berry beers. o.O


I like this discussion much more than the other.

And yeah it makes me sad that Dom4 might be so far away that it may never come, but I support the decision, and I'm drooling to see what these two wild and crazy guys might come up with next.

[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]

Dragar said:
I don't quite get your viewpoint Kraftwerk..

Are you saying that $60 is too much because you and/or your friends think its not worth that much, or that Shrapnel/Illwinter are pricing stupidly and would make more money at lower cost?

If the latter, presumably Shrapnel understand the demand elasticity of their game pretty well and have their price point for a reason? They, afterall, would have the best information to make that judgement. Personally I can't imagine a drop of $15 would have a massive impact on sales. I certainly don't see the depreciation argument - does a book depreciate? Games only really devalue when they are superseded by something better, and I'm not aware of any comparable game that does it better than Dom 3. As was mentioned, only if Dom 4 came out would there be reason to drop the price on its predecessor.

If you personally think its too expensive, why did you buy it? If your friends won't pay for it, either you haven't sold it to them well enough or its not really their thing. No point trying to sell Dom 3 to the average gamer, its a niche interest. No-one I've spoken to about the game considers the price an issue, although only one paid convert so far! Either way, no need to get upset over it, its their prerogative to sell at whatever price suits them.

Personally, I think Dom 3 has saved me a lot of money. For $60 it has taken away hours and hours of time I would have had to find other things to do in, which all-in-all would have cost me a lot more! Doesn't take many videos, books, or drinks out to cover $60, given the hundreds of hours I expect to play on this game before I have enough. The only downside is lost sleep

Yes a book depreciates, though considering the rate, if you dont consider inflation it looks like books go up in price. Picked up a Harlan Ellison, 'I, Robot' the other day with a cover price of 1.35 in 1971, just a small paperback, and i bought it for 3.50. Inflation would put it about 6 or 7 bucks, so it certainly depreciates. Age depreciates just about everything. Besides wine and women.


And its both, its both too expensive for people i know to shell out on something that at first or second glance is an obvious pass. I passed for quite a while myself, and ill admit, i didnt get dominions 2 the best of ways, but it prompted me to purchase dominions 3. Now I dont advocate doing the same thing for friends of mine, but i know theyd like the game if they actually played it for a while, but all of them cant physically sit at my computer for a few hours getting into it. They have to buy it, or "try it", and 60 dollars is a bit steep of an investment in a video game thats not an advertised A+ title. You know what youre getting 30 hours of when you buy Bioshock, or Oblivion, or Diablo III when that comes out. You know youre going to get a quality title.

Its not exactly enticing new customers at the current price tag.

[Omnirizon]

the people who buy dominions do so because their tired of wandering a world of "next craze next phase next nothing new" games that makes up quality titles like Bio "rip-off system shock" shock, Obli "same impoverished RPG models" vion, or Dia "beat a dead horse some more" blo III.

The people who buy Dominions do so because they crave its uniqueness and personality.

The people who buy Bioshock do so because they crave the warm familiar feeling of sitting in a warm pile of [censored]; they've been trained by society and media to enjoy and celebrate the same ole [censored].

[Kraftwerk]

So you admit at least that it's a good game?

Of course its a great game, but I can throw away more money than the average joe on a risk. And I had to throw away what to most people is a fair price at best for games that are considerably better developed. If you care about where your money goes after it leaves your hands, and yeah i know, most consumers are idiots, doesnt mean we all are, then you think about what the costs break down to...if you know a game that costs millions to produce (though it breaks down to several dollars a produced copy), sells at 50 dollars a piece, you would expect, much like every other market on other, that if the production cost of an item is less than millions, to cost less as a result.

And if we dropped the price to a $1 we could sell SIXTY TIMES MORE COPIES, right? Oh wait, 60x1 isn't very helpful. But at least more people would be playing, right?


Why $45? Why not $50? Why not $40? Why not $43.82? So we drop it to $45 then someone comes along and goes, "You're fleecing your customers! If you dropped the price to $30 you'd sell a lot more. 5x30 is more than 3x45."

Why be the only company that sells a product for 20% more than everyone else on earth? From paradox, to malfador, their prices are reasonable, what makes you different. Why are people paying an extra 15-25 dollars more for your game, than any other game in the same category, independant 4x games.

Paradoxs EU3 is already cheaper.

And its 3d.

Hey, who leaked our business plan?

So, you think it's a good game but don't like what we charge for it...that sums it up, right? That's fine, to each his own.

Youre like starbucks (who is failing miserably now). Theres no actual reason that your product costs more than the exact same product elsewhere, youre just smug. A good idea, implemented into a consumer base in the richest country on earth, internetonia, priced for maximum profit, without any consideration to the actual value of the product.

When this recession sets in more, youll drop your prices, because no one will be buying frivilous entertainment. Might as well have a nice large community base on which to sell budget expansions too.

You guys make so many patches with new content, you should consider going on steam, selling the game for vastly cheaper, and sell the patches as episodic content.

[Lingchih]

Hey, hey Omni, lay off. Bioshock is an extremely good game, and in a totally different genre.

[Edi]

If I compare value for money of the Dominions franchise to anything else I own on the gaming side, it's no contest. Dominions wipes the floor with everything else, though some other games I have played a lot and still play. I've bought every Dominions game and never been disappointed. Sure, I have my own gripes about some stuff and I haven't exactly been quiet (which is why I got put in charge of managing the bug reports), but in the end those gripes are minor. The price is not one of the sticking points for me.

Considering how much time I've spent playing the game and fiddling with it, $60 is nothing. I'd pay that in euros for this game, which would be $90 or more at current rates of exchange. I've got games I paid an equal amount for and didn't play a lot at all.

As far as the community goes, there is a fairly good amount of permanence here, as far as permanence wrt any game goes. That's because currently there is nothing that can hold a candle to Dominions in the turn based strategy genre. Notto mention that if you do fork over the 60 bucks for Dominions 3, not only do you get the game and the manual, you will also be able to use all the stuff that has been provided here for free. Which is a damn lot for an indie game, I should say. As someone who has actually made a lot of that free stuff, I can say that making it has also been fun, though frustrating at times. Been part of the value for money I've gotten for Dom3, the exploration.

As far as the Shrapnel Games decision to charge $55, that's theirs to make. They have all the data on how many copies they sell, what it costs to produce and they have comparison data from a lot of other things. They have been successful in this business for years, so they know what they are doing. If Dominions 3 is going to drop in price, it'll probably only be to $49 to cross the psychological barrier DonCorazon was talking about, but it certainly won't come down from that.

There is also the thing that lowering prices to bargain bin levels is what the mainstream games do because they have a market of tens of millions of users. Dominions does not, so lowering the price significantly is not going to recoup the costs. The people who are interested in this kind of game are generally willing to pay the $45 to $55 (that's counting periodic discounts) for it and they will usually feel they are getting their money's worth. Not everyone, but then, there is always someone who is disappointed.

[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.

[Kraftwerk]

Omnirizon said:
the people who buy dominions do so because their tired of wandering a world of "next craze next phase next nothing new" games that makes up quality titles like Bio "rip-off system shock" shock, Obli "same impoverished RPG models" vion, or Dia "beat a dead horse some more" blo III.

The people who buy Dominions do so because they crave its uniqueness and personality.

The people who buy Bioshock do so because they crave the warm familiar feeling of sitting in a warm pile of [censored]; they've been trained by society and media to enjoy and celebrate the same ole [censored].

Uh Warren Spector, who made system shock, made bioshock. It was basically the whole looking glass crew.

It wasnt a rip off, it was sort of a sequel/pre-quel/alternate reality

The simularities are intentional.

Ever play Dues Ex? Same thing. Spector loves his inventory managing FPSs

Both are great games.

And system shock suffered from too high a price for an unknown title as well. I bought it, but i remember it took all my christmas money as a kid heh.

[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 >