Bottom Feeders

May have seen this one before, circa 2012.

Developer happily working in his niche developing role-playing games, and making a living doing it.

Find your niche and work there.
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/135065/principles_of_an_indie_game_bottom_.php


"I feel truly lucky to be writing games now. It's an exciting time. Don't take it for granted."
"Game development is the next great art form, and we're still on the ground floor."
"I get to lurk in my basement and watch the titans of the game industry punch each other silly far above me."

"Find your niche and own it." That about sums it up.

His views on piracy? "Then the first step is to accept that piracy happens."


One of his game trailers

Cheers

 

That is solid advice and goes along well with a discussion I just had with a friend. About pricing. It's kinda crazy how people are pricing themselves out of making any real money because so many people think if they charge less they will end up making more. Works in some cases but really just any basic economics sense makes it clear "charge less to make more" just doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Lol Still "everyone" seems to be pricing their games as no value junk, regardless of genre niche or whatever, then wondering why they make barely enough to buy a pizza and a 6-pack each week.

 

Nice article, I read this a while ago but a good refresher. I like the attitude about piracy.. ie that you're not really selling a game, you're selling something else, like an experience, or an ethic, or a lifestyle, or joy, etc... and focusing on that.

I agree about the price too... racing to the bottom is unfortunate, as a competitive thing, since it soaks up a lot of customers who don't care how the developer prices things, or how much money they make, but for the developer themselves it makes sense to fine tune the balance between price and # of customers, if you want maximum total sales.. .. that is, if that's your ambition. Some people may prefer having `more customers` at the expense of less income, perhaps for other business-model reasons or just because they have some other ethic that tells them its how they want to be rewarded.

 

Yes!

Can't remember where but read a post on some forum re: Minecraft along the lines of "..where can I torrent Minecraft?"
The response: "That wouldn't be very fair to Notch..."

If you treat people well and price it well people will probably gladly pay you for it.

 

@imaginaryhuman Very true! And a lot of people truly believe they will make more money if they practically give away their games. Charging $1 or releasing for free with ads is great if you are after marketing. As you said just trying to build a list for future projects. But if you want to make money charge prices that will make money. I have always preferred to have 10 customers paying $10 each over 100 customers paying $1. First, the ones paying $10 are your real market. They obviously really want this game or type of game. They will be much less likely to complain. They will be more likely to buy the next game. It is all about finding a higher quality customer. Less support. Less headaches all around.

 

Value perception also.

Remember Father in-law putting some item (fish tank, I think) out at a yard sale... "FREE"
Just sat there.

Put "10 cents" and it went instantly.

 

Yep. There are also situations where you might want as many people as possible to participate, if that's important, maybe if the game needs a big online presence or player-base to support a lot of networked gaming or something? Depends on the type of game perhaps. Or if the reason for your product isn't strictly to make money, like some kind of self-help resource that you altruistically would prefer a lot of people access rather than that it make you rich.

On the Unity asset store I experimented a bit with pricing of my assets... when pricing in lower, generally a higher number of people buy the product, but as you say, you also then get people who are less invested/committed, and so maybe have more fringe-like requests or complaints, or are not really `hardcore` into the product and are just curious. And overall, maybe I made less money, because the price was too low. I then put some of my prices up a bit and got fewer orders, but overall a little higher total income. I didn't really track this accurately so I can't tell too well for sure but that's what seemed to happen. But I guess you also have to price against `average perceived value` or something, like there are assets that are like $100 and you can imagine that most people would feel the product to be worth between $50 and $150, perhaps, so then it's a matter of, relatively, how your price bounces against the value that most people (that you want?) perceive it to have. If you're too high even for your niche group of super-users, that may not be good.

 

This has been proven many times in various official and unofficial tests.

There is even a case where it was tested here back in 2009 I just stumbled across today:

http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/choose-your-own-price-results.35059/

This is precisely what I was getting at where 14 customers brought in $140 and 3 customers brought in $150.

It really just depends on who you want your target market to be. If you want people who are unwilling to pay (do not value your work) or unable to pay any or no more than a tidbit then you should price accordingly (maybe free). If you want to get people who value your work and are able and willing to pay what your time is worth price accordingly to reach them. Either way you will get what you are after whether it is 10 freebie/junk price customers or 1 premium customer (maybe 2).

 

Man, I played that back when it was Blades of Exile. Must've been at least 10 years ago.