Making early access more expensive

So one of the early access games I'm playing makes it very obvious on the store page that the price will drop once the game goes into full release. I was chatting with the developers and they said this was a deliberate attempt to limit early access users to only those who actively wanted to participate in development.

I thought it was an interesting strategy. Traditional early access procong is cheaper because the customer only gets 'half a game'. Then the price goes up on full release.

Thoughts on this strategy?

 

It keeps out the idiots, I suppose. It would save them from some negative ratings.

 

My experience from playing MMOs is that the idiots are often the biggest spenders.

 

I think it's a great idea. If you look at the app store, as far as I know premium games tend to get better ratings because people want to feel like they're making smart choices with their money, and they actively look for things that support that, whereas a free game is just an easy target for whichever way it happens to rub you that day - you have no investment in your own perception of it and you'll be more inclined to make a lot of drama just for the sake of fun. I think psychologically it's just very hard for people to deal with the idea of having wasted money and they'd rather find ways to look positively on their choices.

I can definitely see how that would translate to early access. It's all a question of framing, when you put a price on participation, it makes people see it as a badge of honor and something they have to portray positively to others, and they'll be more inclined to make it a positive, constructive experience.

 

Kinda sounds like they are using early access for exactly what it is meant to be. Crazy!

It sounds like they are serious, and more interested in building a quality product instead of trying to build buzz. For a developer like that it is probably a great strategy.

 

Its basically what vlambeer did with nuclear throne, they never lowered the price so only the people who were actually into the genre would buy i, it would keep out impulse buyers who just bought the game because they are bored or whatever.

According to steamspy your launch is your launch, and you dont really usually get any traffic after it leaves early access. So its probably a bad idea.

https://medium.com/steam-spy/some-things-you-should-know-about-steam-5eaffcf33218#.27rtzilt9

 

I think it is quite impolite towards your users. You make people pay more for a broken product which they'll need to test.

Kinda reminds me of Painting the Fence from Tom Sawyer. I'd look for other ways to filter out "uninterested" users.

 

I disagree with the idea that it's impolite. Being made to pay for the benefit of having something is not in itself a category of punishment or a hostile act. And no one is being made to do it, if someone pays a certain amount for early access then by definition it's worth the price for them.

I don't know if I'm some kind of exception, but I actually like to pay for things that mean a lot to me (and I'm far from having a comfortable bank account!). To me, it's a great feeling because it's a case of me being able to influence what gets made in the world by making it (slightly) more profitable.

I think the relationship between game development and gamers is a bit like that between freelance workers and entrepreneurs. If you're a freelancer and you know that you're good at what you do, you should charge through the roof because then you'll only attract entrepreneurs that consider the investment in your work to be at least worth as much as the benefit they get from it. And if you don't attract anybody you're obviously simply not worth the price. But sadly, like in freelancing, game developers are used to mortgaging their own house before asking a player for a couple of dollars.

Ultimately what makes the world go round is cost/benefit, and those who don't throw their weight around and get people to pay up, get abused by people who otherwise have no barriers to accessing them and their work. The only real definition of someone who is charging too much imo is someone who doesn't have any (or enough) customers.

 

I have read that about the early access launch being the launch. Maybe running a higher price during early access will fix that, because it would mean there would effectively be a large sale on the launch day coming out of early access. At the very least, it should lead to an interesting post mortem by the developer at some point.

 

The only thing they could do would be to save one of the visibility updates for the launch, coordintate that with a price drop, and I guess if they got good reviews it could be enough to give them a boost. But the problem is going to be to get the blogs to cover the game

 

The idea does not sit well with my sense of morality, so it is definitely not something I'd do.

Early Access in general often looks like trying to make people pay for testing their game and writing bug reports. Early Access titles often fail to deliver as well. (lots of promising titles that end up being nothing good).

Paying less for early access, having limited number of available "early acccess" slots or giving extras for early access users - I would find all that agreeable. If you want people to "support your project", the scheme used by rimworld (where people could optionally buy a mostly useless but very expensive DLCs) could work as well. However, charging more for an unfinished base game - that'll be a definite "no". At least, that's the way I see it.

 

Seems kinda backwards to what 'could' potentially cut off word of mouth advertising. The more people who know about a product - shown in a positive light, could result in a higher sale rate upon gold master release.

The only reason not to want to sell to bored impulse buyers I can think of is for the reason stated by OP.
I can't think of another reason why anyone would not want to sell to bored impulse buyers. Those just increase sales!

 

That depends entirely on what you and your customers feel is being paid for, doesn't it?

If customers are into an early access game because they want to be involved with the developer, in the community, and see the game take shape over time then that's an experience in its own right that can't be had elsewhere. Sure, the game is unfinished, but it sounds like it's not the game in-and-of-itself that people are paying for.

Plus, something pretty similar goes on with most games. It's super expensive around release, then the price drops rapidly at some point. At the same time, the people who brought it at release were paying without the benefit of post-release patches and support, which the people who waited for a price drop got (almost) out of the box.

As long as your customers know what to expect I think it's fair enough. And to be honest, for a good game I don't think the price is a big deal in any case. The games my wife and I play a lot would easily be well under a dollar an hour. "Do we want to spend time playing this?" is a much more important question than "Is it worth X dollars to buy?"

 

This is pretty much why I brought it. The game is a simulation in an area I find fascinating. Getting to interact with the devs as the game progresses is pretty cool.

I'm in this boat too. Entertainment represents a pretty small fraction of the budget. Most of the big ticket items are housing, food, and transport. Saving a few dollars on a game really doesn't make that much of a difference at the end of the month. So it comes down to 'do I want to do this?' rather then 'is this the most effective way to spend my money'.

I'm not sure about this. Cutting off bored impulse buys may have more effect then you think. So far the reviews of the game and the word of mouth have been predominantly positive. I think much of this is because only people that are interested in the game type and theme have brought it.

No Man's Sky was a good example of the damage that attracting non interested players can do to a brand. If you are aiming at a specific niche, it may not hurt to lock out randoms.

Just random thoughts.

 

//opinion
No, this move requires too much sophistry and mental gymnastics to justify it.

By selling your game you sell an experience that is supposed to be more or less complete and enjoyable.

Technically, you aren't SUPPOSED to even have an early access, because putting the title under early access is a big red flag - it indicates that you either failed to secure funding (and a good reason to question your business skills) or might not have enough skilled staff (which is a good reason to question your development skills). So, if it is early access, your title most likely will fail to be released, miss release date, or get stucck in development hell for a loong time.

So, if developer charged MORE for an early access version, I'd conclude that they're full of themselves and would avoid the title altogether, at least until it hits the release. With this tactic selling the game stops being selling a game and turns into some kind of ponzi scheme.

Err, nope. The price is high, because it is NEW, and it drops because the game becomes old and dated.
Imagine that you're buying a car. A brand new car will be more expensive than a 20 years old one, right?

Let's say a brand new car cost $30k, a dated can be bought, say for $15k. And then there's a weirdo on the block, that charges $200k but only gives you a bottom part of the frame, 3 wheels, a driver seat and half of an engine without even a steering wheel with a promise to maybe some day give you the rest of the car, when it "finishes being manufactured". They justify their price as "a way to support their car company". Would you buy that 200k piece of a car you can't even use? That's the whole idea in a nutshell.

As I said, it is my opinion, but I absolutely see no way to justify it.

--EDIT--

I mean, you can't even call this scheme "investing" into the company, because investing would imply getting some sort of returns (either dividends or increase in value of shares which can be resold). And with this idea you only get incomplete or unfinished product and bunch of promises that can be easily broken.

 

That's still exactly what's happening. Instead of the experience being "play my game" it's "be involved as the game is created".

On that note, what are your thoughts on concert tickets? At the time of purchase the concert doesn't exist, and you're taking it entirely on faith that the band will show up, play well, and so on.

Also note that people often pay extra for things like developer commentary and such "special features".

This makes a bunch of huge assumptions. Personally, I agree that going to Early Access in order to get funding is silly, to say the least. That said, if I had funding then I think that also having access to an audience of people eager enough that they're willing to pay for playtesting access is great.

That doesn't change the fact that the people playing the "NEW" thing are getting a buggier, less refined experience than one that's had a bunch of additional support time invested into it.

 

So, they pay you for painting your fence. It stinks.

The band/performer exist though and have established reputation. Early access means that the concert will maybe happen when they finish training the performer that hasn't been born yet.

No assumptions, just experience. Most projects in early access fail to deliver, fail to meet expectations or fail to be finished.

It is not a fact, it is your opinion.

As far as I can tell, they get broken product, short end of the stick and no financial returns from putting their faith and money into unproven developer. That's not how (I think) things should be done.

If people are playtesting your game, you either should be paying THEM, or at least give them some benefits, because they're doing you a huge favor. Charging them more is a fairly arrogant move.

In case there's a need to "fund our development, please!", there are other options, which I mentioned earlier. All of them are preferable to this one.

 

@neginfinity for practical purposes (considering the way it's been abused) I pretty much agree with you. However I do think that in certain cases and in certain circumstances early access could provide an incredible lot of value to the player/fan. For example if an established company are considering reopening some IP and some die-hard fans are interested in participating and getting involved in something that isn't a sure bet, and supporting it financially, it's a win-win.

But yeah the whole 'early-access' thing for an indie noob developer is a bit like selling VIP tickets to a party in your basement - it's kind of meaningless and you'd be better off making sure you can dependably keep someone interested for more than fifteen minutes.

 

You're mixing up the creator and the product here. There's no reason an established creator couldn't use Early Access if they wanted.

You're assuming the project is otherwise unfunded. You're also assuming that the developers are necessarily inexperienced. Now, either of those things could be true, and I would expect that in most cases they are true, but they're still assumptions.

Haha, what? If the game has had more bugs fixed then it is less buggy. That is not an opinion. If you'd argued that not all games get post-support release that'd have made sense.

If something is mutually beneficial I don't see the issue. Especially considering, as I pointed out before, that people are already more than willing to pay for - and presumably thus see value in - things like developer commentary and such. There's opportunity here to actually interact with the developers while they're working on a thing you're a fan of. That... sounds pretty cool!

That brings me to...

On the note of most Early Access games having, ah... significant issues, I agree that the system as a whole is flawed to the point of brokenness. I get the impression that there's isn't nearly enough quality control or vetting before projects are opened to Early Access. Personally, I think it'd be best kept to already funded projects with established teams behind them.

 

It's worse. The phrase "poisoning the well" springs to mind.

 

@BoredMormon

This is indeed interesting and it seems they hi-jacked the term early access for something different.

Basically, two different products:
1- participation in game development (higher price tag)
2- a finished game (lower price tag)

To assess the strategy, it would be interesting to understand:
- Your expectations when you bought into this, i.e. what do you expect out of it and do they deliver?
- Their expectations, i.e. what do they want to get out of it (it seems they are less interested in pre funding but more interested in getting a better product)

Since you chat with them, would be interesting to hear both sides...

 

That's crowdfunding. "We'll make this thing happen, if you pay us. We have skill and manpower.".

I would not mind such thing, but in general early access projects should have contracts. With milestones, deadlines, duties of developer and money back in case of failure to deliver. Basically, it would be a better idea to treat buyers as customers or investors, and not as "people you can convince to throw money at you".

When someone starts chargin more for incomplete product with "unique experience" (How many voxel open world games are there on steam currently? I think it is at least a dozen of them. All "totally" unique) I obviously won't be paying for this.

On related note I have "star forge alpha" in my steam library. Check it out. It is nice to compare the project's initial "potential" with what it became after the release.

 

That's false. While fixing 10 bugs people can introduce fifty more. If you have programming experience, you should already know that.

======

Either way, I have nothing else to add on this topic.

 

Yeah I read all about that debacle.

And I think that's another point about these openworld voxel games - early access is being abused to fund games that are basically open-ended in scope and unlikely to succeed, and what the devs end up doing is selling the smell of this unlikely story until reality catches up.

 

It might be easier if I link to the game to provide some context. I didn't want to do it earlier and warp the discussion with discussion of the specific game.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/440650/

I stumbled across the game when googling for inspiration for biosphere. I think the term was 'genetics game' or something like that. I discovered a YouTuber doing a let's play if niche, and thought I'd give the game a go. The YouTuber sucked at the game, but I was pretty sure my biology training would let me do better.

I downloaded the game and had a go. I think I played about five or six hours before running out of content. The core mechanics were all in place, and the game looked quite pretty. I was happy with the price I paid for the experience.

I didn't actually buy the game intent on assisting in development, though I did share my opinions on a couple of mechanics I though weren't up to scratch. No idea if my suggestions will make it into the final product.

In fairness they do seem to be using early access for it's intended purpose. The key mechanics of the game were in place, the art was done, and there was nothing fundamentally broken. The only thing lacking was content.

 

Had a look at it, looks in quite good shape.

Back to the original question, under the assumption that there are different stages, since deployment of patches became so easy...in the old days when you had a rom final was pretty final.

I guess from a pricing strategy there are the below options and it really depends what you want to achieve to select the best one for your situation:

1. Early access for free - proof of concept + as broad feedback as possible
2. Early access at lower price than final --- maximize pre-funding (i.e. attract customers of tomorrow with discount)
3. Early access at same price as final --- get pre-funding (i.e. attract fans that cant wait and dont mind if not all is done)
4. Early access at higher price than final --- "bored people" /// maximize quality input (i.e. attract customers that want to be part of the design process and shape the game...or people that want to learn something for their own interests rather now than tomorrow)

 

For the title in question I don't think the strategy is entirely bad I just don't think its entirely great either, for a niche title they obviously don't want to sell so cheap to the only kind of people who would buy it anyway. And then when the price goes up when they add more content features for its niche game type, its more of risk that they get even less buyers. So perhaps its right for them, I do think they should probably put a %sale discount on it for the holidays though.


Personally I wouldn't touch any title that does early access and sets the price above what they are currently delivering in gameplay/content/features. Saying that if what they are already delivering is what I would enjoy at the current early access price then its already a non issue and for consumers like that. I just think as time goes on and more fund early access titles and those titles fail to deliver or go about making stupid changes to what people originally enjoyed in the game they thought they were buying and the direction it was going. Well they ruin it and make it harder for future developers to use the same model/strategy and not fail because other developers have F***ed it up and poisoned the consumer trust on it.

So there is no reason for me to trust them on lowering the price or on raising the price on delivering a compelling game for the current price. That doesn't mean I wouldn't do it, guess you go in pretty much setting the price you are comfortable with and want for your game upfront to support development, you reduce the number of potentially negative reviews (maybe), you make it slightly more exclusive to video streamers or only get ones into that niche, you reduce the number of actual playtesters. ...Actually these are all negative points I wouldn't do it this way at all lol.

I firmly believe in setting the price to what it is worth at the time of selling, factoring in future development and little extra to support that, having a little faith in your buyers and evangelists promoting the game to a larger audience and S***ting on any negative reviews that might come from those expecting more than is humanly possible given the funding/development, and basically just putting the price up slowly as more is added to the product upto a certain threshold. Maybe have sales along the way, I think a really cheap early access price while balancing what is being offered in the product aligns with the price is all part of the fun and if you can do it well and build trust with buyers and show potential buyers that you mean business with what you are putting into the product and give them a heads up that they should definitely want to buy in early for a better deal and to fund a better product being made. Of course there are all kinds of ways to do it wrong and it blows back.