As an indie dev, this article is fucking stupid.
Want to know why indie games are priced at $10 to $15? Becaue AAA has been putting everything they’ve made in the last decade on Steam and it’s all going for $20 - $25.
Indies can’t launch at that price point anymore because they’re competing with AAA games from 10 years ago that have been discounted to death.
The Steam winter sale is the best example of this, where most people will buy RDR2 for $19 instead of the new mega hit indie that’s $20. So indies have been lowering their price to actually get sales. That’s why team cherry priced Silk Song at $20.
Basically, AAA is now just competing with the bottom part of the market they spent that last decade flooding.
They’re complaining about people actually choosing where to spend their money wisely because that means they might actually have to make a good product if they want to sell a game for $70.
I think you probably hit the nail on the head here. I’ve been holding off on MGSV because it’s $20, and I’m waiting for that 50% off sale.
Buuut, that didn’t stop my from buying silksong at full price. Or Factorio. :)
Thanks! 🙂 Appreciate you confirming that. We actually changed the price of our latest game to $10 (from $20) because we launched last December and got buried by AAA selling for $15.
Almost every dev team we talked to this year felt the same about the $20 price. That is, it’s much better to go out at $15 or $10 as a LOT of people see indie games at that price as better than modern AAA. (All while still holding out for classic AAA that go on sale for $20.)
And that being said, I’m totally cool with losing a sale to MGSV or Witcher 3 😁 Just wish the $20 space wasn’t getting so crowded. It’s making it rough for the smaller teams to compete at that price too now.
Honestly, if an indie game is promising, I’ll gladly pay full price. Pacific Drive, The Forest, and Inscryption (small sale) were all games that I picked up because of interesting trailers, premises, and very positive reviews :)
Terraria has always been $10. Stardew Valley: $15. Undertale: $10. Braid was $15 when it launched, and even then, people were bitching about the price. So, the price tag has always been in that range since the first indie game launched.
I think you’re ignoring the incredible amount of oversaturation in the industry. Games are everywhere. I could throw a thousand sticks into the wilderness and it would smack into a thousand different game studios, all working for years on their big hit that (in their eyes) would make them millions of dollars.
But, people don’t have time to even play their own Steam backlog. On average, people buy more games than they even have time to play, and that’s not even counting the sheer amount of movies, music, TV shows, YouTube videos, whatever that is competing for people’s time. If they are playing video games, then they are not watching or listening to other media.
It’s not just the gaming industry. The entire creative industry is propped up on the backing of a 98% failure rate, or sometimes even a 99.99% failure rate. The lucky few get to spout off their survivorship biases, under the bones of former companies and individuals, crunched under the weight of oversaturation.
My dude, I’m very familiar with the 14% of videogame players new game devs are vying for. And every one of the games you mentioned launched at that price because they were developed by a single dev (two at most) who could profit off of the $10 - $15 dollar space that was below the smaller studios putting out games like Shadow Complex, or Mercenary Kings, or Shank 1+2 for $20.
Now all of those spaces are being crushed together. Mostly due to economic factors. Thats where the biggest problem really lies, in the fact that people just have less money to spend on all that entertainment. Just pointing out that it’s competitive at all is obvious my dude, but the direction its going in is one in where there’s less anything being made (including games) because not as many people have money to spend on anything but necessities.
That’s why AAA is now scavenging at the bottom of the totem pole, and pricing their older games at $10 or less on sale, it’s because the few people that have money find that price point appealing. So it’s now one that not just the people who made Terraria, Braid, etc compete in. The money those devs made previously in that space is now up for grabs to AAA companies that never had anything to sell at that price before.
Theres a very tried and true formula for any business, including making games, and in the last 2 years it has completely broken apart. Mostly due to the Embracer group merger failing, combined with AI, combined with economic uncertainty, combined with AAA companies stabbing indie creators in the back (Subnautica, Disco Elysium). Your game doesn’t have to be a massive hit to be successful, it just needs to have a big enough audience to be profitable. But that audience has shrunk over the years as economies have tightened, and the companies getting squeezed have been invading markets they never had a presence in before.
So it’s just desperate times more than anything. But that doesn’t mean you can’t make a living off of making games. I know dozens of small teams funded by government grants making small games you’ve never heard of to help kids in hospitals learn about their cancer. Or teach kids in underprivileged schools about resource scarcity. Making games as a business goes far beyond entertainment and the hopes of narcissists. It’s an artistic medium like any other, and as such benefits society by making the toughest parts of it more accessible.
There’s plenty of ways to run a company doing just that - and just because the world economy is in free fall doesn’t mean the entire business of making games is something for the lucky few. It’s just for anyone that wants to learn how to run a game company. Which isn’t easy, but extends far beyond the simplistic view you are portraying.
If you start going over 2 or 3 people, you’re not an indie dev you’re a AA studio.
I don’t know about the main point that you are making, meaning that it’s the economy’s fault.
I only have a few data points to compare, but anecdotally me and my friends have plenty of budget to buy games, but not enough time to play them as the poster above says. I have such a huge backlog of nice games that I don’t care to buy a game at release time, I can wait for a discount. If it is something exceptionally good that I want to play now, i will do it, but mostly on the ~20 euro range
So I will agree with the poster above. Make something exceptionally good, otherwise it compares with my backlog.
At any given time, there’s about 400 million people playing game on the planet. Of those people, only 14% play NEW games released within 12 months.
It used to be 30% 10 years ago. Now it’s less for a variety of factors, but one of them is less people have the income and budget they used to.
You are in that 14%.
Which is great - but the games you buy as part of that 14% are based on your taste. Not if they are exceptionally good, only if they are exceptionally good to you.
So making games that are “exceptionally good” for an audience isn’t easy because your audience doesn’t even know what they want beyond a genre. I’m sure you could tell me about the games you like and prefer to play, possibly even a genre of games you love.
But if I asked you to tell me what game COULD be exceptionally good in that genre, you might not have an answer. Just other games to compare it to. And if you do have an answer, there’s no telling if it would actually be popular with a bigger audience that genre enjoys.
Making “exceptional games” isn’t a bar to be crossed that makes a game money. Rather a game is “exceptional” once it finds an audience that feels that way about it. Games that have broad appeal have broad audiences like Call of Duty who all feel that game is exceptional too. Many who play it would argue which one in the series was the most “exceptional” and wouldn’t have a great answer for what to make as a better version of that game.
People like what they play, and exceptional games are only exceptional to the audience that plays them. So it’s not so much about making something exceptional, but making something that has an audience that thinks it’s exceptional.
And finding that audience is the hard part. Especially when only 14% of people who plays games are even looking at what you’ve made.
But it’s not impossible. Just difficult these days.
is there a way to tell what is indie and what is slop? i really think it’s getting like the ebay days of the 90’s. just … something feels off. repetitive. odd.
If it has the AI content flag, it’s most likely slop.
Indie and slop are not mutually exclusive. Something can be both.
What’s that? Capitalism fixing problems?
Checkmate atheists.
Capitalism isn’t fixing anything here. In fact, it’s showing that the companies mindlessly following market inflation to keep profits up are doing worse.
Why buy AAA slop when indie gold cheaper?
Checkmate juden.
Yah but the amount of shit games charging 3 dollars is insane. Really dragging down the median.
My rule is I’m only willing to pay a dollar for every expected hour of play, so you can imagine I buy few things at full price.
The last two games I paid full price for were Elden Ring and Mandragora. I am far more likely to pay full price for an indie title that I’m excited about than anything else, because as an artist myself, I fully understand the impact of a pre-purchase on an indie studio.
I would also generally consider £1/hour of gameplay to be pretty terrible value tbh. Truly good games are more like £0.10/hour or less
That’s fine. I don’t agree with you.
If you only look at $/hr, there are some 70 hr games which milk your time and should have been shorter, like Assassin’s Creed, and then there are short, story rich games, like Outer Wilds, which are absolutely worth it even at more than a dollar an hour.
People spend like $20 to watch a 2 hour movie, $1/hr isn’t that unreasonable
To you perhaps. Cinema is less than half that cost here and even then I go less than once a year because I don’t really feel like most films that come out are worth bothering to see given the combined effort and cost.
deleted by creator
I don’t strictly adhere to it or anything, but I think it’s a good reminder sometimes when I balk at the price of a new game that I’m liable to spend hundreds of hours playing.
Not to mention that not all gaming hours are equally fungible.
There can be shorter narrative games where a given hour is worth more (to me), so the higher per hour cost is justified.
Agree 100%. Played Dispatch last week and had a blast. Very short, but worth the money imo
I like some of the early access development styles used in things like Enshrouded and Satisfactory, so mostly ive been spending on games like that. I like the idea of collaborating with a player base to create a game together I think.
Oh definitely. I’ve enjoyed the experience of helping devs mold a title into something better in exchange for a lower price.
I like your dollar an hour rule though, I might use that in the future. Its funny though, my most played game was free and I have 2000+ hours in it!
Edit: I forgot rocket league was 30$ originally! Still a good deal!
It all depends on what you’re looking for. I’ve put hundreds of hours into games and gotten way less than $1/hr, and I’ve also had a great experience paying significantly more.
So I don’t see games in terms of $/hr, especially these days when I’m more limited by time than money. Instead, I look for unique experiences with cost being a much lower factor. Generally speaking, I spend much less than $1/hr since I buy a lot of older games, but I’ve spent far more ($5-10/hr) on particularly interesting games.
But yeah, generally speaking, I’m willing to pay more for indies than AAA titles because indie games are more likely to offer that unique experience.
No it’s the users that are the problem get more jobs idiots
…until GTA6 comes out, then all bets are off.
I just started waiting as long as I needed to, years if necessary, for the games I want to drop down on a sale to under $20. I really don’t care how long I have to wait. There’s enough games out there now to keep me busy.
Best example of this is the borderlands franchise. Wait a year or two and get the game + dlc for 80% off.
Aka the market has rejected your overpriced bullshit. Adapt or die. Welcome to the free market.
It doesn’t matter if you’re a mega corporation and previously had the winning formula. You adapt to meet evolving market demand or you die.
These c suites got too comfy doing everything to only please their shareholders. They forgot that pleasing their consumers wasn’t optional. We are your money supply. If you lose us, it all comes crashing down.
I don’t have the time anymore, the price isn’t really the factor. Anything new has to compete with my existing library and backlog, and other things on my wishlist. It’s a problem that’s only going to get worse, games aren’t really aging out of relevance at the rate they used to.
And if I DO want a triple A game, I wait a couple of years and then for a Steam sale.
And compared to the 10 year old titles on sale that actually work well and look great on 5 year old mid-range HW…
That’s another problem, even if we disregard optimizations, AAA games from 2015. look better than modern upscaled stuff, Unreal Engine seems to be so easy enough to use nowadays that big vertically-integrated slop publishers replaced seasoned developers with the cheapest of zoomers.
i almost never buy games on steam itself anymore…Even on the steam sales. The sales are a poor imitation of the great values that they were 10+ years ago, and quite frankly…the quality of games coming out isnt what it was 10+ years ago, either.
I subscribe to Humble Monthly and, eventually, get almost every game I’ve ever wanted.
I don’t even do humble monthly anymore. They’ve had periods of months and months where I don’t get anything I want to play or some obscure game that isn’t interesting. Its cheaper just to get the monthly bundle when I do see a game I want. Humble monthly was more than worth it maybe 10 years back.
i mean… you can pause your month and skip the shit you have no interest in…
I think in 10 years of being subscribed I’ve only felt the need to do it like…twice? i think
For me I’ve had to do it for more than 5 or 6 months so to me pausing isn’t worth the time.
yeah, if you’re interests are super narrow then yeah it wouldnt be good for you.
Each year there are only a few new AAA games that are worth full price. People be buying indie or older games on discount.
Why buy new bugged COD when you can pick up fixed up No Mans Sky?
No Man’s Sky was an indie released at AAA prices and was a pile of dog shit. Feel like there are other games you could’ve picked…
It was another example of what is wrong with the industry today
I chose NMS cause it is a perfect representation of AAA project that was dogshit on release but got fixed up to a promised game much later in it’s life. It fits like a glove into “don’t buy unfinished crap on release” category.
