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LastFootnote

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Re: Payment models
« Reply #25 on: June 16, 2015, 04:06:07 pm »
+9

The problem is that digital Dominion has two (potential) audiences. There's some overlap—people who would play both—but mostly it's pretty clean cut.

The first audience is casual mobile gamers. If you're trying to cater to that audience, you want an application that runs natively on iOS and Android. For this audience:

• Production values are important, including graphics, sound, animations, and other interface details.
• The expansions don't need to be released all at once.
• It's not important to have post-game logs (or even an always-visible side log), though a leaderboard might be nice.
• Offline play against an AI is a must.

The payment model that makes sense here would be a very cheap app ($0 to $5), and very cheap expansions ($1 for Guilds, $2 for Prosperity, $3 for Dark Ages). No subscription fee.

The second audience (that's us!) treats Dominion like chess. If you're trying to cater to that audience, you want a web-based application. For this audience:

• Production values are a very low priority.
• The expansions should all be available.
• Post-game logs and the ability to collect statistics is paramount.
• An AI need not exist at all.

The payment model that makes sense here is a monthly or yearly subscription that gives you access to all published cards.

Goko tried to satisfy both camps, but they couldn't get their app into the mobile marketplace and their payment system was the wrong one for the audience they did get. In a baffling turn of events, Making Fun is now attempting the same thing.

If I were Jay, I would partner with a company like Playdek to make the mobile version for casual players. Then I would partner with Doug to set up a subscription for isotropic Dominion ($1 or $2 per month). Or if that's too much hassle, just let isotropic be free again, financed by donations. It really poses zero financial threat when it comes to the audience that Dominion Online should be pursuing, which is casual gamers on mobile devices.
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Donald X.

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Re: Payment models
« Reply #26 on: June 16, 2015, 06:01:48 pm »
+4

If I were Jay, I would partner with a company like Playdek to make the mobile version for casual players. Then I would partner with Doug to set up a subscription for isotropic Dominion ($1 or $2 per month). Or if that's too much hassle, just let isotropic be free again, financed by donations. It really poses zero financial threat when it comes to the audience that Dominion Online should be pursuing, which is casual gamers on mobile devices.
Well we will be interested in this advice if things don't work out with MF, however 1) Someone just like Playdek, I forget if it was them, didn't get the job back when because they wanted to do Farmville Dominion, and 2) I find it hard to believe that there aren't a bunch of people who want to casually play Dominion on a full-on computer. I am okay with calling it three audiences: casual device, casual PC, serious.

MF ultimately has to pay for their work and servers. I don't know what their costs are but I know what online Dominion has made through 2014, because I get a % of the take. It has not made anywhere near enough to pay for one guy's salary for the time period they've been working on it. So: it's all a gamble so far, all the hope that they will actually make real money in the future.

To make that money it seems to me, not a businessman, that they need subscriptions. If they sell expansions flat-out I think that has to be for enough that most people are getting the subscription instead. I don't know what reasonable prices would be for anything, I am not in that world. I buy console games. I don't know what servers actually cost to run; maybe they are so cheap that no, you can just sell expansions.

So anyway, I expect they plan to sell subscriptions. And I happen to know they were interested in that path when we talked about this man whenever that was, a year ago? I don't know what full form that will take, what the set of options will be or anything. I think whatever they have now is the random output of putting out a public beta without being ready. Edit: I should be clear, I mean the lack of options; they totally may be planning on those prices for non-subscriptions. If those are no good for you (in a hypothetical world where the program is finished), that is all stuff to complain to them directly about.
« Last Edit: June 16, 2015, 06:07:12 pm by Donald X. »
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SwitchedFromStarcraft

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Re: Payment models
« Reply #27 on: June 16, 2015, 10:20:50 pm »
+1

...It has not made anywhere near enough to pay for one guy's salary for the time period they've been working on it.
That is not a good sign.  At some point, someone will take a look at the burn rate for cash, and decide to quit throwing good money after bad.  I wonder by what internal metric they are measuring what they might view as progress.
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LastFootnote

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Re: Payment models
« Reply #28 on: June 16, 2015, 10:39:29 pm »
0

Well we will be interested in this advice if things don't work out with MF, however 1) Someone just like Playdek, I forget if it was them, didn't get the job back when because they wanted to do Farmville Dominion

"Someone just like Playdek"? I do not currently own any Playdek apps, but from what I can see, the only in-app purchases available for their games are expansions. I seriously doubt that "someone just like Playdek" wanted to turn Dominion into Farmville. And even if they did, clearly they are willing and able to make card game adaptations that are not Farmville, having made lots of them and—as far as I can tell—zero Farmvilles. They have done lots and lots of adaptations of Dominion "clones" (Ascension, Nightfall, Tanto Cuore), which you can count as a point for or against them. Or both.
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Donald X.

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Re: Payment models
« Reply #29 on: June 16, 2015, 11:44:04 pm »
+3

"Someone just like Playdek"? I do not currently own any Playdek apps, but from what I can see, the only in-app purchases available for their games are expansions. I seriously doubt that "someone just like Playdek" wanted to turn Dominion into Farmville. And even if they did, clearly they are willing and able to make card game adaptations that are not Farmville, having made lots of them and—as far as I can tell—zero Farmvilles. They have done lots and lots of adaptations of Dominion "clones" (Ascension, Nightfall, Tanto Cuore), which you can count as a point for or against them. Or both.
We are just headed into "what bad things can I think to say about companies I might end up working with" territory. At the time Jay signed with Funsockets, the competition was some people who'd said "Farmville" and then "oh okay not that" when we said no to that, according to what I was told. I never spoke with them directly, whoever they were, and I'm not checking who they were. Of course then Funsockets turned out to secretly also want Farmville.
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werothegreat

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Re: Payment models
« Reply #30 on: June 17, 2015, 12:10:56 am »
+2

The more I think about it, the more I'm convinced that they need to first off, make a functioning product, then throw it up on Steam for a set price.  People prefer to pay for something once, rather than once a month, even if that single payment would be equivalent to more than a year of subscription.  And in that case, MF would get more money anyway.

And I'm just gonna say right now, $90 is not that price.  Great PC games with far more replay value than even Dominion sell for usually at most $50, and even that is pushing it.  Dominion, expansions and all, is worth ~$20.  Throw that up on Steam, get free advertising from competent players who support your fully functioning product, and they should be fine.  And if future expansions come along, throw them up as $1 DLC's.  Adventures could be the first of those.
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Donald X.

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Re: Payment models
« Reply #31 on: June 17, 2015, 01:07:13 am »
+5

The more I think about it, the more I'm convinced that they need to first off, make a functioning product, then throw it up on Steam for a set price.  People prefer to pay for something once, rather than once a month, even if that single payment would be equivalent to more than a year of subscription.  And in that case, MF would get more money anyway.

And I'm just gonna say right now, $90 is not that price.  Great PC games with far more replay value than even Dominion sell for usually at most $50, and even that is pushing it.  Dominion, expansions and all, is worth ~$20.  Throw that up on Steam, get free advertising from competent players who support your fully functioning product, and they should be fine.  And if future expansions come along, throw them up as $1 DLC's.  Adventures could be the first of those.
I see you like the angle of viewing the years I've poured into expansions as worthless. Super Mario Galaxy costs $60 or whatever; Super Mario Galaxy 2, that's a $1 DLC. I guess people must never make expansions for online things, since the public sees them as things owed to them rather than actual new products. We just need to call Adventures "Dominion 10" and then suddenly it can be worth buying.

When Magic online showed up, it was big news to everyone that it would in fact cost 100% as much for online nonexistent cards as for real cards. 100%! I am not making this up. In fact of course the digital booster packs cost more than real ones, because you could get a discount on real ones, but not on the digital ones. People said how insane this was, then bought them anyway. To this day that's what they cost.

The viewpoint Wizards of the Coast had, as I understand it, was that they couldn't risk hurting the physical product. If it were cheaper to play online, maybe people would stop supporting their incredible money machine. And well things worked out for them. It's an interesting story and I hope you enjoyed it.

Anyway where were we. $1 for Adventures? lol. It's not worth anyone's time to provide it at that price. It's not possibly selling enough copies to pay for the work, even if the work is easy and cheap. From my end, I'd much rather protect the physical product and just not have an online version.
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Kirian

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Re: Payment models
« Reply #32 on: June 17, 2015, 01:51:19 am »
+4

The more I think about it, the more I'm convinced that they need to first off, make a functioning product, then throw it up on Steam for a set price.  People prefer to pay for something once, rather than once a month, even if that single payment would be equivalent to more than a year of subscription.  And in that case, MF would get more money anyway.

And I'm just gonna say right now, $90 is not that price.  Great PC games with far more replay value than even Dominion sell for usually at most $50, and even that is pushing it.  Dominion, expansions and all, is worth ~$20.  Throw that up on Steam, get free advertising from competent players who support your fully functioning product, and they should be fine.  And if future expansions come along, throw them up as $1 DLC's.  Adventures could be the first of those.

$1 DLC?  Geez, man, Map Packs for Civ V have less content than a Dominion expansion, and those run for more than a buck even during the Steam ultra-sale.  I don't think anyone thinks $5-7 is an unreasonable price point for a standard-size Dominion expansion.  The question is whether $11.50 is a reasonable price point... and that's a matter of marketing.

When Magic online showed up, it was big news to everyone that it would in fact cost 100% as much for online nonexistent cards as for real cards. 100%! I am not making this up. In fact of course the digital booster packs cost more than real ones, because you could get a discount on real ones, but not on the digital ones. People said how insane this was, then bought them anyway. To this day that's what they cost.

The viewpoint Wizards of the Coast had, as I understand it, was that they couldn't risk hurting the physical product. If it were cheaper to play online, maybe people would stop supporting their incredible money machine. And well things worked out for them. It's an interesting story and I hope you enjoyed it.

I'm going to be absolutely honest and say that I cannot understand how this was even a thing that happened.  I mean, I know it happened, that's not in doubt, I just don't get it.  Then again, I can't imagine spending a hundred bucks on 36 boosters that might not even have enough cards to play a meaningful two-player game.

Now that I think about it, I can start to understand:  By the time MTGO came online, there were more hardcore players of MTG than there are current total (including casual) players of Dominion and other deckbuilders.  MTGO was also not competing with any other products, where Dominion Online most definitely is.  The "hardcore" base of Dominion consists of maybe, maybe a couple thousand people worldwide.  That's not enough to sustain a digital product, so Dominion Online has to be priced lower than physical retail.

MTG has a ridiculously outsized base to draw from.  Dominion--and Eurogames in general--don't.  Wizards could afford to gamble on that outsized base; RGG (and Mayfair, TMG, AEG, FFG, etc.) can't.
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Beyond Awesome

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Re: Payment models
« Reply #33 on: June 17, 2015, 02:19:27 am »
+1

FWIW, Magic also has a Steam game that costs $10 with lots of cards aimed at casual players. So, they are tapping both the casual market and hardcore market. I do think LF was 100% right with everything he said in his earlier post. The casual market is where the money is to be made and that is going to be through app purchases. iOS is a big thing these days with a huge, huge market, but people are used to paying a certain price point and that ain't $90.
« Last Edit: June 17, 2015, 02:44:26 am by Beyond Awesome »
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jaketheyak

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Re: Payment models
« Reply #34 on: June 17, 2015, 02:36:02 am »
+1

FTW, Magic also has a Steam game that costs $10 with lots of cards aimed at casual players. So, they are tapping both the casual market and hardcore market. I do think LF was 100% right with everything he said in his earlier post. The casual market is where the money is to be made and that is going to be through app purchases. iOS is a big thing these days with a huge, huge market, but people are used to paying a certain price point and that ain't $90.

I think going after the "app" market is probably where the biggest pitfall lies in coming up with a working payment model.
As LF said, the app market is used to paying less than $10 for a game and certainly less than that for add-ons.
And for a truly casual iOS or Android gamer, Dominion won't hold a lot more appeal than any other momentary diversion on their morning train.
So they aren't going to be willing to pay double figure amounts for expansions.

And, frankly, as a multiplayer game it's never going to work very well on mobile devices.
The intermittent nature of mobile coverage and the pick-up and put-down nature of playing on mobile devices mean that it has to be asynchronous multiplayer.
And, for Dominion, that is going to make games take an eternity.

So, really, as I and others have said, the focus really should be on getting the game working on Steam.
That's a platform where gamers are going to be more serious and much more used to paying a reasonable amount for a game.
$10-$20 per expansion would not be excessive and, if the game works well, you could end up selling huge volumes.
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blueblimp

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Re: Payment models
« Reply #35 on: June 17, 2015, 02:39:29 am »
+3

For a casual player, isn't base Dominion already pretty good? Add in, say, Seaside+Prosperity, and that's a lot of content, for about $20. The $90 number is irrelevant for casual players. For that matter, I (as with many people here) played 1000s of games on isotropic, which only had up to Hinterlands. That's proof that someone who plays a lot doesn't really need to spend $90 to get every expansion.

I think an appropriate comparison for price is to expandable card games like Hearthstone, even though it's a CCG and Dominion isn't. If you think all Dominion content ever made should cost $20 total, you will be blown away by how much Hearthstone content costs. A single random legendary card costs at least $4 on average--getting a specific one you want costs more like $16. Yep, getting one card you want costs more than an entire Dominion expansion under MF's new pricing model. (Hearthstone compensates for this by having generous rewards for daily play, so you can still accumulate a decent amount of content without paying.)

That's why I think $10-per-expansion (a more accurate way to present the price) is too low a price, not too high.
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jaketheyak

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Re: Payment models
« Reply #36 on: June 17, 2015, 03:04:36 am »
+1

Comparing to a freemium model like Hearthstone is problematic though.
Getting one specific card costs $16?
Well, sure, if you just want to pony up the cash.
On the other hand, if you play often enough (and are good enough) you can get that card for free.

Freemium games have a really perverse economy where only a tiny fraction of the player base ever actually pays anything.
According to an article from a couple of years ago, it was estimated that 70% of the players who had made it to (what was then) the final level of Candy Crush Saga had never paid a cent.
So, you're probably looking at maybe 10% of the total player base who ever put any cash into it.

These games make money only because 10% of 93 million daily Candy Crush players is still nearly 10 million people.
Hearthstone has 20 million players.

Anyway, my point is that you just can't compare Dominion to Hearthstone, because I just can't see a Hearthstone-style freemium model working for Dominion and you can't compare any fixed-price model to a freemium one.
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LastFootnote

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Re: Payment models
« Reply #37 on: June 17, 2015, 11:52:32 am »
+12

We are just headed into "what bad things can I think to say about companies I might end up working with" territory. At the time Jay signed with Funsockets, the competition was some people who'd said "Farmville" and then "oh okay not that" when we said no to that, according to what I was told. I never spoke with them directly, whoever they were, and I'm not checking who they were. Of course then Funsockets turned out to secretly also want Farmville.

If we are headed into "what bad things can you think to say about companies you might end up working with" territory, it's only because you're steering us there. I care not one whit which company/companies Jay talked to about an online version. Maybe he did talk to Playdek and maybe they did want a Farmville version. That 100% doesn't matter. My entire point is that there are good, native, non-Farmvile app versions of every popular board game that isn't Dominion. Clearly there are companies that are willing and able to make these adaptations.

It seems like your opinions about how much an online version should cost are based on some gut feeling about how much your work is worth. I can't speak for everyone here, but when I argue that Dominion Online should be cheaper, I'm not saying that because I'm undervaluing your work. I'm saying it because I believe it would be far more profitable at a lower price point. Obviously not enough people were willing to pay Goko's prices for the expansions. Why Making Fun thinks that hiking the price will increase their revenues is beyond me.

Is it idiotic that some people complain about the total price of all expansions? Yes, it is. But sticker shock is a real thing, and you can't fight human nature. One solution is to simply not offer all the expansions on the mobile version. Catan takes this route; the iOS version has Seafarers, Cities and Knights, some Scenarios thing, and then a bundle with all of them. I'm pretty sure there are more expansions for Catan, but that's all the mobile version has. If you do offer all expansions, don't have a big bundle for everything; nobody wants to see "$90" on the app store.

Here for your reference are some examples of the mobile board game market, taken from Apple's app store:

Catan: $4.99
  Seafarers: $4.99
  Cities and Knights: $4.99
  The new scenarios: $1.99
  All-expansions Bundle: $9.99

Carcassonne: $9.99
  River: $0.99
  Inns & Cathedrals: $1.99
  Traders & Builders: $1.99
  Princess & Dragon: $1.99
  Phantom: $0.99
  Double Base Tile Set: $0.99
  Winter: $1.99
  5th Anniversary Bundle: $4.99


Ticket to Ride: $1.99
  Ticket to Ride USA - 1910 Expansion: $0.99

Ticket to Ride Europe: $1.99
  Ticket to Ride - Switzerland: $0.99

Ascension: Free
  Return of the Fallen expansion: $1.99
  Storm of Souls expansion: $2.99
  Immortal Heroes expansion: $2.99
  Promo Pack 1: $0.99
  Promo Pack 2: $0.99
  Promo Pack 3: $0.99
  Bundle (contains the 6 things above): $6.99
  Rise of Vigil: $3.99
  Darkness Unleashed expansion: $2.99
  Realms Unraveled expansion: $2.99
  Promo Pack 4: $0.99

Ascension's payment model is closest to Dominoin's. Notice that no one thing costs more than $4 and the bundle costs $7. Each of Ascension's expansions costs at most 10% of its physical counterpart's MSRP.
« Last Edit: June 17, 2015, 01:30:58 pm by LastFootnote »
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Polk5440

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Re: Payment models
« Reply #38 on: June 17, 2015, 01:02:58 pm »
+1

To clarify the pricing, for Carcassonne, the Anniversary Bundle is all of the expansions together. So it's $15 for everything the game offers. Ticket to Ride also has bundles on various platforms.
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Polk5440

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Re: Payment models
« Reply #39 on: June 17, 2015, 01:46:39 pm »
+2

I see you like the angle of viewing the years I've poured into expansions as worthless.

From a consumer's perspective, the years you pour into an expansion ARE worthless. What matters is the end demand for your product, not how much time and effort it took you personally to get there. Unless what you are selling is art and your personal story, not a game.

And this demand for your stuff absolutely depends on what other similar products are in the market and their price. You as a creator can choose not to create, or create something higher or lower quality, but you do not get to decide how much someone else values or demands what you do create.

Besides, as LF says, if you care about getting the maximal value and monetary recognition for your work, then you should care about maximizing profits, not price.
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werothegreat

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Re: Payment models
« Reply #40 on: June 17, 2015, 01:55:41 pm »
+2

I'm willing to pay $40+ for physical expansions because I'm getting actual *stuff*.  Cards and tokens and mats and whatnot.  I understand that these are physical commodities and they have an expense on their own, and I also understand that your own effort means a lot.  But for a computer program, I'm paying for a few lines of code, some graphics, and some server space.  There's no physical anything involved, and if the internet goes down or the power goes out, I don't have anything.

As to your jibe that I don't care about all the effort you've put into it, I'm a writer.  I've spent the past year and a half writing almost two books now.  I'd love it if I could sell a novel for $10 or $20 a pop, but it's a buyers market out there for publishers, and I don't have the luxury of traditional publishing.  So I sell my book for $2.99 on Amazon because I know most people aren't going to be willing to pay much more than that for something intangible, even if I think I did a really good job writing it.  And even then it's hard to convince people to buy an e-book from an unknown author.  You are a known name with a hotly desired product.  I really don't think you have anything to complain about here.
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Donald X.

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Re: Payment models
« Reply #41 on: June 17, 2015, 04:54:41 pm »
+2

It seems like your opinions about how much an online version should cost are based on some gut feeling about how much your work is worth.
I have not expressed an opinion there other than "not $1 for Adventures" and "I'm not in that world and don't know what prices are reasonable."

Obv. the online version can be looked at from my perspective as just extra money on top of the rest, provided that it doesn't lower demand for the physical product; except, work is put into it too, and that work has to be paid for or it isn't worth doing (except of course for the love of doing that work).

Why Making Fun thinks that hiking the price will increase their revenues is beyond me.
I don't know that they do. They may for example be hoping people will subscribe but preserving a non-subscription option, while not actually having added the ability to subscribe yet.

Funsockets initially had prices twice as high. That was their guess, based on who knows what. And f.ds said no and they cut the prices in half. Then died. Dunno how related that is. The point was that MF isn't the first entity to arrive at these prices.

Catan: $4.99
We are talking about intellectual property. As opposed to, say, chairs. A chair has a particular cost to producing it - materials, work, shipping. You have to pay at least that much or it isn't worth it to sell you the chair. If we can produce in volume we can get the cost down but only to a point. I am not trying to be patronizing, I'm just saying all the words that make the point.

Intellectual property is much different. The costs are almost all just the up-front cost of time spent making the thing. The cost of one-time bandwidth use is very small. At some point it's worth selling someone, who won't pay more, access to that intellectual property for almost nothing. This is in the sans-servers situation; I don't know what servers cost but that's a continual cost, such that the sensible thing to an outsider like me is to charge for it continually. In practice maybe the cost is so small that you don't have to, I don't know.

So then, a big thing about intellectual property is, how popular is it. The base cost of a copy of Super Mario Galaxy is small; they are charging for the huge amount of work that went into it, the people who put in the hours. At some point that work is paid for and the rest is profit. But it all depends on popularity. If no-one wants Super Mario Galaxy, it has no way to recoup its costs. At some point it's expensive and breaks even. But if it's massively popular it can be cheap and still rake in cash.

I always think of being a songwriter in the Star Wars universe. Instead of an audience of millions or billions of people, it's, you know, some larger number. You put in just as much work but there's this huge audience and it's intellectual property.

Intellectual property should not work like this. Just an aside.

So anyway, you want to compare Settlers to Dominion, well Settlers is massively more popular and so can be cheaper. You also aren't showing me there if they are losing money on these products but using them as promotion or what.

From my perspective, I am seeing the hours that went into the product, the hours that aren't mine (though I have sure wasted some time on the online versions) and the low demand for the product. And when someone says "they should cost $1" and I say "no" that's not me saying "therefore $10 is the perfect price" or any such thing. The internet isn't good at seeing that but there it is.
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Donald X.

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Re: Payment models
« Reply #42 on: June 17, 2015, 05:03:14 pm »
+6

Besides, as LF says, if you care about getting the maximal value and monetary recognition for your work, then you should care about maximizing profits, not price.
From my perspective, the best value, recognizing that money isn't the only thing worth having, would have been for there never to have been any online versions. The money has been a joke but it would need to be amazing to matter. The interactions with the community have sucked utterly. The work spent on the online versions has been extremely unrewarding. If I had it to do again I would have zero to do with it and my answer to questions about it would be "nothing to do with me."
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Donald X.

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Re: Payment models
« Reply #43 on: June 17, 2015, 05:05:19 pm »
0

I really don't think you have anything to complain about here.
You, werothegreat, are the thing I have to complain about. I can solve that problem of course; I can just not look. It's a proven solution and everything.
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Re: Payment models
« Reply #44 on: June 17, 2015, 05:08:55 pm »
+12

Dominion is a great game. I'm convinced that if half the love that went into designing Dominion could be put into building an online version that would be very popular and therefore also could be quite cheap. Instead we're stuck with a horrible thing that has to be super expensive to make up for being so bad.
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Re: Payment models
« Reply #45 on: June 17, 2015, 05:29:24 pm »
0

I agree with "not $1 for Adventures". If it were me (and of course I am not a buisnessman) I would probably set these prices:

Dominion: $5
  Intrigue: $3
  Seaside: $3
  Prosperity: $3
  Hinterlands: $3
  Alchemy: $2
  Cornucopia: $2
  Guilds: $2
  Mini-expansion Bundle (Alchemy, Cornucpia, and Guilds): $5
  Dark Ages: $4
  Adventures Kingdom Cards: $4
  Adventures Events Pack 1: $1
  Adventures Events Pack 2: $1
  Adventures Bundle: $5

Again, this is for a theoretical mobile-only version, not for a PC-based version, which you could somehow charge more for despite an equivalent amount of work (probably because there's less demand for it).

The assumption I am making is that a good mobile version, available on the Apple app store and whatever Android's equivalent is, would sell far, far better than the web-based game we currently have. I have no data, but it seems trivially true. When Goko first came out lo these many years ago, I heard nothing from BGG other than, "Where's my offline app!?" Those people still want their offline app.

So anyway, you want to compare Settlers to Dominion, well Settlers is massively more popular and so can be cheaper.

I think that's backwards. Settlers is a pretty expensive app. Ascension is less popular than Dominion and cheaper. You can charge more for popularity/quality.
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Donald X.

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Re: Payment models
« Reply #46 on: June 17, 2015, 07:30:43 pm »
+1

I would probably set these prices:
And how much for Super Mario Galaxy 2?

To me that's the crux of this comparison between expansions and the main set. Super Mario Galaxy 2 is just more Super Mario Galaxy. It's the same game with a few polishes and new levels. But it's billed as a game, a full-on game to be charged for. It cost $60 or whatever just like Super Mario Galaxy. You could bill it as DLC instead and then you'd have to charge way less. I can see why they didn't do that.

Seaside isn't somehow less of a product than Dominion. In fact it's more of a product than Dominion. It's better really across the board. And more work went into it. To me Seaside isn't DLC for Dominion; it's Super Mario Galaxy 2. You want it to be cheaper and well that makes no sense to me. All I can be convinced of there is that they should all be billed as spin-offs.

So anyway, you want to compare Settlers to Dominion, well Settlers is massively more popular and so can be cheaper.

I think that's backwards. Settlers is a pretty expensive app. Ascension is less popular than Dominion and cheaper. You can charge more for popularity/quality.
Ascension schmension. You are not swaying me with any argument about Ascension, find a different game to harp on.

It's intellectual property; the more popular it is the less you have to charge. Look around in the world for endless examples of popular cheap things and expensive niche items. The popularity and being intellectual property lets you charge less; popularity can also let you charge more and people charge what they can but that's the wrong lesson here. The entire board game industry is an example; board games would be much cheaper if they were much more popular. Compare pricing on Monopoly and a euro with similar components; Monopoly is the more popular game but is much cheaper.
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GendoIkari

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Re: Payment models
« Reply #47 on: June 17, 2015, 07:36:59 pm »
+2


Seaside isn't somehow less of a product than Dominion. In fact it's more of a product than Dominion. It's better really across the board. And more work went into it. To me Seaside isn't DLC for Dominion; it's Super Mario Galaxy 2. You want it to be cheaper and well that makes no sense to me.

Does the fact that you must own the base set in order to use Seaside not come into play?
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Re: Payment models
« Reply #48 on: June 17, 2015, 07:53:38 pm »
+2

I really don't think you have anything to complain about here.
You, werothegreat, are the thing I have to complain about. I can solve that problem of course; I can just not look. It's a proven solution and everything.

There's no need to be antagonistic here.

Okay, $1 may have been a bit low.  This is why I'm not setting these prices, and why I go with Amazon's recommended pricing for my book.  But I can at least tell when something is more expensive than it should be.  Effort =/= cost.  Product = cost.  George R. R. Martin may spend 5 years each on his books, but that doesn't mean he can charge more per page than Stephen King, who pumps those babies out twice a year or some nonsense like that.  If you're worried about Dominion not being popular enough, and thus needing to be more expensive to recoup the cost, I think you're looking at it the wrong way.  A higher price is not the way to get someone who doesn't know about your game to buy it.  A competitive price is.  MF needs to scale their prices to similar products, or they're not going to sell anything.  isotropic didn't get so many players just because it was a good product - being free helped a lot.  And before you spew the whole "people like free pizza" argument again, you have to realize that what you think people should want does not reflect what they actually want.  If you don't cater to what your intended audience wants, they're not going to buy your product.  I think the fact that pretty much everyone on here and on MF's forums have balked at the $90 price tag is evidence enough of that.
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Re: Payment models
« Reply #49 on: June 17, 2015, 08:09:12 pm »
+1

Does the fact that you must own the base set in order to use Seaside not come into play?

That's true IRL, but for electronic versions the sets could be purchased in any order and would all "come with the base cards" (assuming that the base set is not given away for free).
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