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Stop. Think about how much you would want to be paid to work on this. Ballpark how many units you think it will sell. Divide how much you would want to be pa

by olliej 5y ago

Stop. Think about how much you would want to be paid to work on this. Ballpark how many units you think it will sell. Divide how much you would want to be paid by the number of units you think it will sell. That would be the minimum cost simply to cover your own part. There are two ways to make a return on a product: * Sell absurd numbers with a small profit (race to the bottom) * Sell small numbers at a price point actually includes the cost of running a business Panic is an old and established business. They recognize that developing commercial software (and now hardware???) is something that people should be paid for. One of the most depressing things of the modern era of software dev is how the various “app stores” have turbo charged race-to-the-bottom and spyware/free economics.

ziml77 5y ago
The race to the bottom is depressing and shows no signs of changing. Hell, I was at an event more than a decade ago where one of the panels discussed monetization of games. They discussed how there's no cost to distribution which means that there's no floor to the price. And even back then they'd basically resigned themselves to the fact that freemium was the only way to compete. Personally, I pay for lots of applications. I understand that people need to be compensated for their work and I don't want them to switch to shady tactics to get that money.
- olliej 5y ago
  I can see the misery that devs targeting the various app stores are stuck with. If you charge an actually reasonable amount of money for an app, or worse: a game, you will get review bombed for "charging too much" or "being greedy". Meanwhile PC games that are no more challenging get to charge >=$60 for the high end, but a still reasonable $20 for indy. Then, even if you do get momentum at a reasonable price, that app stores seem to, if anything, promote rip offs and clones that are just racing to the floor.
airstrike 5y ago
> Think about how much you would want to be paid to work on this. How is that relevant at all? I'd love to be paid $1M / year for what I do, but that's not how my wages are determined. That argument is DOA.
- olliej 5y ago
  "Cool" What determines wages is the level of skill required for the job. And if you're some punk keyboard warrior that doesn't have any skills of value, then I'm sorry. It must really suck not to be valued. But for the skilled people involved in making products like this, that skill has value. So those people are able to look at what they've done, and say "I believe my work is worth $X". They then do the above math to work out how much they need to charge per unit, to get that level of compensation. People get entire degrees in this for some reason, but it's really not that hard: * You make more money per unit if you charge more * You sell more units if you charge less * There is a theoretical max point on the curve of units sold * price People who have the skills to develop their own products try to guess the maximum on that curve, and if it is less than what they want to live on they have to adjust their goals or kill the product. The approach you're proposing is to simply charge a small margin on raw materials and manufacturing time is predicated on the time of the person/people designing the product being worthless. I don't think that, not about me, not about the developers working on playdate, not about developers working on other products. Even products I don't like. Yes there will always be minimum-wage/mindless labour. Software and hardware design aren't that.
  - airstrike 5y ago
    > What determines wages is the level of skill required for the job. No, it's not. What determines wages is how much your skill is needed vs. the availability of people with similar skills willing to take on that job. It's supply and demand in the labor market. You don't need to econosplain to me how pricing works in a free market...
    - olliej 5y ago
      Clearly I do, as you’re busy ancapping yourself to product development being free while saying a product is overpriced when it literally sold out at said price. You are right in the strict sense of demand being a necessity for a skill to have value. I was assuming context would imply a skill with demand. I understand it’s possible to have skills that don’t have demand.

by olliej 5y ago

ziml77 5y ago

The race to the bottom is depressing and shows no signs of changing. Hell, I was at an event more than a decade ago where one of the panels discussed monetization of games. They discussed how there's no cost to distribution which means that there's no floor to the price. And even back then they'd basically resigned themselves to the fact that freemium was the only way to compete. Personally, I pay for lots of applications. I understand that people need to be compensated for their work and I don't want them to switch to shady tactics to get that money.

olliej 5y ago
I can see the misery that devs targeting the various app stores are stuck with. If you charge an actually reasonable amount of money for an app, or worse: a game, you will get review bombed for "charging too much" or "being greedy". Meanwhile PC games that are no more challenging get to charge >=$60 for the high end, but a still reasonable $20 for indy. Then, even if you do get momentum at a reasonable price, that app stores seem to, if anything, promote rip offs and clones that are just racing to the floor.

airstrike 5y ago

> Think about how much you would want to be paid to work on this. How is that relevant at all? I'd love to be paid $1M / year for what I do, but that's not how my wages are determined. That argument is DOA.

olliej 5y ago
"Cool" What determines wages is the level of skill required for the job. And if you're some punk keyboard warrior that doesn't have any skills of value, then I'm sorry. It must really suck not to be valued. But for the skilled people involved in making products like this, that skill has value. So those people are able to look at what they've done, and say "I believe my work is worth $X". They then do the above math to work out how much they need to charge per unit, to get that level of compensation. People get entire degrees in this for some reason, but it's really not that hard: * You make more money per unit if you charge more * You sell more units if you charge less * There is a theoretical max point on the curve of units sold * price People who have the skills to develop their own products try to guess the maximum on that curve, and if it is less than what they want to live on they have to adjust their goals or kill the product. The approach you're proposing is to simply charge a small margin on raw materials and manufacturing time is predicated on the time of the person/people designing the product being worthless. I don't think that, not about me, not about the developers working on playdate, not about developers working on other products. Even products I don't like. Yes there will always be minimum-wage/mindless labour. Software and hardware design aren't that.
- airstrike 5y ago
  > What determines wages is the level of skill required for the job. No, it's not. What determines wages is how much your skill is needed vs. the availability of people with similar skills willing to take on that job. It's supply and demand in the labor market. You don't need to econosplain to me how pricing works in a free market...
  - olliej 5y ago
    Clearly I do, as you’re busy ancapping yourself to product development being free while saying a product is overpriced when it literally sold out at said price. You are right in the strict sense of demand being a necessity for a skill to have value. I was assuming context would imply a skill with demand. I understand it’s possible to have skills that don’t have demand.