3 ms·

Boo-hoo, prices have droped. Guess what? So have the costs of developing and publishing your game! I understand the price drop is not proportional to the cost

Boo-hoo, prices have droped. Guess what? So have the costs of developing and publishing your game! I understand the price drop is not proportional to the cost decrease, but that's not even important. The people behind Steam or Humble Bundle are showing great creativity and forward thinking, creating viable businesses (if we can call Humble Bundle a business) by selling 1-2$ games. What this rant is saying is basically that competition is better and cheaper, it's so unfair. Saying that indie games used to sell for 10-15$ does not make it better. It was viable 5 years ago, it's not anymore. Period. Prices of blank DVDs have dropped drastically in the past years. You don't hear DVD manufacturers complain about the price-drop or make claims about the 'industry'. I understand that the author is raising an otherwise rarely discussed issue. I apologize for the harsh tone of my comment, but globally, the message is the same: Stop nagging and do things differently. Your competitors understood that and are moving on!

ido 15y ago
What this rant is saying is basically that competition is better and cheaper, it's so unfair. Nope. What I'm saying is that the race to the bottom hurts all of us except the king-makers (and their few appointed kings) in the long run. It's the same deal as wallmart moving into town and driving all the mom&pop shops downtown out of business. The result is the concentration of power - it is already almost impossible (baring a handful of outliers) to make a successful indie game without going through steam (and giving valve their 30-40% cut).
- fennecfoxen 15y ago
  Bah, WalMart. Your premise that "it harms all of us except the king-makers" is fundamentally garbage. WalMart benefits hundreds of millions of ordinary everyday people to the tune of billions of dollars, and every dollar that someone saves by having their groceries shipped with a more efficient supply chain is a dollar they can spend on things which are meaningful to their lives. WalMart's positive impact on the US economy is bigger than the last recession. Would you approve of a 10% tax on groceries for the poor? Because that's essentially what you're calling for when you call out WalMart. I suppose it's easy to bitch about the "king-makers" when your own little barony is disrupted.
  - ido 15y ago
    Not saying it's all bad. Just saying it's not all good either, and that unlike walmart I rarely see any possible negative effect discussed.
- maxharris 15y ago
  First, the customers are the actual king-makers. In the end, if something isn't what lots of people want, lots of people won't buy it. In any given moment, what people want is something that is out of anyone's control (and this is true whether you're talking about a single developer or a giant group of them banded together in a corporation).^ This is broader than just stuff that you buy. Introspect for a moment, right now: could someone get you to want to listen to music you detest, without forcing you by planting electrodes in your brain? Or to any music at all, if you aren't in the mood? What about our romantic and sexual lives? You can't control who or what someone else wants, nor should you. Remember that games compete with a whole world of stuff out there that's not on your phone or computer or game console. When people aren't playing video games, it's because they're doing something else that they chose to do, such as going to work, out to a restaurant, on a hike, for a drive, kayaking, listening to a recorded lecture, making dinner at home, etc. For all of recorded history, up until the last 35 years or so, people didn't play video games. You're not up against a company that's trying to keep you down: you're up against the actual desires of every single person that would never buy your product, even if they were somehow made fully aware of its existence. It might be hard for you to imagine that the game you work on will never be important to a huge number of people, but you have to get over it. No one owes anyone else a living, no matter who they are, or how much they need it. Anything less means enslaving at least one person, to some degree, to the will of another. ^In the long term, what someone wants ultimately stems from ideas a person chooses to hold, which they apply in the course of dealing with the environment around them.
  - ido 15y ago
    It might be hard for you to imagine that the game you work on will never be important to a huge number of people, but you have to get over it. No one owes anyone else a living, no matter who they are, or how much they need it. It's not about me personally. My last game is still paying my bills and was played by more than half a million people.
  - babarock 15y ago
    And I'm still convinced that there is a market for 10-15$ games. It's just that today's customer won't pay that much for the cute 2d physics game, or the classic reproduction of Super Mario in Flash. I believe there's a range in between the 0.99$ Pacman on Android and the 70$+ new Assasin's Creed. I believe that a dedicated team of indie developers could pull-off a a modern game worth of that price range.

ido 15y ago

What this rant is saying is basically that competition is better and cheaper, it's so unfair. Nope. What I'm saying is that the race to the bottom hurts all of us except the king-makers (and their few appointed kings) in the long run. It's the same deal as wallmart moving into town and driving all the mom&pop shops downtown out of business. The result is the concentration of power - it is already almost impossible (baring a handful of outliers) to make a successful indie game without going through steam (and giving valve their 30-40% cut).

fennecfoxen 15y ago
Bah, WalMart. Your premise that "it harms all of us except the king-makers" is fundamentally garbage. WalMart benefits hundreds of millions of ordinary everyday people to the tune of billions of dollars, and every dollar that someone saves by having their groceries shipped with a more efficient supply chain is a dollar they can spend on things which are meaningful to their lives. WalMart's positive impact on the US economy is bigger than the last recession. Would you approve of a 10% tax on groceries for the poor? Because that's essentially what you're calling for when you call out WalMart. I suppose it's easy to bitch about the "king-makers" when your own little barony is disrupted.
- ido 15y ago
  Not saying it's all bad. Just saying it's not all good either, and that unlike walmart I rarely see any possible negative effect discussed.
maxharris 15y ago
First, the customers are the actual king-makers. In the end, if something isn't what lots of people want, lots of people won't buy it. In any given moment, what people want is something that is out of anyone's control (and this is true whether you're talking about a single developer or a giant group of them banded together in a corporation).^ This is broader than just stuff that you buy. Introspect for a moment, right now: could someone get you to want to listen to music you detest, without forcing you by planting electrodes in your brain? Or to any music at all, if you aren't in the mood? What about our romantic and sexual lives? You can't control who or what someone else wants, nor should you. Remember that games compete with a whole world of stuff out there that's not on your phone or computer or game console. When people aren't playing video games, it's because they're doing something else that they chose to do, such as going to work, out to a restaurant, on a hike, for a drive, kayaking, listening to a recorded lecture, making dinner at home, etc. For all of recorded history, up until the last 35 years or so, people didn't play video games. You're not up against a company that's trying to keep you down: you're up against the actual desires of every single person that would never buy your product, even if they were somehow made fully aware of its existence. It might be hard for you to imagine that the game you work on will never be important to a huge number of people, but you have to get over it. No one owes anyone else a living, no matter who they are, or how much they need it. Anything less means enslaving at least one person, to some degree, to the will of another. ^In the long term, what someone wants ultimately stems from ideas a person chooses to hold, which they apply in the course of dealing with the environment around them.
- ido 15y ago
  It might be hard for you to imagine that the game you work on will never be important to a huge number of people, but you have to get over it. No one owes anyone else a living, no matter who they are, or how much they need it. It's not about me personally. My last game is still paying my bills and was played by more than half a million people.
- babarock 15y ago
  And I'm still convinced that there is a market for 10-15$ games. It's just that today's customer won't pay that much for the cute 2d physics game, or the classic reproduction of Super Mario in Flash. I believe there's a range in between the 0.99$ Pacman on Android and the 70$+ new Assasin's Creed. I believe that a dedicated team of indie developers could pull-off a a modern game worth of that price range.