Indie Game Studio Discovers Trolls

H

HardOCP News

[H] News
Joined
Dec 31, 1969
Messages
0
It's kinda sad when you see someone discover trolls for the first time. :(

When a troll starts to spout shit on some high-profile and influential site on the internet, you have a problem. It’s a very thorny problem because even discussion about the fact that it is a problem is license for the rest of the internet to start trolling you. It has been said that the best way to deal with trolls is of course, not to bait them, but unfortunately they can leave some fairly high-profile bullshit lying around on the internet referring to you, and that’s pretty difficult to deal with when it’s attached to your permanent and public facing persona as an individual and/or a business.
Click to expand...
 
Yeah, worth the read. A bit eye opening.

As much as I love Steam, maybe there is room for more competition. I'm not budging on Origin though, EA has fucked over too many people, including me. You know EA runs Origin with a tighter fist than Valve does.

Then there's this...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dYE5cxQrIp8
 
Interesting read but the way its written they come across as a whiny bitter internet trolls. Steam, Humble Bundle & trolls are why they cant make any money... sure. Its absolutely not the games they sell. :rolleyes:
 
ViperGrendal said:
Yeah, worth the read. A bit eye opening.

As much as I love Steam, maybe there is room for more competition. I'm not budging on Origin though, EA has fucked over too many people, including me. You know EA runs Origin with a tighter fist than Valve does.

Then there's this...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dYE5cxQrIp8
Click to expand...

I do take advantage of the free games Origin has. I don't play them, but I still claim them when available. It didn't cost me anything, so I can't complain too much when they inevitably shut down the servers.

Have you seen this EA commercial for Madden 15 where they just say Blah Blah Blah?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CcdcKhuS42c

It's hard to understand any company that would pay money for something like that.
 
I think he's 100% right. I buy games out of bundles all of the time. $1 for 12 games. $2 for 8 games. $5 for 12 games. I always wonder how do you make money if you're selling your wares for as low as $0.08 a copy? 8 pennies. I throw dimes into fountains for good luck. And you don't even get 8 pennies because some website get 1/3 of that. How in the fuck do you decide who gets the extra penny when you divide 8 by 3? It's important because it's your total income for at least a year until you can release a sequel to your smash hit. Then there is a tax man to deal with.

The guy is telling the truth. I just don't see how this system can work in the long run. Games should be at least $20 each. Maybe they should just sell them for full price and never have a sale. Is it not better to just have 1 sale at $20 than 250 sales at $0.08? Especially if you have to troubleshoot 250 different computers. Maybe the activation code for a "Bundle game" should denote that since it was bought at discount there isn't an implied warranty.

To be honest I wouldn't sell a game I created for less than $20. With that said; when is the next Steam sale?
 
The Humble Bundle thing is a total outlier. I have no idea why those bundles exist or how they make enough money even for charity to be worth it.

The Steam sales, even when the game is $1 to $5 still has the potential to make the dev and Steam a ton of money.

Steam has millions and millions of subscribers, and at some point an old game is likely to reach your "Sure, I'll buy that old bargain bin game" price.

Consider how many times around 5 million Steam subscribers have scarfed up a $2 game. Even removing one whole dollar per sale to cover credit card fees and content providing bandwidth, that potentially leaves 5 million dollars for steam and the dev to split per whatever the contract says.

The system is freaking awesome. And I hope we don't lose it anytime soon.
 
On the flip side, Humble Bundle and Steam sales have help sold many unknown indie games that people would not have bought otherwise. Many of these small indie games are sold in huge quantities thanks to Humble Bundle. Without Humble Bundle, would they have sold the same number at full price? I don't think so.

And this isn't a bad thing either because every indie dev have to start somewhere. If no one have ever heard of who you are or the game you are making, people would be more reluctant to buy you product. By getting more people to try out your game, if it turns out to be good, you'll be able to build your reputation from there and make bigger games that can generate more revenue in the future.

Bigger titles doesn't have any problem being sold at higher price so it's not like nobody wants to pay such money for a game they want. At the end of the day, people would only pay how much a game is worth to them, and there are many games out there. If you take away Humble Bundle and Steam sales, then people would simply not get those lesser known games.
 
Thanks to Steam sales, Blink Bundle, Humble Bundle and Bundle Stars I've bought games I never would have before.
If they don't like it, do what Mojang does, distribute it themselves.
Any time you go through a publisher, they're going to dictate prices and sales then take their cut.
 
Hornet said:
On the flip side, Humble Bundle and Steam sales have help sold many unknown indie games that people would not have bought otherwise. Many of these small indie games are sold in huge quantities thanks to Humble Bundle. Without Humble Bundle, would they have sold the same number at full price? I don't think so.

And this isn't a bad thing either because every indie dev have to start somewhere. If no one have ever heard of who you are or the game you are making, people would be more reluctant to buy you product. By getting more people to try out your game, if it turns out to be good, you'll be able to build your reputation from there and make bigger games that can generate more revenue in the future.

Bigger titles doesn't have any problem being sold at higher price so it's not like nobody wants to pay such money for a game they want. At the end of the day, people would only pay how much a game is worth to them, and there are many games out there. If you take away Humble Bundle and Steam sales, then people would simply not get those lesser known games.
Click to expand...

The problem is that consumers like me only buy when a game is 10 cents in a bundle. We know it's going to make it's way into a bundle for less than a dime eventually. Why buy it before it reaches this price or afterwards when it is back at the $20 full price? If I miss it then oh well; should have been faster. I'll just grab this weekend's bundle instead to console myself.

Also it costs a ton of money to make a game. A developer placed a cost of $10,000 per month for each member of your development team. This includes all of the insurance, electricity, office space, etc that it costs to have them there regardless of what they actually make per month. 10 man team would cost $100,000 per month, or 1.2 million per year. If a game stays in development for 2 years then they need a minimum of 2.4 million in the bank to develop the game.

Selling 40,000 copies at 8 cents a copy in a bundle isn't going to cut it when it cost $2,400,000 to make.
 
I think these guys should look into other merchandise for their games. I got Super Meat Boy from Humble Indie Bundle 4 and LOVED IT. I put many many hours into that game. I didn't pay much for it, but I ended up buying stickers for my truck and some figurines.

I see the point, people will buy a soda at a restaurant that might cost $2.59, just a beverage to go with the meal, you'll be there about an hour. An app that costs $2.50 that you may use everyday, fuck that's expensive. $5 coffee 'fine I'll have one', $5.00 game 'gotta think about it'. One 90minute movie $14, hell yeah, lets go and get overpriced popcorn too... Man they want $10 for their game that I'll get hours and hours out of, I'll wait for a bundle.

then again, I only knew of a couple indie games before this fairly recent trend.
 
cageymaru said:
I think he's 100% right. I buy games out of bundles all of the time. $1 for 12 games. $2 for 8 games. $5 for 12 games. I always wonder how do you make money if you're selling your wares for as low as $0.08 a copy? 8 pennies. I throw dimes into fountains for good luck. And you don't even get 8 pennies because some website get 1/3 of that. How in the fuck do you decide who gets the extra penny when you divide 8 by 3? It's important because it's your total income for at least a year until you can release a sequel to your smash hit. Then there is a tax man to deal with.

The guy is telling the truth. I just don't see how this system can work in the long run. Games should be at least $20 each. Maybe they should just sell them for full price and never have a sale. Is it not better to just have 1 sale at $20 than 250 sales at $0.08? Especially if you have to troubleshoot 250 different computers. Maybe the activation code for a "Bundle game" should denote that since it was bought at discount there isn't an implied warranty.

To be honest I wouldn't sell a game I created for less than $20. With that said; when is the next Steam sale?
Click to expand...
You do realize the idea of bargain sales is because after some time, you've already been on the market and sold at full price and your game/product is already mature, all you're looking to do is maximize your return so you dump the price in order to get people who otherwise would not have bought it to begin with.
It is not a good business model to devalue your product to begin with as your suggesting. However if you have something that's already sold past it's prime and steadily not making sales, dumping the price and netting in even 100$ is worth it.
Basically steam sales and humble bundle are the exact same thing as a bargain bin in old school Electronics boutique.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top