How do you feel about "Suggested Price"?

[Onix]

@AbstractMachine - If you did hand Rob a tenner, my bet is that you'd play the game, or at least try to. You'd mention it to your friends and see if they'd take you up on in. You may not even realize you were doing it.

You're right that money doesn't drive people to play games. What is effective, is to develop a following. The most effective way of doing that is to develop a relationship with people. Message boards help. Having google+ conversations help. Going to cons helps.

But if you cannot meet that person, and they download a game for nothing, there is still no relationship. If they hand you a tenner, now there's a relationship. You have a give and take.

Beyond that there is the perceived value of a thing. If you laid out currency, a little bit of your life, it must be worth something. Why would I expend my money on it otherwise? It must be worth playing.

You might not think that *you* are effected by this kind of thinking, but analyze the games you did play. Walk into a store and pick up a book or a board game. You'll find yourself unconsciously weighing it as a judgement of it's value. There are behaviors that everyone does but no one wants to admit to, or thinks they're exempt from but they're not. Humans are humans. No amount of training yourself will get you to stop thinking like a human.

[Wannabe writer]

being perpetually broke (I have 7 kids) its a golden age. Funnily enough though when I do have money i often go and buy a hardback. I think designers need to realize that unfortunately its almost impossible to beat pirating, and perhaps basing their sales system on a free PDF and Donation or pay for hard-copy or PDF with artwork. However I am seeing things like kick starter behaving the in a similar way in getting backers to play test a piece of work, a sort of trial before you increase your pledge.

Myself I would like my money given to me by 10 or 20 dancing girls with music and the world press reporting that I am the greatest RPG writer ever, or in cash cold hard cash.

The future is changing and I think RPGs need to bend and change as well.

[Onix]

[Rob Lang]

[Onix]

[Abstract Machine]

[kylesgames]

As someone who used to review for DriveThruRPG, I can tell you that price often works against you. When I see a title, I think of the presentation/price ratio off the bat. Icar probably has one of the more premium feels to it of most things on DriveThruRPG. It doesn't have an overly long "This is my game" spiel, but it does show sample pages (with art and good typesetting, no less), and evocative cover that doesn't look like a Photoshop filter or your high school buddy's drawings, and generally a professional look and feel. It's the sort of game that I could see spending $15 on.

I think that realism in a suggested price is as important as anything else; I'm not the sort of person who feels too bad taking something offered for free (Eclipse Phase, for instance). It's the same thing as when I used to see a digital-only game on DriveThruRPG that had a ludicrous printing price listed. I'm actually working on an article in which I give my criteria for getting games on DriveThruRPG and how I reviewed back in the day.

[Rob Lang]

Thank you for the feedback on the Icar listing, it is very much appreciated!

I'd be very interested to ready your article on getting your game onto DriveThruRPG. I did it in a hap-hazard sort of way - even forgetting to tick the "PWYW" check box! Ooops. There is a lot of power in being on the front page, so getting it right up front is important. I shall do better when I put the Fleet setting up.

[Wannabe writer]

[catty_big]

My two penn'orth?

IMO folks are put off by a suggested price if it's PWYW, because the whole point of PWYW is that customers are totally free to pay what they judge the product to be worth, whether or not they're actually thinking (which they're probably not) hehe I can get this cool game for £1 or whatever. Also, it finds its own level. Remember when Radiohead first did PWYW for a CD, and they found that the average payment for it was what they probably would have charged anyway?

With a fixed price, obviously it's hard to get right the balance between charging a high enough price to cover your costs and make some profit but not so high that people are put off by it (not realising how much work has gone into the product), and at the other end of the scale between charging a low enough price that you get a lot of business but not so low that 'low price=low quality' psychology kicks in.

My best advice for anyone wondering how much to charge for their game is to literally work out how much a single copy cost to produce, factoring in everything, including a proportion of your rent if you wrote it at home, as well as computer cartridges and various other tangential and ancillary disbursements etc. It'll be a time-consuming activity but is IMO the only sure fire way to work out the cost of the game. You then double it for wholesale, and double it again for retail, just as you would any other product.