How do you feel about "Suggested Price"?

[Rob Lang]

I uploaded onto Drive Thru RPG to help exposure and as a better way for people to donate to me, the author. It's worked out rather well. Given that Icar went online in 1996 and I only once got a PayPal donation of $5, I'm delighted with how things are going on DriveThruRPG:



You can see the power of being on the front page as a new product in August! Before using DriveThru, I used to get about 100 downloads a month; which has now doubled. In short, moving to DriveThru was a great result! Assuming that Icar was only worth downloading in 2002 and that downloads have been constant, that's 14,400 downloads for $5, or 0.034 cents per download.

NB: The graph will update as I add new data, so if you're reading this long after January 2015, the data might look a little different!


My problem comes with "Suggested Price". Suggested Price gives the author an opportunity to say what they think the downloader might like to offer for it. I've set Icar to $0. I am not sure how I feel about the Suggested Price functionality. On one hand, it allows the author to say "Don't give me more than $1 for this!" or "Buy me a coffee for $3"*. I quite like that. It's an admission that the production values are not the same as a $40 game and that the author isn't trying to feed their family with it. As a downloader, I like the idea of buying someone a coffee - over here we would buy someone a beer to say thank you, a coffee is more universal.

Where Suggested Price is larger than $3, I start feeling guilty. If I download a game for free and the author has suggested $3, I don't feel like I am insulting them. If they put a suggested price of $20 and I don't want to - or can't pay that - then I immediately feel guilty. The author feels that their hard work deserves $20 and I am not willing to give a cent. That's a slap around the face to the author. When looking at the "downloads to donations" ratio, an author who suggests $20 and averages out at 5 cents a download might be somewhat insulted.

Am I being over sensitive about this? I am not sure I am comfortable with "Pay what you want but I think you should pay $20". Is it just me? Am I being a bit too British about this?

[vulpinoid]

Are you running this as a "pay what you want" product?

[Rob Lang]

Yes, as a way of making donations really easy.

[vulpinoid]

I guess I wasn't reading the whole post...

I've had FUBAR on DrivethruRPG for a while, as a Pay-What-You-Want. In it's life, it's made me about 50 dollars I think...over 1800 odd downloads. Some of my other similar products have made more with less downloads, but I don't think they're as "good" as products. A couple of games have even cracked a few hundred dollars, it's enough to sustain the design hobby and pay for some products from other people, and that's all I really want from it.

[Rob Lang]

How do you feel about the use of "Suggested Price"? Do you think it puts undue pressure on the downloader?

[kumakami]

honestly I feel you're putting to muck faith people.... I see Pay-What-You-Want and ignore the suggested price....most people will.

[Anastylos]

I simply ignore the suggestion. Simply because I don't know the quality of the rules and setting. If i like a game I can pay for it later.

[kylesgames]

I find suggested price to be relatively inconsequential to my decision to look at a game. If it's on DriveThruRPG, I'm significantly more likely to pay it because I tend to have some store credit on hand, but for stuff like video game bundles, I'll typically pay the minimum. A lot of it depends on how well I like the author as well; I bought Singularity for Eclipse Phase not because I really needed it, but because I like Eclipse Phase and I've been reading/playing off of Rob Boyle's free PDF's (and, to be fair, a reviewer copy of the same).

[Onix]

I think the suggested price is a fine way of handling setting people's expectations.

For one, it's a way to get people to value your efforts. If you say "this is worth $0", how much should they value the download? You just said it's not worth anything.

Even if I download it and pay nothing, I'm thinking "Ha ha! I got this $20 game for nothing! Sucker!" But I still view it on par with $20 games I've purchased in the past.

I'm fully convinced that buying a product increases the chance of it seeing the table. I'm partly convinced that if the downloader pays $0 but sees the game as a $20-40 value, it has a similar chance of one they pay real money for.

Do I feel bad about paying nothing when there's a suggested price? Yes. But I can't begrudge the person that made the product and has the awesomeness to let me in on a product that I couldn't afford otherwise. If anything, I'm more indebted to that person.

Should you feel bad for making me feel bad? No way. You did the work. I'm the bum getting something for free. I'm the one that is getting the proper feel for how much I owe the writer/designer.

Psychologically I totally think it's proper and good.

[Abstract Machine]

‘Price’ is, in essence, religious terminology – its slippery connection to ‘value’ is well documented, but it has all sorts of other connotations, mostly to do with getting people to do what they might not otherwise do.

I think the view expressed by Onix, above, is that of the majority. I differ, but I’m a freak in lots of ways.

‘Suggested price’ is an imposition. So is a fixed price. So is expecting people play to play your games because you’ve offered them for free.

We’re so well-trained as consumers, we either expect to pay or think we’re getting one over the vendor by paying less, or nothing. I find this dispiriting.

Big companies get round this by supply-driving their wares and locking in customers. Smaller companies get bought by bigger companies by doing what the big companies have forgotten how to do – interacting with people, mostly.

ICAR is good. I’m afraid I didn’t pay a penny for it. If I saw Rob Lang in person, I’d happily give him a tenner, but an online donation? Not likely. I thought I might get to play some hard SF at one point but it looks like ICAR will join the (fairly long) list of games that will never see play.

That’s another connotation of ‘suggested price’ – you’re paying to read it, not play it. The roleplayers I know read new games rather than play them; either that, or they play a game they’ve sort of heard of once or twice before moving on.

I think people are trying hard to imagine a business model that works for new tabletop RPGs. Thus far I’ve not seen one. Graham Walmsley is talking about this very subject in London on the 20th Jan: http://www.meetup.com/London-Indie-RPG- ... 219517643/. I really hope he proves me wrong.

If you’ll forgive me for offering (unqualified) advice, Rob, I’d try to find out more about the people who are downloading ICAR, particularly if they’re paying the suggested price.