Great conversation. As the author of one of the new games coming out, I’ve been following this conversation closely. My game is Life of a Wizard and it’s roughly 150k words. It’s my first game through COG so I have no fan base. I am worried that ad supported games are in trouble due to the fact that the current ad company hasn’t paid our developers in 4 months. Some of you have Beta Tested my game and know what it’s like. The game has no demo version and a sequel is unlikely due to the scope of the game. Considering all of this:
Should I release the game for free with ads and an option to pay to remove them? If so, how much should I charge to remove ads?
As one of those that hasn’t had the honour of testing the game it’s hard to say, and made even more difficult with the ad company problem… In this case I’d even suggest a third option(for those on phone), being able to download the demo, and pay for the full game if they like it?
@Lucid a free, short demo seems like a good idea. Having been one of the privileged ones able to beta-test your game, I would personally charge between £2.99 and £3.49 (sorry, I don’t know what that equates to in dollars) for the game. I’d probably charge £1.99 to remove ads- any less and you won’t earn as much as you could, any more and not enough people would remove them. Personally I feel you should charge to buy the game and possibly charge to remove ads as well, having tested it I would say it would definitely be worth paying a (relatively) decent amount for, and once it comes out hopefully people will give it the credit it deserves on the forums and encourage more people to buy it.
In summary:
dependent on the answer to 2- if no, definitely, £1.99 at least, but possibly more. If the answer to 2 is yes, I’d still go for a ‘remove ads’ button but make it a bit cheaper.
I’d definitely say yes- the game is really too good to not charge for it, considering all current releases have been charged and (without wanting to give away any spoilers) I think Wizard’s Life is easily better than them.
@Lucid CoG (or anyone else) can correct me if I’m actually mistaken in this belief but, even when there are absolutely no problems with the ad company, I think you’ll find that free-with-ads is not exactly a money-spinner. If you’re hoping to get something worthwhile out of this, put a price tag on it - especially as you’ve stated that it’s unlikely to have a sequel, so it’s not a case of trying to build a huge (free) fanbase with the intention then of selling all your avid readers a follow-up game… That, to my way of thinking, would be the only good reason for releasing any decent, large game as free-with-ads.
Bear in mind also that, for the vast majority of players–and for most games they release–CoG’s standard price is extremely good value-for-money in this day & age, considering the time & effort that actually goes into producing one of these things.
Above all, if you don’t place any value on your own game, why should anyone else?
All that said, @Redgrave’s point about a short demo is a very good one. Something able to be downloaded & tried for free is always a good idea, to help convince the large percentage out there who wouldn’t normally buy anything unless they have a good reason to. I would recommend having a close look to see if you can turn the first 10-20% of your game into a free demo, and let your game speak for itself.
My heart supports the free with adds idea, but my mind can tell that no money will be made by that. It depends on whether you want to have some money for your hard work or popularize choice of games. A free game would make CoG famous if it was good and came out at the right time to the right people.
@Lucid, I agree that your game’s worth charging for. And I don’t think it’s your job to popularize CoG. So here’s another vote for give-them-a-demo and charge. One issue is that the depth and scope of your game might not be immediately apparent from the demo – so I’d suggest ending the demo with a teaser that sketches out some of the major milestones and at least some of the possible endings to shoot for (e.g. become a lich, father the next king, bring about a Golden Age, conquer the world).
Even though my young mind has no experience of making money while pleasing your audience.In a perfect world, it would be free-to-play forever, like it used to. But consider the fact that the Authors not only have to write but program and then fix the errors and so on. So it’s alot of work to actually make a game. And I appreciate it, I even help my grandfather when we go on holiday to his farm just so I won’t feel like I’m being a spoilt daughter to my parents.
I find that paid CoG games downloads are abysmal in comparison to their free stuff.
People see a price tag and think ‘nah’ and move on without even trying your game - I know - I’ve been there.
My personal favourite approach is where it’s all one ‘free’ app, but you have to pay for the second/third/fourth parts - Like Choice of Romance and Zombie Exodus.
You need to give people a chance to try the game before paying for it, however you do it, because let’s face it: No CoG game looks good in screenshots.
as a tester of life of a wizard i think 2.99 dollar is kinda justified as you get a lot of bang for the buck as you can play it over and over and still find something new which is important. but then again i don’t live in America i live in Norway and 2.99 dollar is like 17kr and that is the same price tag of of soda here. to sum it all up yeah its cheap very cheap :-))
@djma46 For Life of a Wizard, you’re correct. Problem is, not all games are created equal. Some games I’ve played (not naming names) I’ve bought and was dissatisfied and did not feel it was worth even the little I paid for it.
@fantom Nail on the head, much like @FcA 's article states - Games (even here at CoG) are given a price tag by label, not content or quality of content.
I.e. Hosted games are slightly cheaper, and official games slightly more expensive - regardless of how good one or the other is.
There are many hosted games I’d pay more for and many official games I’ve not bought because of the price and my own low expectations.
It’s not strictly an offical vs hosted though, as for example, Vampire, Zombies and Broadsides - I’d pay around £3 for happily - but there are many more recent ones I won’t.
It’s simply too hard and in some cases unfair (on the author) to individually price the games though.
Indeed. I’ll just reiterate what has already been said, but the best overall solution is where you can get the first chapter either for free with ads, or for cheap without ads (like $0.99) and pay a small amount for subsequent chapters.
Sarah Northway did the flash game Rebuild (1 and 2) and I think plenty believed it was worth charging for. The survey though does reveal the true colours of certain fans, if it’s free they’re gonna go for the free option regardless.
The big question is (and I can understand if CoG don’t want to go into detail on this) whether the official games are currently breaking even or better. If so, then simply getting more writers and having a longer turn-around rate would work. If that’s still a long-term goal, things are a lot more complicated.
I’m concerned about the fact in the article that a book of which overall only 4,000 copies are sold in the whole USA reaches the 6th place on the bestseller list…
About 1 of 8,000 Americans bought that book, which means that there is a high probability that not only you didn’t ever even hear its name, but neither did any of your friends.
I assumed the figure is for total sales worldwide.
In my impression the disappointment seems to stem from the fact that a “bestseller” didn’t get in more cash, but in terms of sheer numbers it sounds like a good deal for me.
Though I’m also a bit surprised that he got sixth place an Amazon bestseller list with those kind of sales.
I agree. The misleading part here is “best seller” at 4000 copies. A 50% royalty, getting $3 each on a $6 book sounds good. 50 Shades sold 5.3 million copies by last August, yet he compares his success to that? If he had a “best seller” like that, he’d have nearly $6 million dollars.
