LOL… I hope the price won’t increase again too soon , because the currency exchange rate for some countries such as the Asia Countries is quite high, it could be about the ratio of 1:3 to 1:4 …
let say the fees is $6, so for these countries they need to pay about 24 local currency including other charges…
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Anything over $7 leaves my impulse buy zone. You can get so many really quality games, movies or books for that amount or less, or free–more than anyone possibly has time to enjoy in their lifetime.
$2.99 meanwhile us the sweet spot where I’ll snap up anything even if I’m not sure I’ll like it, or ever get around to looking at it.
But fwiw I’m far more tempted to purchase games here if a sizeable chunk is available for free. (And they’re well written, of course.)
Easier to put a book down on the third page than halfway through once you’re really invested and all that.
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Although, what it over $7 you could get bundles or one-off purchases for entire series’s?
I consider myself pretty safe and pragmatic with money, and with the stuff I set aside for leisure the price/ cost of COG games fits really well, and I’d be hard placed to price the value of the forum, stuff I’ve learnt and WiP’s I’ve read (for free!)
im not much of a complainer since when i buy something i first did have to test it before buying, so i pay for something when i know is worth the money, what i dont see fair is to pay 7 dollars for a pretty good game and 5 for a less than decent game, i think the prices need to be consistent with the quality of the game .
( you cant pay 20 dolars for a witcher 3 game and then pay 60 or 80 for a dark souls lol is a joke the market nowadays and choice of games is no exception)
While I can understand why the current prices are as “high” as they are, it’s still difficult for me to put enough money aside to buy any of them. It’s mostly due to difference in currency, for example choice of the cat: $9.99 or £7.19 but in my currency, it’s 35.99 zł (of course there are many older games that are cheaper and I’m taking full advantage of that but it’s still hard to wait for sales or until I save enough money to buy some of the newer ones). I guess that my perspective will change when I will move from part time job to full time job and therefore will have more money at my disposal
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Yeah, I get what you mean.
What I do is beta test almost everything I can (although for some reason some good WiP’s just really don’t interest me?)
And do the official beta stuff.
Effectively need to set aside time for good testing instead of money, and also allows you to see whether you’ll like the game or not to buy later.
And on taking advantage of sales, I could swear there are options to buy stuff in bundles? I realise if you want to buy a new game, waiting for part 2 to be released and then buying them all is a bit much, but buying pre-existing series’ at a lower price could be good?
I’ve also taken up writing a tiny bit of Choice Script for a little game myself too, free tools and the forum’s a powerful tool as well, I’d find it hard not to have a working knowledge of CS after all this time testing and shizzle.
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Very good advice, but at the moment it’s much easier for me to save money than invest time in another activity.
Saving enough money to buy a single game is sometimes challenging, buying a whole bundle would require too much effort, this is not after all the only thing I’m doing for fun and/or spending money on
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Ah fair enough, your best best is most likely testing games too.
Although, not to get soup-er personal, but if it’s a budgeting/ cashflow problemo there are many online tools that should allow you to save/ set aside money monthly each month for games/ discretionary expenditure.
And I meant more how overall it would be more cost effective to wait and buy a bundle (although I mean maybe not it real terms I guess)
What I do is browse online sites, forums, code and play free games for fun, so I have quite a bit of money to throw spend sensibly 
on COG games.
If it’s easier for you to save, well, do that! I doubt you’ll miss any kinda super short term deal, and the more money you have available to spend the more financially ready you are to take advantage of COG deals.
Maybe if there’s some sort of Christmas deal see if anything good there? Often older games can be reduced by quite a bit! Good luck with your dinero and divertido.
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Sorry, I guess I explained myself poorly , I’m well aware that if i would bought some bundle i would save quite a lot of money, I’m just too…can’t find the word… in short it would require of me to spend less on other things i enjoy for some period of time and I’m not a fan of that prospect (saving for driving course was draining enough 
), so it would benefit me in the long run but it would “hurt” me in a short term which for i care more right now
@fairlyfairfighter @iMadeYouReadThis
I was away from CoG for few months… but when i come back, i was blessed with the discovery of 2 recently released titles that absolutely hook me into it… the first was Hearts of The House which i discover on the Google Apps store last Friday and once i start reading it, i can’t stop and instantly click the purchase button at the end of the Free Chapters and spend the next 3 days reading it almost non-stop… even though i had to pay the full amount because i miss the promotion period
after the good experience with Heart of The House, i decide to carry the momentum and try out Broadway : 1849 , and again i was hook… luckily for me this time , i am still within the promotion period , so i top-up my phone and purchase it on Monday , wow !!! another great master piece that i am graced with, i am still reading it after 3 days … the reading already took out one hour of my supposed sleeping hours…lol
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Lol, there’s a choice on Steam to buy every choice of games game available (it offers 71) for the price of $322.13 CDN and that’s after a 15% off sale. Question is…is it worth it?
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The way to look at it, is it makes it about $4.50/game. Considering the price of the newer titles that is probably a reasonable deal. But do you want to read all of the games? If many of them are not your thing, obviously it wouldn’t be worth it. If you were going to buy every single one anyway and have the money, maybe it is.
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Thing is I’ve already read most of them XD
So yeah probably not worth buying them all twice.
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Don’t want to sound too stingy as I’ve always loved the games here, its just over the years the price of the games has gone up loads. Would kinda like to know how its set can I expect a better game if ones 6 quid and the other is 4 or is that just the authors choice is there a reason its more expensive nowadays.
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Authors don’t set the price of the game. In general, the price of the game does track with the length of the game.
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I suspect there’s an element of judgement as well, but games seem to be priced based on word-count rather than quality (as that would probably be a bit too subjective).
Prices have increased, but there’s also been a trend towards longer games. If I remember correctly, I paid £0.99 for Choice of the Dragon a few years ago, and that’s only about 25,000 words. Whereas Choice of Rebels sells for £6.99 but has over 600,000 words. I really don’t mind paying 7 times as much for 24 times as much game.
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Personally I’m still all for adjusting the prices to the actual wordcount (aka without code, additional material etc), especially since finding that game like HR2 has merely 60-80k words if you scratch code, additional material (recaps, reading material irrelevant to plot OR worldbuilding) and irrelevant railroading stuff, instead of (according to sources) 180k words.
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You also need to be aware that the word counts given tend to be total words in the entire game not in a single playthrough. Unnatural was about 250k but a player could experience between 60-80k a playthrough (according to Randomtest) so someone who plays a game once would see significantly less words than someone who repeatedly plays through multiple times.
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I think the prices are fair, maybe even a little cheap, for the amount of time an author spends on writing, procurring artwork, proofreading, etc.
That’s not even counting the fact that some of that money goes to the COG company, the app stores, the people behind ChoiceScript, etc.
I understand some people may not have the money to spend on little extra things, but how much does a Hosted Games author really make per $4 sale? $0.20?
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I’d say more then that. I don’t know what the fees are, but if everyone gets 25%, it’d be $1 per sell, maybe? Give or take. 