But it is too expensive, at least it is on European Steam. By the way European Steam does this with AAA games too. Even discounting VAT they simply convert the dollar price into Euro 1:1 when that is absolutely not equivalent.
Google Chrome apps used to price it reasonably as they converted the dollar value into the Euro equivalent and then added the VAT. Steam has lousy business practices. Unfortunately for people who like to play games on PC, like me, these days they’ve become the monopolist. Wish the EU would hit them with the competition laws already, but of course they won’t since nobody in charge considers monopolies a problem anymore these days.
For Steam you can use a VPN or this site to compare prices. Here’s the one for Heart of the House and note that here in the Netherlands Steam applies the already outrageous 23% VAT after.
6.99 Euro is not the same as $6.99 it is $8.15 and you get absolutely nothing extra for that money and the regressive VAT tax comes on top of it still. So for me all in all CoG games are almost 40% more expensive then they are for americans. Now the 23% VAT is a political problem with our conservative government who have raised it in anticipation of abolishing taxes on dividends for the wealthy, but Steam itself is gouging us for almost 20% on everything that goes directly to their corporate profits and provides us with absolutely nothing extra.
Probably, but I like to have a local copy of the game for multiple reasons. Besides, like I said the 23% is a political problem and not something that Steam or CoG can fix as that can only be done when more Dutch and European people stop voting for regressive measures every single time. The other 20% is all on Steam’s lousy business model though.
Does Apple’s App Store do the same thing? It might be something to say to Steam. Are there any viable alternatives? It might be a leading decision maker in your next mobile device purchase.
It’s not since I don’t play games on my mobile phone and I absolutely loathe Apple’s faux “family friendly” bullcrap.
I wouldn’t know much about the app store specifically though because I don’t use it.
Besides Steam’s monopoly doesn’t extent to just CoG it’s also AAA games and increasingly other indies and they all face the same problem.
I find myself siding with @ruhenri on this issue. I personally have no problem with purchasing CoGs/HGs at their current higher rate, but it has been enough for me to take notice as well…and I do know some people, even ones who live in the US, who are waiting to get any game until they have the money, or it goes on sale.
I mean, Heart of the House is $6.99 on Steam. Choice of the Cat is $9.99. Don’t get me wrong, I know that Heart of the House is 360,000 or so words, and Choice of the Cat is 600,000 words. Increased word count means increased time was put in, meaning the editor takes longer, etc. which increases the cost.
However, the average user on a store like Steam isn’t going to read how many words is in a CoG/HG. The part they will see is the price, and maybe user reviews to see if it is worth their time.
I would imagine that is why some games were raised as well. After all, with a library so large, people would be bound to notice the cheaper ones.
And many indies don’t lower their prices unless something is really old or they are really successful.
That is another thing which is hurting CoG in general; exposure. Just talking on Steam alone, Valve is horrible at curating their storefront, trying to make it as automated as possible so they don’t have to hire anyone. I mean, it is pretty sad when there was better quality control in the days of Steam Greenlight than in Steam Direct.
It is pretty much known that Valve also takes 30% of every game sold, and this will obviously be passed on down to the consumer. Slight aside here: it is pretty telling when Origin (by EA) was a better storefront than Valve since customer support actually got back to you in a reasonable time, and they actually offered refunds way before Valve did (the only reason Valve did was they were forced to by the Australian government and EU)
shrugs And with the costs of CoGs, there is obviously competition with the visual novel market, and whatnot. There is a large crossover of the audience, and some people, if they are going to spend $10+ might just go for what they perceive as a higher quality product. In their minds, the art costs, music costs (if a composer was hired), etc. would make sense to them versus just a text game.
Perhaps the current marketing targets are a bit ambitious.
If CoG does start pricing itself in the range of the virtual novels, I fear there will be a reckoning of a nature not expected. Yes, there is cross-over, as noted elsewhere and the CoG library is growing in quantity produced and there has been a positive response to criticism regarding length -
Yet by trying to maximize the pricing as is evident, I fear the niche that has been developed is being left to fallow. Expanding a niche is a good thing but not understanding the parameters of that niche while trying to do so will lead to mistakes.
Visual novels and their culture of relationships and romance do carry over to the existing general IF niche CoG had been developing. The most current releases show this to be true as well as several “community favorites” in the WiP section show the loyality of such an audience. This type of cross-over does require more product both initially and in follow-up. I do see VNtypes of dlc content becoming the next exploited element here at CoG.
All this is cost inductive and results in more aggregate bottom lines - yet the inelastic nature of CoG pricing to absorb these costs instead of passing the costs directly through is going to hurt more then it will help in the near future. The structural differences between the VN market and the IF market are too rigid to succeed in straddling them both for too long.
CoG’s strength in drawing VN bleed-off are related to what makes them a unique niche, the more they become a member of the VN niche (a far greater but much more competitive niche) the more they will need to further evolve the product produced or be seen as a wanna-be in the whole.
Right now, an engaging compelling story based on the western IF fiction model is solid - the reasonable pricing is a part of this success, a driver for those turned off by the various limitations of the Virtual Novel niche but who are still looking to feed their wants.
Ever since the Russian fantasy title came out, there has been a tinkering of a base-successful model. Unfortunately, it seems to me that CoG is now in the outer-limits of its consumer elasticity - either the company will evolve further into becoming a Virtual Novelist publisher or they will see that the roots that got them this far are starting to get rot in them and pull back their current pricing trend.
Their strength is the hybrid IF story and it should remain the core of their vision. I understand the insatiable impulses towards growth and associate increase in cost/revenue gathering but cannibalizing the original core vision in search of future profits leads to most publishers of this size eventually failing - EA was an exception that has survived and even thrived from its origins into a self-cannibalizing studio, continuing to find more independents to swallow, digest then poop out.
The majority of the publishers that embark on such a path end in failure.
My hope is that CoG takes a long, hard look at nourishing and cultivating its strong niche it currently occupies because if it does, my feeling is that it can survive and morph into one of those successful independent publishers. My fear is that the shiny lure of what others have in the VN realm is too much for them to resist trying to join the rat race of the larger VN publishing niche.
Amazing reflection, @Eiwynn. As a customer who has enjoyed CoG and HG’s games for quite some time now and, as such, one that has an interest in seeing the company continuing its tradition and practices so far, I do agree with you. Sometimes, expanding isn’t necessarily a good business decision. I mean, I went from buying approximately 75% of CoG and HG’s releases (I have always been more of a HG kind of guy than official CoG, but you get the point) and I just checked how many games have I bought of the last 8 books released by CoG’s official label… I have bought 2, that’s 25%. I just find myself thinking “Is this really the best use of my money?”, question to which I had a very positive answer 6 months, 1 or 2 years ago… Now? Not so much, and I usually don’t buy games which I would have bought if they were slightly less expensive.
I should have clarified that it amazes me when people say ‘it’s too expensive’ when they can afford it easily and/or in the discussion bring up models from other interactive fiction that has micropayment, sometimes resulting in 10+ bucks every other playthrough. (wth)
On a related sidenote, another part of the problem might be that only few games are available in other languages. While english is a common secondary language across the world, it can also be a factor that makes people decide against it.
And here’s (and I’m sorry I have to bring this up) a major failing. I talked to Jason about this once (offering my services at translating Hero Unmasked into german) and was told that it won’t do, as I am not a professional translator.
While I value the approach to only provide professional quality for the customer, the idea that a translation can not be on a professional standard if you don’t charge for it, is a little… eh.
Especially when you then go to say ‘we can not do translations for the games, it’d be too expensive’.
le sigh
Again, I admire the approach that one wants to provide professional level quality, but this is a bit of a dead end.
I mean, just imagine the possible increase in sales were the games were available in spanish by default. Or in japanese, for example.
Just speaking generally, but the prices of a professional translator could easily cost more than what a game might earn, especially as niche as one like Choice of Games.
I know of a couple of visual novel companies that are in the same boat; they would love to translate their stuff into other languages, but there is no guarantee it would sell well.
The other thing which often leads into a company’s thinking is that a poor translation can reflect badly on a company. Hanako Games (Long Live the Queen) mentioned this as one of her concerns; if something is given an ‘official’ stamp by the company and it sucks, well that can be a tough impression to shake off.
I will agree with you on this score. There have been a lot of fan translations which have turned out good; whether it was back in the days of VHS anime, to game projects which were translated for love of the project.
To give Hanako Games credit, they have actually allowed fans to translate Long Live the Queen into other languages, even showing where the files, etc. were. However, this was also done with the understanding this was not an ‘official’ translation. If anything, in this situation, it boils down to a person ‘modding’ the game…and some companies are loathe to allow that as well.
As said, what irked me was mainly the statement that ‘one can not provide a professional translation if they don’t charge for it’. I mean, I know where they’re coming from, but at the same time I see
‘I can’t read english that long’ as a reoccurring reason why people don’t play the games after the demo.
Translating the games has come up before, there’s some discussion of it over here:
I don’t think I have anything to really add (other than to echo everything @Lys said, since she hit all the points I was thinking of), but some of these thoughts have been brought up before if that affects anyones’ opinions
If someones english is good enough to understand the demo then I doubt that they would have any serious problems with reading the whole thing. I think if someone reads the first few chapters (the demo) and then decides against buying the game then they probably have some other reasons for not buying it.
Don’t the app stores do the same thing? I thought they took a large chunk out of the selling price too. What happens when you’ve got single companies with close to a monopoly on sales distribution
I don’t like how you can’t tell how good a game is by the demo and the price increase without a garuntee of good quality is annoying. There’s such a small subset of people who like text based games and this stops people from getting into them. I’d like for it to be ad based or get enough achievements to unlock like Magium does.
Oh wow I had no idea :c is there some petition or something to get google to change their mind? Especially since there are so many bad reviews given because it charges for a full game
