Price Increases

They can get high compared to other apps, true. But anyone who complains about literally not having enough money for them had better not have bought a single console game. One new Xbone/PS4 title runs 15-20x the average CoG/HG price. And even a used console title would be more than any three or four games here. And while those are much more elaborate constructions, many last little longer than some of the more in-depth stories here.

If I could make a suggestion I feel is at least somewhat realistic, maybe some price drops could occasionally be done on older games? Everything releases on sale, but after that ends the prices seem to go up and stay up. Maybe some of the older stuff could get a dollar knocked off for a month or two. First games in a series like Lost Heir or Heroes Rise. Would be good for the first CCH when the second comes out. Greatest Hits sort of deal.

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For those games that are on Steam, they have been discounted during their huge annual sales. I mean, I understands that’s not across all platforms, but for those who might not know and use Steam, it could help.

I have definitely paid more for video games that I was more disappointed in (and sometimes had the same or less playtime) than any CoG or HG story, that’s for sure! I also think that it’s entirely reasonable to check out any of the titles on the main website (even if they don’t have a demo to download in the app stores, you can find them here) and that you should be able to get a sample of whether or not it will appeal to your tastes. Sure, it may not be a completely perfect system, especially for certain groups, but it’s still a solid foundation and seems to have served the brand well enough so far.

Nope. I still wouldn’t buy it that way. It’s not necessarily about quality even. The writing style could be good or not so bad and there could still be something in that game what I really wouldn’t like and maybe that would prevent me from reading it more then once. Now if I’d pay that much money and there would be only 1 or 2 games out of all the games which I get which I would really enjoy and would reread it multiple times then I’d still feel like that was a waste of money.

As said above, maybe a sort of wiki/page own review thing would do.
Like, give a genre for the games, brief overview for length and approximate wordcount per playthrough and user ratings for replayability, triggerwarnings etc.

The games I saw disappoint people often are usually games that were short and/or had little to no branching and/or a massive amount of railroading. Or are games where the author forces something unto the reader out of nowhere without any chance to avoid it (we all are probably thinking about the same thing right now).

And I don’t want to hear anyone go ‘but spoilers’ TWs are NOT spoilers.

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There are reviews left by users on the app store/Google play/Steam or wherever you buy your game. That and the forum threads are how I gauge whether a game will interest me, and I use the website demos in case I’m not sure.

If you mean creating a new page, who will host it, register it, design it, write the content, etc.?

I do think it would be good to feature content warnings in the advertising blurb. I’m not sure what thing you’re referring to but there have been a few scenarios in official games and forum WIPs that I wish I could have chosen to avoid.

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As said, yeah, there are those reviews, but often they are not that helpful. Either they are complaining about having to pay for the game, are one or two word reviews or are absent in total.
And by new page I meant a new subpage on here.

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I think I’ve seen it discussed before to add average playthrough length alongside total word count, which would sort of solve the issue of discussing how much of the game is railroads versus branching, since you could tell by comparing those two numbers.

I’ve seen CoG games reviewed on at least one larger game review site, but even longer, in depth reviews are still going to be subjective as all get out. I can think of several games that are very well liked on the forum that I couldn’t even tolerate the demos of, and conversely games that are heavily disliked or criticized that I enjoyed thoroughly. I don’t really think official reviews would be any more effective than the discussion threads that crop up anyway, and the forums aren’t exactly hard to find for people looking for more opinions

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And only then, European Steam has a lousy business model of converting dollar prices into Euro 1 for 1 and then adding the VAT on top. So sticker price isn’t what we’re actually paying. Mind you for me personally it doesn’t matter so much now, other then the fact that I detest Steam’s business practices of gouging EU customers, but I didn’t exactly grow up wealthy.
When I was a college student I could have an entertainment budget of as little as maybe 10-20 Euros a month left over and that does change things.
I know from chatting with @FairyGodfeather that others around here have had similar experiences in their past.
Similarly there are lots of people on disability, welfare or a small pension who have very limited budgets for discretionary spending. @Eric_Moser and that includes getting “treats” such as that burger for themselves.
So-called “food banks” aren’t the fastest growing banking sector in the Amsterdam area for nothing.

When you have no money for discretionary spending it is easy, of course you can buy absolutely nothing, on a very limited budget that is where the really tough choices have to be made.

Here’s the Steam Prices page for XoR.

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Are the prices on Google Play store and the App Store the same as Steam prices in the Euro region?

No, they convert prices based on a different things. I think GPS is actual currency to currency conversion and Apple has a complex tiered pricing structure conversion I can’t begin to describe, but it’s not quite the numeric to numeric thing Steam does with euro.

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And everyone who can’t afford it has my sympathy. It is a tough situation all around; I can guarantee in the visual novel arena that if something isn’t at least $10, then Valve’s own algorithms won’t promote something as heavily. I imagine this is hitting text interactive fiction games as well.

What is frustrating is that a time or two I was tempted to hold a random giveaway of various new CoGs on Steam. It would have been paid out of my own pocket, but with a thread on the forums. It wasn’t going to be anything big, but I thought it might be a chance to give a few games to other people who may not be able to afford it.

However, I was told since it was going to be a random giveaway that makes it gambling of a sort, and so could be potentially liable in a legal sense. And yet loot boxes are taking off like you wouldn’t believe. shrugs So it seems it is better to do nothing.

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Hmm, for me, I totally understand and appreciate why the costs are going up, but I bought Tin Star for $1.99 – I double-checked my google purchase history, even. Tin Star is, by far, the longest CoG/HG that has been released (unless there has been a change-up I haven’t yet heard of); unfortunately, this means that I subconsciously compare everything to the cost I paid for TS.

Is this 80,000 word novel, with an estimated play-count of about 40,000 words going to be worth more than the $2 I spent on TS? Generally speaking, no.

I love HG and CoG, and, if I could, I would buy every single game multiple times, just to support the very talented authors we have here.

The thing is, however, that most of us got into this on a happy accident, after seeing how low the prices were. Yes, they’re still low, but they’re on the higher end of prices for the app store, these days. $6.99 for a game with 100,000 words, including code? That was mind-boggling for me to see the other day – and that wasn’t even on Steam (I don’t buy any of these games on steam; they’re far too difficult for me to read on the computer, versus on my phone)!

I understand that we’re potentially buying hours of replayable content, but, being realistic, we’re only putting a ton of time in on the first playthrough. After that, most of us are spamming different options to see the different endings or different romance scenes. That first playthrough is the most important, and if it is short and subpar, $6.99 suddenly feels like a giant waste of money – especially on a mobile game.

I think the best route for CoG/HG to take, with this, is to give a warning before price changes are going to increase, sitewide. I’d love to know more of the reasons – is it due to tax, is it because the companies you’re working with are demanding more money, are authors asking for more royalties, etc.

I’m not against paying more, but it is definitely requiring me to be more discerning; I mean, I bought most of these games when the most expensive one was $3. It’s hard to justify paying more than twice that for games that, on average, have been of somewhat…lower quality (in terms of length or even just garnering interest).

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Yeah, the pricing (as mentioned before) seems all over the place
Take HR as example. None of the games in the first trilogy goes about 200k words, average playthrough length seems to be at 75% of the word-count (aka little to no branching) yet the prices are (in order and euro at GPS) 2,95, 6,49 and 4,29 (plus microtransaction for stuff that basically tells you ‘in order to win this you MUST follow the author’s vision of the MC being an attention-grabbing dramallama who cares only for themselves’)
How? How are the prices determined?
Slammed (haven’t played yet, so no comment on branching) has 200k+ words and is 6,49 while IIRC Hero Unmasked (at 300k) is 4,29.

I don’t know about the other outlets but Google has been very welcoming in the two cases (4 years apart mind you) where I was so disappointed with a game that I tried to return it. I felt bad both times cause I do want to support CoG and the individual authors but I was very upset with these games for being crap, too.

Either way, I got my money back which made me a bit more cavalier about trying things out. And I usually reinvested my returns in another CoG/HG product right away anyway.

I believe you have to return the game within 60 minutes of purchasing. Unless you are a particularly swift reader, you generally will not finish an entire game within 60 minutes.

I’ve also noticed that a lot more of these games are being hacked by certain websites (my tablet does not like to install some apps, so I download the latest google play version of apks – the non-paid, non-hacked versions – then purchase the game that way), as the prices have gone up. This is to be expected, to an extent, but it’s within hours of release, rather than within weeks, as it used to be.

I fear that the price increases may, in fact, be costing CoG more money than they’re garnering.

I don’t really think CoG can be blamed for their games being hacked–I understand that if something is more expensive, it’s more likely that people are going to try to find ways of getting around that pay barrier, but really people will do that with anything. Look at Kyle T Webster’s photoshop brush prices–I remember seeing them for 2, 5, dollars, the ones I bought were “pay what you want,” I think the highest prices I remember were 15 bucks for some of the bundles, but he was still pirated an insane amount. So much so that when I just popped onto google to see if anyone still had the rough prices so I could double check, the first thing that popped up after “kyle t webster brushes” was “free”. Seems to me like with CoG’s increasing popularity, the speed and frequency of pirated copies popping up would be increasing anyway, regardless of the prices.

Definitely wasn’t the case last time. It was probably around 24+ hours later.

Also, you’re not necessarily supposed to finish it, just return it once you start feeling disappointed. And probably don’t overdo it.

Oh goodness – I didn’t mean to imply that, at all. I can see how it would come across that way, though. I’m coming from a place more of concern for the company than from victim-blaming, or anything like that.

Oddly enough, I haven’t really seen the popularity of CoG increase too much – the number of downloads has stayed pretty much the same average for the last few years; however, that could be me misremembering things. I don’t just stare at numbers obsessively, or anything :laughing:

Fair enough.

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Its increasing.

There are more people on forum than six months ago and the number of active WiP is increasing too. The number of downloads must be increasing too but that’s something that no one really keeps track of ( except the company .I mean ofcourse )

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Huh, that might’ve been my misunderstanding then–I really don’t watch downloads and the like, but I thought I’d been hearing that the CoG audience had been expanding? But I don’t remember where or when I heard that, so it might be my misconception