1.99 to 0.99?

I don't think there's ever been any agreed-upon rules on a stickman's body. I know the UN discussed it after the Rwanda conflict, but I don't think they agreed anything.

I think that's difficult. Lots of different customers have different opinions on price. There are people out there who won't buy it until it goes down to $0.99, and others who feel most games on the App store are worth between $4.99-$29.99. (And a few apps are doing very well at the $20+ price point.)

It all depends on the target market, and this is probably the most important factor to consider when choosing the price. Unfortunately nearly all indie developers lack the marketing side of things and don't know enough about target markets, so they're all just going for the lowest common denominator: 99¢.

I think all indie developers, no matter what their marketing plan is, should always start at a higher price. For starters, there will always be people who will buy your app at the higher price because they can afford to, and you want those sales. There are also App store websites dedicated to tracking price drops, so you need that flexibility to be able to have promotions and make price drops over time. If you start at 99¢, there is no room to move in terms of pricing. Moving prices up can be a death sentence, and many of your potential customers will see its previous price and will just wait for your price to go back down again. This becomes more dangerous when a customer sees previous 'free' promotions.

99¢ isn't a magic price, and it won't make your sales increase. I think you should keep the $1.99 price for now — work on your marketing and getting people to buy it at that price.

 

I just wanted to add to this because I think what you've said isn't always true. In fact, doing exactly what you said (out-pricing the competition) can often work to your advantage.

I'm stealing this example from a marketing blog I read recently, but imagine Grandma Robinson presented with the results from her App store search for a recipe app. Is she going to go for the 99¢ apps, or the app at $4.99? It costs more… so obviously it's a higher quality with better-tasting recipes. $4.99 is a small price to pay for quality, so she buys the more expensive app.

A more savvy user might go through and compare the features of each of them, but there will always be those who have no idea what they're looking for and will buy based on "perceived value."

I remember this story from a few years back while I was inside a camera store. I was having a conversation with the owner of the store and mentioned I was interested in the nice Sony camcorder sitting on the shelf. He chuckled a bit and then told me everyone always looked at the Sonys. He then showed me a cheaper brand that looked almost identical to the Sony camcorder. In fact, it was identical; the color, the size, the shape, the LCD screen, even the features were the same, in fact they were made at the same factory. The only difference was that the Sony had the 'Sony' badge, plus a 50% higher price. But the most surprising thing is that the Sony camcorder outsold the cheaper brand in droves. The customers wanted and trusted the more expensive Sony camera. At the end of the day, Sony's marketing became the selling point.

There will always be those customers who have no idea what sort of features to look for and will buy based on "perceived value." Both price point and the packaging (the app store icon) can go a long way toward standing out from the crowd. Although I already know Imangi appreciates how important the app icon is.

 

hmm

Hmm, well maybe someone needs to be honest here.

This is my personal opinion so please don't take this personal.

I would not download youre game, even if it was for free.
The game shown here is an simple GameSalad project and it doesnt look like there went much effort into it.

Assuming youre kinda young, have no coding experience, but you are interested into Iphone developement. Spending another hundred dollar on GS and throwing some simple elements together doesnt make youre app worth a dime to others.

possibly you should compare youre game, you created to other games in the same price range.

what are you really offering?

doodle like graphics? why? you said you wanted to aim for that. i would guess because you can't do better?

addictive and fun gameplay? where is that?

as a pure product i don't see a single reason why anybody should buy youre game. there is absolutely nothing that hasnt been done a thousand times before in a better more polished way.

i'm sure you have had alot of fun making the game with game salad testing it on youre ipod/iphone , showing it to friend who said it was col etc.
but you need to step away a couple metres and look at it from a consumer perspective.

why would somebody buy youre game? would you spend 2$ on such a game rather than getting a polished well done alternative, the appstore is cluttered with?

i don't know often people try to be too nice to each other where some real an honest would bringt alot better results. sometimes its more helpfull to see the world without the pink shades for what it is.

if i would be you i would make youre app free (yes i know you spend some money on the licenses etc.)
and get onto the next project. prolly try to get an friend of youre who is good at graphics todo some work for you, make something rounder and don't hope to get rich with game salad brew anytime soon.

possibly think about it to nix the salad if its limiting you so much. with the money you should have get you some books on iphone programming. that would be a more solid way to start than thoose "click stuff together" game creators.

well everyone starts small, i don't want to discourage you, go and make youre next game, i wish you best of luck.

m.

 

The fact is that they are buying the Sony brand name because they believe they can trust it. An indie developer has no such brand awareness so pricing your app the same or higher than the well-known competition is not likely to bring success.

Imagine you have the no-name camcorder at the same price or higher than the Sony. Who would choose the no-name one over the Sony?

To extend nattylux's example, if you make a line drawing airplane game and price it higher than Flight Control, you would either need to be a very well-known brand, or have killer features and gameplay to overcome the brand awareness of Flight Control. Even so, you might be better off pricing it at a similar level or lower (although lower is not really viable in this case).

 

I played the web version of the game and in my opinion you did a good job with the graphics. If you consider a game like stick escape, well that's probably a developer that used stick figures because he couldn't do better art. But Stickman Dan is funny to look at, it has simple but charming animations, and overall creates a consistent atmosphere (except maybe for the colored items issue someone mentioned).
The real problem for me is the simple gameplay - we all know that it's similar to tons of other games in the store. I don't really feel motivated to get also this one because of the lack of particular "twists" in the gameplay... maybe you can think about something cool that could be added.
As you already know you would also benefit from being able to save scores locally and upload them online. These are important features for this kind of games. There's nothing much you can do about this, hopefully the GS team will bring a nice surprise in the next future.

 

No, you're absolutely correct. Building a brand that people trust is also very integral to long-term success, and a very important discussion to bring up.

But in the app store there are barely any brands to speak of aside from a couple of majors. So there isn't much danger in out-pricing the 'Sony' of the App store, because there is no 'Sony'.

If I'm honest, if I was looking at products I knew nothing about – let's say blenders – and I recognized none of the brand names… I would most likely skip the cheapest ones and buy a mid-range one based on nothing other than the assumption its better because it's priced higher.

This discussion isn't hugely relevant in terms of gaming, but for certain types of apps I believe it is, and I just wanted to point out that nattylux's comment isn't true all of the time.

 

you don't sound angry at all. lets put the game aside you managed todo something most of the guys in this forum didn't. you finished a game.
alot of people just talk all day long about their cool thing they want todo withot ever achiving to finish it.

i find you refreshing mature when look at most of the other flame threads.

keep up youre work and most importantly have fun creating new games!