Here's how I see it. $10 - I've never bought anything on the App Store for more than $7, and I don't plan to. If the game starts out at $10, I'm just going to wait for a price drop, and I'd imagine a lot of other people will too. $7 - I actually just bought Dungeon Hunter, and I've bought a few other large games for the same price. This is probably the best pricing, because it's not that expensive, but it's enough to show that it's a serious game and it'll pay off pretty quickly. $5 - Maybe do this as a sale after the games stops selling. Introductory sales are never good ideas. All you're doing is losing money because the people buying would have bought it for full price. < $5 - Don't ever go less than $5 until the game is just not selling at all. That's my input.
You paid $9.99 for Doom. (16 year legacy) But did you pay $5.99 for The Quest? $9.99 for Zeus Quest - Adventure? $6.99 for Pheasant Hunt 3d? $9.99 for Crusade of Destiny? Now, don't get me wrong, I am all for higher pricing in the App Store, and a deep RPG is prob the best way to do that. And I find the people complaining about prices>$0.99 to be very frustrating. I'm just pointing out that you can't compare yourself to the Doom franchise. arn
Arn - Your right - I don't think I worded that correctly. I did pay the price for the name, and I ended up with a rail shooter which is not what I wanted at all. The graphics were very well done, but the style of game play just wasn't what I had in mind. I would pay 9.99 for Crusade of Destiny because its the first (or second) full 3d action rpg on the App store - and I know its made by one or two people - which I fully support! That being said I just bought Dungeon Hunter...
Ok, and amending my first comment. I do think you can do > $4.99 as an indie dev if the game has enough in it, but it really has to be a "must have" in terms of content, because you are directly competing against the likes of Doom and Madden (price wise). arn
Well, the great thing here is that you can always change the price fairly quickly, according to how the market reacts. Wondering about all the "what if" questions will just end up stressing you out. Figure out who your target population is, and price it according to what their spending habits are, as well as what you feel your game is worth. How much control will you have over pricing anyways? I'm assuming the publisher will have a pretty big say in this?
Stick with your gut on the price... You guys already know that anything much less than $10 for a game like this is a huge psychological blow to the compared to how much work you have put into it... A lot of people have lost their minds when it comes to apps and "value".
For me the price doesn't matter. It's because the game (animation) looks very bad. Also a few days ago, the developer was unable to write "iPhone" right. The website has only been a single image...
Are you just trying to create drama? 1. your opinion 2. spelling....are you serious? you're going to judge a game based on a spelling mistake on a forum post?! 3. have you even been to the website? unless you're trying to use reverse psychology so that everyone jumps in this thread to defend Josh, i'm confused...
Yes, it's actually my opinion. If a dev makes an iPhone game, I want him to be able to spell iPhone right. Of course I have visited the website! It has only been an single image... I don't base a game on the website but I want the website to look as polished as possible! Even if the spelling and the website were right I wouldn't buy, because the animations look poor and choppy. I also think that the iPhone can handle better graphics. Well I'm not able to make a game like this, but from what I've seen, this game looks lame to me. Period.
The spelling thing is really silly, especially since it's a forum post that you seem to have a problem with. I'll just disregard that for now, because I can't even begin to comprehend someone not liking a game because the developer spelled something wrong on the internet, lol. I still don't know what you mean by a single image....when I click on the link to his website, there are lots of screen shots and even concept art. Are we talking about the same thing? I agree a polished website is important for developers, and to me it seems like Josh's website is pretty good....again, are we talking about the same thing? It really sounds like you're going to a different site or something. Regarding the graphics, well I'm not sure what to tell you. What other 3D rpg are you comparing the graphics, or even gameplay to? Do you even like rpg's? It just seems like your opinion is biased for some reason...maybe you just don't like the 3D rpg genre?
Totally agree, I really don't think you'll find much success at 9.99 thats for sure as said no matter how good it is. I would say a intro price of 4.99 would be good and if it started climbing the charts then try 6.99 at most. But even doing that is gonna start to slow up sales and hinder your climb up the charts and we all know how much it pays to be high on the charts. The way the app store is a lower price high on the charts is gonna get you more money then a higher price point and not be on the top 100 at all. Look at Real Racing its a hugely polished game and by a dev that had a number 1 ( 99c ) game already ( although still relatively not a huge name dev ) and struggled with sales. Even at a price drop its struggling at 6.99 to stay in the top 100 for a really solid game. The poll is gonna be largely biased, since most people that voted have a huge interest in this game already ( thats why they are looking at these threads afterall ) so of course they are gonna be the few that are willing to pay more for the game and not a accurate indication of the majority of idevice gamers.
I mean the following: What I mean is: iPhone is not spelled IPhone. And the iPhone 3GS is not spelled IPhone 3Gs! That's what I mean. Nothing too bad, but something that's avoidable. I'm talking about the technical view here. HTML is not used properly and a few days ago the website has only been an single image. What I mean is that the website doesn't use text, only text embedded in images which is not right from the semantic aspect of web design. You can see this when you're trying to select text. That's not possible cause the website only contains images! For comparision: Visit the Rolando 2 website (http://rolando2.ngmoco.com/) which is done properly. If you only regard the look of the website it's ok, but from a technical view, the website is really bad! I really like RPGs. I played Vay, Inotia and Dungeon & Hero on my iPod touch. I haven't played many 3D RPGs but the animation (especially the battles) in Ravensword look totally lame and choppy. It's simply not fluid. The resolution of the textures is also pretty low and the FPS-view is silly in my opinion. When watching the trailer I noticed many bad things: The animation sequence in the beginning looks like if it's from a RPG on a console or PC, but I'm not sure in this point. The animation of the text ("The secret must be revealed") looks like if it's done in Windows Movie Maker. Also the font looks unusual (the edges). The bear is walking funny/silly... These graphics don't look really good: Took a look at the sheep? The don't fall down they are just pushed by the horse! Why? They shouldn't have put that in the trailer so that anybody can see how bad the physics are?! And finally the battle sequences in the end of the trailer are extremely lame! They don't look like high quality. So my points are: Bad website, bad trailer, bad animations, and a short playtime (which is ok in other genres but not for RPGs)!
Now thats taking a fine toothed comb over it! Short playtime - we don't even know what the playtime is yet - but it should be as long as Dungeon Hunter (we're still adding stuff) Isn't iPhone spelled iPhone? That one confuses me.
It's spelled iPhone 3GS. You corrected that one on the homepage of the website but there are still 2 mistakes: the "S" in iPhone 3GS is big and on the subpages it still says "IPhone". Playtime: Didn't you say it would be from 4-6 hours?
I was looking at iPhone's website and it says 3G the s is in a little box, however, I just noticed when its written in text at the bottom that they do use a capital S. I'm pretty sure that doesn't have anything to do with the game play. As for the trailer, obviously thats what the game looks like (at least in an early beta)
I'm sorry, but this "spelling" argument is so inane, that I can't take anything else you're saying seriously. You may or may not have good web design points, but I can't even focus on that because you sound so arrogant and condescending about such a minor issue that isn't even about spelling, it's about usage of a brand name and its variations. If this is an issue to you, I can't see how you visit this site where just about every use of the words "there/their/they're" in postings are incorrect, not to mention "it's/its". Get over it. If you don't buy a game for this reason, you're unreasonable. Period. I hope you enjoyed my incomplete sentence.
I did say 4-6 hours which was a very rough estimate of what we had at the time. Theres still more to come, and there is playability after the ending of the story as well. To be honest, there probably won't be a good time estimate before the game is actually released. We'll get our first true measurements after its on the App store. From people that have never played it and don't know exactly where to go - or haven't been beta testing for several months.
