How much is a fair price for Automation

[Deus ex Machina]

i think the main problem is with the quality of most games.

why should i pay full price for a game that only evolves at a pace a snail outruns?

EA football manager eg. most of the time its just a bit of finetuning and the actual clothing....

and always full price



that being said many ppl just say i wanna play 4 free.

[Daffyflyer]

We'd like to price as low as possible, but it all depends how many people are likely to be interested - as we are fairly niche, the minecraft strategy might not work for us

[Drake]

We'd like to price as low as possible, but it all depends how many people are likely to be interested - as we are fairly niche, the minecraft strategy might not work for us

IMO a higher price than minecraft wouldn't be such a bad thing. With the average price of retail games where I live being between 50-70$(USD, or CAD, ours is worth more now) It wouldn't bother me to pay as much for this; I know im going to get something good quality, and in the unlikely case that it isn't I will already know from testing it . But prices vary, and in some countries games are cheaper than others.

Maybe it would be good to make a poll on the cost of games? Or maybe just make a thread for a list of countries game prices and have users post. Pick a few big releases like Starcraft II, or CoD 9 or whatever ridiculous number they are at now and get people to see the average price in their country.

Since it is a Niche game, and there is no competition to speak of, so I think that the people who love cars will pay whatever price its given. But with people on the fence, a high price tag might scare them off..

Maybe we need a poll on the demographics of what kinda people like this game. Are we all car nuts? or are there people who like it for other reasons?

[Daffyflyer]

Insightful post as usual drake


Yes, there does seem to be BIG difference in price per market, would be interesting to find out in detail, however I'd hate to actually price Automation per market, always drives me nuts seeing games on steam that are cheaper in the US than here..

[Drake]

Yes, there does seem to be BIG difference in price per market, would be interesting to find out in detail, however I'd hate to actually price Automation per market, always drives me nuts seeing games on steam that are cheaper in the US than here..

Oh I definately agree with that.

Personally it makes me feel like Im being ripped off when I see different prices by region. It would be nice to have a price that is reasonable everywhere.

[Daffyflyer]

What it really boils down to is, the bigger our community is by the time we release the game, the lower we can price it whilst still being sure of making back our investment (which is quite substantial, even though indie development is low cost, it will still have cost tens of thousands by the time we are done)

[robt100]

I think that having a good demo could help with a higher pricing, although itd need a time limit so as you dont end up with an LFS style demo community! But if people are impressed with a demo they are more likely to fork out a few more ££ for the game as they feel it is of quality. But then again, creating a demo will take time to adjust things etc. Maybe something to do straight after release, get the followers of the game to purchase it straight out then add a demo for "newcomers" at a later date with a change in price depending on how the initial selling phase went.

[Deus ex Machina]

hm a demo here seems to be easy, or not so easy, depending on the security against "unlocking" it you want.

the easy way is just to mark some parts of the real executed code as comments, which get ignored while running the program; in html (iirc, can sort the different languages ive "programmed" in out) thats just the following two things: "/ before and /" after the part you dont want to use.

all one had to do to get the full game out of the demo with this method would be to unmark these parts again.

the not so easy way would be to delete them instead of marking them.

[Daffyflyer]

Yeah, A demo is easy stuff - for now we will have the engine and car designer as demos, but when we release the full game we will consider our options for a more complete demo perhaps.

[Killrob]

why should i pay full price for a game that only evolves at a pace a snail outruns?

You got a point there, but the answer is: they do it because people buy it! You cannot really blame the company for this, but only the buying customers. On the other hand yes, the reputation suffers from this in the so important hardcore community - which will make up 99+% of the Automation community hehe.

We'd like to price as low as possible, but it all depends how many people are likely to be interested - as we are fairly niche, the minecraft strategy might not work for us

I know that you have to be careful with your expectations, but saying that a car game is niche is like saying soccer games are niche... potentially Automation is not niche at all. Let me give you a lead. Remember the awful Need for Speed Underground and all the bad tuning car games that followed? Remember the huge success of the whole car/tuning movies and games 5-10 years ago? Those kiddies are now grown-ups, and probably there is still at least a hidden spark of interest in them, probably for something a bit more serious. Enter Automation! Doing it right (and you have till now, in my opinion), this game can potentially get huge. The potential audience for your game is really large if my above example holds true to some extent. The Minecraft strategy, but also the Mount & Blade strategy (a game that is REALLY niche as compared to Automation), works because people don't have to think twice before shelling out 10$, but they DO think twice if they have to cross the barrier that is 20+$.

If you indeed make a high quality game, which we all hope for, and achieve good initial sales by a low entry barrier, make a good demo and get some kind of exposure in the media, word will spread rapidly and do the rest for you. I see the low price tag as an essential piece in this puzzle. With a higher price tag the threshold of general interest cannot be broken as easily.

[dread_darven]

You got a point there killrob. The community that started with granturismo and later with nfs underground still exists. just look at street legal racing, it isnt that big as a few years ago but still alot of modding going on. nitto legends also has a big community.
Plus, this game could definitly be for tycoon fans in general imo, when info and screens of this part will be released those people could also get interested.
but the problem of getting people interested is indeed key. minecraft gets alot of interest also due to the fact you can play instead of looking at vids and pics. the beta signup is a good way of building a big fanbase and the modding going on for minecraft also gets alot of extra attention for it.
i would pay around 40 euro for this game, but the minecraft strategy (beta for less money) is a good way for getting alot of attention. Offcourse it should not have alot of bugs but features could be implemented (on a regular basis) when time progresses.
A demo is also a good way, but it might also get people to lose interest if the demo gives to much content or if it is released to soon (attantion span)

[AlfaDave]

guys we pay around £40 for a new xbox title or ps3 title. and around £30 for pc title of the same game so your game could be around the £20 in the uk and that would sell i recon. you cant price it the same as games like cod black ops £40 for consoles £30 for pc but i recon you could push a good £20 or £19.99. that would be box and book tho. you would probs have to make a discount for online download of game and make the book instructions* a pdf

[AlfaDave]

i doubt you will ever get people interested in this game who are interested in need for speed and games like that as they take far less time and are a lot less complex as in the business side of it. i recon maybe 5% of those gamers would like this game. i talk to loads of gamers who are those gamers your talking about and i have told them about this game and alot of them have said not my type of game. a few have said it is but lots wont even play a game that takes aslong as civilization revolution on the xbox and ps3. lol. a bit majority of gamers who like nfs and games like that may spend one or 2 days playing hard then have a break where they just have a quick blast with a car on the game then do that for a week then have another few days of hard challenges and time into it. its not the same type of game so you should not even thing thats where your main people are coming from. i would point my finger at people who buy tycoon and manager games. half that as 50% are male and thats your buyers and i know some out the 50% wont care for cars but that will take the few % of women into account aswell. not to put a downer on things but i come from a marketing background and thats how i see it. also 21 euro's is about £18 so that would be my vote give or take a few pounds

[Daffyflyer]

Yeah, its certianly not something with as much widespread appeal as Need for Speed, its more targeted at the hardcore car nut crowd, but even that is a pretty large market and they don't have many good games to choose from, particularly with regards to designing cars

[dread_darven]

the current nfs crowd indeed has the attention span of a......well not that long . But there are people that started there interest in games like nfs underground etc. and are now for example bussy playing street legal racing and nitto legends and games like those. I realy don't know about the amount of interst for automation in these crowds but they are not all those people with a very short nfs attention span. But i also don't know how big the fanbase is in those games. will post some topics on the forums of street legal racing to find out , although i don't play those games anymore.
And as daffy mentioned, the hardcore car crowd is pretty big indeed.