Game Pricing

[R.X.DIEM]

There's a pain in my wallet and a hole in my head!

In a resent post someone had mentioned an approximate number of D20 products that are available. Aven said "There are currently 1099 reviews available on 545 products". That's alot. I really enjoy RPGs and I spend maybe more than I should on them. There's alot of awsome stuff out there, also a hole lotta crap (I know that's a matter of opinion). The stuff I like I'll buy, If I can afford it. When I say "afford" I mean, product Value (content,art, playablity,quality of the printing and material) versus the price of the book minus the money in wallet. Pretty simple. So the only obsticle in My little equation is the finances. Not the money in my wallet but the price. I have money and a desire to spend it and not blow it. So what do I do when I see a book that I like (out of the 545 or so D20 products out there),but using my little, non scientific, unprofessional, completely unworthy equation,and realize that I can't buy it ( or justify buying it )?.....Amazon?..Well if a retail store is selling a book for ... say $39.95. They must be getting it at about $20.00- $25.00 per book (I'm guessing) not $39 or $38 or $37 etc. Let's say that the publisher has a web site and sells this book over there site. Do they sell it at a discount(no middleman)? No they don't! Let me go on! For example, Bastion press, ARMS & ARMOR, $24.95, at my local gaming store I get 15% off, that's $21.20. On the bastion press online store, the price is $24.95. No discount......Guess what, at $24.95 or $21.20 it's still not worth the price (that's figured in another equation). I did pick it up..... Amazon, $16.00 slightly used. At $16.00 I got a book at a fair price! 96 f/color pages, soft cover, marginal art. $16.00 fair, $24.95 not fair. Dragon magazine, $5.99, 114 f/color pages, great art,etc, great price. Arms & Armor-96 pages, $24.95/ Dragon-114 pages, $5.99. I think my mystery equation is showing it's self. But hold it! If I buy from Amazon( Epic level handbook at $27.97 pre-order) I'll be hurting the publishers, I'll be hurting something, somebody! Well it won't be my wallet! And that my friends is how it Actually goes in the REAL WORLD. Sure I'll spend abit more for something I really,really want and really,really like. But for the most part over inflated prices, I'm not going to let it affect me....Any questions?

 

[Voneth]

My cash is tight right now, so these higher priced books are taking longer for me to collect. I think some of the thinner hardbacks out there are just made hardback to justify the price tag *cough* PsiHB *cough* Freeport book *cough* , however ...

I have seen both sides of the gamer income story.

I've seen the guy who goes out to eat dinner and then sees LOTR for the 3rd time even though he plans to buy the video. All of these luxuries are temporary, but he goes to a game store the next day and looks at a game book that could give him years of enjoyment and then he says $30 is too much. It's a matter of priorites and percived value for him.

And I have seen the gamer who has to take some of the Domino's pizza home from his delivery job just so he has some discreitonary income for games. His outlook on the $30 is that he could filled the fridge for that amount of cash. It's matter of cold reality for him.

I guess the real question is where do most gamers sit on the income scale. Of course every one is going to claim they don't make enough money, but how much of it is just perception and how much is real.

 

[Hard8Staff]

My 2 cents:

1) You guys are consumers. Your job is to consume what you feel like consuming and let the non-worthy die on the vine. Those that remain (that you bought from) will continue to make product that you'll probably like (since you bought from the before). If you buy a product and you think it stinks, don't buy from that company anymore and buy from another company instead.

2) The "average" game designer (outside WOTC) probably works part-time in game design and makes (clears) $5000 per year on games. The "average" full-time designer probably makes more like $15000-20000 per year. $30k is extraordinary in our industry. 2001 salaries were bloated by the ease of selling d20, but competition and a general downturn will cause a decrease in salries in 2002.

3) Buying at Amazon doesn't hurt the manufacturer. it hurts the games retailer and distributor.

4) The current pricing of RPGs is too low for the designers to do anything but eek out a living. Most game designers are educated enough to make double to five times what they make making games. But they do it anyway because they love games, are young, don't realize they'll never make much more except in extraordinary circumstance (e.g., working at wotc), are not married, are marrried to a spouse that has a great job and hasn't yet left them, or have no kids or most of the above. The problem with the low salaries ISN'T getting people to do the work...that's obviously not an issue as evidenced by the plethoras of product on the shelves now. The problem is keeping the talent. Most designers can't make it past a few years before they realize their lives are going nowhere, their children need college funds, they need to save for retirement, etc. etc. Honestly, most secretaries make far more than game designers. Think about that! Finally, the average salary of game designers hasn't seemed to have changed over the last 5-10 years! SO there's really not much hope inimproving. Thus, rather than retaining the best talent, our industry loses it to other industries (typically average boring office jobs).

5) Our gamble has been to price higher across the board, but pack in the quality/quantity to make the purchase worthwhile. Another method of increasing margin pursued by several companies has been to go light on word count (aka development time) and page count and keep the price average or even low (but costs are even lower). I think you'll see more of each of these as outside (real life) pressures force designers to take a long hard look at their 92 tempo, non-existant 401k, complete lack of savings, etc. So, bottom line, expect higher prices, lower quality or inconsistent product value (and a revolving door of authors).

Again, just my 2 cents.

David Kenzer

 

[maddman75]

Voneth - I think part of it is the change in the target audience - college age and older. The teenagers are playing video games for the most part. Adults are gaming nowadays, and adults have money.

Gaming is by far the cheapest hobby I have. Once the books are bought, you can play to your hearts' content. Anything past the core is just luxury. Don't get me wrong, I've bought a lot more than just the core, but they aren't NEEDED. Claiming that RPGs are too expensive because the FRCS is $40 is like claiming driving is too expensive because a CD changer costs so much.

I think there's room in the market for both types of books. There can be the high end hardback full color $40 sourcebook and the low end $5 .pdf. Or $10 adventure.

 

[drnuncheon]

Sorry, I have to come down on the industry side on this.

The ideal target for a gaming company is someone like me: young, no kids, plenty of disposable income. On average I buy - and this kind of scares me when I think about it too much - $20-40 of gaming material a week. (I console myself with the realization that I'd be spending far more if I took up golf or something else "normal". )

Anyway, the problem with catering to the people that can't afford RPGs is that they don't have any money. So if the publishers want to make money, they have to put out stuff that appeals to the folks that do. And then they have to make it actually worth that money.

Sure, they'll expand their potential market if they're cheaper. But will they expand it enough to make it worthwhile? If the company makes $10 on a book (stop snickering, you game designers), then to make it worthwhile to reduce the price by $5, they would have to sell twice as many.

Do you think twice as many people would buy, say, Freeport if it were $25 instead of $30? I doubt it.

When you consider that the actual profit margin on the book is quite a bit lower than $10/book...like half that on a good day...

Would twice as many people have bought Freeport if it were $28 instead of $30? (Say "yes" and I'll laugh.)

J

 

[King_Stannis]

i have to ask, then, what do industry people feel a part-time and full-time game designer should make? do we want to pay the part-timers $15,000 and the full-timers $45,000, with full benefits? if so, would companies need to double the price of books to achieve that result? i'm just asking this, because i'm not sure. we've heard from dave kenzer that part-timers make (roughly) $5,000 and full timers make $15,000-$20,000. I'm here to tell you, that raising the price for your sourcebooks and adventures by a buck or two is not going to double those people's salaries. it may raise it a tad, but will it make it more attractive to this wealth of talent that ryan d. thinks is just waiting to get "back into the game" for the right price? i think not.

so do you, as i said, double your prices? if you do that, you freeze out a lot of your market - i probably have as much disposable income as anyone here, and no way would i pay $20 for even a good adventure like "death in freeport" or "three days to kill". you also open the door to rampant thievery via peer-to-peer systems.

it's a tough proposition for the industry people. but if your contention is to give your writers a good living wage, i think you may find it harder than people like ryan d. make it sound. i think the cold hard reality is that writers may have to do this stuff on the side, to supplement their "real jobs" - the way most of them do now. i don't see that changing with a $1, $2, or even $5 price increase.

finally, i will just say that the market is more sensitive than people think to prices. i always use the bastion press "arms and armor" example that R.X. Diem used. it's just overpriced at $25, and there's no two ways about it. now, i don't know the sales of that item for bastion, and, who knows, with the high price they might have i higher profit per item because of it. even if that were the case, i doubt that bastion press is paying their writers - full or part-time - any more than any other rpg company out there.

 

[Corinth]

A game designer should make a bare-assed minimum of $30K/yr. and he ought to get more than that if he's any good. Income should equal that of console game designers, and that's where the price increase in games is going as I see it. If you can shell out $50 for Doom 42 when it arrives, then you can shell out that much for a new RPG rulebook.

 

[King_Stannis]

A game designer should make a bare-assed minimum of $30K/yr. and he ought to get more than that if he's any good. Income should equal that of console game designers, and that's where the price increase in games is going as I see it. If you can shell out $50 for Doom 42 when it arrives, then you can shell out that much for a new RPG rulebook.

yeah, but can you shell out $30 for an adventure, or $40 per sourcebook? i'm willing to bet you can't for a sustained period of time. and that's what would have to happen to pay game designers the amount of money you propose. i would also submit that comparing console game designers with rpg game designers is comparing apples to oranges. two totally different products, despite their perceived similarity.

 

[Hard8Staff]

I guess the theory goes like this:

If most products were priced higher, gamers would have to choose between products and only the strongets would get enough sales to survive. the weaker writers/companies would die out leaving only the cream of the crop. The cream then sells more volume and gets accordingly better margins (print prices per unit drop as volume increases). Cream now pays more for writers.

Frankly, it's not currently possible because competitors will lower price to undercut and hopefully outsell their competitors. This road to oblivion is very attractive and hard to resist, though sometimes caused due to foolish feature creep (see just about anything we've made recently -- way too much in there for the price asked -- HackMaster GM Shield should have been $29 NOT $19).

But is an INFERIOR 96 page $20 book a better deal than a really good 96 page $25 book? We should be measuring the price of books in the context of their quality. Someone stated that a $40 book was too expensive. Is FR too expensive? (I think it's a value at $40, frankly). How about if the MM and Monsters of Faerun were smooshed together into ONE HC? Would $40 be too much for THAT?

It seems to me that some people are willing to pay for about 32 pages at $8 but have a hard time with 320 pages at $30.

But at the end of the day, as a manufcacturer it's my job to figure out the consumer's threshold of pain on the price/value proposition and price accordingly.

As consumers it's YOUR job to make choices and buy what you like and NOT buy what you don't like (unless it's broccoli...you should all eat your broccoli like it or not).

And to answer the question of what a designer should make: whatever the market will bear. Personally, I think $35k is in order for beginning designers, $60k for really good ones. Guys that run companies should get six figures.

Dave Kenzer

 

[King_Stannis]

I guess the theory goes like this:

If most products were priced higher, gamers would have to choose between products and only the strongets would get enough sales to survive. the weaker writers/companies would die out leaving only the cream of the crop. The cream then sells more volume and gets accordingly better margins (print prices per unit drop as volume increases). Cream now pays more for writers.

Frankly, it's not currently possible because competitors will lower price to undercut and hopefully outsell their competitors. This road to oblivion is very attractive and hard to resist, though sometimes caused due to foolish feature creep (see just about anything we've made recently -- way too much in there for the price asked -- HackMaster GM Shield should have been $29 NOT $19).

But is an INFERIOR 96 page $20 book a better deal than a really good 96 page $25 book? We should be measuring the price of books in the context of their quality. Someone stated that a $40 book was too expensive. Is FR too expensive? (I think it's a value at $40, frankly). How about if the MM and Monsters of Faerun were smooshed together into ONE HC? Would $40 be too much for THAT?

It seems to me that some people are willing to pay for about 32 pages at $8 but have a hard time with 320 pages at $30.

But at the end of the day, as a manufcacturer it's my job to figure out the consumer's threshold of pain on the price/value proposition and price accordingly.

As consumers it's YOUR job to make choices and buy what you like and NOT buy what you don't like (unless it's broccoli...you should all eat your broccoli like it or not).

And to answer the question of what a designer should make: whatever the market will bear. Personally, I think $35k is in order for beginning designers, $60k for really good ones. Guys that run companies should get six figures.

Dave Kenzer

good points, dave! people will pay for quality, but only to a certain point. the playstation 2 is a very high quality product, but i have balked soley because of the price. just an illustration that there is a point where someone will say "man, i'd love to get this, but i just can't afford it".

you also brought up a point about people wanting to buy a 32 page adventure for $8 but won't pay $32 for a 320 page book. i have to say, absolutely correct! whether right or wrong, that's the way people perceive things. a little known fact is that those little AEG and FFG mini-modules are no better a value for their page count than a normal 32 page adventure! but that is not the perception of the people scooping them up like hotcakes.

and i agree with your final two thoughts 100%.