Aquaria: best indie game ever????evr.

    Interestingly, hours of entertainment provided has little to do with perceived value for many people. I know many people that buy many full price games and only get about 4-6 hours of play out of them before they go on the shelf. But they perceive more value in that small amount of time. I suspect it has a lot to do with the notion of consuming things that are popular and prominent in the marketplace. For example, my roomate has a giant collection of games, 90% of which he has only played once or twice. The value he gets out of it is in having "his collection" of games. He will also constantly crawl gamespot and buy many of the popular games when they come out. He seems to get a lot of value out of simply buying and consuming these releases even if it is only for a short period of time.

    id by it was 15 bucks ... seriously these kind of indie games just cant expect people to shell out such high payments they gotta go for the:"curiosity "-sells and than get a word of mouth avalanche going ... i think the 30 dollar price point stands in the way of large scale success for this game

    what other features / elements would justify a $30 price in your opinion?

    games like Zuma, Chuzzle and Peggle normally sell at $20. Do you think Aquaria is less, more, or about the same value than any of those 3 games ?

    not saying you should think one way or the other, I am honestly curious what you (or others) think. What elements make a game valuable to you?

    i think those games overpriced, zaphod. either of them should not cost more than 10 bucks on the steam platform, where little money goes into publishing; it's a ripoff. 15-20 bucks is alright for a game like aquaria even though it might offer less actual content than free indie games like cavestory. they are shooting themselves in the foot though - i reckon they could have gotten a larger clientele by lowering their price 10 or 15 bucks, so their loss.

    also to answer your question more properly, i value a game in "value", a mix of gameplay/fun and features/content; features/content actually linking back to fun as well. i reckon alot of people have the same thing - whenever they buy something, they want to feel that they got some value for their money.

    $10 is a bit cheap really. That's pretty much the same price I pay for my lunch a few days a week. I'd say $15-$20 is reasonable for any budget game, which is about on par with a cinema ticket.

    I think $30 really isn't bad seeing as it's a long game. Cheaper games like Peggle tend to have no story and pretty much just have arcade-like gameplay, which Aquaria doesn't. I think Zaphod has a very good point with bringing up the perception of value: what exactly is it that makes Aquaria seem so undeserving of less than half the amount of money as the many shit Xbox 360 and PS3 games out there? If it delivers relatively high production values and a memorable story-based experience, is it really not worth half the price of a retail game?

    I think it is.

    Your lunch must suck, since I buy $18 lunch almost every day

    If the game is so amazing, with over 14 hours on non linear gameplay, then the game could be like $25, hell these days you pay like $60 for 5-6 hours of linear gameplay. Graphics might be better, but not as cool.

    God, what do you buy??

    Even a foot-long Subway is only about $9 here, and I usually settle for something smaller from the supermarket. I guess a straight conversion isn't very good though as the pound is quite strong at the moment relative to the dollar.

    you guys have hugely expensive lunches! i pay, what, around $5 for mine every day and it's a feast. regardless, no matter how inexpensive or expensive one's lunch actually is, comparing game prices with lunches is bad.

    there are lots of bargain bins where you can pick up games for $10 that are good, full size games. now, as i said, i dont require games like aquaria to be this cheap, but definitely 15 or 20 bucks and not 30. games like peggle, bejeweled or whatever casuality they make up should not go over $10, because it's not worth more. enough said.

    Quote from Sentura

    you guys have hugely expensive lunches! i pay, what, around $5 for mine every day and it's a feast. regardless, no matter how inexpensive or expensive one's lunch actually is, comparing game prices with lunches is bad. there are lots of bargain bins where you can pick up games for $10 that are good, full size games. now, as i said, i dont require games like aquaria to be this cheap, but definitely 15 or 20 bucks and not 30. games like peggle, bejeweled or whatever casuality they make up should not go over $10, because it's not worth more. enough said.

    My mom would gladly pay the $20-30 for Zuma. I'd say worth is up to the consumer.

    then do you think that perceived value tends to vary more between hardcore and non-hardcore gamers? I would assume that popcap picks a 20 dollar pricing because either more people will pay that, or enough people pay it that it makes more money than if even more people bought it at 10 dollars.

    I do think that pricing your game too low can be very harmful in the fact of saying "this is how valuable my game is." If you price it about the same as the cost of a lunch, does that give off the impression that you are going to enjoy it about as much as one good meal and for as long? There is a lot of psychology involved in product pricing wherein many times LESS people will buy your game if it is very cheap, because it lowers their expectations before they even buy it.

    20$ for PopCap games? I know Peggle has been priced at 10$ for several months (or when we are talking about prices and psychology I should better be exact and write "9.95"$). Checking their site I also see that they got this "50% off on all games" event going until the end of the year, which means all games are 9.95$. Are you sure the 20$ aren't just a marketing trick to create the illusion you are saving money? Dell is a different company that comes to my mind which uses such practices.

    Interesting discussion, I think the first thing I would do is play the demo and then decide whether the 30$ price is justified. Although it costs less than the new games you find on retailer's shelves and the longer I think about it, the more I think the price is fair, but on first glance, just looking at the videos and screenshots, it makes me also feel it is overpriced. Maybe because it uses "old technology" and the complexity of the game isn't visible at first glance. It looks like a game of an older generation - not "state of the art" or on par with new games and thus inferior and should be priced according to "bargain bin" prices. Or it's a game with the dimensions of a Popcap game, which would also mean it is overpriced.

    Makes you realize how much we are blended by technology and marketing.

    I imagine the $30 price tag is because of the expected sales from the fans that’ve been following it for two years, once they drop I’m sure the price will lower too. Indie developers can have business strategy too.

    good point taylor

    so far the elements I have seen mentioned in conjunction with percieved value are:


    • [*:2a98r6vj]screen size
      [*:2a98r6vj]level of technology (state of the art)
      [*:2a98r6vj]complexity (# of features)
      [*:2a98r6vj]hours of gameplay
      [*:2a98r6vj]art style
      [*:2a98r6vj]similar games in the same price bracket
      [*:2a98r6vj]story elements
      [*:2a98r6vj]amount of content

    Hehe, this thread becomes quite interesting .

    To quote frie on : "Makes you realize how much we are blended by technology and marketing."

    It's funny, because i tend to don't find 2D games to be technologically obsolete artistically less valuable, and i think it's actually the fact that i don't make any comparisons between a 2D and a 3D game.

    I love both of them for what they are, there's gameplays that i won't see fit in 3D and respectively. But there's an interesting point i would like to show.

    When talking videogames at the average gamer level, most people immediately do a correlation between art/technology. So does technological advances make a game more beautiful, and in consequence more valuable ? In the world of 3D gaming, it obviously has something to do with real-time, and i think everyone would agree if i say that Tomb raider : anniversary stand out artistically speaking compared to Tomb raider .

    Well the thing is that in 2D.

    I enjoyed playing aquaria like this

    Although i could also enjoy playing it like this all the same , even if technologically, it's the lower level.

    True, but we're hardly the average punter KoKo5oVaR. I'd say the majority of "hardcore" gamers are easily captivated by a games presentation, take them as a measure of how awesome the game is going to be and therefore how much money it is worth. I have done it, I like to think I'm more open than most, but I'll still find myself making an opinion about an entire game based on what the manufactured trailer or teaser shots look like.

    I've seen so many people, even in the industry, be dismissive of things that haven't got the brown and bloom next-gen touches all over them. You play something like Progear or Mushihimesama and people are confused: a shoot 'em up with sprites where you can actually see a Game Over screen? Who is this renegade hippie? And how can I get away from him? Surprisingly few people seem to fill the niches.

    Contrary to us, your lowest common denominator punter wants to play a game so similar to previous titles he suffers déjà vu throughout, only with better graphics, and when he’s finished it’ll go on a shelf and collect dust.

    Best ending in a game ever!!

    The price was just right for a game like this. It was like 20 euros, which is nothing since a normal cinema ticket is 11 euros.

    Ps. fix that evil server exploit mapcore virus now!!!

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