Even sticking to one instrument, songs that are theoretically similar have difficulties vary quite a bit based on what strengths and weaknesses the player has. Can they pick consistently at high speed? Can they shift chords well? Can they do hammer-ons and pull-offs at speed? And then there’s the more game-based skills like use of Rock Energy for score multipliers or just survival. And knowledge of a song has a huge effect as well. How do you balance that?

The enjoyable songs are going to be a subset of what is balanced for a particular difficulty. So frequently a player will like to play about a third of the Tier 6 and 7 songs on Medium, a third of the Tier 3, 4, and 5 songs on Hard, and about a third of the Tier 1 and 2 songs on Expert. How do you balance that or even indicate it to the player?

“Not that you shouldn’t have the option, but there’s little point in designing a game for people that can’t stand the idea of losing.”

It’s worth noting that difficulty levels are entirely relative. Where it starts getting muddy is that most people judge a perfect difficulty level as relative to their own skills. What you might find a challenge, I might find frustrating or on the other extreme, far too easy y’know? It’s not about whether someone can stand the idea of losing or not – it’s about folks abilities to play. I’m glad that you’re physically and mentally able to play hard games, it doesn’t follow that we should exclude those who can’t or judge them as having to use “retard” levels, right?

The truth is that everybody has different abilities and that goes from puzzle solving down to how physically able they are. The more people you can open up your game to, the more people who can play it. It’s why I have no qualms in writing a colour blind “friendly” version of one of my games, why I don’t object to putting in a practice mode where you simply can’t die. It leads to stuff like this which I’m immensely chuffed to see happen. It doesn’t effect the people who don’t use them but makes the difference between someone being able to play and experience a game and not.

So there is a massive point to doing this stuff.

It *enables* more people to play games. That’s a bloody good thing.

Most Indie devs I know play with their pricing a bit rather than taking a standard “well, this is how much effort I put in, this is what I think I deserve” and settle on the price that works best for them.

It’s a funny market though. Puppygames stuff does better at the standard Indie price points, Bullet Candy sells better at around 3 Earth squids (how much of that is down to Steam presence is an unknown), Space Giraffe would have sold the same amount of copies whatever the price and me, I’ll continue to get the odd fiver here and there from kind folks.

There’s no across the board rule you can apply because it depends on a lot of factors – are you targeting a specific niche, is it likely to have a broad appeal, is it a five minute quickfire game or a thirty five hour epic, do you need to recoup x amount to make your next game etc…

A quick browse around the Indiegamer forums will give you a lot of anecdotal evidence (and in rare cases, hard figures) on price vs sales. Generally though, it just doesn’t follow that lower price=increased sales or increased profit. Honourable exceptions go to limited time offers such as the Steam sales – everyone likes a discount.

That’s not to say I don’t agree with you – a £5 or less game falls into complete no brainer for me and I’ll instapurchase without a second thought, a £10+ game not so.

From all I gather, people like me aren’t purchasing indie games in enough numbers to make that work for most folks.

This is true and a major factor in the feasibility of Zeno Clash.

Sure: Each of us is playing a peg, and we wait and chat until we’re hit by a ball.

I would play a blue peg of course. Orange is for pros.

Dear lord. Can you imagine a Popcap MMO? That would be it; game over for the entire human race. We’d all turn into pod people and never leave our PCs…

(well, moreso than ALREADY, at least)

He’s an explainer.

but i think its nice to get a “nintendo hard” game once in a while as long as it gives you room to improve, infinite continues, correctly placed checkpoints and randomized challenges (no memorizing enemy positions)

the problem is the very idea of a “main-stream” game, its very difficult if not impossible to make a great game for a wide-spectrum public (the “masses” are stupid means that when you look at ppl in big groups, since each person excel at different things, you tend to average to the lowest common denominator, they cant help it), it would be better to make games for different kinds of gamers like they used to make, but to do that they first need to lower the dev costs so that they can break even with a few thousand units and that wont happen as long as they keep putting the graphics above everything

If a game’s too easy, it gets boring more quickly, and isn’t quite as interesting or effective as it could be. But if a game’s too hard, it gets frustrating and you get stuck and you stop playing. Being too easy makes a game mediocre; being too hard breaks it.

I think that’s why mainstream games tend to be leaning towards easy-mode. Since a game that’s too hard ends up being MUCH worse than one that’s too easy. And given the bell curve of skill possessed by their audience of gamers, adding an extra Nintendo Hard level of difficulty to the top that will only appeal to the very tip of the curve isn’t really a justifiable expense.

The thing is, are you absolutely certain that increasing the price increases the profit? I’m not asking it to be cheaper purely because I don’t want to fork out the cash. I genuinely think it’s a wise business decision. Once you’ve finished the game it’s all digital so you can price it however you like. If selling it at $20 nets you 5 sales and selling it at $10 nets you 15 sales then clearly the latter makes more sense.

I appreciate that you’re trying to earn a crust, infact I really enjoy buying indie games particularly because it feels like I’m supporting hardworking devs, not just some faceless corp like EA. However, I’m just not sure that some of these indie games are price right for the customer *or* the dev, you might be able to make way more money by making it cheap.

Out of interest Oddbob, do you, or anyone else for that matter, have any stats to back up either suggestion? If you’re selling a game at a certain price, how did you arrive at that decision. What made you think that was better than making it lower/higher?

Oh and with respect to Braid – I really enjoyed it but I don’t think longevity can be overlooked. I think 8 quid is more appropriate than ten, but I guess that’s being really picky. Fantastic game though, I just think indie devs need to sell at the most efficient and profitable price (which may mean lower) and not think of it as “based on the hard work, this game is worth £x”.

so in the end we get action games that are too easy on pc because of the mouse, or strategy games that are too dumb because you cant micro with a gamepad (The last remnant is a sad case of this, a really nice game killed by dumbing down the unit control up to the point the AI takes all the big decisions and all you can do is tell it “use magic a little more” or “try to heal yourself”, that is, IF you get those option)

However i have good hopes that this will change soon (at least on the control thing) since developers are all “the PC is the next big thing!” now that everyone bought a netbook and the consoles are aging fast while the big financial blows MS and Sony took with the economic crisis on the background means a next generation of consoles is pretty much on hold if not canceled

Some of you guys are those people that were playing Doom on god mode with idkfa, aren’t you? I never could figure out the appeal of a braindead-easy game. Not that you shouldn’t have the option, but there’s little point in designing a game for people that can’t stand the idea of losing.