Hmm. Blood bowl’s just been released via Digital Download. I almost didn’t blog about it. Which is some going when I normally leap a the slightest chance to mention the Skaven. The reason why is the small matter of its price. It’s forty quid, digital download only. And there’s no demo. That’s not on, is it?
I occasionally feel as if I’m alone on this one. I’ve a tendency to tweak marks down for clear price-gouging, because the mark’s sole purpose is a consumer guidance role. Accepting a game’s increase in price for no clear reason is a betrayal of the consumer advocacy part of the gig. Seeing the period when Activision were doing terrible ports of their superhero action games and releasing them for thirty five quid grated enormously. It doesn’t matter whether or not it’ll be reduced in price almost immediately – reducing from a higher price to a lower one is incremental, and if we let people release for more money then it really just leads to more expensive games.
But for a digital download – and a game solely released this way – it seems even worse. The thinking on matching prices online to those in the shops is that developers believe by undercutting the shops, the shops will stop stocking them. (They’re right here too, which does lead to the situation where you can more consistently buy a boxed copy cheaper than you can a download one – the sales skew that one a bit, of course, but they’re not consistent. By definition, really.) Perhaps the thinking is by releasing on Direct Download first they have to be more expensive than the shops, to discourage people from buying it from them now?
(I presume it’ll be hitting the shops eventually. Last I heard the 360 version was, which makes a PC version not doing the same a really odd decision)
Alternatively, they’re aware that as a game with a certain hardcore audience, some people would pay the little extra. They know not everyone will – but better they get the money from the people who will before the inevitable price cuts. Which is basic economics – different people will pay different amounts for different things and you make most profit by making sure everyone in each group pays as much as they can – but a difficult thing to accept when it’s as brutal as it is. I mean, extrapolate outwards. If – say – Epic let you have access to Gears of War 3 two weeks in advance of everyone else but you had to pay a grand for it… yeah, I bet there’s people out there who’d do it.
Okay, I’m going into thought experiments on this one. But fundamentally, it annoys.
Am I alone on this one?
(And – er – what’s it like, folks?)
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Indeed, thanks Aldezhar, that’s reason enough to pass until/unless it’s changed.
It’s expensive in the UK because the £ is weak as hell. You can’t blame the publisher for that, it’s the same price as every other game in the rest of Europe.
Actually, the pricing is way off…
$49.99 for US (that would be £30.30 – but if you manage to buy it for this they still whack 19.6%VAT on it and end up charging £36-7)
£39.99 (with 19.6% VAT!!!!! WHAT???)
I don’t remember the Euro price, but it ended up being less than £40 when I saw it. (Amazon FR has it for 42.81Euro, which is £36.81, and 47.32Euro, which is £40.25)
I would have bought it if there wasn’t such a disparity, but once again we’ve been shafted in the UK. Of course, there’s always the argument that “you’d pay more than that for the boxed set and teams” etc…. But that’s comparing apples and oranges.
Anyway the game is quite good, there are some bugs though and the difficulty settings for the AI are a bit wrong (hard mode seems actually easier than normal mode because the AI plays “safer” on hard which leads to less “lucky” dice rolls).
The muliplayer UI could use a big improvement too, and long pass play is for sissies :o
So it’s a rent for £40. I agree with KG that’s not on, but they are not the first to do it, and plenty seem fine with it. I’ll pass until the situation changes.
No demo, No sale.
Online BB is an appealing concept though, so I hope they sort something out.
Online BB is an appealing concept until you face someone who’s been playing for 20 years :D
I’m a proper boardgaming geek and have been waiting for this to come out for ages, so i ended up paying the full £40. Also, at least in my head i know that £40 is going straight to the dev, not to a rubbish shop taking 50% of the profit. I want them to make more teams, add more rules etc, and i see this as a way of saying ‘thank you’ for finally making the darn game!
By the way it is awesome (even if you have to turn the settings down to prevent your video card exploding) and Chaos Rules.
I played it all weekend when i wasn’t enjoying the sun, and will be playing it for months to come!
Also, the problem with your Minotaur vs Skaven is that you are probably getting ‘Both Down’ rolls meaning that their skaven has ‘block’ and your minotaur doesn’t. Make sure you are picking the correct dice when you attack or block as you want different ones depending who’s turn it is :).
It might be advisable to learn the game a tad better before taking on the 20+ year vets. It’s going to have a ranking system before long though right? So that problem could be solved then.
“If – say – Epic let you have access to Gears of War 3 two weeks in advance of everyone else but you had to pay a grand for it… yeah, I bet there’s people out there who’d do it.”
Yes, and that’s exactly how it *should* work. Direct downloading makes this sort of economic shenanigan even more possible, not less. If you can afford to spend $1,000 on a game that just came out, and it’s worth that to you, then DO. That’s how you support the people bringing you that game, and send the message that it’s that valuable to you. If it’s not worth that to you, wait.
It may be frustrating to you to wait a couple months to play something, but surely you have no shortage of good stuff to play? And by doing things this way, impatient rich dudes get to subsidize your gaming pleasure. Niche games aren’t going to sell a hojillion copies even at $10, but if they can sell 100 copies at $1,000, they’re off to a great start at justifying their development costs and providing joy for the rest of us when they eventually make it to $10.
There is no shortage of gaming bounty to be found for less than $20, but it’s mostly stuff that came out a year or more ago. You of all people know that’s not a bad thing. The “low marks for high pricing = consumer advocacy” thing makes a certain amount of sense, but those reviews will still be there two years from now, when the price has dropped.
Just this morning, I started reading old reviews of Serious Sam and Painkiller, to see if they’re worth my time. I think Steam wants to sell me Painkiller + Expansion pack for $10. That’s practically a lunch here, so all I want to know from the reviews is will I enjoy it? The time I’ll invest in playing it far exceeds the money.
@Gothnak : “By the way it is awesome [...] and Chaos Rules.”
Amen to that. Once you give block to all your chaos warriors, you can really smash pretty much every one except dwarves (damn stunties can take a punch).
@wyrmsine : Your minotaur should stomp pretty much every skaven in sight but beware of stormvermin, because they have block from the start and your minotaur doesn’t, meaning that they will take you down on a “both down” result.
You should also know that the minotaur is very strong but not invulnerable (his AV is “only” 8), which means that back up is always welcome when he’s assaulted by multiple enemies.
I would also advise against buying the minotaur from the very start of the game in order to buy Team Re-Rolls instead ; RR are cheaper when you buy’em at team creation and they are a godsend for chaos in the early game because your players may have good stats but they’re not packing any skill (whereas a dwarf blocker will start with block, tackle and thick skull)
@Geoff, yeah that’s fine, but money is not the only issue here. It’s also a limited time DD with limited activations; meaning that the people handing over their £40 now are ‘probably’ getting the worst deal in more than one factor.
@Choca – I missed the usefulness of rerolls early on and bought a Minotaur, had some very very close matches at first. I lost my last match 2-1 to the Reikland Reavers (Who took a very early 2-0 lead), but they only had 3 players on the pitch when the fulltime whistle went and all of them were stunned. i lost 2-1, damn short halves!
@Dan
Granted, it’s probably a knee jerk reaction, but when you consider past form (i.e. EA Downloader, Plinus (Time Gentlemen Please) spring to mind), services which tend too mention time-limited downloads often try to charge extra to extend the download window – for example, w. Time Gentlemen Please, once you’ve downloaded it once, that’s it.
I’ve spoken to Dan & he’s going to try and sort something, but if you want to download it more than once, you have to pay an extra 50% on top of the price. It’s just wrong in a day and age to prohibit even a sensible amount of downloads when the bloody server is going to be serving the damn file anyway whether I’ve paid the extra £1.50 or not.
@Woges
Oh I’m not defending the DRM. Simply the practice of games releasing with higher than the “standard” or “reasonable” price, then gradually lowering it over time.
You used to be able to get replacement disks very cheaply a long time ago; customer service isn’t what it used to be imho.
Just thought I’d update with a note on this game’s pirate status:
For a low-profile game such as this, the torrent sites are reporting around 1500-2000 simultaneous users either seeding or downloading the game. That’s more than, say, the Sims 3.
This is what happens when you:
a.) Don’t have a demo of any sort.
b.) Charge $50 for what is essentially a very late beta by the sound of it.
c.) Charge 40 pounds to the poor sods in the UK (roughly $66).
So yeah. Pretty crazy numbers for such a small title as this, but then that’s what you get when you do everything in your power not to have people buy your game in the first two weeks.
The standard full price for a video game in most of Europe is around 50€, that’s roughly 70$.
Poor sods in the UK ? Yeah right.
Im not sure if its mentioned in the comments already but for any brits who want this cheaper, in the country field, change UK to United States and you get it tax free, it still ends up being the most expensive game ive bought but shaving £7 off the bill helps.
Im not going to get into the legality of it but for me it was legal as im from the channel islands and dont pay VAT anyway. (I actually sent them an email a wek ago asking how to get it tax free and what do you know they havent even replied yet)
What country field where?
I know if you put the code for the US product in you can get some money off (convert $50 to £ then add silly amounts of VAT) so can this be abused so you can get it for £30.30?
After clicking your credit card type where you put your name, email and CC details, theres a country field that defaults to United Kingdom for me, click the “change country” link. This probably wont work for Paypal though.
The key point that no one’s yet confirmed:
Is there a Dwarf Deathroller?
Why yes – there is… Squelchy non-Dorf teams for lunch?
This is what happens when you:
a.) Don’t have a demo of any sort.
b.) Charge $50 for what is essentially a very late beta by the sound of it.
c.) Charge 40 pounds to the poor sods in the UK (roughly $66).
Bwahaha, the old if theres no demo I have a legitimate claim to pirate it excuse. It doesn’t play like a beta to me, I’ve poured maybe 8 hours into it already. It plays great and captured the tense thrill of the boardgame.
Hey, look, it’s authentic Blood Bowl complete with an authentic Games Workshop price!
Someone had to say it, right? I didn’t buy it (yet :-/) because I saw the US $50 price tag and I’m still trying to decide whether I want the portable or PC version…
People looking for a cheaper alternative while they wait for the price to drop could do worse than check out http://www.fumbbl.com, which uses the skijunkie client mentioned above.
Someone mentioned fumbbl in the comments to an earlier bloodbowl thread, & I’ve been playing on and off ever since. My way of passing it forward ;)
I quote, from the latest patch notes:
“To enhance the performance of the game on your computer, the game resolution has been decreased.”
That is the entirety of the changes, and this required an entirely new bb.exe to be downloaded (24MB).
Seems fishy to me. Nothing like full disclosure to instil confidence in your customers.
Much as it’s going to sound like whining, but who else has paid out for this? I doubt the randomness of the game engine, just having played my first game and suffered 9 double skulls in 11 turns :(
I wanted to do a Flash version of Necromunda a while back. On that topic; Gorkamorka?! I had more chaotic fun with that game than any other GW title