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I’m not sure why you mentioned Valve. It’s common sense more people buy during a sale.

Yes, his games are less expensive initially than a big-name title, but 10 years later they’re more expensive! Not to mention they’re more expensive that a large majority of the indie RPGs available.

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Secondly, Valve was seeing dramatically higher profits when *temporarily* discounting a title steeply. That’s quite different than simply setting the default price lower.

Thirdly, Vogel’s games (and most non-wargame indie titles) *are* priced lower than the big budget commercial titles – those retail for $50-60.

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Then again, since a I couldn’t tell the difference between the Avernum engine and the Genoforge engine, it makes me wonder how separate they are…

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I’m talking in relation to Avernum. KotC is probably priced just right, and I, too, love the sprites and MIDI music.

And I’m not saying games’ pricing should be based entirely around production values. (Well, actually, it kinda sounds like it, but I don’t mean it! Really!) What I’m saying is that it is exceptionally annoying to me that Jeff Vogel, of all people, is saying indie games can’t survive on 5 dollar games alone. While it is entirely true that budget pricing is not an option all the time, he continually releases games that all run on the same engine (which he’s been using for damn near a decade, at this point) with minimal graphical, UI, or gameplay improvements.

Certainly, I understand the “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” mantra, but with ten years with this engine, is it impossible to add something as common as walking animations? But to top it off, he charges nearly 30 dollars for every game when it is released. Again, I know one can’t assume a price should be lowered just because it is an indie title, but having not needed to make a new engine in a decade, I question how much work is put into Avernum II, for example, versus Avernum I, which needed an entirely new engine.

Maybe I’m not one to question such things, as I’ve certainly never made such a complex game, but in comparison to other indie RPGs, like, say, Eschalon or KotC (both of which are cheaper than Avernum V, use entirely new engines, and are graphically more impressive than Avernum), it seems slightly ridiculous for his games to cost so much.

I am, in part, suggesting that a game’s pricing should be partially based on something like production values. Clearly, gameplay should be the most important part in pricing, but certainly, if a game, for example, were to utilize ASCII characters versus a game using animated sprites, one would expect the former to cost less than the latter, correct?

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Now, there are as many indidividual positions on game pricing as there are gamers in the universe (I for one almost never buy new retail games when they are still at full price since I don’t think any 10-15 hour game is really worth $60, but would gladly pay $30 for a lengthy indie title with gameplay that I thoroughly enjoy), but to seriously suggest that something as potentially superficial as production values should be the sole determinant of pricing (which is precisely what you’re arguing in your last paragraph) is a pretty extreme idea…

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I personally think Jeff Vogel is the last person who should be saying that the scene won’t survive with cheaper-than-larger-production titles. He’s been using the same engine for years, with minimal changes, not to mention that he still hasn’t improved the cryptic UI or the laughably poor-quality character portraits. In-game characters barely animate, and really what he’s doing with each game is creating a new script for the same core game. Albeit, very long and involved scripts… but the point still stands.

Indie developers should not and can not expect to create games with 1/30 the production values of a larger title and charge 1/2 the price. It doesn’t quite work that way.

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Also, as for the text being unreadable, as soon as I put the game into windowed mode (and what sort of person are you who wouldn’t!), the text is pretty easy to view.

Graphics… come on. This is old school brilliance, who needs graphics :)

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