Poll: Would you buy an indie game that costs $60?

[poiuppx]

My personal philosophy on game payment is 'If it's worth the price, do it'. This applies both ways; if I think that it's worth it to me to pre-order a game I am personally excited by, and pay the launch-day price accordingly, then I'll do so. By the flip-side of the same coin, if I see a game most people say is so-so or bad, or has received very mixed reviews, but the cost is low enough, I'll give it a shot. It's one of the reasons I like Steam so much; that game only has a metacritic score of 60, but the price is $4 today. Screw it, I'm pretty sure I can get $4 worth of enjoyment out of it unless it breaks my PC.

That said, an indie game selling at full Triple-A price needs to pull off a few things first. It needs to be big. It needs to have replay value. It needs to come from a studio I can have faith in, one that has done other indie games and done a damn good job with them. In short, it needs the kind of features that would get me to lay down $60 at launch, same as any other title; the perceived notion of value as related to the cost involved.

I think the easiest way to do this, in today's market, is to look to some of the semi-older RPG titles of the modern PC era, like the original Fallout. It's not pretty... hell, compared to a lot of even contemporary games, it's a bit on the ugly side. But the size of the world, the degree of involvement you can have, the quality of the story, and the impressive gameplay elements made it worth purchasing on Day 1. Show me an indie studio that could do this, effectively tossing out the idea of high end graphics in exchange for a large dynamic setting & story mixed with exciting gameplay, and have it come from a studio whose work I already can see, play, and trust... yeah, that'd be worth my $60.

 

[DragonChi]

Yea..maybe..providing the graphics were really decent, Great game mechanics...and the storyline is better than the Crystal Skull BS. (See what I did there...?)

 

[teh_Canape]

depends
I judge a game by it's own game...ness... w/e
I judge a game for what it is, not where it comes from
so if I think a game is worth US$60, indie or AAA, I'll pay that

 

[The Funslinger]

When an indie developer creates an old school RPG where I can pour hundreds of hours into a vast world with deep lore and fleshed out NPCs I will gladly give that developer £40 for that game.

The current handful of indie games I've played? Minecraft probably only comes close and I've spent about £30 on it if I had to.

The fact that they are owned by themselves making them independent...

Also quoted for truth, that's all it takes to be an indie developer guys. Has nothing to do with the size of your company or your budget. Being 'indie' means publishing your own stuff.

EDIT

Nope not at all. People should stick to doing what they know and the only thing those guys know is how to release a small short game. There is a big difference between releasing a "tripple A title" and a $5 game that you play for a few hours and then forget about. These guys dont really have the knowledge or ability to actually produce a game like that.

I call bullshit on this. It's more like they don't have the budget, not the knowledge or ability. To get a big budget you usually have to sign up with a publisher which then nullifies the whole 'indie' thing.

Not that it's anything to do with the topic, but what is your avatar from?

Edit: I guess I do need to be on topic. Well, that depends. I could say that indie companies don't necessarily have quality assurance. The counter argument there being that in these times, the same can be said of AAA devs. Real brain tickler, I guess. Probably no, because usually they tend to be a lot smaller than AAA games.

 

[Something Amyss]

As with anything else: My willingness to pay is proportional to my perceived value of a title.
Regardless of who made it.

Exactly. Being "Triple A" isn't a guarantee it's worth 60, and being an indie title doesn't mean it's not.

 

[Iori Branford]

On 360 some 2D arcade shooters retailed for as much as $80. US. Not including any shipping. And I do mean arcade -- these average 30 MINUTES over 5 or 6 maps of pure shooting gameplay. No time to explore the scenery, no friendly chatter, no buying or selling, no side quests, no epic drama. Technically one or two moderately experienced fellows could have a superficially similar game up and running with a couple months' work.

But if you can manage to get past the minimal content and engage with the game design itself, the series of escalating challenges governed by the few simple rules, it can pay you back many times over. No joke. If a game only gets this much right, I could be playing and replaying it from the beginning, over and over again, for life.

 

[WaReloaded]

It'd depend on the game. Having said that, if for example, Mojang released 'Minecraft 2' and the price was $60, I'd happily pay what I'd usually pay for an AAA title. It all depends on the credibility of the developer, too, as I'd be more hesitant to pay $60 for a debut title.

 

[MurderousToaster]

It would depend. I would pay $60 for the game if Four Leaf Studios were to make another, for example. However, I would not pay $60 for a game by Mojang.

Also, I wish people would stop whining about the current average price "increasing", because it's simply factually incorrect. As TotalBiscuit pointed out in one video, back in the NES era, Super Mario Brothers 3 retailed for $70, not counting for inflation, which would increase the price of SMB3 to over $100. Tetris was $55 not counting for inflation. As good as these two games are, in terms of content-to-price, modern games being this cheap are a godsend. If anything, we should want the prices to stay as they are or even increase - as the prices of the actual boxed game decrease, the publishers are going to want to have DLC to make up for the lost money. And you all hate DLC.

 

[Quaidis]

It depends on how absolutely amazing the game is. It doesn't matter if it's an indy company or a giant name. If the cover has something catchy and amazing like flaming raptors whipping through space toast on it and a gripping plot-line like how it's a rpg action adventure puzzle detective game about a boy on a quest over the cure to his cat's flea-issue, I would completely pay for it. It would be even better if said game had rave reviews, as that would likely get me to realize the game exists in the first place. It would also, optionally, help if I knew the developer from previous games.

 

[Master_Fubar23]

No. The AAA company's shouldn't be selling games at 60 bucks a pop to begin with. Indie Devs are should lead the way for better games at lower prices.

 

[Vault101]

if I thourght it was worth that much, then sure

 

[UrieHusky]

If the quality was there sure, Serious Sam 3 was technically an indie title and that was almost AAA price. It doesn't matter whether a developer uses an in-house engine, staff and funding or have a publisher/using somebody elses engine, it's the quality that dictates the price (at least for me) so I'd definitely be willing to pay full price for an indie title.

But hey that's my opinion, nobody else has to share it.

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

I have yet to find any game I'd consider worth the $60 pricetag.

This. I sometimes wonder where all these people who can afford multiple $60 games a year come from. What kind of jobs must they have that they make that much money in a year? Because $60 was a week and a half of groceries for me while I was off at college, and while I did what I could to save money, I wasn't exactly starving.

 

[Smooth Operator]

If the content is there I have no problem with it.
But do not for a moment think a garage band dev team is up to the task, games like Super Meat Boy can be conjured up by one guy within a week or two with nothing more then free tools, if the idea works they can add stuff later on and if it's shit you really only lost some free time.

A properly $60 title however is a huge deal, you need gobs of money to start, you need work stations, you need a huge dev team, you need to figure out the whole game before you even start so people will fund you and your employees can do the work properly, and if the game goes badly you owe people millions, you loose years of time, you put employees people on the street... a completely new bag of dice there.

 

[Et3rnalLegend64]

Probably not $60. I don't even pay full price for non-indie games anymore (I wait till it goes down to 40 or something). If the game was really damn good and/or had enough content, then I'll pay 30 or 40 for it. It's as much as I'm willing to spend for any other game. My brother is still whining that we have to pay 30 bucks for a PS2 Atlus game.

 

[SenseOfTumour]

It's tricky, because I know I've spent nearly 100 hours on Defense Grid, and while I've bought all the DLC offered, I still sort of feel like I owe them more money

Whereas there's a ton of full price releases that I feel robbed by even at half their RRP.

I feel the best move the industry could make is to stop thinking that every game needs a $50 million budget.

Rare occasional games, GTA IV, Skyrim, etc, sure.

But for your generic corridor shooter, you don't need to hire Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman to do voiceover work, and hire Pixar to do the cutscenes. Just give us some things to shoot and make it fun.

I maintain the same for Hollywood, do you really think you'd get no A list actors working if you capped pay at a million per movie? If you didn't well, there's hundreds of actors who are 99% as good and 99% as good looking, which lets face it, seems far more important than the acting. You'll find they'll quite happily 'settle' for a million bucks and the lead in a new movie. The reason top actors can command $20 million for a lead role, is that the filmmakers will pay it, then complain that piracy is cutting into their profits.

How much better would the movie industry be if we had more than Matt Damon and the Rock to choose from when we need an action hero, or we had more than Jennifer Aniston to choose from when we need a romantic lead who's a little 'kooky'?

 

[chaosyoshimage]

Pier Solar is pretty tempting, but I guess it would just depend on the game. To be honest, I rarely buy a game for $60 unless it's some big RPG I know I can't wait for the price to drop on.

 

[ReinWeisserRitter]

The price of an independent game is worth as much as any other's if the quality is there. With that said, many independent games become popular because they're inexpensive, and wouldn't be worth higher price tags, frankly; the games often just aren't deep enough, nor have lasting appeal. If an exception came along (and it hasn't, by the way), sure, it'd be worth "full price".

Of course, I'd be hard pressed to pay sixty dollars for any game, and have yet to do so.