新型数字游戏发行渠道的大量涌现，为独立开发商打开了又一扇市场大门，但选择过多也造成了多数独立开发者和工作室难以盈利的局面。

虽然多数人都已经意识到市场营销与游戏营收之间的关系，但需要指出的是，游戏价格也是极为关键的影响因素。合适的价格点不但能够成功招徕买家，还能让开发者顺利创收。要找准这个价格点并非易事，加上各个平台都存在不同的变量因素，所以要让这个价格在获得收益与保证客源之间取得平衡，更是难上加难。

app-store-games

iPhone平台的价格战

因为较低的准入门槛和较大的经营弹性，iPhone在近年来已成为最受独立开发者热捧的游戏发行渠道，是小型工作室以及新兴开发商的理想选择。

但是，苹果App Store的用户消费能力却让这些开发商很是为难，因为这些用户都爱便宜货，开发商不要说是从中盈利，即使是收回成本都是个问题。

加拿大多伦多的Capybara Games公司（游戏邦注：该公司代表作为手机游戏《Critter Crunch》）联合创始人南森·韦拉（Nathan Vella）对此无奈表示，因为99美分是用户“最理想”的消费选项，以至许多开发商，尤其是独立开发者不得不自贬身价，通过薄利多销收回成本。

Capybara推出的《Critter Crunch》于2009年6月登陆iPhone，2010年1月份售价仍保持在1.99美元。韦拉表示，如果多数开发商放弃99美分价格，那么App Store就很有可能重塑用户对游戏价值的看法，从而也会形成对独立开发者更有利的局面。

韦拉表示，“我经常拿《Canabalt》来举例，在我看来这款游戏绝对值2.99美元。亚当·索尔茨曼（Adam Saltsman）不向游戏低价潮让步，坚持以自己的估值定了这个价格。我们的立场和亚当一样——决不让99美分的压力左右游戏的定决策价。反正游戏值多少钱，我们就标注多少钱。这种不受外界干扰，可以自主定价的感觉真好……”

canabalt

不过游戏邦认为，制定游戏价格，还要考虑发行平台和开发预算这两个重要因素。

用韦拉的话来说，那就是你在游戏开发过程中就要有先见之明，权衡利弊，这样才有可能通过理想的下载量收回成本，或者幸运地实现盈利。在iPhone平台上，采用大团队大制作的游戏往往面临巨大的风险，因为没有人可以确信它到底有没有强势出击市场，或是收回成本的潜力。

韦拉还表示，另一个关键因素是游戏质量，虽然游戏质量高并不能保证成功创收，但制作一款垃圾游戏，一定会让你自绝财路。所以最好的出路就是，在游戏开发过程中多留神，至少得让游戏质量达标，看起来足够体面后才能见人。

免费模式

当然，并非人人都抱着和韦拉一样的心态，著名iPhone游戏开发商ngmoco公司在尝试过多种付费选项后，终于敲定了“免费体验”的运营模式。

据ngmoco公司市场营销副总裁克莱夫·唐尼（Clive Downie）所称，在一年多的游戏开发和发行过程中，他们曾给游戏设置免费到9.99美元不等的价格，并仔细研究了App Store的定价失策案例，也了解到一些社交网站的

游戏付费模式，经过一番比较后，才最终做出了这一决策。游戏邦还获知，该公司在2010年初推出的《Eliminate》和《Touch Pets Dogs》采用的就是这种免费下载游戏，付费买新功能的模式。

唐尼表示，“这种模式受到了不少用户的欢迎，不过它也并非人见人爱，无所不敌，所以它并不适合所有的用户。但需要指出的是，它符合大部分玩家的需求，而且我们认为这种模式在未来还会更受追捧，因为玩家的消费意向总会随着消费习惯不断发生变化……iTunes本来仅售9.99美元甚至更贵的产品，但多数用户都不肯为这些东西掏钱。不过iTunes通过添加0.99美元这类低价选项，扩大了用户的选择范围。我们比0.99美元策略更超前，干脆将游戏设置为免费下载，但如果你想创造更高的游戏成就，把游戏当成主要的消遣方式，那你就可以再多花点钱投入其中。”

人们传统上认为，免费游戏在质量上一定比付费游戏更逊一筹，但唐尼却另有看法，他表示App Store正逐渐扭转用户的这种偏见，而且免费游戏的质量也确实一直在大幅提高。唐尼认为，“用户希望获得更多选择，大家时间都很有限，所以开发商可以通过价格帮助用户及早做出选择。假如你的游戏很不错，那么你也有可能收获与付费游戏不相上下，甚至是更高的回报。那种一次性付费下载模式，可能导致许多用户觉得自己花了冤枉钱，却没有享受到物有所值的游戏体验。

唐尼表示，《Eliminate》和《Touch Pets Dogs》都是很高端的免费模式游戏，它们是按付费游戏的标准来设计的，所以在质量上并不亚于付费游戏，但却比后者更实用，因为它们支持用户免费下载，付费加速游戏进程。

touch-pets

在推行免费模式之前，ngmoco充分利用了App Store游戏定价的灵活性，测试了用户对不同价格的反应。

比如说，在发行《奥兰多2：金兰花之旅》（Rolando 2: Quest for the Golden Circus）之前，ngmoco为了把该游戏第一版本的玩家吸引过来，就计划在App Store撤下第一版本的游戏，岂料这一举动马上招致众多粉丝的不满，ngmoco不得不在一天后立即取消原来的计划。用户会及时针对游戏，尤其是游戏价格变动向开发商表达意见，这种有效的用户反馈机制正是App Store最大的优势之一。

据唐尼所称，更改iPhone游戏价格很容易推动下载量，这一点是毋庸质疑的，但下载量的增幅有多大，持续时间有多长就要取决于一系列影响因素。他认为，选准时机非常关键，最好是在玩家对游戏仍然感兴趣时降价促销，引来更多潜在用户；下载量上升了，游戏排名也会随之高升，排行榜的领先优势反过来又会再度刺激游戏下载量。

灵活的价格机制

Capybara于2009年10月在PlayStation Network平台发布了《Critter Crunch》的升级版本，售价是6.99美元。当时该平台的小型游戏一般都售价5美元甚至更低，大型游戏都在10美元左右，有些还超过这个水准。

韦拉表示，当时他们就游戏价格一事咨询了SCEA（索尼电脑娱乐美国公司）的意见，但出于种种考虑，还是决定以6.99美元出售游戏，“首先我认为有些游戏是‘正餐’，可以喂饱玩家，比如说《Flower》这款游戏，我玩过之后就觉得心满意足，不会想碰其他的游戏；还有些游戏是零食，是正餐之余的调味品，《Noby Noby Boy》就是一款很棒的零食游戏，你玩过之后感觉不错，但并不会因此而放弃其他的正餐游戏。”

他们决定走中间路线，因为《Critter Crunch》类似于体积较大的开胃食品，玩家可能觉得很有满足感，也有可能过后又玩其他的游戏，总之这种情况主要取决于玩家当时的心情。他们发现正餐游戏的价格都不低于10美元，零食游戏则不超过5美元，所以就采用了折衷的方案。据游戏邦了解，当时还有另一款属于开胃食品的游戏《Shatter》的零售价是7.99美元。

韦拉称他们十分清楚自己的处境，在PSN平台发售一款知名度不高的原创益智类游戏并不是个完美的策略，他们知道自己并非极具知名度的PopCap公司，所以希望以相对实惠的价格降低玩家的准入门槛，以此吸引大量玩家体验《Critter Crunch》，增加人们对Capybara公司的了解。

发行平台掌握定价权

尽管PSN平台的价格机制很有弹性，开发商可以自主决定游戏售价，但Xbox Live Arcade平台在这一点上就比较苟刻了，它的游戏定价权完全掌握在微软手中。不过，Twisted Pixel Games公司CEO迈克尔·威尔福德（Michael Wilford）却认为这并不是什么坏事。

他认为，虽然Xbox Live Arcade的游戏售价由微软来决定，但开发商可以提出建议零售价。开发商主要根据游戏内容与其他游戏的对比，提出建议零售价，而Twisted Pixel总是尽量为游戏提供更多内容，比如说免费的玩家图片、高级主题、虚拟形象奖励等，让产品看起来更加物超所值。在他看来，将游戏定价权交给微软可能是件好事，因为微软在这一领域很有经验。

《The Maw》和《Splosion Man》这两款Twisted Pixel游戏售价都是800个微软积分，相当于10美元。威尔福德表示，“我认为大部分用户都不在乎我们之前的游戏售价是多少，对我们有好感的用户都会知道，我们的目标就是通过每部作品，不断超越自我。我们希望赢得用户的信任，不管发行的是15美元的游戏，还是20美元的游戏，用户都会对产品质量抱有很高的期望，而且我们也会通过继续努力，不辜负这种高度的信任。”

游戏邦发现，在数码游戏领域，目标用户的心态更为浮躁，所以开发商很难在盈利的同时，有效防止标价过高的倾向。威尔福德表示，“如果价格上升了，你会开始流失潜在用户，所以不能指望通过高价创造更多营收——你得判断出买家数量下降究竟是否与价格增长成反比。有时候即使你认为更高的价格可以创造更多利润，但也不得不为了争取更多用户而放下身段，让更大范围的用户认识并记住你的品牌。”

韦拉颇为赞同这个观点，“对我们来说，游戏价格是我们对产品本身的估值、迎合玩家需求这两者的合体，比方说，《Critter Crunch》卖到15美元对我们来说才合算，但对玩家来说就未必了。我认为多数零售游戏的价格不是被抬高了，就是被贬低了。从另一方面来看，我觉得iPhone平台的游戏基本上都面临被贬低身价的压力。制定合适的价格并不轻松，也不是件有趣的事情，有时候甚至让你纠结得头疼，所以我们最后总是会综合考虑公司和玩家双方的利益来定出价格。”

Critter Crunch

最重要的是，开发商在游戏制作过程中就得考虑周全，提前打好算盘，预估出游戏的价格。韦拉在提到《Heartbeat》这款游戏的时候表示，“我们原来就想过，其他因素可能会有变化，但我们并不是要推出一部真正的巨作，所以就估算出了一个大概的价格，这样我们就知道如果要平衡收支，游戏开发过程需要多少预算，我认为开发商推出任何一款游戏前都应该有这种经济上的考虑。”

总结

虽然各路开发商对游戏定价标准的看法不尽相同，但韦拉、唐尼、威尔福德的一些观点，对独立数码游戏的标价仍具有通用的参考价值：

1.要具有前瞻性。虽然你可能是在最后一刻才确定了游戏售价，但在开发过程中就应该综合考虑产品投放的平台、项目延伸范围等因素，并由此来制定预算，因为它们与最终的游戏售价息息相关，密不可分。

2.兼顾自身与玩家的需求。不论是免费模式的iPhone游戏还是10美元的XBLA游戏，让产品售价符合用户预期这一点非常重要。因为这一招不但可以收买更多玩家，而且可以由此建立与玩家的良好关系，取得他们的信任。

3.灵活调整价格。发行数码游戏的一个好处在于，开发商可以灵活调整游戏售价，在特定平台展开特价促销活动。如果你有足够的实力，那就不妨让游戏适当降价，然后密切关注用户对不同价格的反应。

要制定一个可盈利的价格实非易事，但对独立开发者来讲又极其关键不可逃避。所以游戏邦在此奉劝各位开发商，制定价格前一定要做足准备工作，进行市场调查，倾听用户意见，这样才不至于被游戏定价过程折磨得筋疲力尽。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，转载请注明来源：游戏邦）

Finding The Sweet Spot: Pricing For Independent Games

The surge in popularity of independently developed games has opened up new creative possibilities. The advent of new digital distribution venues provides plenty of new outlets for these developers to get their games out to a wide market. However, this has also had the side effect of leaving a lot of these individuals and studios unable to make a profit.

While people are beginning to realize marketing is relevant, price is a vital part of the equation, too. The right price point will attract buyers, but still allow the creators to make money.

It’s a tricky balancing act that can be a daunting task. And when you factor in the variables inherent to each different platform indie games pop up on these days, the balancing act gets even more difficult.

Planet of the Apps

The iPhone has become one of the most popular outlets for independent developers in recent years. With a low barrier to entry and great flexibility, it seems like a perfect fit for small, up-and-coming studios.

But the nature of consumers on the app store means that it can often be difficult to make a profit or even break even when releasing a game on Apple’s mobile device.

“The push to 99 cents is the single most frustrating and terrible thing about App Store pricing,” says Nathan Vella, co-founder of Toronto-based Capybara Games (Critter Crunch).

“Since it became ‘expected’ by consumers, it forces a lot of developers, specifically indies, to devalue their game and significantly increase the number of sales needed for developers to get back their investment.”

Capybara’s Critter Crunch, which was released on the iPhone in June of last year, currently sells for $1.99. And Vella says that if more developers stay away from the 99 cent model, the App Store will become a better environment for indie developers because it could potentially change the way consumers view the value of games.

“I always use Canabalt as my example — that game is 100 percent worth $2.99,” he says. “Adam Saltsman bucked the trend and priced his game at a level he thought was fair. We’re on board with what Adam is doing — not letting the 99 cent pressure define how you price your game. Rather, just price it fairly. Having control of your pricing is great — being able to define, at a fine level, what your game is worth is something you often don’t get control over.”

It’s also important to realize the platform you’re developing for and to budget accordingly.

“You need to be smart on the production side to not spend a fortune making a game,” Vella says. “That way you break even at a good number of sales, and maybe even start profiting. Huge teams and giant-sized epics are super risky (on the iPhone), since it’s so tough to tell if a game’s going to hit and make back its costs.

“The other key thing is making a quality game,” says Vella. “While quality doesn’t assure you financial success by any means, making a garbage game pretty much ensures you won’t have financial success. So, the best thing you can do aside from being smart in your production is make sure the game you put out hits a certain quality bar.”

Flying Free

Of course, not everyone has the same mentality when it comes to developing games for the iPhone. After experimenting with various payment options, prominent iPhone developer ngmoco has settled on a free-to-play model for its new titles.

“We made this decision after a year of developing and publishing games that were priced from free to $9.99, and evaluating the pricing erosion in the App Store, and the behavior of players in other areas of their entertainment mix — like social networks,” says ngmoco’s VP of marketing, Clive Downie. Two of the developer’s most recent titles, Eliminate and Touch Pets Dogs, are free to download but offer for-pay features.

“Consumers have reacted well,” says Downie, of the move to free-to-play. “You can’t make everyone happy all of the time, so this approach doesn’t suit everyone.

“But it’s important to say that it suits most people and we think in the future it will suit more people. The consumption behavior of players now and in the future is changing based on their habits.

“An example is right there alongside the App Store,” says Downie. “iTunes would only be selling albums at $9.99 and above in another world where consumers didn’t want to pay for specifically what they wanted to consume. But it sells singles for $0.99 to cater to choice.

“We’re taking it one step further. The game is free. If you want to achieve more and use the game as one of your regular entertainment outlets you can pay more.”

Traditionally, free games have been viewed as being of lesser quality then their for-pay counterparts, but as Downie explains, the nature of the App Store has changed this perception for many consumers. Free-to-play games have shifted up in quality, argues Downie.

And there’s more to it, he says. “Consumers expect optionality. Time is restrictive and there’s so much more to do with it that, by providing choice at a price, if you have a good game at the center, you can receive returns that are comparable or more than just asking for a one-off purchase. A one-off purchase that actually will result in the majority of consumers never experiencing all of what they’ve paid for.

“Both Touch Pets Dogs and Eliminate are very sophisticated games that take this approach. They are designed like premium games, have the quality of premium games — but are free-to-play and allow players to consume at their pace.”

Prior to moving towards the free-to-play model, ngmoco made use of the flexibility of App Store pricing to test out various methods of selling its games by judging the reactions of consumers.

For example, when the company released Rolando 2: Quest for the Golden Circus, it originally planned to discontinue the game’s well-received predecessor to help boost sales for the sequel.

However, the decision to remove the game was changed just one day later, after numerous fans voiced their displeasure. This sort of instant feedback, especially with regards to price changes, is one of the major benefits of the App Store.

“Price changes on iPhone games result in increased downloads, that’s for certain,” Downie says. “But the amount of volume change and for how long that continues is a function of a series of factors.

“Timing is the crucial factor. Best to drop price when the app is still fresh and there’s a large amount of latent need for the game — so when the price is dropped there’s a release valve against that need, and the downloads are high, and [that's] enough to propel the app into a high chart position where organic downloads happen.”

A Flexible Console

Capybara found a similar level of freedom when it released an upgraded version of Critter Crunch as a downloadable title on the PlayStation Network this past October. The game was sold for $6.99, a unique price on a platform where smaller titles are generally sold for five dollars or under, and bigger games typically cost $10 and up.

“We consulted with SCEA about our price point, and they were extremely helpful. But in the end it was Capy’s call. And we made the decision to price it at $6.99 for a couple of reasons,” says Vella.

“To make my first point, I am gonna fall back on the food analogy I’ve been using… Some games, we’ll call them ‘meal games’, leave you full when you finish playing them. A game like Flower leaves me feeling so satisfied that I don’t really want to play anything else after. Other games are more like snacks, that you play in short bursts around meal games. For example, Noby Noby Boy is a wonderful snack game. When you are done, you feel good, but you could easily segue into another meal-sized game soon after.”

“With Critter Crunch, we set out to create something in-between — a size of game that’s more akin to a large appetizer. Something that, depending on your gaming mood, can satisfy or leave you open to more gaming as you choose. When we looked at this, meal games are comfortably priced at $10 and up, and snack games are priced at five dollars or less. We wanted Critter Crunch in between the two. We had also seen Shatter, which is another great large appetizer game, break the mold with the $7.99 price point.”

“Secondly, we had our eyes wide open about our situation: launching an original, and relatively unknown, game in the puzzle genre on PSN is surely not perfect. We knew we weren’t PopCap, with tons of existing knowledge of our product or our studio. So with the goal of drastically reducing barriers for people to get into the game, we thought a nice low price point might help. We really just wanted as many people as possible to both play Critter Crunch, and see what Capy was able to do as a developer.”

Out of Your Hands

But while PSN is fairly flexible, giving developers a lot of freedom with deciding at what price point they want to sell their game, Microsoft’s Xbox Live Arcade is much more rigid. Though, according to Michael Wilford, CEO of Twisted Pixel Games, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

“Xbox Live Arcade games are priced by Microsoft,” Wilford explained. “We get to make a suggestion, but ultimately it’s their call. When making our suggestions, we mainly consider the amount of content on offer relative to other comparable games. We try very hard to offer more content than is expected for a given price point, and so far we feel like we’ve done a pretty good job, especially considering the free gamerpics, premium themes, and avatar awards we give to our players.”

According to Wilford, putting the pricing decision in the hands of Microsoft can be “a good thing given their knowledge of the unreleased portfolio.”

Both of Twisted Pixel’s games, The Maw and Splosion Man, were priced at 800 Microsoft Points, the equivalent of $10. However, Wilford doesn’t believe that this has put the developer in a box, forced to release only $10 games in the future.

“I don’t think the majority of our audience knows or cares what we priced our previous games at,” he explained. “And the ones that do have a positive attitude towards us and know that our goal is to one-up ourselves with every game we make.

“I think, and hope, that we’ve earned their trust enough that if we released a $15 game, or even a $20 game, there would be a high expectation of quality, and a high degree of faith that we would continue to over-deliver.”

And in the digital space, where potential customers are often much more fickle, finding the right balance between paying the bills and not being over-priced can be tough to find.

“As your price goes up, you start losing potential buyers, so you can’t just assume a higher price will yield more revenue — you need to figure out if that buyer drop-off is proportional to the price increase or not,” Wilford says. “And sometimes, even if you think a higher price point will be more profitable, it may be best to go lower anyway in order to get a bigger group of people playing your games, recognizing your brand, and remembering your name.”

Vella agrees, saying “For us, it’s a combination of what we feel the game is worth, and what we feel is fair to gamers. For example, pricing Critter Crunch at $15 just wouldn’t feel right to us, and I don’t think it would be fair to gamers. I think some games, many of them retail, are overvalued and overpriced.

“And on the flip side, I think there’s a push on the iPhone side to undervalue and under-price. Pricing isn’t easy, it isn’t really fun, and there are so many repercussions that it sort of makes your brain bleed. In the end, we just try to make decisions that best serve our studio and try to be as fair as possible for gamers.”

One of the most important things is to understand what you’re getting into in the early stages of production, so that you can get an idea of how much to charge for a title even before it’s finished.

“We started prototyping knowing that, while everything else may change, we are not aiming for a really big game,” Vella said of Capybara’s upcoming WiiWare title Heartbeat. “That knowledge helps us get an approximate price, so we can figure out, internally, how best to budget the development — where we break even, those sort of business-related calculations that you have to do for every game.”

In Conclusion

While there seems to be little consensus on how to price a game, speaking to Vella, Downie, and Wilford has revealed a few universal truths when it comes to putting a price tag on an independent, digitally released game.

1. Know what you’re getting into. Though you may not settle on a price until the very end, it’s important to think about a range early on in the development process. Factors like platform choice and the scope of the project are important things to consider and allow you to budget accordingly, and should have a strong affect on the final pricing decision.

2. Be Fair. Whether it’s a free-to-play iPhone game or a $10 XBLA title, keeping your price in line with what consumers expect is vital. Not only will it ensure more buyers of that particular game, but it creates goodwill and a consumer who knows they won’t get ripped off with your next title.

3. Stay Flexible. One of the benefits of a digital release is that it allows for flexibility in terms of pricing, discounting certain platforms. If you have the ability to experiment with price, do so, and pay attention, as it will teach you a great deal about how consumers react to different price points.

Settling on a profitable price is neither easy nor fun, but for independent developers it’s crucial. Being prepared, doing your research, and listening to consumers can alleviate the frustration that is generally associated with the experience and make pricing less painful. （source:gamasutra）