Tip ‘o the shanter to Ysharros over at Stylish Corpse:
Pricing Models: Pay What You Want
Crayon Physics is currently on sale, using the same sort of “pay what you want” method that World of Goo did a while back for their birthday. It worked out pretty well for the WoG guys. Here’s hoping it works for Crayon Physics.
The sale ends Friday the 15th of January, though, so if you want this excellent game, get over there and buy it!
Awesome. I loved the demo, will definitely need to pick up the full game (for my wife of course
). I’d probably pay a reasonable amount like $15 or so. Is that too low you think?
The full retail was originally $20, so $15 seems very reasonable to me. Of course, everyone gets to pick their price point. I’m leaning to $8-10 because I’m a cheap penny pinching jerk, but would have picked it up on a good Steam sale if I’d have caught one.
It’s definitely worth that to me, anyway. $20 is a bit much (I waited for Torchlight to go on sale, too) for an impulse buy in my book, but Crayon Physics is certainly a game worth buying. It’s more a question of budget in my case, not whether or not it’s worth spending money on. It most certainly is.
You are trying to make me feel guilty for paying a stingy $5!!!
Well it won’t work. Crayon physics is a game I would never have bought except for this special offer. As it stands they are now $5 richer than they would have been. The game isn’t really my cup of tea but you have to admire innovation.
Mwahaha!
Truth be told, I may wind up paying $5 myself, depending on how expensive it is to fix my friggin truck that started leaking antifreeze again this morning. *gnashwailwhine*
I can’t lowball it to a penny, but 75% off is still a solid Steam sale price.
If you haven’t read that article at the “it worked out pretty well for the WoG guys” link, I’d highly recommend it. They got a LOT of money they wouldn’t have otherwise. That’s the take-home point, methinketh.
Must be or they wouldn’t have elected to do it. Except maybe for the publicity, in which case it’s still win-win. Someone who pays even a little >> someone who doesn’t buy it at all.
I heard the guys who made immortal defense did it as well, but as I understood it they left it that someone could pay less than the paypal fees for handling the transaction.
So I think pay what you want is silly if you don’t atleast set it to cover your transaction costs.
Callan, I was thinking exactly the same thing last night. Someone in one of those links (or a comment thread, I don’t remember) was citing 34 cents as a baseline PayPal transaction fee. I’m not sure how accurate that is, but I’d suggest setting a baseline of 50 cents just to be sure. That’s still an insanely low price for a good game.
That said, the huge number of people lowballing at a penny are still getting the game and playing it, generating word of mouth. Perhaps it’s considered advertising/marketing overhead if they aren’t actually generating any income. That’s especially true if they wouldn’t have bought the game at the 50 cent baseline.
*shrug*
I’d be skeptical about word of mouth will work in that regards. Perhaps it does, but for myself I’d not be willing to stake money on it (in that way – handing complimentries to known reviewers or even well know bloggers, fair enough…)
Yeah, without having a real bead on the costs or the value of a customer “purchased” with the transaction fee on a lowball bid, we probably can’t estimate the impact of those sales. I’d like to believe it’s a net positive, but I just don’t know.