RPGWatch Forums - Spiderweb Games - Jeff Vogel on Avadon on Steam

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Spiderweb Games - Jeff Vogel on Avadon on Steam

Jeff Vogel has updated his Spiderweb blog talking about why he released the game on Steam and its Steam price.

A few quotes:

Quote:

Unsurprisingly, I'm pretty excited about it. After 16 years of being a tiny, invisible, basement-dwelling bottom feeder, for a few precious weeks, I get to act like I'm a real developer. With a real distributor, a nice trailer video, and everything. Yes, there will be money, and that's always nice, but it's the recognition I'm sort of focused on now.

Another quote:

Quote:

So I'm charging $10 on Steam and for the iPad. By the standards of that market, it's a hefty price, enough for me to earn my living. It's cheap enough to work as an impluse buy. It isn't the $1 or $2 price that I'm still sure would put me out of business.

This means I need to adjust the prices I charge on my own web site. I have changed the price of Avadon to $20, and in the future we will very likely reduce the prices of our earlier games as well. Our next game, Avernum: Escape From the Pit will start out at $20. If this grand experiment works well, we may make future games cheaper still, though I doubt any new game on our own web site will ever go below $15.

More information.

Is there any real difference between the Steam version and the one on his site (outside of having to use steam)?

Also, what does he mean by 'a few weeks'? Is the game only available for a limited time?

Quote:

Originally Posted by blatantninja (Post 1061087646)

I haven't actually gotten it but I did notice there were Steam achievements so there's that but it doesn't look like much else is changed as far as I can tell.

I think by a few weeks he means that games generally sell the most on Steam in the first few weeks after release when they get promoted on the front page and (usually) get a small discount on release. After that the sales tend to be a trickle unless the games go on sale at some point, then the sales will spike again.

I honestly wouldn't be shocked if this goes on a $5 sale at some point once they've pretty much gotten all the sales they are going to get out of it at the $10 price point.

I only pretend that I've come to terms with a world where people with an internet connection and an interest in gaming won't put two and two together to find the games they want without a major e-tail portal dangling it literally in front of their faces, but let's say for the sake of argument I truly have and I'll shut up about it.

So what's the difference between having a page on your website selling your game for $10 more than it's available on Steam versus, say, just having a page on your website asking people to donate $10 to you if they like your games? Either way you're asking people to pay $10 more than they have to out of the good of their hearts.

(There's probably some answer that involves complaining about how onerous gaming via Steam is, but the people who use that service don't seem to mind so much.)

I guess the differences from the PC version wasn't too much of a reason to sell it so cheap on iPad, afterall :)

Maybe now that he has the visibility he will learn that production value and presentation aren't really that pointless efforts.

He often complained about how hard it is to break even selling for a cheap price, when with a better looking game, the same price range and the whole Steam showcase he could make probably five times more money than he is used to make for any of his games.