dakuth Posted February 17, 2011 Share Posted February 17, 2011 Reading this made me wonder about Combat Mission. I seem to recall that Battlefront's model was something like ... no DRM what so ever on the game, but you needed to register your game to get forum support. Patches and the like. WAIT. No. Sorry, that's Paradox. Still. Battlefront seems to have some of the suggested features of this "single franchise model." Building a rapport with their customers. Building off of the same franchise with sequels (you could either say "tactical wargames" is the franchise and the individual titles are the sequels, or "Combat Mission" and the modules being the sequels), digital delivery, etc. So I'm curious to know what Steve and the rest of the Battlefront team think of this article and piracy is general? Would a rock-bottom pricing structure work? For example, imagine it's priced at $5. Obviously anyone that reads these forums are going to buy it for that price. We're literally salivating for it now at any price. But consider we could say to all our friends "this is the greatest strategy game EVER, and it's only 5 bucks!" I know a chunk of my friends would pick it up for that price just to check it out. Now here's the real kicker: Most of them will not like it. Too involved. Too hardcore. But there would be SOME that would become converts. Perhaps they never realised that tactical warfare could be modelled so accurately? And now you have a long-term fan, and all your later modules are getting snapped up by this new fan. The question is - especially poignant for a niche title - would a rock-bottom price work? And taking that a step further... with no DRM you'd have to assume there is some "borrowing" going on. Does this help or hinder the game? If I've guessed right (no DRM, but register game for support and patches) then this seems like a very clever idea. Battlefront ahead of their time a bit? Discuss 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Elmar Bijlsma Posted February 17, 2011 Share Posted February 17, 2011 Nah. Will never work. Wargames are a very small market in the first place. Dropping the price is unlikely to translate in very much more sales as damn near everyone in this hobby is already considering a purchase. Especially at that $5 price you will never get the increased sales. I'm not sure they'd even make back the cost of sales. Actually, I think such a low price might just damage the product as it will make it appear as a sub-par game. As for DRM, as long as it's effective and stays mostly out of my way I'd rather have it then go without. I really wouldn't want to feel like a sucker for buying. And the price of admission makes a good bouncer for ye random l33t knobheads. Yeah, I know, it sounds stupid for a consumer to say; "Charge me money, lots of it, and throw some DRM on that!" But I'd rather do that then have my wargaming needs go un-catered for altogether. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
benpark Posted February 17, 2011 Share Posted February 17, 2011 It's a steal at whatever they sell it at. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MarkEzra Posted February 17, 2011 Share Posted February 17, 2011 Price has little to do with passion 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dakuth Posted February 17, 2011 Author Share Posted February 17, 2011 Nah. Will never work. Wargames are a very small market in the first place. Dropping the price is unlikely to translate in very much more sales as damn near everyone in this hobby is already considering a purchase. Especially at that $5 price you will never get the increased sales. I'm not sure they'd even make back the cost of sales. Actually, I think such a low price might just damage the product as it will make it appear as a sub-par game. As for DRM, as long as it's effective and stays mostly out of my way I'd rather have it then go without. I really wouldn't want to feel like a sucker for buying. And the price of admission makes a good bouncer for ye random l33t knobheads. Yeah, I know, it sounds stupid for a consumer to say; "Charge me money, lots of it, and throw some DRM on that!" But I'd rather do that then have my wargaming needs go un-catered for altogether. You're still thinking content business. I'm not even sure that Battlefront is doing that - with the module and digital distribution model. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moon Posted February 17, 2011 Share Posted February 17, 2011 dakuth, you answered most of your questions yourself, actually. Would a rock-bottom pricing structure work? The answer is no. Because: For example, imagine it's priced at $5. Obviously anyone that reads these forums are going to buy it for that price. We're literally salivating for it now at any price. a) why sell at $5 if we can sell to the majority of our existing customer base at $50? But consider we could say to all our friends "this is the greatest strategy game EVER, and it's only 5 bucks!" I know a chunk of my friends would pick it up for that price just to check it out. Now here's the real kicker: Most of them will not like it. Too involved. Too hardcore. But there would be SOME that would become converts. We would need a lot more than SOME converts. Specifically, if we were to sell at $5 instead of $50, we would need 10 NEW converts for every customer we already have now. In other words, we would need to increase our customer base tenfold. That's not a lot if your customer base is 10 people ... but it becomes a LOT if it already is counting in the tens of thousands as is. Dropping the price works for mass market resellers (fancy digital or brick'n mortar, they're all the same ). It works because dropping the price creates a boost in short-term sales. (And that's all they care about because once a product is milked, they move on to the next.) And it works because the mass market games they sell appeal to a very broad customer base. None of this is true for us. Elmar summed it up: Wargames are a very small market in the first place. Dropping the price is unlikely to translate in very much more sales as damn near everyone in this hobby is already considering a purchase. We could be giving away copies of CMBN for free and you would still not get 99% of the kiddies out there scrambling for the latest cheat on their XBox or trying to impress their buddies on Steam to like it much. All we would do is create a short term bubble and cannibalize the product (as well as our future) in the long run. Martin 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moon Posted February 17, 2011 Share Posted February 17, 2011 PS. The article you linked to is crap and full of logical faults. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MikeyD Posted February 17, 2011 Share Posted February 17, 2011 There's the opposite tack BFC could take. Sell CM:BN for $200. Here's my reasoning. We're a captive matket, no real competition out there for us to go to. If they lost 2/3rds of their customer base with the price spike they still come out ahead. Plus the game would gain tha cache of being "That high-priced boutique wargame" and would see additional prestigue-conscious customers in the same way manufacturers slap a fancy label on a $20 pair of jeans and sell them in upscale malles for $300. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gunnersman Posted February 17, 2011 Share Posted February 17, 2011 Then there are always health and beauty items which BFC could get us all to buy...and then we could turn around and try to sell them to our friends and families and then they could sell them to their...wait...that's been done...damn...never mind. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WillLight Posted February 17, 2011 Share Posted February 17, 2011 Not sure about that Mikey, people feel ripped off when a game is way more expensive than its "peers" (regardless of whether or not you think other wargames are as good as CM). This is often a visceral, rather than logical feeling, but we are all too susceptible to those. Just look at what happened when Panther sold BftB for $80, a great game, and objectively well worth the money, but an uproar nonetheless. Look at Steel Beasts, another great game for its niche, and one with no substitute, even more so than CM has no real alternative, and for $100, their customer base is tiny. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dakuth Posted February 17, 2011 Author Share Posted February 17, 2011 PS. The article you linked to is crap and full of logical faults. Well I'd be very interested to hear the specifics. As I read the article, I thought of Battlefront - because I think that Battlefront already employ many of the strategies mentioned. Other than a few minor quibbles, it sounded pretty solid to me. But this is what I was most interested in (as I was well aware that the "rock-bottom" pricing structure wouldn't be feasible/too risky to contemplate) - if you have disagreements with Tadhg Kelly's assumptions. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gunnersman Posted February 17, 2011 Share Posted February 17, 2011 Look at Steel Beasts, another great game for its niche, and one with no substitute, even more so than CM has no real alternative, and for $100, their customer base is tiny. Yes, but ESim's mainstay is developing high fidelity sims for military market. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dakuth Posted February 17, 2011 Author Share Posted February 17, 2011 a) why sell at $5 if we can sell to the majority of our existing customer base at $50? Well the argument is that seeding is more powerful than one-shot economics. We would need a lot more than SOME converts. Specifically, if we were to sell at $5 instead of $50, we would need 10 NEW converts for every customer we already have now. In other words, we would need to increase our customer base tenfold. That's not a lot if your customer base is 10 people ... but it becomes a LOT if it already is counting in the tens of thousands as is. Dropping the price works for mass market resellers (fancy digital or brick'n mortar, they're all the same ). It works because dropping the price creates a boost in short-term sales. (And that's all they care about because once a product is milked, they move on to the next.) And it works because the mass market games they sell appeal to a very broad customer base. While true, you're focusing on very short term benefits. The claim isn't that you will sell 10x as many come release day - it's that you seed a franchise. That you get the product into so many hands, that your next product spikes - and in turn seeds more. And so forth. Arguably, this is something Battlefront has already done, with tweaked specifics, with modules and the CMx1 --> "publishing other titles" --> CMx2 evolution. Complete with long-term patch support and developer interaction. We could be giving away copies of CMBN for free and you would still not get 99% of the kiddies out there scrambling for the latest cheat on their XBox or trying to impress their buddies on Steam to like it much. All we would do is create a short term bubble and cannibalize the product (as well as our future) in the long run. Martin I suspect you are right - and I that's what largely sparked my interest. Kelly was talking in broad terms and I wondered - how would this idea translate to a niche game like Combat Mission? What you say makes sense on the face of it - but who is not to say that there are strategy gamers out there in the making, that are lacking the exposure? The guys that play Call of Duty and think "I love this game, but I just wish it was more realistic - if I could control all my teammates, and spotting and morale were significant factors." And if they exist, who is to say how many there are? Perhaps strategy gamers are older because they come from the older generation of games, when they were more cerebral than action. Nowadays there are more action than strategy games - but it does not necessarily follow that because you are X-Gen you like strategy games, and if you are gen-Z you like action. I'm sure plenty of X-Gen converted to action games as computing power picked up. Why then are there not Gen-Zers who are strategy gamers that are just lacking the exposure? PS: I should point out I consider this a thinking exercise. If *I* were Battlfront, no-way I'd risk a model like this. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Elmar Bijlsma Posted February 17, 2011 Share Posted February 17, 2011 PS. The article you linked to is crap and full of logical faults. I think it does sorta make sense for the small indie games and stuff like Peggle or Bejeweled which do not have crazy amounts of development time to recoup in the first place and can have a broad appeal if they can get reach. Especially if it gets big on Faecesbook or whatever. But even the big AAA games can't do it, I think. They need several million sales to make a profit these days, and that's at $50! There just aren't tens of millions of extra customers out there. To pull off anything remotely what that article is talking about you'd need a Free to Play business model. That'd work. But CM is the wrong type of game for that. He has some hints of nice ideas but he's wrong to jumble them all together and think that they remain valid. Some of his stuff is mutually exclusive. For instance the volume of sales required for a $5 game pretty much prevents any kinda of meaningful engagement by the developer with the customer. And what good is that long term relationship anyway, if the basis is the developer selling the game at practically cost. By and large I'd say what he is proposing is taken to extremes and unrealistic. As for MickeyD's captive audience suggestion: Only up to a point. I don't think there would be a great drop in sales if CMN went for $60 instead of say $45. Certainly not in the wargaming side of things, though the more casual sales would take a noticable hit, I guess. But there is a fine line. The moment customers think you are taking the piss, the result is dramatic. As mentioned Panther games got trodden on in all the forums. I don't know how that worked out financially but it wasn't pretty to watch, that's for sure. BFC has always gone for a fair price, imho. If they had always taken us for the full wack $60,- I guess that would have made them more money initially but cost them brand loyalty long term. Extract every last penny out of the customer and you don't get forgiven for stuff like CMSF's initial release or whatever odd bug is encountered in CMN. In that extent the article is (partially) right. But dropping the price as far as the author suggest doesn't give a proportional increase in loyalty that can be turned back in to coin later. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Elmar Bijlsma Posted February 17, 2011 Share Posted February 17, 2011 Well the argument is that seeding is more powerful than one-shot economics. While true, you're focusing on very short term benefits. The claim isn't that you will sell 10x as many come release day - it's that you seed a franchise. That you get the product into so many hands, that your next product spikes - and in turn seeds more. And so forth. I'm pretty sure Moon would not be wiling to concede that he's practising one shot economics. I reckon BFC have always been seeding to an extent. It's just not the main focus for a very good reason: Focussing on short term benefits comes naturally if you need those to pay bills. There is no point to seeding if you can't afford to make that next game and are jobbing on a construction site because the missus doesn't think much of a cardboard box for a home. And I'm still not sure if seeding as a primary focus is feasible. At some point you do need that x10 increase in sales. If it's in the next product or the one after that is still a wildly optimistic. And guess what, if your third game finally does sell 10x more then the first, you have only broken even on that first. You'd pretty much need a pyramid scheme type growth to finally start compensating for the low pricepoint. You'd need your game to go epically viral in the mass market. And that is a VERY unsafe business model to rely on. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wodin Posted February 17, 2011 Share Posted February 17, 2011 Battlefront are fairly priced...other developers\publishers charge alot more... 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WillLight Posted February 17, 2011 Share Posted February 17, 2011 Yes, but ESim's mainstay is developing high fidelity sims for military market. Yeah, you're right, I guess it goes to show how such a pricing model isn't viable unless you have some other form of income. Would they be able to survive on their consumer sales of SB? Only they know of course, but it would seem doubtful. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paper Tiger Posted February 17, 2011 Share Posted February 17, 2011 You have to keep sales of modules in mind as well. The title sells for $50 and will keep a lot of folks happy while work is ongoing on the Commonwealth module, another $25. Then we get the Arnhem module, another $25, and finally the Funnies module which might also be $25. So, considering that most of us forum frequenters are going to buy into this all the way, that means you will pay $125 for the full monty. I think that's a fair price for the work that goes into this. Trust me, these guys really do work their asses off to produce games. I'm no butt-kisser but I truly respect hard work when I see it and these guys are deserving of every penny... er, cent coming their way. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LJFHutch Posted February 17, 2011 Share Posted February 17, 2011 Not sure about that Mikey, people feel ripped off when a game is way more expensive than its "peers" (regardless of whether or not you think other wargames are as good as CM). Well I know I couldn't afford $200 that's for sure. Pricing model is great as is, though I think a nicer DRM system wouldn't hurt, why the limited unlocks? Scares the hell out of me every time I uninstall or change operating systems/format ..... 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Battlefront.com Posted February 17, 2011 Share Posted February 17, 2011 Moon already beat me too it. Main points to consider: 1. We are a niche company. Even if we priced our games at $1 we probably would not dramatically increase the number of people paying for our games. All we would be doing is giving a huge discount to our customers and then going out of business right after. 2. Moon was kind when he said it has logic flaws and is "crap". It's far worse than that. OK, so what specifically is crap about that article? First off, content does have value. If it didn't, why would anybody pay $0.01 for it? So the fundamental line of logic used by this guy is inherently flawed. Second, the content we produce, whether someone values it or not, has real costs associated with it. If those costs aren't paid for by someone, we cease to be a viable company and you customers are "one shot" because we aren't around to give you another product. We're no game "factory" with lots of redundant and useless overhead. We're lean and still our games cost us far, far more than any of you probably imagine they do. In fact, we spend more on Combat Mission than I saw Sierra OnLine spend on most of their games back in 1996/97 when I worked there. Sure, that was a long time ago but the costs for labor have not risen significantly since then. And labor is our biggest expense, obviously. Alright... so the guy says that we could be worth billions like Google by releasing our stuff for free or near free. Well, if we could make billions off of selling your personal information and cramming ads in front of your faces, sure... that makes sense. Especially if we did an IPO and the investors are dumb as rocks and keep pumping the stock price up. Yeah, that would be super sweet. In short, the author obviously has NO IDEA that Google makes its money from selling information about the people that use its products, not off the products themselves. It's not about "establishing relationships with its customers", it's about mining data from their customers and selling it at the highest price possible. How does that relate to games? According to him we need to get people to think of "Battlefront" as a verb, like "Oh, today I just Battlefronted dude, it was so cool!" and the money will just come rolling in. Right. Then there's this thing about one shot customers. Er... how many of you consider yourself one shot customers? Before you answer that look on your harddrive or check your Forum registration dates, because I'm pretty sure I've seen you guys around here before at least once in the last 12 years. Which means he's pretty much clueless about what niche markets are all about. Now, I do agree that for some types of games he's got a point. If you have no established market, no market name, very little invested, and nothing really to distinguish yourself from the other thousands of Bill Gates wannabes... sure, put your game out for next to nothing and hope the shotgun approach works. I know people that have made a pretty good amount of money from doing things like this, so I have no doubts it can work. All kinds of things are possible when development time is 3-4 months by one person with no overhead worth speaking of. To recap... the article has no relation to the real world we live in. Steve 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
scottie Posted February 17, 2011 Share Posted February 17, 2011 You have to keep sales of modules in mind as well. The title sells for $50 and will keep a lot of folks happy while work is ongoing on the Commonwealth module, another $25. Then we get the Arnhem module, another $25, and finally the Funnies module which might also be $25. So, considering that most of us forum frequenters are going to buy into this all the way, that means you will pay $125 for the full monty. . Agree , buying all the modules means you will end up paying $125 ish, im sure most of us will. On the plus side the cost is spread out over a year or two depending on the work rate of the dev team ... (only joking, i know you chaps work hard). Re the $5 cost , if i was a newbie to the product this low cost would put be off at first glance , just a perception thing , would expect the product is not that good at that price. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Other Means Posted February 17, 2011 Share Posted February 17, 2011 BFC already seed the market with a demo. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cambronne Posted February 17, 2011 Share Posted February 17, 2011 Guys,just sell it at whatever the price you consider to be fair. It's only we,the customers, know we all are milk cows but at the same time we don't like to be treated too obvious like milk cows. And you did good job about it so far. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thomm Posted February 17, 2011 Share Posted February 17, 2011 I do not know, but did the CM:SF base game not sell at very low prices in retail, attracting people to buy the modules directly from BFC in the process? Best regards, Thomm 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lt Belenko Posted February 17, 2011 Share Posted February 17, 2011 The only good part of the article is where it says a low price would force the company to quickly release a sequel or in the case of BFC a follow on module. Bottomline: Just keep the modules and new games coming. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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