scottie Posted February 17, 2011 Share Posted February 17, 2011 Bottomline: Just keep the modules and new games coming. absolutely , if it ain't broke don't fix it. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Joachim Posted February 17, 2011 Share Posted February 17, 2011 Many people have a problem with economic formulas. These formulas are often linear - until inifinite. Like in: "If the price is zero, demand is infinite" Well, yesterday I was on the driving range to practise. The ball machine was out of order, so range balls were in 2 large baskets, for free. 3 people were there. Surprise: None of them used infinite balls. Yes, more balls than usual. But: Limited time. So there is always a threshold, long before you reach inifinity. The big thing is to correctly identify that threshold. In BFC's case, the threshold is their market size. If they give away their product for free, people still have to play it. Which means installing it and then spending time to learn it. Read: A few hours before you really start to enjoy the game (if you aren't addicted already). That time has some cost to the players. Even leisure time is not "for free" - it is pretty restricted and thus valuable. Thus a short formula for the cost of a copy of CM:BN is: Time needed until you get fun out of it + direct cost for your copy + some hardware-related costs. Thus the price (as in: Total cost of ownership) will never be zero (except if BFC pays money for people playing it ) Which saves one of the most important economic theories. But shows that the application of economic theories is non-trivial. If you don't really understand them, you should be careful. And don't get fooled by people who might know better than they say - but actually do earn their money by selling you web 2.0 (or sub-primes, CDOs, whatever). For every successful company like Microsoft, Google or Facebook, there are scores of companies that failed. Successful companies in the IT industry are not successful only because they used web 2.0 or adopted new models or whatever. Google Buzz, Google Wave, .... grand scale failures. Done by the people who did Google. What did they do wrong? They were even for free! And thought to have a much larger market than BFC. Well, they did not know their market (as there was none before). BFC think they know their market. Dunno, if they really know all of it. But their objective is to be successful on that part of their market that they know. That is enough to keep them alive. They might try to widen the market. But let's face it - their trial on new markets is selling CMx1 for a low price. Which by far beats that guy from the article who says they should sell their first module of a new series for a cheap price. Ah yeah.... I like good strategies. And I expect them from good wargamers. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bertram Posted February 17, 2011 Share Posted February 17, 2011 One of the falacies of that article is that it looks to a handfull of succesfull compagnies, tries to generalize what they did to get succes, and then declares that the formula for succes. This is by no means new - it is a general practice in management literature. It is a flawed approach though. First because the author starts with an idea, and then selects a handfull of - usually comparable - compagnies. As these compagnies are the ones that gave the author the idea in the first place, they tend to support his idea.... In this case it is pretty easy to point to other compagnies in the same field, that are a succes, and have a different approach (like Battlefront, or Blizzard with WoW, which is by no means free). Second because the authot generalizes over wildly different circumstances - as Martin and Steve discussed. And last, but most important, because the author looks at succesfull compagnies, and then looks backward. If you really want to see what is a succesfull strategy you need to follow a large number of bussinesses from the start, and see which survives. Maybe there were thousands of start-ups that tried to give away games for free, and just a few survived, while there were just a few that priced games according to cost, and most survived - no way to tell using the approach in the article. And even if you follow a lot of compagnies and analyze the difference in approach of those that are succesfull versus those that are not, your conclusions are still only good up to that point in time. One of the famous management book describes "highly succesfull compagnies" of ten years ago - and now half of them have gone under..... 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moon Posted February 17, 2011 Share Posted February 17, 2011 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. Indeed we do. Other Means and Thomm just mentioned a couple... demos (which are not only rock-bottom priced, but FREE), and using multiple distribution channels (such as retail) to widen our customer base and reach people who would never dream of looking for us online. I don't have much time to dive into specifics, but let me illustrate the logic flaws by taking the conclusions from the article and moving them to a different market. Let's say car manufacturers: Following the advice from the article, car manufacturers should start giving away their cars for free, in the hope that people will buy their next car from them because they liked the first one so much. Think about if for a sec, or longer. The longer you'll think about it, the more problems will become apparent. Catering to pirates is the worst approach you can take. People who suggest this do not have to make a living off of selling software. The only differences between stealing cars and stealing software are that the latter is easier, more anonymous, and more difficult to prosecute, and socially more slightly accepted. And don't be mistaken to think that piracy is "free". It's not. We ALL pay for piracy, including the pirates. Martin 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pvt. Ryan Posted February 17, 2011 Share Posted February 17, 2011 The game should be free and then we pay by the minute to play it. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Joachim Posted February 17, 2011 Share Posted February 17, 2011 That would really hurt my purse.... I'd rather pay 200$ flat. CMBB is about one of the best investments I made. Especially when comparing it to a single green fee over here... 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sequoia Posted February 17, 2011 Share Posted February 17, 2011 My one worry about Battlefront's current business plan is that CMBN will be such a big hit they'll retire afterwards to drive weasels around the Maine woods. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Joachim Posted February 17, 2011 Share Posted February 17, 2011 Well, then they could pay others to pick the low hanging fruits of CM:WAR, CM:SiS, ... 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Erwin Posted February 17, 2011 Share Posted February 17, 2011 If you think about it, the entire CM1 series was free... for some people. They could copy unlimited copies and get the .exe file that enabled one to play without an original disc in the drive. BFC could have brilliantly planned that in order to maximize their market - the one that enjoys playing realistic wargames. So, having proven themselves with an outstanding product like CM1, and created a loyal/fanatical/addicted fan base which desperately wants more product, it only makes sense to now charge "real" money for new product which now cannot be pirated. I doubt if BFC would lose a significant number of customers if they doubled their price or more for a game. It's a good bet they'd probably make a lot more money. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Battlefront.com Posted February 17, 2011 Share Posted February 17, 2011 Many people have a problem with economic formulas. These formulas are often linear - until inifinite.... So there is always a threshold, long before you reach inifinity. The big thing is to correctly identify that threshold. In BFC's case, the threshold is their market size. Very well put. The primary problem with any industry where supply of product is always greater than demand, is that there will be a lot of losers no matter what simply because there's only so much time/money/interest/etc. available to absorb the supply. Think about music, movies, food products, whatever. For every successful company like Microsoft, Google or Facebook, there are scores of companies that failed. In a way any industry is like a big sales pyramid scheme. "Sell a ton of our cleaning products and you too can be a millionare like Frank and Jessica (cut to picture of the happy couple on their yacht. And you can do this from your own home, with just a small investment of $5000". Well, it might be true that Frank and Jessica made their millions from being better at getting suckers to buy the 2nd rate products they sell, but if everybody who bought into the scheme had an equal chance at success, nobody would be a millionaire because the market can only support so much mediocre window cleaner and rug shampoo. Google is where it is at now through a combo of skill, luck, and good will coupled with utterly ruthless business practices. Same with Facebook. Which, BTW, proves what we're saying here. MySpace was first, huge, and valued highly. Where is it now? The mass market is a fickle bunch. One of the falacies of that article is that it looks to a handfull of succesfull compagnies, tries to generalize what they did to get succes, and then declares that the formula for succes. This is by no means new - it is a general practice in management literature. And it's also important to note that these sorts of predictions are time sensitive. Go back to 1941 and look at the successes of the Third Reich. You could have written a huge book on "How To Rule Europe in 3 Easy Steps" based on what had happened so far. Does anybody think that book would have been a best seller in 1945? And last, but most important, because the author looks at succesfull compagnies, and then looks backward. If you really want to see what is a succesfull strategy you need to follow a large number of bussinesses from the start, and see which survives. Which is why we got out of the traditional retail publishing scam. Content providers were always the last to benefit from their creations. Survival rate in that environment was so low that we risked jumping to the Internet long before anybody thought it was viable. We succeeded. But since then, how many have failed? It's always a tricky thing, but one thing is usually true... the ones that get in first, with the right combination of skills and products/services, tend to be the ones that survive the longest. Steve 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Battlefront.com Posted February 17, 2011 Share Posted February 17, 2011 If you think about it, the entire CM1 series was free... for some people. They could copy unlimited copies and get the .exe file that enabled one to play without an original disc in the drive. BFC could have brilliantly planned that in order to maximize their market - the one that enjoys playing realistic wargames. So, having proven themselves with an outstanding product like CM1, and created a loyal/fanatical/addicted fan base which desperately wants more product, it only makes sense to now charge "real" money for new product which now cannot be pirated. There are companies that do this and sometimes it works. Or a compromise concept, where the first release is really cheap and the subsequent ones are more expensive. We actually did this with the initial Strategic Command release and it worked out very well for everybody. The trick is surviving until the second release and/or facing down a revolt from people who say "hey, I got your previous thing for free, now you want money from me? Go fly a kite". This is a problem that Google faces now, and in a way (thanks to Microsoft giving away IE) killed off Netscape. I doubt if BFC would lose a significant number of customers if they doubled their price or more for a game. It's a good bet they'd probably make a lot more money. Yes, we do think that from a dollar standpoint we could probably go up a lot in price and in the end wind up with fewer customers but more money in hand. This, however, is a risky strategy because it is generally a bad idea to have your customer base maxed out. Changes in market conditions could cause a dramatic change in fortunes for such a company. So we are going to continue going down the road of charging a fair amount for our products and be happy with that. Steve 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lt Belenko Posted February 17, 2011 Share Posted February 17, 2011 Any one notice exuberant amount of time Steve is spending on the forums? Prediction: Pre-orders are imminent. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rick Posted February 17, 2011 Share Posted February 17, 2011 This is actually one of the most interesting threads on this forum and I wish more people who deny businesses rights to protect their intellectual property would read. The important part being that with the FB/Google business model there is more going on than what the average customer sees, or there is no way they could be making the huge sums they are. In the end, charging a fair price for use of the intellectual property is probably the best approach for customer and business alike. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
noxnoctum Posted February 17, 2011 Share Posted February 17, 2011 I assume it'll be $39.95 or $49.95. I doubt BFC would put some retarded DRM on their game. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
flammenwerfer Posted February 18, 2011 Share Posted February 18, 2011 Gary Grigsby's War in the East is selling for $79.95 for download only. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Battlefront.com Posted February 18, 2011 Share Posted February 18, 2011 Heh... that's what I paid for my first Grigsby game... War In Russia back in the mid 1980s. That's a double dose of "what goes around, comes around again". Steve 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Erwin Posted February 18, 2011 Share Posted February 18, 2011 War in Russia brings back fond memories... Glad he's still developing. I'd buy War in the East, but then I would be absorbed by that and would miss the CM:BO release (heh). 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rocky Balboa Posted February 18, 2011 Share Posted February 18, 2011 Heh... that's what I paid for my first Grigsby game... War In Russia back in the mid 1980s. That's a double dose of "what goes around, comes around again". Steve Yeah played that one quite a bit as well and cut my teeth playing Grigsby's stuff on the Apple IIe. I suspect War in the East will just be a rehash but brought up to run and look better with current tech. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moon Posted February 18, 2011 Share Posted February 18, 2011 $80 for an upgrade? Wow. And to think that people complained about our $1 Vista upgrades... 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Blackcat Posted February 18, 2011 Share Posted February 18, 2011 Interesting discussion. What is the maximum I would pay for CMBN? Well based on my experience of CMSF, probably £100(GBP). On top I would buy one or maybe two modules for around £30, but I probably won't buy the whole set (I passed on the NATO module for CMSF). However, based on my experience of CMx1 I would cheerfully pay £200 for the base game and £50 for each and every module. Why the difference? Primarily multiplayer capability. IN CMSF I eventually got tired of kicking the snot out of the AI and had essentially "done the game" long before NATO was released. I can't cope with real time and PBEM takes to long for my tastes as I tend to lose track of what is going on/what my plans are between moves. CMx1 had me playing for a lot, lot longer than CMSF because I could play againt a human in a style that I enjoyed. Therefore, in terms of hours of pleasure per £ I don't expect to get half the benefit from CMBN as I did from CMx1. I am still going to get huge enjoyment from CMBN (and I'll know more about just how much after the preview in Liverpool tomorrow) so I would be prepared to cough up far more dosh to Battlefront than I would for any other game producer that I know about. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DaveyJJ Posted February 18, 2011 Share Posted February 18, 2011 I am still going to get huge enjoyment from CMBN ... so I would be prepared to cough up far more dosh to Battlefront than I would for any other game producer that I know about. Ditto. If it hadn't been for the transition to OSX and the whole RAVE graphics debacle (not Battlefront's fault) I'd still be playing CMBO. It was, and remains, my favourite computer game of all time. So with that, I'd be willing to pay CDN$80 or so for CMBN which is $20-30 more than the standard PC game in these parts. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Erwin Posted February 18, 2011 Share Posted February 18, 2011 Blackcat: I completely agree with your assessment. (Altho" I still find the CMSF AI challenging if you play to avoid friendly casualties.) 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LJFHutch Posted February 19, 2011 Share Posted February 19, 2011 Well I think that's just a pretty big and general problem with the CM series: the multiplayer isn't very easy to get into. What about a program to sync users so they can coordinate a time to play or just play with who's online, a server browser etc. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
medlinke Posted February 19, 2011 Share Posted February 19, 2011 I saw the title for this thread and wondered if there was information...been away too long! I think BFC has been fair and up front with pricing. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moon Posted February 19, 2011 Share Posted February 19, 2011 My curiosity lies in why BFC doesn't get involved with Steam! The answer is surprisingly simple: we don't think that it would make any significant difference in our business. Just because a couple million kiddies are playing big budget FPS games on Steam doesn't mean that it's a good platform for us. For a small publisher with a mainstream game and without an established outlet, it is probably the only option (notice I didn't say "good option") But for us, there is as little incentive to be on there (in any more involved way than we are now) as there is to start doing full page ads in XBox magazine Martin 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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