arrogancy:

I wouldn't spend more than 400 on BB. It seemed pretty good; but what makes me always come back to Geo Wars and perfect my skills is the constant competition on my leaderboards. It's like many old school arcade games; I'm protecting my high scores, so I keep coming back to them. Without that driving force, I'd relatively quickly lose interest in playing, which would probably happen with BB.

Re: Competitive:  Duely noted Mr Arrogancy!  :)   Don't you worry though, I have you covered.  Just you wait and see.  ;)

Re Price:  glad to hear that most people think it's "worth" the 400 point price...   if people were saying "dude, your game is only worth 200" then that would be a serious wake up call :)     Re-reading the various comments I got from people regarding price (both in this thread and outside) it actually seems like the average "value" people are feeling is in the 500 point range...   and while i'm working my butt off to improve the game even more, I'm not certain the improvements will tip it to an 800 point consensus...   i can save that for Biology Battle 2 I suppose ;)

Looks like a 400 or 800 point game to me.

My guess is that people who like it, will buy it, and people who don't like it, won't buy it, and the actual price (400 vs 800) is not likely to make all that much of a difference. If there are, say, 10% of your sales at 400 points who wouldn't buy it at 800 points, then you'll make a lot more money selling it at 800 points. Really cheap stuff works when you have impulse buys (candy in the check-out isle in the supermarket), and when you have a competitive market with equivalent product substitutions (say, toothpaste). However, selling games on XBLCG is nothing like that -- you have to convince people to find your game, and then to download it, which is no trivial matter, and then actually try it. After they try it, they will like it, or they won't. The purchasing decision at that point will be very different than the purchasing decision you'll make in the supermarket check-out isle.

 

Camels and Rubber Duckies.....

excellent article mr zman.

and yeah, intuitively I agree with basically everything that joel guy is saying. This is why I prompted this "how much" question here, as an answer here is about as objective as I could hope to hear (feedback wise) before I'm forced to decide a price.


I'll see if the new features I'm adding to Biology Battle are compelling enough to justify a higher price. i have a little under a month to do so, so I better make that remaining time count :)

Heh, this is a terrible place to ask for a game price if you're wanting 'objectivity'. Only got poor college students and independent developers saving every dime are going to respond to you here. Unless that's the only audience for your game, of course.

Keep in mind that there are still games outside of the 360 that sell for $10 or more that don't have features like leaderboards and achievements. Wiiware in particular is a good platform to look to, since they also have a very strict size limit (40MB) which severely limits how much content is in the game and/or how good the game looks, and yet there's still games selling quite well on that system at $10. Leaderboards and Achievements are important for a very small segment of the people you're going to sell to. For the vast majority of people, it's either entirely irrelevant or a nice bonus. But that being said, a lot of the people it's important to (game reviewers, hardcore gamers) are the same people that can do a lot of word of mouth marketing for you, so you have to take that into consideration also.

And there's the very real bit where you're somewhat competing against large budget XBLA titles, as well as a lot of amateurs who are making great games but don't have confidence in their game (and don't know anything about business, and are probably doing this on the side and don't really NEED to make any money, and really they just want to see a lot of people playing their game) underpricing their titles, so people will make unfair comparisons and pretty soon no game will be able to sell unless they are priced at 200 points, because everyone else is pricing their games at 200 points, and the games become a worthless commodity (at least until some killer title comes out that everyone has to have and charges a premium and people become more sensible about what they'll pay again. XBLA went through a similar phase until Braid/Castle Crashers made it okay for other people to charge 1200 points).

Also keep in mind the dollar is tanking, so the money you'll be making is going to be worth less and less to you every day. This also means a lot of people have less money to spend, but most people find games a better value for their dollar already than going out to eat, movies, etc, so they're going to be cutting back on those for a long time long before they stop buying games.

So it's tricky, but please, people, don't make this service worthless because you're too afraid to ask other people for the money your game is worth. See what other purchasing options (games and otherwise) are out there and do your best to price your game accordingly (it's hard, I know. I'm struggling with this myself. Proximity HD is likely going to be light on features the first iteration. Not too much different than what won the contest a year ago, actually. But my target audience is also a more casual audience which put tons of hours into super-simple match 3 and bust-a-move games they pay $10-20 for).

For example, I read a graphic novel at a bookstore last night called 'Blankets', over the course of 2 hours and some change, and ended up paying $30 for that book I had just finished reading, in full, for free, at the bookstore, because I got that much enjoyment out of it and wanted to show my appreciation for someone creating it (while an $8 book I was also considering got put back on the bookshelf). I'll probably reread it once or twice and maybe lend it to 1 or 2 people over the next few years, but it was still worth it for me for the 6, maybe 8 hours that I'll interact with it total. HD Movies are on average $30 right now for 1 1/2 hours that will be rewatched maybe 2 or 3 times over the next few years for most people. People usually put 8-10 hours, at least, into any game that they really enjoy (i pulled that number out of my butt, but I'd say it's probably roughly that for most people judging by my own experience and my conversations with people). And you're afraid they won't pay an extra $2.50-$5.00 for your game?

keep in mind the dollar is tanking

Actually, ...

 

Huh, that's interesting. Our company does a lot of business with Japan, so this is what we've been seeing, and I just assumed it was like that across the board. So does that mean Japan's having greater issues than we are, then?

Brian Cable:

Heh, this is a terrible place to ask for a game price if you're wanting 'objectivity'. Only got poor college students and independent developers saving every dime are going to respond to you here. Unless that's the only audience for your game, of course.

Keep in mind that there are still games outside of the 360 that sell for $10 or more that don't have features like leaderboards and achievements. Wiiware in particular is a good platform to look to, since they also have a very strict size limit (40MB) which severely limits how much content is in the game and/or how good the game looks, and yet there's still games selling quite well on that system at $10. Leaderboards and Achievements are important for a very small segment of the people you're going to sell to. For the vast majority of people, it's either entirely irrelevant or a nice bonus. But that being said, a lot of the people it's important to (game reviewers, hardcore gamers) are the same people that can do a lot of word of mouth marketing for you, so you have to take that into consideration also.

That's a good thought Brian. What i'll do is try to cram in the remaining awesome features I have left over the next 3 weeks, so I feel that internal justification to charge the 800 points.
If for some reason I cant get all the remaining awesomeness into the game by Nov 19th, then I'll probably go the 400 point route.

Novaleaf Software:

What i'll do is try to cram in the remaining awesome features I have left over the next 3 weeks, so I feel that internal justification to charge the 800 points.

To be cramming features in just before release and then expecting to compete at XBLA prices seems risky to me.  3 weeks before release any game currently selling for 800 points would be code complete and undergoing serious testing and any code changes would be limited to major bugs.  The risks here are compounded even more by the fact that CC games (AFAIK) will not have an easy way to release patches.

JamesH:

To be cramming features in just before release and then expecting to compete at XBLA prices seems risky to me.  3 weeks before release any game currently selling for 800 points would be code complete and undergoing serious testing and any code changes would be limited to major bugs.  The risks here are compounded even more by the fact that CC games (AFAIK) will not have an easy way to release patches.

I disagree. Most developers here either work alone or in very small teams and have adopted a very iterative, rapid development model. Under such conditions, a competent team can re-write large portions of a codebase in a short timespan with minimal impact on bug complexity. Quite a few games (including Biology Battle) already show an impressive level of polish and stability and are unlikely to affected tragically through last minute development.

Hi, I am your core 360 gamer. I am very much looking forward to Community Games. I was so eager I nabbed a student trial XNA and have played some ccgames.

Biology Wars (ha ha) is exactly what I want out of XBLCG. I just saw your very impressive website, screenshots, nice short descriptions, way too long trailer, and downloaded the demo. I am immediately disappointed. I want to like this game. I would most certainly have paid 400 mspoints $5, but after playing the demo, not so much.  The only real problem was the ship's speed, and hence action, was too slow.  You have about 30 seconds to impress the average gamer to buy your game, then they are likely gone forever. See Shred Nebula. When I saw your website I said "Why isn't this on XBLA?" After playing for one minute, it's obvious, it's not really fun, exciting, and new. The action has got to be much more fast and frantic.

There are more quality games now than ever before. I can't lay down $10 for every shiny bauble that comes along, but $5 if the gameplay completely wows me in the first minute.  From the looks of things, there are going to be too many XBLCG with the prices set too high. It's the one big thing that puts off gamers from an impulse buy. I do not want more features, I want just one thing: Unique Addictive Gameplay.  I bought GeoWars1 and still can't really get into it. But Geometry Wars 2 is the very best arcade game I have played in 30 years. They managed to figure out what actually works gameplay-wise and then cut out all the pointless crap that didn't. Now I cannot stop playing it.  I recently realized why: Leaderboards. Somebody posted the same thing above me. Now I'm not into high scores, I could really care less, but when I see someone on my Friends List has beat my high score, it seems I just have to get back on top. Out of 60 people on my friends list, only 6 have GeoWars2. I can't believe not even half of my friends didn't buy it. I've tried to convice them by word of mouth. But it's said twin stick shooters are the new WWII shooters.

So maybe go ahead and copy or imitate what Geometry Wars does best, because your game is going to inevitably be compared to it in every review and person's opinion. Biology Wars, I'm not kidding. Let this be the premiere quintessential Geometry Wars clone, even though it's not. Because Geometry Wars is just an Asteroids ripoff, which is just a Space Wars ripoff. Make the name of this game well known by the people who regularly play Xbox Live.

Also put the Friends List Leaderboards built into every single player mode. I don't want to even have to push a button to bring it up at all. Clean up and simplify the overcrowded HUD, it's a little too crowded. And most important, if possible at this late stage, faster and more frantic gameplay.

Your other post about marketing, the word your looking for is "hype". Websites like IGN, Gamespot, 1up, Joystiq, XBLArcade are by far your best bets. Send them a 30 second trailer with a couple of different looking screenshots and one paragraph that can sell this game better than advertising. Good Luck!

Oscar K:

JamesH:

Novaleaf Software:

What i'll do is try to cram in the remaining awesome features I have left over the next 3 weeks, so I feel that internal justification to charge the 800 points.

To be cramming features in just before release and then expecting to compete at XBLA prices seems risky to me.  3 weeks before release any game currently selling for 800 points would be code complete and undergoing serious testing and any code changes would be limited to major bugs.  The risks here are compounded even more by the fact that CC games (AFAIK) will not have an easy way to release patches.

I disagree. Most developers here either work alone or in very small teams and have adopted a very iterative, rapid development model. Under such conditions, a competent team can re-write large portions of a codebase in a short timespan with minimal impact on bug complexity. Quite a few games (including Biology Battle) already show an impressive level of polish and stability and are unlikely to affected tragically through last minute development.

I'm using SCRUM as the project management style, so it's somewhat like Oscar says.  We are leaving a 2 week sprint ending on Nov 14th as the "ship it" cycle.   That said, I still feel like we have some really good gameplay tweaks to put in, especially those that are meant to resolve some of the issues Gordo mentions (i address these a little further down in this post)

Gordo Jones:

Biology Wars (ha ha) is exactly what I want out of XBLCG. I just saw your very impressive website, screenshots, nice short descriptions, way too long trailer, and downloaded the demo. I am immediately disappointed. I want to like this game. I would most certainly have paid 400 mspoints $5, but after playing the demo, not so much.  The only real problem was the ship's speed, and hence action, was too slow.  You have about 30 seconds to impress the average gamer to buy your game, then they are likely gone forever. See Shred Nebula. When I saw your website I said "Why isn't this on XBLA?" After playing for one minute, it's obvious, it's not really fun, exciting, and new. The action has got to be much more fast and frantic.

Well I'm really glad you feel the site is good enough.   For the gameplay issues you are talking about, I'm a bit to blame for trying to make it as easy for "noobs" to get into the game, because that's what all the feedback i get from around the office is (all noob players).   I do realize (and thank you for reafirming) that the core audience of xbox is "CORE" players, and In my last "ship it" dev sprint I'm going to ensure we have a great trial experience for both noobs and core gamers alike.

And yes, leaderboards are very important.  we will have it in our game, no worries (well, we are still working on it, so nothing is sure till it's done :P )

Btw, thanks for the "brutal honesty" about thinking the gameplay sucks.   I'm able to read into the rant, and pick out the key issues you are raising :)  I wish more people told me it sucks and rant about why a bit :D

 

 

Abel Garcia Plaza:

I’d pay 400 MS points for this game, as has some similarities with Geometry Wars and that game costs 800, as far as I know.

Geometry Wars cost 400 points when it was released.

Novaleaf Software:

Btw, thanks for the "brutal honesty" about thinking the gameplay sucks.   I'm able to read into the rant, and pick out the key issues you are raising :)  I wish more people told me it sucks and rant about why a bit :D

No, Biology Wars certainly does not suck at all. It is a good game on the cusp of perhaps being very good.
But to compete against the recently released GeoWars2, which is outstanding, BB will have to quicken the pace.
I want to feel as if I am in a desperate battle for survival. I don't want to just point and shoot as each target presents itself.
I think accessibility is the most important game play feature there is today.
It has to be easy enough for beginners but unique and challenging for hardcore players.

Please realize as gamers and not developers, we don't want more features, we want simple, fast, addictive gameplay.
The biggest titles last year all used twitch reflexes: COD4, Halo3, Pac-Man Championship, Galaga Legions, GeoWars2.

Just pretend I'm an idiot here with the only question from my first post.
Is there any reason why I can't move as fast the whole time instead of having to use the speed boost button?

I don't want to just point and shoot as each target presents itself.

After five minutes, BB doesn't allow you to lazily point and shoot all the time. You have to actually keep up, and even plan a little bit which way you're going.

jwatte:

I don't want to just point and shoot as each target presents itself.

After five minutes, BB doesn't allow you to lazily point and shoot all the time. You have to actually keep up, and even plan a little bit which way you're going.

That's true, but I'm going to change the "Online Challenge (Hard)" mode, so that it start out fast and furious  (with a disclaimer that beginners should play the Local mode).

That's what i meant when i was saying I like it when people rant, that told me that the core gamers would likely find the game rather boring in the beginning, and wouldnt play it long enough to get to the challenging parts...

I think the people who want to compete for topscore are going to be the competitive core gamers, so I better make that mode especially well suited to them....

If we can get the remaining features into the game, we'll probably go for the 800 points...   just based on what I see being developed at the 400 point level, and compared to msft's desire to put xbla games at 1200 points now....

I downloaded the demo from your website.  Here are my notes.  They are probably not going to be very helpful.

I am sitting with my laptop computer, reading about your work and how hard you folks have been going at it to create a game in time for launch.

Okay, so I download the demo installer.  It installs cleanly with no thinking whatsoever on my part.  Nice job.

I start the game up.  First, I have a little trouble looking for keyboard controls.  I look in help, and can't find them.  I note there is a setting to turn graphics quality on high.  So I set it to high.

I start a game.  The first problem is that at the top it says "Demo expires in 57 days".  Well, at least I think it says 57.  It might say 37.  That's a problem with the font if I can't tell what it says, even though it is trying to be futuristic.  The next thought that goes through my mind is: "Great, how is it deciding that my demo is up?  What crap is not going to cleanly uninstall when I take the demo off my system?"  That's a sour taste and I haven't even started.

Perhaps the loading screen is necessary so you can get you assets loaded, but I had no idea what it was about.  It was confusing and didn't do much to describe what was being loaded or what kind of character I was playing.  I'm still not 100% sure.

A splash screen appears showing controls.  Whoa!  I have to have my mouse to aim?  Uh oh.  Not going to go well on my laptop.  There isn't enough time for me to remember all the keys.  All I get is WASD and... then the mouse.  The spacebar and shift do something.  Uh oh.  Okay well I'll just figure it out.

The game starts.  I start moving around.  I'm not sure who the bad guys are so I assume everyone.  I trying to aim with my laptop's touchpad but it doesn't do anything.  I hit spacebar and the lightning effect takes some guys out.  Then I remember the other key mentioned was shift.  I start mashing it and, sure enough, laser bolts come out of my ship pointing east, and always pointing east.

Then I get booted back to the desktop.  Windows wants to know if I am activating StickyKeys.  Um... no, I was just playing a game that made the mistake of using Shift for a button to mash.  Or maybe it is something that can be temporarily disabled in code.  I shrug and go back to the game.

I am now firing southeast.  Some bad guys come to the ship and destroy it.  I get taunted when I am destroyed with phrases that seem like internet memes or lolcats.  I come back to live and move around, picking up a few items.  It says my lightning is available, or maybe it said upgraded.  Eventually I get hit again since I am only shooting southeast, and the game ends.

I exit, and a massive screen tries to tell me all the game's features.  There is so much crammed on it, I decide to read none of it.  I exit and uninstall the demo.

On the positive side, your game looks fantastic in play mode.  It rivals geometry wars.  It is smooth and pretty.  I couldn't get the sound working, but that may have been my fault, so I can't comment on that.  I could not play the game, so I can't comment on gameplay.  In the end, I would not fire up my Xbox and hunt for your game to play.

I know I was at a major disadvantage by not playing it on the Xbox, but unfortunately sometimes when you offer a demo on PC in hopes of getting someone to move to Xbox, it isn't enough of a point to say: "Well, you'd have liked this much better on the Xbox."  Maybe I shouldn't have been offered the demo.

I sincerely hope you sell a billion copies of your game.  I really do.  For the record, I didn't buy Geometry Wars, either.  I played the demo and found it tedious.  For some reason I spent hours playing Asteroids, but I found Geometry Wars too busy to feel like I was having an impact on the game.  It didn't feel like my skill mattered, just that time would "run out" when the game decided to throw too much at me.  I am sure that is incorrect and today's gamers are just so much more talented that there is no place for the simple starter levels that Asteroids offered, so you could play for five or ten minutes (or for me in one case, I recall playing hours and hours) and feel like you were "beating" an unwinnable game.

Take anything you want from the review.  Discard it all if you want.  I just find that you might appreciate the visceral responses I recorded on my notes as things were happening on screen.  Those gut reactions might change sales, so I hope they help you sell a ton.  I think you should charge 400 points, myself.

To give you another comparison on pricing.  I found myself disappointed in Braid at 1200.  I loved the game, but when I beat it in 3 hours I was sorely disappointed that it wasn't 800 points.

Perhaps your disapointment indicates what is yet another reason that makes xbox development so attractive: a homoginized experience with one hardware layout, and one controller layout (gamepads).

I'm sorry you didnt have a controller handy, and the "how to play" screen doesnt actually skip when it's done, you have to press a button to continue.   from your "i didnt get a chance to read it", it sounds like you didnt have the desire to read it, not that it didnt give you the time.     That said, sure we can make that loading a bit clearer i'm sure...   but if you are on a laptop with no mouse, that means yet another controller profile that has to be dealt with, and made "fun"...

basicallly that's part of the reason why the PC version wont be released for 6 months.  

And since most of your complaints are surrounding the experience on a laptop, unfortunatly there's not much I can take from your experience...      except that some people who dislike the genre will probably dislike this game too... 

and that when we do release the real pc version, we should give the user options for other input profiles.

I've been pretty quiet on these forums for the last few weeks, because I've been busting my butt getting Biology Battle perfect :)


It's done now.   Thank you all for all the help and feedback regarding pricing, and marketing advice.  

Now that the game is technically finished (assuming it passes Peer Review),  I'll be focusing all my time on marketing.  I'll start by trying to send version to editors of magazines to review, and also put up some in-game videos over the next few days.

After launch, I'm going to try doing a "real" marketing campaign at some of the bigger game sites, but not yet.  I want to wait to see if it makes any impact on sales doing so.  (This is as much of a "get your feet wet" experiment as it is a money making process)

I know being the author of Biology Battle I'm a bit biased toward's it's quality, but I suppose in only a few days we'll all know :)

Novaleaf Software:

I know being the author of Biology Battle I'm a bit biased toward's it's quality, but I suppose in only a few days we'll all know :)

This game looked very well for me in previous videos. Can't wait to see it finished ;-)

Yes :)

Too bad you didnt get into the peer review, however I"m going to be submitting an update later today, so you'll have another chance.


Oh, i forgot to mention, but the price is 800 points.   So far I only see one other game at that price, that being Colloseum.

Novaleaf Software:

Yes :)

Too bad you didnt get into the peer review, however I"m going to be submitting an update later today, so you'll have another chance.


Oh, i forgot to mention, but the price is 800 points.   So far I only see one other game at that price, that being Colloseum.

If any XBLCG game is worth 800 points it's this one.

Harald Maassen:

Novaleaf Software:

Oh, i forgot to mention, but the price is 800 points.   So far I only see one other game at that price, that being Colloseum.

If any XBLCG game is worth 800 points it's this one.

I would say it is worthy of the honor of an 800 points price tag, especially since it is such a high quality.

Epic game.....worth 800 easy

great job. IMHO the 100k was well spent :)