$10 of $15 - opinions please!

[tolworthy]

Hello all! This is my first post, I only discovered indiegamer two days ago, and I'm really impressed. These threads all cover topics that I have asked about on other forums but with only limited success. I feel at home here already!

Here is my question: I am making a large adventure game based on Victor Hugo's Les Miserables. ( www.LesMisGame.com ). It also includes a large gaming world in which I plan to add other classic stories, so I hope buyers will come back for future upgrades. From talking with other adventure games developers, it seems that I should charge either $10 or $15, but I can't decide which. Can you help? Here are the pros and cons.

$15: any lower and it looks cheap. Any higher and some people won't risk their money on a first time game from an unknown lone developer.

$10: I want impulse purchases. And I want to exceed their expectations. And I want people to come back an 12 months and purchase the upgraded version, which will include the existing game plus another classic book. I intend to continue adding books every 6 months or so. Long term, I want to reach non-game players, and compete with books rather than games. Books are generally cheaper than games.

The obvious compromise is to have a reduced price for upgrades, but this would require me to keep some kind of record system. I have zero skills in that department. Also I value simplicity: I would rather have a low fee, find a reputable eCommerce site, then forget about the sales and concentrate on game quality. This is a long term project, and I plan for word of mouth to be the main driver of sales as the months and years pass.

Any comments?

[cliffski]

your site looks very interesting and your game sounds original. definitely $15.

[lennard]

If you aren't going to release until Dec. 2007 then you may be a little early to be worrying about this!

[Bad Sector]

$15.

And contact the Adventure Company.

[Jack Norton]

Just a warning: check about any possible legal implication before continuing your project, since you say is based from another author's opera.

[DaveGilbert]

If it's that big, I'd say go for $20. If the game doesn't sell or people complain, repackage it for $15 or $10 later on.

[tewe76]

check about any possible legal implication before continuing your project, since you say is based from another author's opera.
Check that anyway, but i think LesMis is old enough to not having any copyright.

Looking at your web i think your game could be one of those "special" titles which could be $49.99, $99.99, and so... It clearly seems a very special game (5,000 hand drawn scenes!) based on a classic. It could be perfect for schools, universities, etc.

Man, very good job. Keep on. Ah, and Welcome, of course :)

[Bad Sector]

The book is available at Project Gutenberg (http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/135), where it says that the copyright does not exist in US.

However the words "Les Misérables" seem to be trademarked by Cameron Mackintosh Overseas Limited, as stated in the bottom of their site (http://www.lesmis.com/).

[tolworthy]

the words "Les Misérables" seem to be trademarked by Cameron Mackintosh Overseas Limited, as stated in the bottom of their site (http://www.lesmis.com/).
Wow, I'd not noticed that before. I have been careful to avoid any similarity with the musical (for obvious reasons) but it never dawned on me that they could trademark the name. There are literally dozens of movies and at least one previous play with the same name, so I assumed that would not be an issue. Thanks, I'll have to look into that.

[ragdollsoft]

A 600 MB game is very risky! See if you can cut that, it's very important if you want online exposure.

As for the price, I'd go for 30$. You're not selling a arkanoid clone, you're selling "Les Miserables"! It's not a mass product for sure.

And yeah, do check seriously for © and ™, you dont want to discover after you finished it.

Also maybe try to contact some book publisher and see if they might be interested.

Your site's homepage pic has a very bad "jpg effect", increase the quality! It's not like 50k makes much difference nowadays!

Good luck!

[tolworthy]

Thanks for the replies so far. This is really interesting. So far I have only discussed this on adventure game message boards, and there the culture is very different. Adventure gamers think nothing of a gigabyte download, but there is a culture of freebies and second hand games so they expect very low prices (and don't have much experience with trying to sell games commercially). However, the adventure game market is a very small niche and that is one reason I came here for a broader view.

A 600 MB game is very risky! See if you can cut that, it's very important if you want online exposure.
I'm trying, but it's not easy. One of the selling points is the size of the gaming world - it already has 5,000 scenes (1,000 main scenes and 4,000 in-between scenes) and over 12 hours of music. I thought I was doing pretty good just keeping the file on a single CD! :)
The harder task, from my point of view, is getting the demo down to a reasonable size, but I won't need to worry about that for a long time yet. I know, I know, I also don't need to worry about the price yet, but I want to settle as many issues as I can at an early stage. I expect that I will have plenty of other things to worry about in the month before release.

As for the price, I'd go for 30$. You're not selling a arkanoid clone, you're selling "Les Miserables"!
I really didn't expect this, everyone is saying "go higher." This is really interesting. My fear is that that expectations will be very high - this is my first game, and I'm not trying to compete with Big Studio graphics. But it sounds like I can definitely risk a higher price than ten bucks.

And yeah, do check seriously for © and ™, you dont want to discover after you finished it.
Quite. I just spent some time researching the trademark area, and added a couple of new pages to the FAQ part of my site. I will probably change the way I promote the game, just to make double sure that there can be no possibility of confusion with the musical.

Also maybe try to contact some book publisher and see if they might be interested.
That was my original plan, but as a lone developer with no track record I thought that might be too optimistic, or at least take too much time away from developing. I might give it another thought though if others agree.

Your site's homepage pic has a very bad "jpg effect"
That's interesting, thanks for pointing that out. Nobody else has said that (maybe nobody else visited it!) I wonder what others think? Were there particular pages, or was it all the book images, or the gray background, or? I could certainly look into that if others found it a problem.

[papillon]

From what I know of the adventure community if your quality is reasonable, 600MB and $20 is absolutely fine. But remember that a lot of adventure gamers want a buy-on-disc option. :)

[bard]

Wow, impressive game on all fronts. You could probably risk something as high as $30, but $20 seems inexpensive yet not "too cheap to consider" (in my mind, anyway).

The name "Les Misérables" may be trademarked, but is "Les Miserables" (without the accent)??! :p

[Philippe]

The name "Les Misérables" may be trademarked, but is "Les Miserables" (without the accent)??!

Isn't the point of a trademark that you can also go after similarly named products in similar fields (e.g. Apple going after sites that use the word "Podcast")?

I have a hard time believing that a musical name (from a musical with copyright expired) can be trademarked.
Perhaps this can help you?
http://www.uspto.gov/main/search.html

[tolworthy]

I have a hard time believing that a musical name (from a musical with copyright expired) can be trademarked. Perhaps this can help you?
http://www.uspto.gov/main/search.html

Thanks. I spent a few hours at their site earlier, and at similar sites, and at first I thought "evil capitalist parasites" but after a while I started to almost agree with them. (Maybe something to do with that low level hum and the subliminal messages flashing on all government sites...)

The basic idea of the law is to not to confuse the public in a way that allows company A to benefit from company B. Whether I like it or not, most people think "Les Miserables" is just a musical, and people might come to my site expecting something from Cameron Mackintoch. Which is nice for me, but his lawyers might not appreciate it. So I can sort of understand his point of view. So I've renamed the game slightly, to "Les Miserables: the game of the book." It's a mouthful, but I think it will keep me safe.

As far as I understand the law, as long as I make it perfectly clear that this is based on the book, I should be entirely safe, legally.

[papillon]

The *musical's* copyright isn't expired, the *book* that the musical was based on is. I would think you should be able to use the name because it's not competing in the same field - you're releasing a game and not a musical. Not a lawyer though obviously.

[Nexic]

Since you're in a niche with not much competition and with a very particular audience I think you should be going for $25 - $30. I'm betting you will get practically the same number sales at $10, $15, $20, $25 and $30.

[Escapee]

Like others, i would suggest 19.95 (std price for customer/affiliate partner perceived 'good' shareware game) or slightly above for the the largest adventure game in the world.

[Tom Gilleland]

$24.95 for the game, and add $10 if they also want to buy the book. Do a CafePress version of the book.

Tom

[BIGZIPZ]

Is it just me or are you guys reallly excited about the potential of this game? I can feel something in it. I think its going to be special.

[MrQ]

A wise man once told me, start higher, you can always drop it in price. But if you start lower, you can't raise it. (well you could, but I'm sure people would be pissed off)