World of Goo "Pay What You Want" Sale a "Huge Success"

[Mr.Pandah]

I paid a penny, simply because as a penniless student I can't really afford more. It's a great game and I would pay the full price if I could afford it, but sadly I can't. And yes, I know that seems pretty heartless, but 2DBoy did a great game and I reckon they should definitely carry on the good work, I'll be sure to look into any future projects they have going as and when they arise

Eh, don't feel bad. A friend and I also paid just a penny. I couldn't pass up this deal. I figured something like this would happen anyway, being that the game is a year old(already? jeez I feel old). Sales must've been low and it was an interesting experiment to see what would happen. Good for them!

Also..yay I'm a statistic!

 

[Andalusa]

I already had this game, it's awesome.
I probably would have ended up paying full retail price if I'd bought it in this sale, anyway. But they haven't done that badly. Others could learn from this.

 

[UtopiaV1]

I haven't bought the game because I just don't want it. Then again, I am one of those dickheads who only buy games with guns... if the goo had little guns and shot other armies made of goo, that would be freakin sweet, here's £50 mate!!!

That really is bad, I seem to be the reason why the games market has stagnated. God i hate myself.

 

[theultimateend]

2D Boy's "World of Goo First Birthday" experiment - allowing gamers to pick up the acclaimed indie title for as little as a penny - is being hailed by the game's creators as ridiculously successful.

HAHAHA
I WAS RIGHT !

A year ago I remember saying game makers should be given what we think they deserve, a bit like street performers.
People answered me this was stupid and could never work.
If only the rest of the game industry could do the same...

Now nobody remember it and this post will probably be thorougly ignored, but it still feel good.

I hate to blow the wind out of your sale but your 'great insight' is over two thousand years old.

Everything is worth what its purchaser will pay for it.
Publilius Syrus
(~100 BC)

Um, that wasn't the insight. The insight was that indie games should take a street performer approach to business.

He said "A year ago I remember saying game makers should be given what we think they deserve, a bit like street performers."

Which was in relation to what I said. Everything is worth what its purchaser will pay for it. IE. People will pay what they think the game makers deserve.

So yes. I'd say it was the insight. "Like a street performer" was just an example, not the insight.

Although on the flat earth thing, I find it odd that people would later become famous for discovering the earth was round because of its shadow on the moon long after the Greeks. You'd think if the believe in a flat earth was negligible that no such discoveries in the future would have garnered someone a famous enough spot to be noted in astronomy text books.

I suppose a better example would have been geocentric versus sol (or sun) centric beliefs. But live and let live, it was an interesting wiki article.

 

[oppp7]

Uh, so where can I buy it? Online from the Wii?

 

[Kstreitenfeld]

Thanks for the heads up! I just bought this game for the generous price of $0.02.

 

[The Bandit]

I paid a penny, simply because as a penniless student I can't really afford more. It's a great game and I would pay the full price if I could afford it, but sadly I can't. And yes, I know that seems pretty heartless, but 2DBoy did a great game and I reckon they should definitely carry on the good work, I'll be sure to look into any future projects they have going as and when they arise

I don't want to beat up on you, but I don't really buy your excuse as a "penniless" student. Sure, it's okay to pay less, but shouldn't you really be basing the amount you pay against what you'd pay for other forms of entertainment, and compare it to the number of hours you'd get out of Goo? You could even divide that result and still get a lot more than a penny.

For example, figure you get six hours of fun out of Goo. Figure that's six movie rentals; at $3/rental (and splitting the cost between 3 friends), that comes out to $9/4 = $2.25. Even if you want a 90% discount, that's still $0.25. Paying a penny is saying that WoG is worth less to you than a gumball. That's not payment - that's an insult, even for a "penniless" student. If you're so broke that you can't even afford to pay $1 for a good game, why are you wasting your time posting about 15 times/day (4500 posts over 10 months) on The Escapist - get some employment.

Or, he could say "Hey, they said I can pay a penny, so that's what I'm going to fucking do." Get off your high horse.

 

[SenseOfTumour]

I gotta admit I wouldn't have had the bravery to have done this if I'd been in their shoes, I'd have at least set a minimum price of 50c or $1, just to make sure that if a million people had paid 1c I wouldn't have been bankrupted by the paypal and server fees.

Having said that, I'm pleased that it worked out..

Someone mentioned Diablo, and other old games.

I think a great idea would be a charity based on this format.

Games companies donate limited rights to older games that they're no longer making bank on, such as System Shock 2, Carmageddon, Diablo II etc (Diablo II would be a great idea as they'd have a captive audience for their Battle Net service and a wave of new people to advertise to).

They then say 'pay what you like, min $1' and all proceeds after bank fees and servers fees are paid go to a gamer charity, and it's massively publicised to show that we're not all murdering psychos, but can give something back to the world.

 

[SenseOfTumour]

I'd suggest that if you paid 1 cent, and really enjoyed it, why not pop back and buy it again for a few bucks this time, and give it to a friend

That way they get back the cash they lost on the 1 cent sale, and you get to support an indie, AND spread the love to friends!

Did anyone else see the 4 people who paid $50 and wonder if they were people who pirated it and were paying off their guilt? Not that it's a bad thing, so long as they paid up eventually.

 

[incal11]

I hate to blow the wind out of your sale but your 'great insight' is over two thousand years old.

Everything is worth what its purchaser will pay for it.
Publilius Syrus
(~100 BC)

You forget that bargaining was the default mode of payment in the old world;
try bargaining now in a game store and you'll be looked at like you're a total idiot in the best of case.

I think Cheeze_Pavilion kinda answered for me here, but I want to clarify.

I once said game developpers should be paid a bit like street performers in one of those endless discussions about piracy and how it could be solved (in part), I wasn't totally believing in this idea myself but I really liked it.

I'm sure You agree that Fallout doesn't have the same value as EA's SportGame X yet both are sold at the same outrageous price of 60$ (this is just an example of course).
If I really really want to try the generic sport game out of curiosity ; will I pay it the same price I paid for Fallout ?
Of course not! I'm going to download it.

It's in that context I had the "pay what you want idea", I'm not pretending I'm the first one to ever had this idea.
The World of Goo experiment is a rare exeption in the game industry, I bet that if every last developpers, including the big shots, used this as the default mode of payment profits would soar up.
I realise this is a big leap almost noone is ready to make.

Now nobody remember it and this post will probably be thorougly ignored, but it still feel good.

Paying a penny is down right tragic though...if there is a "pay what you want model", there should be a reasonable minimum value...

I agree, bargaining shouldn't be one sided, maybe 1$ minimum is better.

 

[incal11]

So the reason it's a big leap that nobody is willing to make is because it's a dumb-ass idea.

That's about what I was told a year ago.

You did not bother to read my post to the end, I agree that 1 cent is too low as a minimum, I said bargaining should not be one sided.
Maybe the minimum could be set at 1, 5, maybe 10$ depending on the game.

Maybe you could redo your math with those points in mind:
-It needs to be experimented but it's not beyond imaginings that a large part of those who paid a cent would have paid a dollar if that was the minimum instead.
-I'm not sure you counted the total number of sales this game made since it came out, you're not very clear on this.
-Then you could add in the number of people who would have bought it instead of downloading it, world of goo being one of the most pirated game it is significant, I'm sure you can see it even if you are extremely cynical. This idea did came in a discussion about how to solve game piracy after all (please, reread my previous post about this).

I'll take the time to do the calcul myself in pessimist mode later.