Hello everyone!
Me and my friends just released our first game: Kotto and Kokone Ultra Adventures (Appreciate if you checked it out)!
And we were having some hefty discussions regarding the price of the game, specially since there aren't many resources online (most I could find are videos with "How much money my indie game made" an related).
It seems hard to find a general rule of thumb to decide how much gameplay time is proportional to price (specially since a long gameplay time is different than quality gameplay time). Our game takes ~1.5h to complete, this is definitely longer than many free short games, but definitely not longer than other very popular RPGs. I would say gameplay time is one of the most important factors when factoring price, but is there a less arbitrary way of deciding these values?
Furthermore, should games aim for high purchasing power individuals rather than average individual sales? Market dynamics usually make so that a cheaper product leads to more sales, which usually lead to more money for the developers and a better price for each individual customer. That said, there are so many quality games for free/with patreon backing that it makes very discouraging for users to pay for individual games as is. We evaluated the idea of making the game free and offer some kind of paid service to subside, but we couldn't really think of any actual service.
I think most game devs want their games to be played first and to make money in second place, but the balancing can be very challenging, how did you do it in your game?
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In our game we analyzed different aspects and just settled in for $2.00, but yeah the discussions have been intense regarding that.