As the title says, is it more worth it to sell your game as paid on itch. Or is it more worth it to publish it as free and earn money through donations + the larger amount of people that will play it.
I know a lot of people will say “it depends”, but i mean in YOUR experience, how does revenue from paid games compare to revenue and larger playerbase of free games?
For Itch.io, I'd say it's better free.
Other stores, like steam, would say with a price.
I have an indi paid game, between 100 - 200 sales on steam, on itch it doesn't even reach 10 (note, I'm not complaining, I'm just commenting the numbers).
To publish on steam, you must pay a fee and meet several requirements, if your game is free, many people will think that it has some trap or that it is a poor quality game.
On itch, the vast majority of games and game consumption are free-to-play indie games. People do not see bad, that the game is free, on the contrary, it is precisely what they are looking for.
What you should not do is place the same game with a price in one store and free in another, otherwise a group of people will feel cheated.
This is a thing that should generally be planned from the start of the design. If you have designed and produced something meant to be sold, you are making sure to take all consideration of things like audience and competition into account. And for the prospective consumers who are not comfortable with buying from an unknown publisher, you're publishing a free separate demo version so everybody can try before they buy.
If your product wasn't planned to be sold, then those considerations have been weightless, and you've probably made a game best put up for free.
Like androidlove I also have no income, so the only things in my life are whatever is made available for free, and the people publishing free games might be the only reason I haven't gone insane years ago (at least I think I haven't...) . Buuuuut itch takes commissions from sales and I <3 itch so I appreciate also those creators who are selling their games because they are supporting the itch that makes all these free games in one place possible. So, create something silly and simple to share with us all for free, or create something marvelous enough for people to pay money for. Whichever is your inspiration, you are doing it in the right place.
I'm an advocate of paid games. First of all, because making a good game is a lot of work, and in my opinion work should be paid. I mean, you don't expect your plumber or dentist to work for free, do you? So why should a developer? Then with a paid game, you help itch.io because you give them a share for hosting all these (mostly) free games. And only with paid games, you can make sales. I have paid and free games in my repertory, but every paid game also has a free demo (you can play at least the first hour or the first level of the real game, so you can test it, and see if you like it and how it works). "Pay what you want" seems a good option, but I never earned a dime with it. Last but not least, a free game is no guarantee that more people will play it.
It's always good to give back to devs if you enjoy their games but no everybody is in a position to do that. Especially today with the rising cost of living world wide. If your game is of a high enough quality by all means charge for it. A donations model can work nicely if you treat your followers right and look after them. You will gain more and more people will be inclined to offer a financial kick back.
Many devs are already at a massive loss after the purchase of assets, music etc. Charging for a high quality game that's taken years to create by a small team or solo dev is justified.
I went from having a some $1-4 games to making them all free with no option to give me money. Gamedev is a (big) hobby for me and I don't want the extra stress of founding a company, doing all the tax stuff and checking updates on new laws.
I did make a few bucks but it wasn't worth the hassle. If one of my games goes big and boat-loads of people download it I might consider quitting my normie job and going the professional gamedev route though.
I hate to say it, but I have to agree with you on the point that graphics matter. I try to maintain that I believe quality of graphics has nothing to do with the quality of a game, yet I find myself instinctually glossing over games that don't have eye-catching graphics, and stopping only on the ones that are fun to look at. There's no getting around it, your would-be players will skip past your product if it doesn't look the way they need to to.
This model makes the most sense to me, as long as your games maintain a shared narrative. If they don't, a free demo with limited capabilities is a similar approach. This way you don't lose players to the price tag, and people who have played your first episode/demo and like it are likely to pay for subsequent episodes/the full game.
Not saying this is the way to go, but i just released a game and my method was to make a full version of it paid and to provide a fairly sizeable free demo( around a third of the game is playable for free). I still think free demos are a very fair way to give people the chance to see if they actually like the game. No idea if this works in term of overall views/plays. Time will show.
