Adventure Gamers - Forums

Actually I think they actually get nearly as much money of a English download at Steam or GoG as they get of a German box-release. They sell those games at 30€ here an I bet they never get more than the half of the price of a box, just because of traders and taxes. Since their strategy generally seems to be an agressive starting price, most full-length adventures here are sold at 40€ here in Germany, they just take the lowest price possible for them to reach a broader audience. They won’t even care which version you get, because they get their money anyway. Oh, and it works. Just look at the sales for Daedalic games at GoG. They’ve increased much due to the promo and Carsten Fichtelmann’s (the Daedalic CEO) presentation at the CD-Project conference. So, either you get a box or a cheaper download.

About the games, well they are definitive the best Daedalic games to date and also by far the best modern adventure games out there. Harvey’s New Eyes might do some things different that many people liked about the The Breakout but is much superior game, with a high depth in it’s plot and (at least in German) a incredibly funny and intelligent humor.

I hesitate to get involved… but…
Theres two forces at work. The first is, when you sell a boxed version at launch, you dont want to undersell it by making the download a cheaper alternative. If theyr not priced the same then youre discouraging people from buying the boxes you spent money on. And manufacturing the box can be very expensive, so releases that include a physical copy should be more expensive across the board (things like kickstarters and limited prints break the rules here).
The second is, unfortunately things get priced based on what people are willing to pay. I remember a story where trent reznor realized his music was being sold for much more in one region than in others, so he called up the label and asked them why. And the answer he got was simple: they decided that group of people was willing to pay more.
I dont pay launch prices anymore usually, because a $60 game such as dishonored certainly isnt costing them that much to get the download to me, and in a matter of weeks theres sure to be opportunities to get it half that or less. But in the case of daedalic i wouldnt feel too bad about it, because the pricing decisions theyr making are probably based on what they need to do to survive.

Well, I just finished the German edition of Chaos auf Deponia, and it was awesome!
There were some plot twists I didn’t like, but that appears to be intentional of the writers, since they got resolved in a nice way.

Really great game!

Fien - 20 October 2012 02:34 PM

In no way, shape or form…? You can deny it till you’re blue in the face, but it’s in fact EXACTLY what you said:

English gamers pay less because they get none of those advantages.

Okay, slightly lazy wording on my part. When taken in context of the (conveniently-ignored) sentence before it, I was clearly trying to say that English gamers get the benefit of paying less because we get less for our money. Or as zane said, it’s what English gamers are willing to pay for less benefit than German gamers get. Like you, I don’t set Daedalic’s pricing, so I have no idea what all went into their reasoning, and didn’t ever claim to.

But you have changed your tune twice since. First it was the long wait of 3 weeks for a game which is inferior to the original, then it was the box, and now you’re focusing on a pricey download, while casually admitting that “economics” play a big part after all.

Uhh, no. I’ve been clear all along that all three are factors, stating in no uncertain terms from the beginning that cost of disc version vs. download is the most important factor. Siddhi tried to isolate the timing point, but that was a strawman argument.

Yes, it’s the same scenario. If this “simple reality” as you call it, is the reason people pay less for a localized game, then I fail to see why it should not apply to the localized German version of an American adventure. But the truth is of course that Germans do NOT pay less than Americans.

Now it’s you with the strawman. You’ve singled out the localization as if that were EVER a standalone point.  It wasn’t then, it isn’t now, making this comparison moot.   

You’ve lost me completely.

Obviously that happened much earlier than now.

This is just a typical internet argument: nitpick any point, no matter how irrelevant, just to create misdirection. Seriously, what the hell are you even arguing?  That the price of the German download version is too expensive?  Can’t be, since I’ve already agreed to that, TWICE.  So what, then?  That your early, native language, boxed version of the game should cost the same as the late, English-translated, download-only version?  And if you do think that, I’ve already suggested how you can make that happen, TWICE. Because, you know, you have that option with a disc version.

You paid a reasonable price for a boxed game by any reasonable standard, so it seems you just want to be angry about something without really knowing what. And since responding to that has already take up far too much of my time, we’re done.  (Feel free to rant on in my absence. I’m sure the poor English saps that would trade places with you in a heartbeat will shower you with sympathy.)

zane - 20 October 2012 03:29 PM

I hesitate to get involved… but…
Theres two forces at work. The first is, when you sell a boxed version at launch, you dont want to undersell it by making the download a cheaper alternative. If theyr not priced the same then youre discouraging people from buying the boxes you spent money on. And manufacturing the box can be very expensive, so releases that include a physical copy should be more expensive across the board (things like kickstarters and limited prints break the rules here).

I agree that probably is a big part of the reasoning for the high download pricing. But I wonder if it’s actually true in practice. I think we’ve probably reached the stage where people will opt for boxed games or downloads based solely on which version they prefer now, not on whether the other version is comparably priced. The Kickstarters are actually an interesting test case, since of course people had to pay more for the boxed versions, and seemed perfectly willing to do so in many cases.

yeah, kickstarters, and the pay-what-you-want model are both pretty fascinating. Games could be priced completely differently 5 years from now.

You know what, adventure developers should just get rid of the boxed edition and do download only. They can do a limited run of boxes for pre-orders or collectors editions, but otherwise they should focus on digital distribution. When they do that, they can get it into Steam, GOG, bundles etc. I think they would make a lot more money that way.

Super stoked to pre-order Chaos on Deponia for 11.99 on Gog and I just finished Deponia on Monday so the timing couldn’t have been better. I hope that the third part in the series comes out as quickly.

Daedalic has really impressed me with their games. I have played The Whispered World, A New Beginning and Deponia. I really like the classic gameplay, the stories and the logic puzzles too. They are now my second favorite developer after Wadjet Eye Games!

I am excited to play The Dark Eye: Chains of Satinav but am waiting for either a Steam sale or Gog release. I am not sure about Edna and Harvey though. Will there be a review of Harvey’s New Eyes up soon? I’ll probably wait in any case since I have a huge backlog at the moment.

So many good adventure games coming out.

Such a shame if they are digital download in english only. Digital downloads don’t interest me, I only buy boxed retail games.

The problem with making boxed versions is that unless you sell it at a higher price compared to the digital version (if prices were put fairly on both products anyway) you’re basically losing money on each sale of the boxed version.

So if the boxed version is 20 dollars and so is the digital, you are losing money on the boxed version (again, unless digital is overpriced), and if digital is cheaper then almost everyone will buy that instead except a few hundred hardcore players, and then the production costs for the boxed version will be even higher.