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Fenixp: Depends on who you ask ;-) Loved the ending. I feel like people who complain about it wanted a different story than what Firewatch actually is.
Yep!I actually liked the ending a lot(and the rest of the game of course)and the pc version is fine performance wise,played from start to finish on a 750ti and tested a bit on a 770 and on max settings it never dips below 30,it's not perfect but it's not dreamfall chapters.

As for prices,as others have pointed out it's more of a subjective matter for the customer,i would be willing to buy a shadowrun game or a grim fandango remastered on the day of release but i wouldn't pay 36 euros for The Witness for example,not even 10 i guess since i dislike myst like games,that doesn't mean of course that game is not worth that amount of money to people who love the genre
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Brasas: Bottom line - this stuff cannot be calculated even assuming perfect information and computation power.
Well yes, that's the point. However, some macro observations can be made, and it's all the more valuable because there are seriously people who'd argue against it on first principles.

For example, I'm a big fan of a certain sport. Said sport allows men and women to participate, but there's no women's league. It's heavily strength- and endurance-based, and men have a yooge advantage. So arguments can be made (and probably have been and are being made) that there should be a less physically demanding women's league, so more women would be able to enjoy the sport and win and feel all warm and fuzzy. Then again, arguments can me made that a separate-but-equal league would be treated as second-rate, not worthy of attention, fewer women would participate and the amount of fuzzy feelings would actually decrease. I'm in the first camp (and not just because I won the national championship in 2015 on a fluke), and I would respectfully disagree with a member of the other camp. But both of us will agree that those who think that women shouldn't be allowed to ride bikes at all are dead wrong and also major assholes.

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Brasas: Is that what you consider being a radical skeptic?
No, I mean the hypocrites and genuinely crazy people who think all knowledge is unreliable and therefore completely worthless. Meanwhile, most of them keep relying on [unreliable] knowledge in their daily life. In this case it'd be something like "how can we know when people are happy, what if Putin orders you to say you're happy or he'll shoot you?", "what if people are happier when they're suffering?", etc.
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Starmaker: snip
First, congrats. :) Second, I quite deslike the postmodern rejection of objective truth type thought you describe. I see I misread more differences of opinion in your original reply than were actually present.

Sorry about that.
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Brasas: But can you imagine a price based on % of income? Tell us your salary and we will charge you for the game accordingly. ;) I actually hear some traffic fines are now done like that in some EU countries....
Yes they are, and it is the only way to do it properly. That's a totally different issue from the pricing of goods though. The price of a product should be at the "sweet spot" level (which as you say can be hard to find). The size of a fine however, should act as a deterrent against incurring that fine. If that is set at a fixed level, low enough that people with low incomes won't go bankrupt from incurring it, then it does not work well as a deterrent against people with very high incomes. A fine should "hurt" equally, no matter who incurs it, otherwise it doesn't really work.
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Wishbone: Well, it's about finding the "sweet spot" price that maximises the Price * Sales calculation.
It's more complicated than this, because there's no single price. You set a price, get some players, then have a sale, get more players, then at a later date have an even better sale, get more players. There's some sense in acquiring players slowly, because there's need to support them, and it's better to get a few early, fix the game based on their input, then get more when the game is more stable. On the other hand, getting a lot of players early can build momentum, assuming that more players think the game is good.

It's hard to get right. Still, as a general rule it's easy to reduce a price over time, but increasing it is more difficult (less likely to be accepted), so it's better to start off too high and adjust than start too low.
A lot of people seem to miss the fact that "a product is worth whatever people will pay for it" goes both ways. If a developer can charge $20 for their game and people are willingly buy it, it's not overpriced.

I think most indie games are ridiculously undervalued, and I'm glad that things are starting to go in the other direction.

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Fenixp: Problem with pricing an indie game is that, these days, you basically have to think along the lines of "So, when it drops 75% off, can we make profit anyway?" I feel like today's marketplace forces you to overestimate price of your game in order for it to feel "like a bargain" when it goes on sale - even for a $5 game, people will wait for a sale or bundle.

As for Price:Length ratio, every person is free to decide what's worth their money to them and what is not. That being said, I will never forget majority of Firewatch or Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons, whereas most of my 120 hours of Heroes of Might and Magic III are long gone from my memory and I would definitely not want developers to artificially pad their games just to be "worth" their asking price.
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Cyraxpt: the ending isn't great
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Fenixp: Depends on who you ask ;-) Loved the ending. I feel like people who complain about it wanted a different story than what Firewatch actually is.
So much this.
Post edited February 25, 2016 by jefequeso
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Fenixp: Depends on who you ask ;-) Loved the ending. I feel like people who complain about it wanted a different story than what Firewatch actually is.
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jefequeso: So much this.
I love how many people agree with ending of Firewatch being great.
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jefequeso: So much this.
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Fenixp: I love how many people agree with ending of Firewatch being great.
I think it wasn't as good as the rest of the game, but it's the best it could have been considering what needed to be wrapped up (the character drama and the thriller part).
In a "totally unexpected turn of events" (ahem), most of negative steam reviews (and forum topics) of Superhot are about its price/length ratio:
http://store.steampowered.com/app/322500/
Developers can charge whatever they want for the game.

If customers don't think it worth it, then they don't buy the game. Developers can either stick to their guns or change the pricing.

That's the way it works. Throwing the adjective "indie" in the above sentences doesn't change anything.

Honestly, the developer's only mistake was actually responding to the criticism. The Steam Community is one of the most toxic communities in gaming history. By getting defensive about his work and diving in, the devs are, predictably, being shouted down and mocked. And I'm sure everyone is having a great time making fools out of them

You don't ever 'win' arguments against the Steam community, you just end up looking bad.
Post edited February 26, 2016 by TheTome56