DayZ's sales performance: A hard lesson learned for developers

Lets take DayZ, 999rur atm for alpha (guess liek 1500rur at release), and Mass Effect 3, 799 pre-order (999 after release).
Ok, so we got a "never finished" indie game and AAA title from greedy corporation.
From here i can clearly see which worth its price.

I'm seeing your thread as, 'I paid full price for the game, don't let other people to buy it cheaper than me'.

DayZ is overly hyped, it was the reason ARMA II CO was top in steam sales for a long time. Now ARMA is all but forgotten. It's selling a lot of copies right now because of that hype. Once the hype dies down, people will only buy the game if it is good enough, and if the devs can't make it good enough for it's price, they will be desperate enough to throw the game in the bundle bin and get some more sales from that. So you should tell the devs to not get lazy seeing all that money and keep working on the game.

You are using one overly hyped game, which was hyped even before it came on steam I might add (mod doesn't count), to tell all indie devs to not give discounts. Just because DayZ managed to get sales doesn't mean every indie game can. Most indie games are released and quickly forgotten. Their only hope of getting sales is discounts. Your idea is a very good way to kill indie gaming.

tl;dr Bundles or large discounts are good way for new indie devs to get recognition. If their games turn out to be good, next time they make a game, it won't need to get bundled quickly or give overly large discounts. But for new indie devs, it's a necessity.

Also, DayZ will apparently be more expensive when released, so people are buying it now rather than paying more later. Another reason, it's in the top.

"worth the price" is a big term you're waving around for a terrible alpha of a game whose developer already has shown that if he loses interest no matter his promises he will just leave.

You're forgetting a pretty important part of all this which is that there is a huge difference between Joe the indie dev and Bohemia Interactive.

This isn't Bohemia Interactive's first game and I somehow doubt the success of this game alone will decide whether they can pay rent in 3 months.

I hate the fact that it tells developers they don't even have to finish their games to achieve high sales. In my humble opinion, there are far too many early access games on Steam right now with warnings about being buggy, broken, trim on content or otherwise unfinished.

Funny thing is, I've seen gameplay of it, and it is hardly in a playable state for anyone that hasn't alpha/beta tested before. So I really don't understand. There are a lot of full fledged games with a lot more content that are completely done and bug free(mostly)

So... WtF?

i cant disagree with him. i mean, he's got a point. if you believe your product is good, you dont need to sell out cheaply right out of the gate. Skyrim, MP3, Sleeping Dogs, basically AAA titles have all been in the same path. Hype it up, enjoy the full sale, then gradually discount them within slow periods of time. Whatever works, ofc customers want all titles to be bundled right from the start, i mean who doesnt wish to have Assassin's Creed bundle with the newest Creed title as the bta, lol.

I get what he's saying, they need to maximize their income first. Whatever works, it works for them because they have a well-known and pretty much an anticipated title. I've also wondered how does straight to bundle from start help indies. 1$ minus fee and donation, cant be getting that much income. At least i heard Fez was maximizing their income with the same slow discount method. Pretty sure many indie titles that are really good can follow the same path instead of selling out asap to get max audience but not max income.

They've rebuilt the game from the ground up to create the standalone. And the mod was free because you had to buy Arma II to play and guess who made the mod? Now it's moving on and is no longer a part of the base game it once was, so it is its own beast and should be treated as such just like any other game.

Something I do need to point out here is the whole sales argument. They can't. There is a minimum spacing from the time you launch on steam before you can get pushed to any of the sales. I know this because I have a few developer friends that I work with who were turned down for the summer sale because they had just launched to early access themselves.

Some things take time. And if you don't feel it's worth it, then don't buy in. There are plenty who will. Just like with Infestation: Survival Stories, except this one is a bit better.

I think the message was always clear; IF your game is really good, you won't need to heavily discount the game. But that's not true for many games with the high standards of today's consumers. In the end the heavy discounts are meant to target people who would otherwise never buy their copycat game and if a really game sucks, that's basically everyone so might as well bundle it.

I think most people know about how to sell a lot of games. Make them good. Problem is, it seems not as many people are getting original ideas and if they are, they want or need the money quickly. The equation for most of them is, how can i make money. The problem is it should be, how can i make the best game while making money. Short term looks is how most company and devs are.

Uh no, DayZ is just a trend, like minecraft and dota. It's popularity is making it more popular. This is especially the case with the more casual gamers. Of course the popularity of a game would make them think that it's quality - it must be if so many people play it.

The lessons business oriented developers have learned are 1: word of mouth is powerful, 2: gotta jump on that bandwagon. That's why we have a million zombie and/or sandbox games right now.

DayZ for gays

I think bundles have spoiled us beyond repair, I was fine with the occasional humble bundle because it felt special and unique, but now we're seeing bundles week after week. I don't think I've been desensitized, but I've grown to appreciate how bundles worked before, and am saddened by indie devs feeling the need to throw their games into the bargain bin so early on. To be honest, games like Magicka were in my eyes the prime candidates for bundles, games that have been given a chance to run their course

Anyhow I can't begin to describe how disappointing it is to see people complain about a $25 being sold for, I don't know, $2.50 just because it was previously sold for $2.25 or some shit like that. It's just annoying and tiresome to see people constantly bitch about reasonably priced games. I remember wanting to buying a console, and looking at the prices of games and it just reminded me how great getting even 50% off on a game is.

People are starting to skip bundles because 5 games for $ 1 is not worth anymore unless there 's some triple A title. Put this together with how easy is to
publish something nowadays and you 'll get a similar scenario to the pre -1983 crash : no quality control and an oversaturated market full of cheap clones and
no innovations whatsoever. The catastrophic scenario doesn' t look too far and some medium sized publishers are already gone , like THQ.

Except that you're overlooking the genre appeal and the game's strengths.
You could have said the same thing about Minecraft.

The reason it sells so well despite a lack of huge discounts or other bundled goodies is because it has proven to be fun, and promises to get better. In the case of DayZ it's the idea of a standalone away from ARMA 2, and it has a large fan-following as well as a popular genre (one that is often done quite badly). These are all factors that add up to strong sales, and doesn't really raise any real red flags against bundles or sales.

On steam, you'll actually find that most new games get a small pre-order discount, and then once made available they stay at full price for a while, regardless of any big sales going on. This is more a lesson in how quality and perhaps customer service / fan communication can keep the sales in an elevated state, and how re-hashed pre-forumulated or half-assed games only garner strong sales when at a discount.

Why do you compare bundling/post-release sales with pre-release sales performance? Many of those games that are ending up in a bundle or on a -75% sale were having a very good sales performance in their first days on Steam.

I agree with everything you say about the need to focus on quality and creativity instead of superstitious marketing tactics but I think this comparison is very far-fetched. While I love the idea that a real indie game is getting so popular and would love for it to stay that way, it's only rational to believe that it's going to wear off, go on sale a year from now or eventually end up in a bundle.

After all, it's only a game and gamers are very impatient and impulsive creatures, majority of them being interested in playing a game only near it's release (thus the initial sales spikes on steam are normal). I believe most indie devs would like to create a great, lasting game that is defending itself with quality and not marketing tactics...but games are similar to art in the sense that sometimes it just doesn't work and isn't received well by the audience. Unless dev's sole intention is releasing a really crappy game and cashing in on it's initial sales spike and then repeatedly putting it on sale (i.e. Garry's Incident and such) - I believe devs shouldn't be badmouthed for still trying to earn some money for work they put in their ill-received piece of art.

EDIT: I thought you seem to want to start a discussion here and then you reply to some people with "you don't have any education and your earnings make me sad" instead of counter-arguments?

I guess no civilized discussion for you then, I'm out :3

Who are you talking to? I didn't buy any DayZ

What a terrible analogy.

"unknowingly hurting their early buyers and loyal fans"

hurting?

"hurting their early buyers and loyal fans"

no they are not "Hurting" the early buyers/loyal fans.
these early buyers/loyal fans are just that, they buy the game at full price.

OP makes no sense and has made me lose even more respect for humanity.

If I were selling a product, I personally wouldn't tarnish my products value and follow Call of Duty's footsteps in having 50% off tops if you're lucky. YOu gotta make money off these spoiled gamers, ya know?

I don't have the data to back this up, but apparently neither do you. The way I see it, it's quite the opposite. Bundles are very sustainable, because LOTS of people pay cheap, the developer makes lots of money and, OMG, there's still room for charity! And bundle is like a promotion. It's not up forever, and the game is still selling on its own, even if not so much. Many people only get to hear about a game or company through a bundle like that.

And DayZ is ONE game.

DayZ just came out last like week. Why in the world would you expect it to be discounted already?? That doesn't even make sense -- and even more so given it's popularity.

Also, if you take into account that it is going to go up in price as development continues and it transitions from alpha, to beta, to full release, then in a sense it is technically being offered at a discount compared to what you will be seeing in the future as content is added and the game is fleshed out more. It's worth noting that Project Zomboid is following the same model.

I agree that pay-what-you-want bundles are not a sustainable business model, but due to it's popularity DayZ is a special exception when it comes to discounting to entice buyers. The reality is that most games do not fall into that category.

There is nothing wrong with early access or its pricing. I consider it merely a pre-order and the only difference is that you can play the game right away, however in its current (more or less buggy) state. You can still wait for proper release if you want. If anything is bad, than ENDLESS BETA some games are using for months/years as an excuse not early access.

"it is fair to say that its sales performance is a very strange phenomenon in the post-humblebundle gaming society."
Yeah, it's totally baffling why people would pay for a game based on a mod that had tons of fun with.