In conclusion, don’t try to defend Steel Beasts’ price. That’s before we even get into psychological motives, such as one of Slitherine Group’s own developers being accused of having paranoid personality disorder Ssnake’s already mentioned intention to keep out impulse buyers or when all else fails the “this is the way we’ve always done it/not invented here” mentality.
With this, combined with the fact that oligopolies are more profitable than a relatively free market, they don’t have an economic interest in expanding the audience. Furthermore, said oligopoly would erode if the market expanded its audience, since a larger audience would bring in more developers. This demonstrates that Slitherine Group doesn’t have a good grasp on economics. Oligopolies are subject to what are known as kinked demand curves, where the elasticity of demand can change sharply depending on price. These create a high barrier to entry, and thus the indie military games market is what is known as an oligopoly. The indie military games market has a tiny audience, no interest in expanding its audience due to perceptions of the audience being tiny, and a tradition of supporting games over the long run. Which leads me to a side note about what these four developers do share in common. The three developers that responded to Rock Paper Shotgun are part of the indie military games market, just like eSimGames. It doesn’t, for the exact same reason that applies to the others: they don’t have eSimGames’ military contracts as a primary source of income. They cite inelastic demand curves, thinking that this magically solves everything. Slitherine Group’s response looks the most impressive, but doesn’t hold up. Shrapnel Games’ response doesn’t apply here for the same reason, and adds a pointless tangent about how great it is that they can keep selling at these prices. John Tiller’s normally valid response of actively supporting his titles doesn’t apply here, since he doesn’t have eSimGames’ military contracts as a primary source of income. The responses he got don’t help Ssnake at all.
Last year, Rock Paper Shotgun did an article urging indie military game developers to cut prices on their old games. And why is he even talking about the conversion rate, given that he’s not spending a cent on community-generated videos?Īll of this brings us back to the subject of the indie military games market. Maybe if more enthusiast sales were the goal, and if the price wasn’t so high to begin with, then the conversion rate would have been higher. Of course, all of you miss an important point that Ssnake himself admitted In short, the two of you are comparing apples and oranges. And Steel Beasts locks you into an armored warfare experience, whereas DCS allows you experiences ranging from WWII fighter aircraft to modern air combat to helicopters to basic ground warfare with air support.
Buying DCS: Flaming Cliffs 3 and DCS: Combined Arms delivers similar, but not identical in detail, gaming experiences to buying Flaming Cliffs 3 and Steel Beasts. Secondly, DCS DLC is so varied as to practically constitute whole new games. Firstly, DCS DLC requires DCS World, which is free. Neither can I think much of Nate Lawrence or RogueSnake in their statements using DCS and its DLC totaling over $800.
In short, it doesn’t sound like the current Steel Beasts Pro PE price model can compensate for increased tech support overhead in any meaningful way.
I don’t know if their classroom license costs have changed, but $125 per Steel Beasts Pro PE copy sold + $40 upgrades doesn’t sound like much compared to $1,800 per Steel Beasts Pro copy sold + undoubtedly more expensive upgrades by military clients, and all of their military clients in total have a lot more people than the civilian enthusiast market currently provides.