The Castle Doctrine Forums

Hey Jason, I registered an account just for this thread. (But now will hopefully participate more in the community )

I just wanted to throw another voice out there to support what you're doing in your pricing model. I work in games and work closely with monetization managers, marketing, user acquisition, sales, product managers, producers etc... I'll just start by saying I wholeheartedly support what you're doing with the pricing model, just so there's no confusion over my personal opinion. Also, it may not matter, but I also wanted to say that I have bought the game and have played it for roughly 25-30 hours within 3 days - great job!

A lot of the things that you mention in your posts are so spot on that it's hard to believe you haven't worked in the same capacity as I have for some time. You've either reaaally done your research, or you have great business sense. As you can see from the forum reactions, your announcement is NOT what people wanted to hear. You're right in that people have been conditioned for sales. What you're doing right now is analagous to "delivering the bad news", and you're being shot for it. What you describe as sales hurting overall revenue actually subscribes to a very large school of thought, and while it's still emerging, a lot of people are against it. They're against it for the reasons that other users have posted here - "See how much money we made when it was on sale??", "We don't make anything when it's not on sale!", "We get free front page exposure during sales!". Because of all of these more "obvious" reasons, it's hard to go against the grain even for large companies, but sales and marketing are slowly moving towards more of this model of NO sales. It's a slow transition and we're testing as much as possible as we go, and a lot of people are still really against it as it hurts our short-term revenue but I find that so far it does smooth out the graph of sales over time and I'm a big proponent of it.

Also when I say "sale" what I really mean is "discount-pricing". One thing that's starting to gain traction over discount-pricing is value-add. Instead of putting something on sale for 50% and having to find twice as many users, what can be done to add value to the game such that users will want to come in? This requires getting a little more creative. I bought the game when I heard about the "Steal real money" contest. I bought it at $8, but I also would have bought it at $16. I bought it and I convinced 3 other friends to buy it as well. Another friend is on the fence. That's a great example of a value add

Anyway I think I'm starting to ramble.

Just my 2c. Will be glad to share more thoughts/experience and answer any questions if you're interested. I really just wanted you to know that the world isn't against you in going for this pricing model.