Comments on: Why are wargames so expensive?

By: Battles from Bulge out – 2nd mortgage required for purchase « After Action Reporter

Thu, 27 May 2010 07:33:29 +0000

[...] blogged about this before and nothing has changed and nothing is likely to. I guess I’ll give up on any plan to play [...]

By: Drood

Drood — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 22:34:04 +0000

Also, hope you update soon:) (He said as a shameless excuse to post his website that he’d forgotten to mention last time:))

By: Drood

Drood — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 22:32:37 +0000

I just paid over $100 on Matrix’s site for the hard copy of the new War in the Pacific! I have never EVER paid that much for a game, not by a long shot.

The high prices stop me buying lots of games. I’ve wanted to get Operational Art of War III since release, but I am NOT paying that for it. I don’t care if it’s the greatest thing since sliced bread.

Pricing like this is why software piracy is so rife. It’s a gouge, pure and simple. Someone I know has friends at Matrix and during their big Christmas sale last year (or was it the year before? I lost track of time) they saw HUGE sales. I know I bought multiple titles. (Advanced Tactics for starters.)

Actually I bought that and Puresim Baseball (and one other. I forget the name) in 2007, and last Christmas I picked up Harpoon.

It’s very disappointing as a fan to essentially be punished for having niche tastes.

Ah well.

Love the site BTW. Been browsing around it. Full of win!

By: TinyPirate

TinyPirate — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 09:44:53 +0000

You and me both, but it seems the publishers don’t agree. I really think there’s a general gamer audience for the star wargames that these publishers own. Bundle them up and ship them while there’s still an OS that will run them. Steam would be perfect.

By: maas

maas — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 02:17:09 +0000

I am a new wargamer who would purchase downloadable Matrix Games if they were in the $20 price range (as opposed to $50-60). If Matrix Games were on Steam and showed up as a weekend deal for 75% off they would see the same 1500% increases as mentioned above. I think they are limiting their market by keeping their prices artificially high.

By: TinyPirate

TinyPirate — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 11:45:18 +0000

Well, your rule of thumb is largely true – except when I’m playing BloodBowl! Which is awesome

But I do get your point that the games often seem to deliberately make themselves hard to understand and hard to follow. That being said, I think there are developers and games who can bring the grogs and the gamers together in a perfect consensual union of geeky pleasure (legality varying by state).

Recently I would point to the success of Uniwar on the iPhone and the enjoyment people are getting out of BloodBowl to demonstrate that there’s great strategy and even PC-boardgaming out there, just you won’t see much of it from the “big” name strategy publishing houses who prefer to charge a lot and sniff their noses at non-grog gamers. Their loss.

By: peterb

peterb — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 13:36:39 +0000

Matrix seems to have staked out this position – along with Shrapnel Games, I guess – as Game Publisher To The Grognards. This means they’re basically selling into a boutique sector of the market, and I think they’re probably right in believing that that market is fairly inelastic. Lowering the price to $20 isn’t going to convince someone who doesn’t play wargames to suddenly buy Battlefront (shudder).

It’s a shame from my perspective because I don’t think there’s anything intrinsic about these games that makes them not appeal to the public as a whole. It’s largely about user interface, which is something that can be solved by planning and technical implementation.

My vague rule of thumb is “If the game by default, when resolving combat, actually has little pictures of dice on the screen, it’s directed at the grognards and the UI is probably hopeless.” Those games are going to not change in price, because purchases aren’t driven by lower prices, but by the appearance in the market of new addicts.