Why does KSP need to be extremely expensive

[Slam_Jones]

Hey OP, (@Hans Kerman) were you able to get a copy of the game?  Depending on your region, I may be able to help out a bit...

Edited December 14, 2017 by Slam_Jones

[Magzimum]

This game was the best 40 euro I ever spent.

And personally, I love the funky junkyard textures of the parts. The physics engine is real, and the challenge that the game gives you is real. But the Kerbals and the parts just look funny, and personally I love that. The graphics does not give me the impression that the game is unfinished... on the contrary, I think that the game is quite polished by now. But rather than giving the game a layer of blingbling graphics, the devs improved the VAB and SPH, so you can get fuel overlays and generally more options to put stuff together. They created autostruts, so we can use less normal struts. Sure, some people hate it... haters gonna hate. I just love it, and I use autostrut all the time. And most importantly, they made the game stable.

I know no other game where you can slap together some random parts, and throw it into the universe.

[Lord Aurelius]

1 hour ago, Corona688 said:

Ah, fair enough.   I agree that there's room for improvement in a lot of areas, but you mentioned graphics four or five times in one list of gripes, it looked like your main objection.

Yeah, I probably should have used different words or been a bit more explicit in what I was getting at. Given your art background, it probably drives you crazy when people throw out the word graphics like I did when they actually mean something else. And I even watched an Extra Credits episode on YouTube not long ago on this whole issue...

[SiriusRocketry]

I bought the game for NZD23.99 on the Steam Summer Sale. 

 

Boy am I glad I did. Coming up on 350 hours, and so far I have (in my career save):

Dropped an atmospheric probe into Jool

Manned landing and return from both Duna and Dres

Orbit around Eve

Mun and Minmus bases

4 space stations in Kerbin orbit

 

And much more

 

[invision]

on sale for 20.00 steam

[Kerbonavt]

To me, KSP has a special kind of longevity.
I bought it some years ago, had a big break and just fell in love with the game again :).

There aren't many games that provide such a replay value, that's one of the reason why the price is ok for me.

 

[Freds]

One picture worth more than one thousand words:

 

[Brofessional]

Publishers have become stingy about reducing base prices because Steam has a major sale at least every 3 months these days. Excluding new releases, most people aren't willing to pay full price for a game anymore when they can just wait a few weeks and pay significantly less.

 If the base price for KSP was $25 then the -40% price would be only $15, which is what most people would end up buying it for. 

That or they have to do a smaller discount, and that doesn't draw as much attention.  Kind of like when stores jack up the prices on items just before Black Friday, then put -50% signs up.  The customer thinks they're getting a great deal because of the big -50% sign, but they're actually only getting say 10% off of the normal price.

 

You can't really blame Squad for not cutting the base price, because it only makes sense from a business standpoint.  Personally I bought the game for just $13 back in 2011.

Edited December 15, 2017 by Brofessional

[Raptor9]

@Hans Kerman, and anyone else waiting for a 50% off sale:

www.humblebundle.com/store/kerbal-space-program?partner=szyzyg&charity=61469

Courtesy of Scott Manley, but only 20 hours left as of this post.

Edited December 15, 2017 by Raptor9

[invision]

kerbal is also still 20.00 on steam 

[Archgeek]

On 12/13/2017 at 6:21 PM, Lord Aurelius said:

Audio pass to add missing sounds and better quality music (some of those audio tracks get really repetitive and annoying, plus no music when in atmo for some reason), plus some chatterer type functionality

I...am genuinely curious...what sound effects are missing?  We've got get engine spool-up/down, we've got multiple rocket sounds, the hilarious new sound landing legs make, that crazy explosion+valve hiss sound for decouplers, normal explosion sounds, the splashdown sound...I'm not sure what's missing.  Does the landing gear sound not affect plane gear?  RCS/vernor sounds would be silly because vaccuum...electric whine of rover wheels?  I guess that might conduct through the chassis.

These are of course guesses.  I want to know what you think is missing.

Also no music in atmo was probably an early design decision: VAB tune => silence on the pad => rockets roaring => space theme marking orbit.  It makes ascents feel really good.  'Could do with some plane flight bgm, though, and maybe some kind of subtle but oppresssive Eve bgm.  However, I'm sure way too many fans like their creepy, silent duna.  _{*sstv signal intesifies*}

[Clockwork13]

I recall buying KSP for $20 or $30. Did the price go up?

[qzgy]

59 minutes ago, Clockwork13 said:

I recall buying KSP for $20 or $30. Did the price go up?

40 USD is the base price as of 1.0 (IIRC)

[Clockwork13]

20 minutes ago, qzgy said:

40 USD is the base price as of 1.0 (IIRC)

I bought the game during 0.23.

[Lord Aurelius]

On 12/22/2017 at 5:52 AM, Archgeek said:

I...am genuinely curious...what sound effects are missing?  We've got get engine spool-up/down, we've got multiple rocket sounds, the hilarious new sound landing legs make, that crazy explosion+valve hiss sound for decouplers, normal explosion sounds, the splashdown sound...I'm not sure what's missing.  Does the landing gear sound not affect plane gear?  RCS/vernor sounds would be silly because vaccuum...electric whine of rover wheels?  I guess that might conduct through the chassis.

These are of course guesses.  I want to know what you think is missing.

Also no music in atmo was probably an early design decision: VAB tune => silence on the pad => rockets roaring => space theme marking orbit.  It makes ascents feel really good.  'Could do with some plane flight bgm, though, and maybe some kind of subtle but oppresssive Eve bgm.  However, I'm sure way too many fans like their creepy, silent duna.  _{*sstv signal intesifies*}

I was thinking rover wheel sounds and deploy sounds for things like solar panels and radiators, and cargo/service bays. Also, RCS/Vernor engines should make some sound in a vacuum due to the fact that they're rocket engines. Same thing goes for Kerbals on EVA with their thrusters. I'm not expecting Star Wars levels of sound effects, but at least some mostly realistic sound cues for actions.

For music, I can see things being quiet just before launch, but once a craft launches it would be nice to have some music in atmo. It's also silly that simply being in an atmosphere results in no music, but everywhere else, including landing on other planets (as long as they don't have an atmosphere) has the same music as outer space. To me it's another inconsistency that doesn't make any sense. Ideally, I wouldn't mind seeing each planet have their own music theme, with different tracks for each of the environments to provide audio cues for switching situations.

[damerell]

On 11/12/2017 at 3:40 PM, Snark said:

There's going to be some minimum price point that they can't go lower than, because it costs a lot of money to make a game, and they have to at least recoup their expenses before they can start seeing a profit.

While I think KSP's price is quite reasonable, this doesn't follow. The marginal cost of selling a copy of a videogame is very low - it was pretty low even before digital distribution, and now it's almost nothing. Even if it turns out a game is a flop and the expenses will never be recouped, it's worth selling copies at a price that doesn't amortise the production costs because they are already spent; it still reduces the losses. The only minimum price point they can't go lower than is the marginal cost of distribution, which is tiny.

Of course, I expect Squad, like anyone, to sell all the $40 copies they can before they start selling $5 copies...

[majNUN]

3 hours ago, Lord Aurelius said:

I was thinking rover wheel sounds and deploy sounds for things like solar panels and radiators, and cargo/service bays. Also, RCS/Vernor engines should make some sound in a vacuum due to the fact that they're rocket engines. Same thing goes for Kerbals on EVA with their thrusters. I'm not expecting Star Wars levels of sound effects, but at least some mostly realistic sound cues for actions.

For music, I can see things being quiet just before launch, but once a craft launches it would be nice to have some music in atmo. It's also silly that simply being in an atmosphere results in no music, but everywhere else, including landing on other planets (as long as they don't have an atmosphere) has the same music as outer space. To me it's another inconsistency that doesn't make any sense. Ideally, I wouldn't mind seeing each planet have their own music theme, with different tracks for each of the environments to provide audio cues for switching situations.

I would also add environmental sounds for Kerbin (Chatterer adds wind and Water Sounds adds a bit after the splash down fx). There's a mod that adds to ship sound fx if you're flying IVA as well as RSC sound fx, docking sound fx, and rover wheel fx. @pizzaoverhead has this page: 

I support a one-man indie game called Rodina, which has music for each planet you visit - and that adds greatly to the ambience of the game.

But the bottom-line is: Why shouldn't Squad give a little more love to sound instead of us having to rely on mods? I would have assumed that it's all part of the polish of a released game.

[Frank_G]

Hmm... i played KSP for years straight and will return to it, once the Update is released... the price is absolutely okay for the bang you get out of the game (and out of your rockets).

[MiffedStarfish]

I got it for £25 in 2014. Best £25 I ever spent.

[Snark]

7 hours ago, damerell said:

While I think KSP's price is quite reasonable, this doesn't follow. The marginal cost of selling a copy of a videogame is very low - it was pretty low even before digital distribution, and now it's almost nothing. Even if it turns out a game is a flop and the expenses will never be recouped, it's worth selling copies at a price that doesn't amortise the production costs because they are already spent; it still reduces the losses. The only minimum price point they can't go lower than is the marginal cost of distribution, which is tiny.

Sure, the marginal cost is really low.  But the fixed cost of actually producing the game, isn't.  They have to pick a price point that will recoup their production costs, or else there's no point in producing the game in the first place.

If you're Blizzard or EA or one of those really big guys that produce AAA titles that sell more copies than the population of a good-sized nation, then they sell so many copies that the fixed cost of producing it is relatively small in comparison.

That's not the case with KSP, though.  It's a niche market.  Squad doesn't release sales numbers, but I bet that the number of copies sold-- or even the number of copies that they can sell-- is going to be pretty limited.  At any price point, no matter how low. 

KSP is wonderful and I'm hopelessly addicted to it and I hope they keep making awesome Kerbal stuff forever... but I'm a weirdo.  It takes a certain kind of person to like to play KSP.  There are only just so many people out there who would ever be interested in playing it, at any price.  Heck, they could give the game away for free, and it would still be only a very small minority of the general population that would play it.  "Engineering and orbital mechanics" is really, really fun for people like you and me who are into this kind of stuff... and completely, utterly boring and intimidating to the 99%+ of the population that aren't.  If I went to one of my loved ones and offered to pay them $5/hour to play this game, they wouldn't take me up on it, because they would regard it as a punishment. 

Just to completely make up some numbers in the absence of any real data at all:

• Let's suppose you want to make a game.  Let's suppose it's a "niche" game that you know will never, ever appeal to the general population-- it would be physically impossible to get 50 million users, ever, even if you gave it away for free.  You're not targeting the mass market; you're targeting a small niche of really, really passionate people, who will buy the game and play it for thousands of hours.
• So, let's say you figure out that there are about 1 million people who could ever buy the game.  That's a hard ceiling; you can't boost it by lowering prices.
• And producing the game isn't free; software engineers and testers and all that stuff is expensive.  So, let's say it costs $10 million to produce the game.  That's a hard floor; you can't produce the game any more cheaply than that without cutting corners that would make the game unappealing to the intended fan base.
• And let's assume for the sake of argument that the marginal cost of selling the game, as you say, is so low that it might as well be zero.
• In that case:  If it costs $10M to make the game, and it can sell to at most 1M people, then that means that there's $10 of development cost per copy built into the game.  So you have to charge more than that in order to make any profit.
• And you're not super motivated to go for bargain-basement prices, either, because although your following is small, it's passionate.  Lowering prices won't sell many more copies... but raising prices won't sell all that many fewer, either.  So you don't have a lot of motivation to lower the price, as long as it's not so high that it puts people off.

 

 

[adsii1970]

Thank you, @Snark for sharing your views. But I would also like to add my comments to what you've already said.

I paid less than $10 for KSP through Steam while it was still in development mode. Although the demo was .18, what I purchased through Steam was .22; I had previously purchased it through the KSP store for around the same price but didn't realize it was the same game. A "duh!" moment... and that's what happens sometimes when you don't know what you already have because you've changed computers... and that's what happened in this case. Anyhow...

Combined, I may have paid anywhere from $20 to $25 for the game - total. Which is why I have no problems paying for DLC. But I digress...

So, according to Steam, I have played KSP for 2,370 hours. And I know that I've also played about the same amount of that on the non-Steam copy I maintain (I play a Steam-version game that's unmodded, or "vanilla" as it's referred to as). So, I'm probably approaching 5,000 hours of play time. That comes out to approximately $0.005 per hour cost. And the more I play, the more it goes down. Even if I paid the full price as it is currently listed on Steam, which is $19.95, I'd still have nearly the same return on use numbers. If I calculated at it's full price, at $39.99 as regularly listed, that's still $0.008 per hour cost. Now with that said, that's not really that expensive considering:

The average ticket price to go see Star Wars VIII in the United States (from my tri-state area as of this morning) is $10.10 and that does not include the drink or popcorn. The movie is 2.5 hours long, which makes it nearly $4.04 per hour cost. And if you add the popcorn and drink, it will go higher.

Considering that with the movie, once it's over, you have to leave the theater or buy another ticket, purchasing KSP gives a greater return of enjoyment on investment. It all depends on where you place the value on how you spend your free time.

[GDJ]

On 2017-12-10 at 9:31 AM, Hans Kerman said:

Why Does Kerbal Space Program Need to be THAT Expensive, $39.99 Wont get you anywhere playerwise, Somewhere around $24.99 Would be more Reasonable

For the amount of replay value and the amount of playtime I've put in, $39.99 is a bargain. The only game I've played as extensively is Gran Turismo, and from #1 to #6 I've paid far more than $39.99.

[Corona688]

9 hours ago, damerell said:

While I think KSP's price is quite reasonable, this doesn't follow. The marginal cost of selling a copy of a videogame is very low - it was pretty low even before digital distribution, and now it's almost nothing. Even if it turns out a game is a flop and the expenses will never be recouped, it's worth selling copies at a price that doesn't amortise the production costs because they are already spent; it still reduces the losses. The only minimum price point they can't go lower than is the marginal cost of distribution, which is tiny.

That they could charge less than they spent to make it hardly means that it's reasonable to do so.

[luizopiloto]

I have 4000hrs of game play...
worth every penny...

[Guest]

Just fine to me. If it is too much for you, play orbiter 2010.