Hi there, I've been following Clockwork Empires since its announcement, and I'm incredibly excited for it. I am curious about the preorder pricing plan. Since Minecraft popularized the whole charging for an alpha business there have been numerous pricing models, Notch's of course being "it gets more expensive as we develop it" while we've also seen "early bird backer tiers" (ie project eternity's first few thousand backers got it for 20 instead of 25, and it will probably release for substantially more than that). Some companies justify a premium-priced alpha as "paying to experience development" or "pay-walling off testing phase to increase quality/interest of testers". My question is this: will the earliest access price be the lowest price or highest price we should expect to see the game? or is 30 dollars what you expect the game to cost at release? how do you justify whatever decision you have made regarding this? I'm going to back it either way, but I'm just curious what your thought process was, as I think you are the smartest guys in game dev. Thanks in advance
So far, we are only stating that $29.99 USD is the price for Earliest Access right now; our official policy is to not commit to anything, and then make a funny joke about it instead. More generally, we can't see into the future, and so we don't want to say something like "this will be $29.99 USD forever" or "we will announce a complicated, multi-tier kickstarter-based pricing scheme" or "we'll only take Digglebucks", only to realize that this was a terrible idea (especially the Digglebucks) and have to back out of it, thus annoying people. I will say that we argued long, and hard, over picking $29.99, and that it's based on a certain amount of competitive analysis versus other titles on Steam in similar genres, both from other indie studios and from higher-tier/AAA publishers.
The release is scheduled in about a year from now. So in that time you'll surely see it on sale (whilst in early access). If you wish to save money and purchase it in its early access I'd recommend waiting for the steam winter sales. Or if it ever goes on humble bundle in the future. But I take it you want to know if it'll every increase in price. (then again, just waiting saves you money as well as gets you a more complete experience). Cheers mate!
Everyone knows CogCoins are the future and the exchange rate from Digglebucks to CogCoin is terrible.
Thanks for the replies, guys. I'm planning on backing just as soon as I can justify the expenditure, as I don't really care about saving the few dollars on this one (this is one game I'd pay a premium to get early, and I'm not the type of person who cares if someone else got a better deal -- usually). I was more or less just curious if they had an official public thought process on the various Early Access pricing methodologies we've seen and whether or not they adhere to one.
