Comment on Hollow Knight: Silksong won't cost nearly as much as they could probably charge for it
kurushimi@sh.itjust.works 1 week ago
They surely could charge more, but what they’re charging feels sane economically. They’re what, 4 team members grand total?
Hollow Knight was hugely popular for any game; latest figures are 15 million copies sold. Well, unlike a AAA studio that has to split costs quite widely and account for profit margin demands and disproportionately high compensation for upper leadership and all that fun stuff, the proceeds for Team Cherry could be divided much more tightly and equitably.
Which is just to say, they’re hopefully doing well as it is and maybe are in positions to be comfortable regardless of how much Silksong makes, at least in the short to mid term, so they could comfortably be chill about pricing.
sj_zero@lotide.fbxl.net 1 week ago
From an economics standpoint, the amount of money that you're putting into a thing doesn't really have anything to do with the amount you charge for it. I'm working on my first novel right now, and it's been a whole lot of work -- I've been working on it for 9 months, and while I haven't been working on it full time every day, I've put a lot of time in every single week since I started. By contrast, a much better author working on a much less ambitious work probably spent a lot less effort on their book. Regardless, I can probably charge a lot less for my book because the demand for my book is going to be a lot lower than the demand for their book is because people are like their book and they're probably not going to like a mine LOL
The higher you charge for your product, the less people are going to buy it, but the greater your margins are going to be, the lower you charge for your project, the more people are going to buy it to a point, but the lower your margins are going to be. For an indie title, and this is still an indie title, you could try charging more and you would still sell a lot of copies, and you really improve your profit margin, but part of the reason why indie titles work is that you can get it into the hands of a lot of people, and if it's really good then those people will end up going off and evangelizing to others, and eventually you have cult hit on your hands.
The reason to have a and bigger production is that if you think that you can get more of those sales for a higher cost, and thus getting higher margins with higher volume. A lot of companies are learning right now that you don't lose money on each unit and make it up on volume, so there's a lot of massive flops going on.
kurushimi@sh.itjust.works 1 week ago
Good insights 👍 and also good luck with your novel