When Mossmouth introduced the worth for UFO 50 it got here as a nice shock. The sport famously comprises 50 video games—therefore the title—so it is cheap to count on a better worth than common for a brand new launch indie recreation, particularly one which’s been in improvement for eight years. However no: it is priced at $25.
I seen lots of people in boards and on social media had been happy and shocked about this, so I figured I would ask the group throughout a current interview what the considering behind the worth was. There had clearly been lots of considering behind it, starting from the potential problem of promoting it for extra, via to the group’s want to shock the participant with surprising depth—in the identical manner Hole Knight maybe did again in 2017, or Elden Ring in 2022.
Noting that deciding on the appropriate worth was difficult, Mossmouth’s Derek Yu pointed to the potential misunderstanding of what was below provide: had been these mini-games or fully-fledged 8-bit videogames?
“I feel there are folks that might pay much more for it,” Yu stated, “however then I additionally suppose there are lots of people which are pretty sceptical of the idea of fifty video games. What does that imply, precisely? Are they minigames? I feel there’s lots of psychological hurdles to recover from with regards to what 50 video games truly means for me as a client. In the end, I feel we considered it as one indie recreation, after which we appeared on the panorama, and at different indie video games that we felt had been comparable, which is difficult as a result of not many individuals are making collections of fifty video games in a single.”
Jon Perry additionally notes that the idea itself wanted the sport to be priced pretty generously. “The fantasy that we’re presenting right here is of those freeware discs, these pirate carts, your pal from faculty’s assortment that you simply get your arms on for an hour. These are usually not conditions the place you have got paid a big entry payment: it is a state of affairs the place you have got this embarrassment of riches the entire sudden. if we had charged $250, it will be like shopping for a elaborate field set of one thing. It will change the entire framing in a manner.”
(Word that I had already, type of as a joke, and type of sincerely, steered the sport would possibly fairly be priced at $250.)
Yu additionally introduced up a extra apparent downside: the group’s want to make it reasonably priced to folks that need to play it. Mossmouth’s Tyriq Plummer agreed. “At a sure level you’d begin simply pricing out the folks that you simply truly need to play the sport and at that time what is the level? What are you doing?”
Eirik Suhrke (who, amongst different issues, could be blamed / praised for Barbuta) added his ideas: “A minimum of for me there was at all times this sure mission assertion at the back of my thoughts of eager to blow minds, proper? Of eager to go above and past only a shock. I wished it to simply preserve stunning on stage after stage after stage. And you may see that within the video games: What? This recreation has an intro cutscene? And what: This has a special two-player mode? The worth level is setting you up for getting greater than you had been anticipating and being shocked in a great way.”
UFO 50 is out now. You may also learn my function interview with the Mossmouth group, the place we focus on the making of this treasure trove.
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