Machinarium, a game by the makers of Samarost (1 and 2), is being offered for $51 in a “pirate amnesty” (down from $20); the makers estimate that only 5-15% of people playing it paid. (No idea how they did that estimation. They’ve also, in a belated fit of sanity, added a note to the blog post saying they don’t really believe everyone buying it now has already pirated it…)

I bought it, at the reduced price.2 But I didn’t buy it at the full price.

I’m supporting Perfect on Kickstarter (and you could be too — it’s at 30% or so, with 15 days still to run). I made the minimum pledge that gets you anything: $5 for a pdf (its a story game).

This weekend I went on a bit of a games kick; I tried out my Humble Indie Bundle games3 which have been sitting there since May, and I bought and played Osmos. I was tempted by, but did not buy, Gratuitous Space Battles.

I paid $20 for the Humble Indie Bundle (five games, released on a pay-what-you-want basis); the pirate amnesty Machinarium was $5, Osmos was $10. Compare that with the two I didn’t take: original Machinarium at $20, and GSB for $25 (the “Collectors Edition” with expansion packs; $20 for the standard).

Sometime last year I also bought Fallout 2 (a nostalgia trip, as well as a great game) from GOG.com (“Good Old Games”) for $6; on someone’s advice I also bought Arcanum for the same price.

The point of this litany (besides horrifying my mother and my girlfriend) is that all these games are insanely cheap. So cheap that I passed up a fun-looking game for $25, because it was a bit pricey. That’s totally insane.

I think what happens is that sub-$20 prices don’t even register as spending money (for comparison, an average weekly grocery shopping trip costs me about twice that), whereas a higher price (no matter how reasonable) makes me think “Is it worth it?” which starts me thinking “Do I really need this?” (Answer for games: no.)

Judging by what the Machinarium folk are doing, I must be fairly representative of the market, except that I don’t pirate (any more: my Fallout nostalgia is for someone else’s copy). Which must really suck for game developers.

I like creative people making creative games.4 So today I’m upgrading my Kickstarter support for Perfect, and I’m buying GSB. Do I need it? No. But I can spare the cash to help support someone’s creativity. And looking at the lineup of games I own and prices I paid, it seems like I owe a bit to the industry.

Notes:

  1. All prices in this post are in USD. [↪]
  2. And then discovered it won’t run on 64-bit linux… ah well, they did warn linux users to try it first… [↪]
  3. World of Goo was the big hit; I didn’t try Gish and the others didn’t scratch my itches. [↪]
  4. And I like them releasing them without DRM. That’s part of the Machinarium story, and applies to everything mentioned above. [↪]