World of Goo does a Radiohead. Pay whatever you like.

by mapleoin • 17 years ago

115 61 17 years ago

Thanks for posting this. Glad to pick this up and support the designers and the model.

snprbob86• 17 years ago

Great game. Even if you aren't much of a gamer, give this game a try. Anyone who ever enjoyed building anything (everyone here?) should enjoy the puzzles and anyone with even the smallest bit of design taste (most of us?) should enjoy crazy well polished presentation.

aw3c25• 17 years ago

I downloaded a copy back then and decided it was not my kind of game pretty soon. Later I found out that I just played as much as the demo would have gotten me. So I recommend trying the demo instead of blindly warezio0ring if you just want to check it out. It should be enough.

maximilian• 17 years ago

Yay. my sorry grad student salary can't justify $20, but i'll throw down $10...

I've been wanting to try it our for a while.

xal• 17 years ago

I would have paid more for it then the ask. I had it preordered though. Maybe I can gift a copy...

I hope they make it an iPhone game. If they would have released it for the iPhone originally it would probably be the most sold game on the system.

teej• 17 years ago

There is a huge difference between giving away a year-old product and giving away a brand new, never-been-sold-before one.

Let me explain.

Radiohead took a -huge- risk by releasing an album, out the door, right at the start, with a "pay what you want" pricing model.

2dboy is taking -no- risk by releasing World of Goo with a "pay what you want" pricing model. They are already on the tail end of the demand curve at the $20 price point, they are just using this as a chance to capture more of the market at a smaller price.

Radiohead took a huge swing with their pricing model, 2dboy didn't. It's a completely different situation.

dangoldin• 17 years ago

I'm not sure why you're getting downvoted - you bring up valid points.

This is similar to price discrimination. You can initially offer your product at $20 and sell to whoever is willing to pay at that time. Then you lower it to $10 and sell to whoever is willing to pay at that time. And so forth. The major difference is that the customer is determining the price they are willing to pay rather than the manufacturer. If the customers act honestly and do pay exactly what they would pay if the manufacturer had set the prices, the manufacturer would actually be better of.

discojesus• 17 years ago

If the customers act honestly and do pay exactly what they would pay if the manufacturer had set the prices

I think you should be more explicit in step two.

http://blog.stackoverflow.com/wp-content/uploads/then-a-mira...

aw3c25• 17 years ago

I agree that the title of this is completely wrong. Still this is excellent marketing. Imagine if more companies would give away their older products like this. It would be received very well from the gamers.

*I do NOT mean DRM-infested things like Steam.

indranil3• 17 years ago

not Steam but what gog.com is doing is brilliant...

cdr• 17 years ago

Steam is the most reasonable DRM I've seen. I don't mind it at all.

mechanical_fish• 17 years ago

This is true, but it is also what we call "looking a gift horse in the mouth".

shabda• 17 years ago

Are we also calling end of season sales as "Gift Horse" now? (Ps I like WoG)

raquo2• 17 years ago

100% correct. Multi-market economic discrimination based on self-selection by time of purchase - 95% of those who would have ever paid $20 have already purchased the game, others will now pay less than that. They could have as well just dropped the price to $5, but they would have never got any free PR without this stunt.

sjs• 17 years ago

And this promotion is only for a week. It's quite different.

The stupid thing is that this has nothing to do with the promotion. Bad title.

biohacker422• 17 years ago

The cost of filling out my cc or paypal info exceeds my personal cost of spending $20 dollars. I would literately pay $20 just to avoid the hassle.

On a related subject matter, recently I spotted something a bit off on my Verizon bill. I get phone/cable/internet from them on one bill, but I noticed an odd charge. I had to dig through the bill to find the one page that mentioned a charge from payment one on behalf the internet commerce company.

In short, it was definitely a fraudulent charge and apparently they can bill you, via Verizon, TimeWarner, At&t, etc. automatically! It has happened to a lot of people, there is nothing you need to do for them to start billing you.

In fact, you HAVE to preemptively call your ISP to tell them to lock your account so that 3rd parties can't aoutmagically bill you!

However, why can't we have legitimate charges which are this easily billed? Why can't I sign up once for an advertising project or something, and then it divides X amount of dollars every month to websites I visit?

Or something like that. Ideas?

drusenko• 17 years ago

PayPal payments are pretty difficult, but credit card payments don't have to be hard. Example: http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/139/weeblypro-screenshot.png

eli2• 17 years ago

1) Sure, find a non-paypal way to send me 20 dollars plus your credit card number and I'll fill it out for you.

2) That's called "cramming" and you should report it to the FCC so that (hopefully, someday) they can put those guys out of business.

3) That's called "micropayments" and people have been talking about it for over a decade. There are major technical and political problems to implementing it and, ultimately, I think most people would prefer to get ads on their web pages than having to pay a penny to view it.

biohacker422• 17 years ago

2) That's called "cramming" and you should report it to the FCC so that (hopefully, someday) they can put those guys out of business.

Already done it, apparently the (scam) company was started by an ex-high level At&t insider. But yeah they sure did find a way to take 20 dollars from me without me having to do anything.

And yes it is micropayments, I guess I'm just surprised and angry that the closest I got to micropayments was a scam.

unalone4• 17 years ago

I got this with the Steam Indie Pack; it was one of my favorite entries. (If you're looking for games beyond this, let me also recommend Blueberry Garden, Braid, and Everyday Shooter.) I can't support the design trend of simple gameplay with elaborate detail enough. Most game design today strikes me as being ass-backward: Attention is focused on insane playtime and complicated systems, and not on the small details. The result had been a lot of games that look ugly and aren't fun to play without dedicating a lot of time to them.

World of Goo and similar indie games are making gaming mainstream. Anybody can play them and enjoy them. Casual players get the fun distraction, and more hardcore players can appreciate the finer details and the more difficult challenges.

barrkel6• 17 years ago

Hm. I can't go along with the general love-fest over World of Goo.

I bought World of Goo for $20 in large part because of the hullabaloo around it, and completed it in an evening. It was basically a bridge-builder derivative, where it's fun to overcome all the challenges, but once overcome, the desire to improve on them with economizing / scoring is a lot less. I got about 6 hours at most play time out of it.

If I valued the games I've enjoyed for replay value with a similar price / playtime equation, such as Far Cry or Far Cry 2, I'd have to conclude I should value them in excess of $500 apiece. First person shooters, when executed well, completely blow away puzzle games in replay value.

I would rather value WoG at about $2 at most. I'm not sure I'm any better off for having bought it, other than knowing that I don't want to play it again.

unalone4• 17 years ago

The desire that's built in is the online tower building. But I don't do it for that. I do it for the thrill of seeing how efficiently I can make my pieces.

The graphics are beautiful. The soundtrack is incredible. The humor is perfectly executed. The feel of the controls I hope to one day equal. The physics engine's to die for.

I don't know you, barrkel, so hopefully you don't take it personally when I say: You'd value that package at two dollars? Pathetic. This is what I hate about the gaming community. You said you got six hours of play out of it, and don't think that was worth $20? I pay $10 for a CD with 40-60 minutes of music on it. I pay $15 for a 3-hour movie. This masterpiece of a puzzle game you value at two dollars. Unbelievable.

It's worth mentioning that I can't stand most first-person shooters. The Orange Box ones (Half-Life 2, Team Fortress 2, Portal) are the only ones I've played and liked. The level of workmanship on the average FPS saddens me. They strike me as gimmicky and cheap.

I can't comment on how long it takes to beat World of Goo, because I haven't beat it yet. I'm on the second world out of, what, six?, and I've played it for a few hours. I spent an hour alone trying to hit the challenge records on each level. But the game isn't just about beating levels. It's about the joy of putting things together, seeing what works and what doesn't.

All that was released by a team of two people. Far Cry was made by a team of five hundred people, and it's nowhere near as sleek as World of Goo. I think 2D Boy puts Crytek to shame. They're entrepreneurs and artists and I wish them the best of luck—and it really pisses me off when the tasteless slobs that call themselves the gaming community decide to shit all over a good thing.

indranil3• 17 years ago

I love this game! I got this as part of the MacHeist bundle (I know I know, but the bundle was too exquisite) and it is seriously one of the most fun games out there!

Would totally buy it again, and possibly will now, just to pat them in the back!

Sthorpe• 17 years ago

Has anyone been able to download the game?

pbhjpbhj• 17 years ago

Am doing now, got a 503 with FF but plugged in address to wget and am getting about 160kBps, 2 mins to go.

timinman2• 17 years ago

I did. Paid 11 dollars for windows copy, 5 dollars for Linux.

eli2• 17 years ago

If I hadn't already bought it twice (once on PC, once on the Wii) I'd certainly buy it now. Great game.

steve19• 17 years ago

Seems like a bad idea to me. Sure, somepeople will pay more than $1 (or whatever the paypal minimum). But most will pay the minimum.

pjhyett2• 17 years ago

It's solid marketing regardless. I've heard of WoG before, but used this opportunity to buy a copy...for more than $1.

trefn• 17 years ago

I just bought a copy. I'd considered it before but it wasn't worth $20 to me.

Even $1 from a person who would never have bought it before is a net win - they probably don't have many expenses associated with sales (support etc) so it's pure profit, with the additional benefit of marketing.

pjhyett2• 17 years ago

I haven't been able to download a copy of the game from their servers in an hour, guess the sale is working :)

aminuit• 17 years ago

I don't understand this. As a consumer buying a video game, I'm trying to maximize my entertainment per dollar. Why would I ever pay more than the minimum amount? Maybe the HN crowd will pay a little more out of a sense of camaraderie, but I don't understand why a typical gamer would.

gjm11• 17 years ago

To encourage the developers to make more games that you like. Because your inbuilt sense of fairness makes you want to reward them for something whose value to you is more than the minimum amount. Because some bit of your brain always acts as if other people might be watching, and you don't want to appear mean. Because playing the game, or reading the 2dboy blog, or something, has made you feel like you have some sort of personal connection with the developers, and you want them to do well. Because you want to trade off giving them more with keeping more for yourself, and at very low prices too little of what you pay goes to them rather than Paypal.

(For example.)

RevRal• 17 years ago

I was curious whether 1 cent would work.

It did.

mziulu• 17 years ago

IIRC, PayPal takes a commission on the transaction, around 30 cents if I am not mistaken. I think this means that the developers actually lost money in your case. Correct me if I'm wrong!

timinman2• 17 years ago

My son has been wanting to buy W.O.G. for a long time and brought it up today. I hadn't looked at HN yet, so we went direct to 2dboy.com and to our delight, found the sale. We ended up buying to copies for a total of $16. Way to go guys, I hope you make a bundle.

chanux• 17 years ago

I remember they had lot of press (or at least Linux press) releasing their Linux version. I think they are quite good in marketing or being very lucky (Now you HN people know what luck means :) ).

Torn• 17 years ago

Quick question -- if I donate a few £ to the guy, can I link it with my Steam account?

I'm kinda losing patience for games I can't manage through steam. Am guessing that Steam won't take licence keys for copies not bought through their services though, which I think is a missed opportunity to get more people using Steam.

kevinh• 17 years ago

No, you can't link it to your Steam account. Valve maintains a list of games you can register to your account from a CD key here:

https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=7480-WUS...

World of Goo does a Radiohead. Pay whatever you like.

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