Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category
Size Does Matter
Friday, January 28th, 2011
If you’ve been reading my blog for a long time (and if you have, I thank you), then you may recall I post I wrote about a year and a half ago called “My iPhone’s Not Cheap, but my Apps Are“. At the time, I was trying to find reasons why we were seeing a race to $0.99 on the App Store with the iPhone. One of the reasons I considered at the time was this:
3) Size Does Matter
As humans, we have a built-in instinct that bigger is better. Most people want a bigger house, more land, louder stereo, bigger lawn mowers, faster, larger cars, bigger TVs. For some reason it seems to be ingrained in our brains bigger things are more valuable.
…
I believe that because the games are played on the tiny iPhone, it reduces the perceived value to the customer. Why else am I willing to spend $15 on a game that I play on my TV that I wouldn’t pay $5 for on the iPhone?
But I didn’t really have any proof to back it up; it was just a suspicion I had. However, lately I’ve been reading a lot of books on behavioural psychology, and behavioural economics. It’s a subject that I’ve discovered I’m absolutely fascinated by, and makes me wish I’d done a psych minor in school. But I digress…
The book I’m currently reading is called “Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion” by Robert B. Cialdini. The current chapter is about how the appearance of authority causes us to react to things differently. However, he mentioned, almost in passing, a study done in 1952 by Dukes and Bevan about the way in which the perceived importance of something affects people’s perception of its physical size [1]. Objects that were thought to be more important were perceived as physically larger than objects that were attached less importance, even though they were exactly the same size!
However, what I found fascinating is that the same thing holds in reverse. The brain works the other way too: objects that are physically larger are perceived as having a higher status than small ones.
I believe that this is part of what drives the price of iPhone apps down. A game played on a small screen is perceived to be less important than the same game played on a large screen. I further believe that this is why we see the same game on the iPad listed at a higher price, yet people are willing to pay it. For example, Angry Birds is $0.99 on the iPhone, but $4.99 on the iPad. It’s the same game, but on a bigger screen. Back in the depths of our brains, something is clicking, saying “well Angry Birds is bigger on the iPad, so it must be more important.”
Now, I’m am sure that there are many other factors, psychological and otherwise, that play into the price points of apps on the store, but I believe this is a big part of it. And it’s nice to have a study to back it up. 😉
Owen
[1] Robert Cialdini, “Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion” (New York: HarperCollins) 223.
H4x0r3d!
Thursday, November 6th, 2008
If you’re reading this from inside Google Reader, please DO NOT click on any of the story titles until further notice. It appears that sometime last night my site was hacked. If you arrive at the site from the google.com domain, then you will be redirected to a malicious virus site.
I am about to take the blog completely offline to try to work this out. Please do not visit the site from any Google tools until I have this resolved. I’ll post again once I have everything working again.
My apologies for the inconvenience.
Owen
State of the Casual Industry
Wednesday, August 13th, 2008
I can’t believe that I’m still unpacking. It’s all I’ve been doing all day, every day, since our stuff arrived from Vancouver last week. Granted, my wife and I were out of town for 3.5 days over the weekend for a friend’s wedding, but still. I’m getting really sick of boxes. The end is in site, however! The rooms of our apartment are starting to look like rooms. Hopefully only another day or two of unpacking to go, then back to work.
Speaking of work, Gamasutra ran an article this morning on the State of the Casual Games Industry in 2008:
- The State of the Casual Games Industry in 2008 (www.gamasutra.com)
They interview 3 people in the industry: one from Popcap, one from Playfirst, and one from Reflexive. These are guys who ought to know the industry better than most others. It’s interesting to see that they’re seeing trends in the casual space that the “hardcore” industry went through in the last few years. Namely, the drive towards more story and character in the games. The three argue that you couldn’t distribute Tetris today (as a new game) because it doesn’t have a story that drives the player through the game.
I found the article interesting, but also a little disappointing. There is a lot of doom and gloom talk about the future of puzzle games. I’m working on a puzzle game right now and I’ve been debating about whether or not it needs a story to drive the main gameplay. These guys seem to be saying ‘yes’, for the most part.
However, what I found most encouraging was Jason Kapalka, from Popcap, saying that they’ve always just made games that they want to play. This is what I’m trying to do, too. I figured that if I manage to create a game that I really enjoy playing, there are bound to be other people who will enjoy the same game.
I didn’t decide to set out and start an indie company so that I could follow the trends and make clones of whatever games happen to be selling well on a given week. I started doing this because I want to make the kinds of games that I love to play. Hopefully there will be a market for them when they’re done.
Owen
Going Rogue
Thursday, August 7th, 2008
“The Escapist” had a great article this week on “Going Rogue”. It’s about game industry veterans who left mainstream development to start their own indie games companies:
I’m hoping to be back to “regular” posts (and coding) sometime next week. I’m still swimming through an ocean of moving boxes right now.
Owen