Jeff Vogel of Spiderweb Software has been one of the longest and successful independent game developers that I know of.  I don’t believe that Jeff would say that he is successful, but I judge it by the longevity and sustainability of his business – over 15 years of striking it on his own developing his own games.

Geneforge 5: Overthrow by Jeff Vogel

In one of his latest blog posts, Jeff laments the constant downward push of prices in the game industry, specifically citing the price points barriers created by Apple, Amazon, and Xbox Live and how this affects the market expectations for niche development.

In a series of exchanges, Jeff and I traded points where I pointed out that in that many casual games regularly sell at the $20 price point despite being heavily derivative and oversaturated in the market.  But the reason they can demand such prices is because of the amount of traffic they generate on those portal sites.  So despite the fact that there is a market drive to push down indie games at or below $10, that with sufficient Internet market and traffic share, you can bring the price up pretty high and be comfortable.

Derek Yu, the Editor-In-Chief to TIGSource.com, used the traffic generated by his site to sell copies of Aquaria at a $20-$25 price point.  And many top notch indie titles such as Braid and World of Goo sell well above the $10 cap because of all the traffic and interest they generated.

To be fair to Jeff, I think that he might just be talking to cause a stir in the air.  Also being 15 years an indie for a niche market must take its toll.  15 years in the IT industry is several lifetimes.

But I honestly believe that the right price point is $10 and under for an indie.  And with the news that Amazon.com can do digital distribution, it makes it even easier for an indie to get into the action.  Creating a viable storefront that is safe, secure and reliable to a prospective buyer is a difficult task and having a game on Amazon.com to download gives a lot of people a sense of trust in the quality of your product.

Some quotes from the comments I made I think bears repeating:

The Internet is the biggest street corner in the world, and we are the street musicians and performers who hopes that the passersby will toss us pennies along the way. But if we’re good enough, they may stop long enough to pick up the CD we are selling next to the hat we set down on the street. And even though the big man who owns a storefront says that they are paying too much for the CD, if we are good enough, responsive enough and entertaining enough, we will still make a sale – and hopefully a good living.

That’s the charm of being an indie and entrepreneur – great risk, great reward and making the things you are most passionate about the very things you do everyday.