Hello everyone!
I’m Gustav “Gruffa” Groth, Product Manager for CK2. I’ve previously written a dev diary about what goes into releasing an expansion from the publishing point of view. You can find that dev diary
here.
As you may have already inferred from reading the title of this post, this is not a dev diary, and I won’t bring up any new features or content in the upcoming expansion, Jade Dragon. Instead, I will talk about how we determine the pricing of CK2 expansions, and reveal the price of Jade Dragon. You can expect more publishing diaries from me in the future, because we’d like to shed light on the publishing operations behind CK2 and have opportunities for discussions about related topics with the community. Please note that dev diaries will continue to be posted in the same manner and frequency as usual. Publishing diaries are an addition, not a replacement.
Let’s jump right into it! It’s my honor and pleasure to announce that
Jade Dragon will be available for purchase for $14.99.
Why $14.99? There’s no exact science to pricing, and there’s no right or wrong answer to what the correct price is. I’ll attempt to summarize our method below:
Who makes the decision?
The price point decision is taken by the CK2 product team. I described the product team in further detail in my
previous dev diary, but in short it consists of the Product Manager, the Product Marketing Manager, the Game Director and the Project Lead. This combination of people represent all aspects of the development team and the publishing organization and should be able to make the best informed decision.
Estimating value
For every new expansion that’s being planned, the game designers attempt to estimate what the perceived value of the expansion is to the player. They break it down into its features and how impactful each feature will feel. Using this method, each expansion receives a “value score” which can be compared to the value score of our earlier expansions. By looking at the reception (forum discussions, reviews etc.) and financial performance (revenue) of earlier expansions, we can evaluate whether or not you found their value-to-price ratio fair.
Pricing as means of communication
Using the abovementioned method, one may argue that the price levels could be more flexible. The majority of expansions have been priced at either $14.99 or $9.99. Why are all CK2 expansions (Way of Life being the exception) priced at a multiple of 5? The reason is that the price point itself is a very effective way of communicating value and help the player manage their expectations. Having a wildly varying mix of odd price points such as $8.99 or $12.49 would be confusing to both the player and ourselves. If we’re good at being consistent with the amount and quality of content in $14.99 or $9.99 expansions, players know what they can expect when they see those price tags. Now, getting that consistency is an area of improvement for us, but know that we’re doing our best.
Why $14.99?
Given the “multiples of 5 rule” described above, one might wonder, why wasn’t this priced at $9.99 or $19.99? The simple answer is that when Henrik Fåhraeus and Alexander Oltner designed Jade Dragon, they had $10 worth of gameplay systems, and $5 of cosmetic as well as musical content, in mind. Together, these add up to a value of $15.
We first experimented with including cosmetic content in the expansion itself with Monks & Mystics, with good results. Why did we do that? Throughout CK2’s lifetime, we have tried different ways of adding cosmetic content to the game. There have been portrait, unit and dynasty shield packs. Later on, we graduated to releasing content packs alongside the expansions. And the list of DLC kept growing… We’re aware that the extensive selection of DLC is prone to discourage new players from getting into the game, and old players from returning. Therefore we have taken action to slim down the amount of DLCs available on the store pages, like bundling them into collections and the like. These measures would lose their meaning if we kept throwing new, small piece-meal DLC onto the, now cleaner, store pages. That’s why we opted for this method.
Wrapping up
That was all I had to say about pricing this time. I look forward to releasing Jade Dragon and see what you think about it! I have to run to a meeting now but I'll be back in an hour to answer any questions you may have!
Cheers,
Gustav
