We can't just expect all players to go along with the mantra of "less game, lower quality, higher price" but we can change the dynamics so that players feel they get treated well while increasing indie games' share of the wallet and drive more revenue to developers and do so early in the process.

Not wanting to leave this thread on a down note, I'm sure you're left with the question of "OK, well what do we do about it?" Well, as a startup looking to overcome this weakness in the gaming marketplaces, our answer is to change the formula and use the power of indies coming together.

This means that our current markets are driving us to lower our prices even more than the outside economies and realities of survival are already driving prices to the lowest possible. This impact is even more strongly felt amongst indie games where there is immense pricing pressure and competition.

So, even if we say that back in the 90's I was able to sell my game at $40 and that I was able to keep that up in real value, the raise of sales mean that I would have had to undercut my own price in the recent decades to something like $32 today. (Assuming an average 20% discount)

The thing that it doesn't cover is the increasing downward pressure on prices that comes from the increased price competition within the actual game marketplaces themself. So, we already at a heavily devalued dollar but then we end up taking less of that.

Namely, it was this chart. The one that highlights that games have never been cheaper in terms of real prices pegged to the 2024 $. It also shows an interesting tid bit that any price increases tend to get lost very quickly. (In this case in less than 2.5 years.)