A few months ago, the makers of World of Goo did an experiment. They gave away their game for any amount of money that you would pay for it. The result were fantastic:

http://2dboy.com/2009/10/19/birthday-sale-results/

The first thing I realized when I read through the results was that people are currently paying money for games they have not played before. And that is somehow strange, because how can we know its value when we have no idea of how much it will entertain us? I find it a dangerous thought that the amount of money that you have to pay resembles the amount of joy you will have from the game. And even worse is the way we think about a game that we have already bought, see http://goo.gl/eBqX for the reasoning. So not only are we probably paying way to much for games, we think about them much better when we pay a high price.

The second thing that crossed my mind was Runescape. They have a pretty good pay-model which would let people play the game, let them see what their fun is worth – and if they like it, they can pay for it and receive even more fun!

What is interesting about the World of Goo experiment is that they ask the player how much they think the game is worth BEFORE they have played it. So this experiment is all about expectations. And this simple thing is what all games have to cope with. It seems very interesting to do some more research into expectations and how to raise them. Ain’t that what marketing is all about?

An interesting next step would be to ask a player how much a game is worth after he has played it. How should that work? Interesting thought.