by Zerbique
This thread is a bit fascinating to me.On the one hand, the published has explained why the price is what it is (I suppose the extra benefits for the larger volume of sales help funding sets for lesser known characters, which adds variety overall), and if you think about it and compares it to other Kickstarter projects, it's not crazily expensive. On the other hand, people do feel it is expensive. Despite the reasons they are given, and their acceptance of it (which of course varies from one person to the next), they still feel uneasy with the price.
I would like to understand this feeling more, because rationally speaking, this KS campaign is not more expensive than many others. In this campaign, you have 4k backers that go to the basic pledge, and half that (2k) that go to the deluxe. If you compare that with Valheim (much lesser known IP), the pattern is almost reversed, with 2k backers going for the base/base with minis, and nearly 4k going for the full-bling beast (with no additional gameplay stuff) at 220€. So TMNT is objectively parallel to that. It has regular crowdfunding prices.
The first explanation I came up with is the resent people feel toward the higher-tier pledges. Even though they don't need them, they are here. Full of alluring bling featuring beloved TMNT characters, yet out of reasonable financial reach for most people. They feel excluded and they are unhappy, even though they don't need that extra content. However, after further reflexion, this would apply to any campaign with a full-bling pledge, including Valheim, and we don't see the same feeling there.
Here is my hypothesis then.
There is already tons of contents for Unmatched out there. So much so that only the die-hard fans of the system would plan to get everything (especially so since some sets are OOP with skyrocketing prices on the second-hand market). The more Unmatched titles are released, the less necessary they become. This year, there has already been two sets, the two Japan historical figures one, and the Shakespeare one. Tales to Amaze has only been recently released. Therefore, people have already plenty of contents for Unmatched, there is room for countless match-ups, and they don't really need any more. Sure, new bosses are very nice for the co-op players, but still, there is less of a sense of necessity. By the end of the campaign, there will be more backers for TMNT than for Tales to Amaze because of the IP that brings fresh blood to the system, but that's not the point. The point is that people feel they could more easily live without the game. It something that seems very nice to have, but also somehow superfluous.
And since they only "desire" it, but don't feel it is a necessary addition, they resent the price more, because their sense of desire cannot overcome that rationality barrier the way the sense of necessity does.
My guess is, if this had been the first or second Unmatched game ever released, people would have had less issue with the pricing.