Murder Mystery Pricing:
If you’re a seasoned veteran of purchasing games, particularly RPG-style games, you may have noticed that murder mystery pricing varies wildly depending on where you’re looking. If you peek around the web and look at some murder mystery companies out there selling either box set dinner parties or online murder mystery plans, you’ll start to notice a trend. Most of the companies that are producing these games are charging full-cost board game prices for each of them. This is the cost that is analogous to a full-price video game or computer game. There is some logic behind why they decide to do this. The first thought behind this price point is that takes a lot of planning and time to create a proper functioning murder mystery game. Aside from the hours and hours of plotting, planning, and creation, next comes the stages where you need to create graphics and visuals in order to create some sort of coherent interface for players. Last, but certainly not least, comes the time to playtest the game, ideally several times. When you’re trying to facilitate multiple playtests for a 20-person game, this can be quite challenging… Trust me when I say that. You also need to consider that players can only playtest each game one time since you can’t count on accurate feedback once they know who the murderer is. This is the part where I’d like to point out an especially important factor to consider before buying any murder mystery game. Whether it’s from Dastardly Deeds Murder Mysteries or another company and whether it’s online or in-person, you need to consider that in almost any murder mystery game, you and your friends and family are only going to be able to play the game once. After that, the murderer will be revealed and the secrets of all the individual characters will no doubt have leaked out throughout the course of the game.
Do feel like you’re getting cheated by other murder mystery companies?
Are Murder Mystery Games One Hit Wonders?
In a way yes, but also keep in mind that after playing any murder mystery game there is no reason you can’t hand off all of the documents in the game to one of your players so that they can in turn host the game again for a group of their friends. While you may need to have different players every time, nothing is stopping the host from hosting the same game multiple times, and there is nothing stopping players from in turn hosting the game for a different group. While I know this is the part where I should say “you shouldn’t give away games and you need to come back and buy more”, I’m not going to be that guy. The truth of the matter is, once you’ve bought a murder mystery game, there’s almost no reason not to spread it through your friend group and give them all the opportunity to play it with their different friend groups, family members, and co-workers as well. This does allow you to get a little bit more bang for your buck when purchasing a murder mystery or online murder mystery game. Does this really justify the cost of a murder mystery, though? Let’s take a step back and focus on the price point that most companies try to justify for their murder mystery games.
The Cost of a Murder Mystery Game:
The cost of a murder mystery game can vary greatly depending on where you’re looking, as mentioned earlier. Most companies out there are charging upwards of $60 for a single copy of a game that will allow you and your companions only one solid playthrough. If you’re thinking that sounds a little bit steep, we absolutely agree with you here at Dastardly Deeds Murder Mysteries. A single evening event or playthrough of an online or in-person murder mystery simply can’t justify this kind of price point. Some companies even have the audacity to charge additional surplus fees if you want to add extra characters into your playthrough. With this additional monetary transaction, you’re looking at some games that push the scales at almost a hundred dollars to play a single-use murder mystery game with your friends. This seems a little bit excessive for a board game activity that’s a one hit wonder. It kind of sounds like they are trying to get you to drop $100 for a copy of Catan that you can only play once… For this reason, you’ll notice that all Dastardly Deeds Murder Mysteries games are priced at $20. This timid price was decided on as a perfect median to make our games accessible to almost anyone. If you’re playing one of our larger games like Single Tractor Mingle, with a full group of 20 players, this comes out to $1 a person for an evening of entertainment, which is a damn good deal if you ask me. If you want to treat your friends to the game then $20 is a much more easily accessible price point than paying a $60 price tag by your lonesome. You won’t feel like you’re burning a hole in your wallet by treating your friends to an evening of murder and intrigue.
Split a murder DD murder mystery with 20 friends and enjoy a game night for $1 a person!
While that set group may not be able to play that specific murder mystery again, there are always new murder mysteries coming out from Dastardly Deeds Murder Mysteries and nothing is stopping you from passing on the components to one of your friends to allow them to host the game for another group who is not familiar with the scenario. When you’re thinking about buying any kind of murder mystery game, think first and foremost, are you getting price gouged for what this product is? Having personally purchased games from many other murder mystery companies, I have paid a heck of a lot more for a hell of a lot less of a finished product. While I won’t name names or knock any other specific murder mystery gaming company, a lot of the products that I’ve purchased in the past seem entirely unfinished and unrefined with minimal playtesting and ineffectual plot concepts. With that, I will also add the caveat that I have had fun playing almost every murder mystery game I’ve ever played, including those from other companies. I will still stand by my gripe though that I feel somewhat offended when I pay $60 for a game that looks and feels incomplete.
What Do I Get for $20?:
Many of you out there have never played a game like this before. You might be asking, what do you get when you buy a murder mystery game? The truth is this answer may vary wildly depending on who and where you’re purchasing your game from. Some companies have opted to create box sets that utilize paper character sheets and pre-crafted documentation for you to utilize on the night of your event. While this might sound all good and fine, in many ways this is one of the most horrendous ecological wastes of resources and materials imaginable. Considering the game itself can usually only be played once, companies that opt for this style of game are trying to assure that you can only play the game once with materials that are used upon the end of the game. It makes these box sets a gigantic waste of time. Pre-boxed murder mystery games are not only eco-unfriendly, to say the least, but most of these games also require you to discard components and write on other items. This eliminates the replay value. When the character sheets and cool little item cards are written on and shredded, this makes it impossible for you to hand off the game for one of your other friends to host at a later point. This is exactly what these companies want. I’ve seen some of them even offer to sell you the components of the game again to re-load the game you’ve already purchased. That’s low, and it truly makes pre-boxed murder mystery games one hit wonders. They can only be used once and then all the resources that went into crafting them are wasted. At least they looked pretty?
You get everything you need to host a game with a DD Murder Mystery.
On the flip side of the spectrum, I have paid upwards of $60 for nothing but a shell of a game. Some murder mystery companies out there will have you pay them premium dollar just to send you a Word document that you first must decipher, split apart, cut out, put into envelops, tape, stable, and craft all the components yourself. While Dastardly Deeds Murder Mysteries doesn’t provide any pre-printed options, most of our online and in-person games require minimal preparation. All of our in-person murder mystery games do not require you to take components apart and put them in envelopes, or any of that nonsense. At very most for an in-person game from Dastardly Deeds, you will need a printer, some paper, and maybe an odd pen or pencil. Our games are crafted to use a minimum number of components to play in-person. Character sheets are limited to single-page documents and additional information for players is designed and intended to simply be accessed through players’ phones. When you’re playing an online game from Dastardly Deeds Murder Mysteries, the only thing players need is a video-capable device and a way to view a PDF document. Likewise, as a host all you need is a video-capable device and a way to view documentation. This can easily be the same device if you’re okay with multitasking.
Our larger games will often include more intricate settings and different components to send out to your players. But at the end of the day, hosting one of our online murder mystery games is a simple as emailing your player’s documents, getting on a video chat at the same time, and spending an hour to two laughing at your friends. Why are other murder mysteries so expensive? This is a question I’ve asked myself many times in the past. Now that I have personally, along with my cohorts, crafted multiple murder mystery games for both in-person and online play, I see no justification in charging in the $60, $40, or even the $30 price range for any form of murder mystery game. The truth of the matter is after the game is crafted, playtested, and put up on the website, that is where the work ends. There’s no printing, there’s no mailing, there’s no troubleshooting, and there is nothing more to do than craft more unique games. There is just no justification for charging more than $20 for an in-person or online murder mystery game.
$20 Murder Mystery Games:
If you’re at another website thinking about getting a game that’s more than $20, stop and take a look at what Dastardly Deeds Murder Mysteries has to offer. $20 murder mystery games are the sweet spot that I had been looking for for a long time. It just so happened I was never going to find it unless we started creating them ourselves. You might blame us for undercutting the competition… Guilty as charged. I’m sick of getting price gouged by other murder mystery game companies and other online game companies to purchase role-playing games and strategy games that have the same price tag as the AAA-rated video game. Many of these companies may argue, “oh you can split the cost between all of the different players”. Let’s be real. You can’t always get that one guy to Venmo you right when you want them to. You know, the one I’m talking about. Effing Greg. When you’re only paying $20 for a murder mystery game, the price point becomes affordable even if you’re not sharing the financial load with your players. Even for one of our smallest games, like Serial Killer Social with only five players, if you do end up splitting the cost, that’s less than a cost of a single beer each for a night of entertainment. Now, that’s a bargain!
Save money and buy more drinks for your next murder mystery game!
So, if you came to this article really wanting to find out why other murder mystery games are so expensive, the truth of the matter is, I can’t answer that question because I don’t know myself. It’s a real noodle scratcher. All I can tell you is that at Dastardly Deeds Murder Mysteries, we are never going to price gouge you in the way that some of those other companies out there do. Welcome to the golden age of $20 murder mystery games! Get ready to start accusing your friends of murder, now at a low introductory cost!
