Once again, the gaming industry proves far more versatile than the music or movie industry in benefiting from forward thinking economics.

Covered by Slashdot, it seems the makers of the hit game World of Goo for Wii and PC have celebrated the close of their very successful year in an interesting way. They decided to make the game – which retails at $20 – available for whatever the buyer is willing to pay.

This is a great idea: make what money you can from initial launch at premium price, and then accept the fact that the game will lose value as both novelty and technology motor on. Then, in lieu of griping and moaning over the resell market and trying to circumvent the first-sale doctrine with install limitations and the like, you allow users to pay what they wish. This will likely be lower than you’d like in price per unit, but you’ll likely sell more than you’d hope for, as well. With intellectual property, this pans out just fine, particularly for digital delivery data like World of Goo, where you simply don’t have the same high overhead as you would for, say, the Thighmaster or the Sham-Wow.

The result: While the average sale price was about $2, more than 57,000 people purchased it. Quite certainly, these were customers who simply wouldn’t have bought the game otherwise or who – according to a 2D Boy poll – bought it again for another platform.

The developers were more than happy, and extended the special. Hopefully, this is an idea that others will follow. Surely, there are games out there that simply do not warrant the MSRP price tag, but that would garner slews of customers if they could pay what they wished. Such schemes have worked very well in the publishing industry, as well, though the industry at large is still very weary of taking that step – somehow convinced that ebooks should sell for the same as the physical book minus a buck or two.