Humble Indie Bundle
Comprox
*chortle*Canada Join Date: 2002-01-23 Member: 7Members, Super Administrators, Forum Admins, NS1 Playtester, NS2 Developer, Constellation, NS2 Playtester, Reinforced - Shadow, WC 2013 - Silver, Subnautica Developer, Subnautica Playtester, Pistachionauts
*chortle*Canada Join Date: 2002-01-23 Member: 7Members, Super Administrators, Forum Admins, NS1 Playtester, NS2 Developer, Constellation, NS2 Playtester, Reinforced - Shadow, WC 2013 - Silver, Subnautica Developer, Subnautica Playtester, Pistachionauts
<div class="IPBDescription">Another indie game pack / donations</div>Just spotted another good <a href="http://www.wolfire.com/humble" target="_blank">sale going on</a> using a 'pay what you want' model. This stolen text from Shacknews explains it best:
<!--QuoteBegin-Shacknews+--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Shacknews)</div><div class='quotemain'><!--QuoteEBegin-->The bundle packs DRM-free editions of Independent Games Festival award winners World of Goo, Gish and Aquaria plus Lugaru HD and Penumbra Overture for Windows, Linux or Mac, which cost $80 if bought individually.
By default, all proceeds are split evenly between the developers, Penny Arcade's charity Child's Play and digital rights advocate the Electronic Frontier Foundation, though purchasers can adjust the proportions if they feel one group deserves more money.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--QuoteBegin-Shacknews+--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Shacknews)</div><div class='quotemain'><!--QuoteEBegin-->The bundle packs DRM-free editions of Independent Games Festival award winners World of Goo, Gish and Aquaria plus Lugaru HD and Penumbra Overture for Windows, Linux or Mac, which cost $80 if bought individually.
By default, all proceeds are split evenly between the developers, Penny Arcade's charity Child's Play and digital rights advocate the Electronic Frontier Foundation, though purchasers can adjust the proportions if they feel one group deserves more money.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Comments
I don't really like any of the games, but 5 bucks to support Indie devs and try each of these games for like an hour seems fair to me.
I don't know why they chose "split evenly" as the default. I bet most people don't even see that option and if they had the developers as the default they'd probably have higher profits from this (and less charitable donations).
Took the cheapo route with 5$ (straight to developers), reasoning I wouldn't really buy any of the games on their own. Right now, that is. I think it's actually close to what they'd get from selling an $80 game at retail.
I think they'll turn good profit with this even if everyone shells out 0,01$ or so: the idea of discount sales is to touch the customer base that wouldn't buy the game at normal price, and at that rate it's much more attractive than pirating.
EDIT: Current stats say they raised 24,000$ in just a few hours, so yeah. The average donation size is 7,5$ though.
I've heard great things about Gish and Aquaria, but never played them.
Aquaria is amazing, but can be difficult (until you get the jellyfish armor) and confusing (if you check your map there'll be sparkles suggesting where to go; also, there's a pearl for the gate to the east in a cave just below it. A lot of people get stuck on that one for some reason).
I don't really like any of the games, but 5 bucks to support Indie devs and try each of these games for like an hour seems fair to me.
I don't know why they chose "split evenly" as the default. I bet most people don't even see that option and if they had the developers as the default they'd probably have higher profits from this (and less charitable donations).<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Because it's a charity event.
Yeah, somehow the Canadian is about equal if not better than the US Dollar. wtf
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->The Bundle
Five independent game developers, headed by Wolfire Games, have joined forces and created a bundle of games. The bundle consists of: Aquaria, Gish, Lugaru HD, Penumbra: Overture and World of Goo.
Everybody that gets the bundle are also able to buy the remaining Penumbra games (Black Plague and Requiem) with a 75% discount (for only $5 that is)!<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
i all ready had Penumbra (I found black plague better)
but the other games is what I'm after :)
Maybe they don't know about it?
possible... I tweeted it at Tycho, but he must get thousands of tweets a day, and also he was in NYC accepting an award for being one of the Time magazine 100 most influential people of the year, so I'm sure he was indisposed. Also sorry for bad grammar in my last post. I was abusing my Droid's voice-to-text functionality in my car.
Damn. Looks like the voice recognition software got quite good while I wasn't looking.
Also the sale just passed quarter of a million. Doesn't show how much of it goes where, but, good freaking start.
I would assume the huge contributions are mostly to the charities, the tiny ones mostly to the developers, and the middle ones split evenly.
I hope they get more publicity. It'd be awesome to see 1,000,000 contributors. Such an amazing promotion.
If they hadn't done this bundle thing, I still would have played the games but I would not have paid them.
I gave my 'donation' to the developers, as I figured I owed them more.
Somehow, I don't feel guilty. I should, right? Playing the games and then they come out with a pay-what-you-want deal. I wasn't guilt-induced into buying, I just thought it was an excellent deal and a very fair way to do things. So far I'm really really enjoying Punumbra which seems to be like Myst + Lovecraft, an amazing combination.
I hope they make a tonne of money from this.
If they hadn't done this bundle thing, I still would have played the games but I would not have paid them.
I gave my 'donation' to the developers, as I figured I owed them more.
Somehow, I don't feel guilty. I should, right? Playing the games and then they come out with a pay-what-you-want deal. I wasn't guilt-induced into buying, I just thought it was an excellent deal and a very fair way to do things. So far I'm really really enjoying Punumbra which seems to be like Myst + Lovecraft, an amazing combination.
I hope they make a tonne of money from this.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I don't think you should feel guilty, but I have a strange perspective on piracy for someone in the games industry. If it's not costing the developers anything (as in bandwidth or support costs), it's not harmful. It just gets more exposure to an otherwise unknown indie game. I realize there are some who would never buy a game I make, but given the option to pirate they might check it out... I would rather they play it for free than never at all. I make games for people to experience, and though I also want to make money... there's no fun in it if money is the only thing you're after.
I think this type of thing is great because it does offer a way to give back to developers when you have pirated the game. It's not forcing anyone to, but it lets people feel good and feel like they are contributing to future works rather than the standard model of paying for the experience and often being let down or feeling the price was not worth the experience.
This kind approach to piracy and your customer base as well as providing more exposure to your game also can create future customers. This is especially true with a pay what you want system because anyone who is willing to donate to help support the developers is going to be more likely to actually feel some ownership of future works and buy them outright rather than pirate them.
I know there have been books that have been like this. I got the first one for free from one way or another (public library, download, whatever), but paid for the future one because I loved the series and wanted to contribute.
I don't remember if I ever pirated World of Goo. I think I just played the demo and thought it was too repetitive / boring to buy the full version... but with this promotion I was able to still contribute a little to the developers so they can keep on innovating and making new games.
Sorry for the rant, hope it is semi-readable.
I think this type of thing is great because it does offer a way to give back to developers when you have pirated the game. It's not forcing anyone to, but it lets people feel good and feel like they are contributing to future works rather than the standard model of paying for the experience and often being let down or feeling the price was not worth the experience.
This kind approach to piracy and your customer base as well as providing more exposure to your game also can create future customers. This is especially true with a pay what you want system because anyone who is willing to donate to help support the developers is going to be more likely to actually feel some ownership of future works and buy them outright rather than pirate them.
I know there have been books that have been like this. I got the first one for free from one way or another (public library, download, whatever), but paid for the future one because I loved the series and wanted to contribute.
I don't remember if I ever pirated World of Goo. I think I just played the demo and thought it was too repetitive / boring to buy the full version... but with this promotion I was able to still contribute a little to the developers so they can keep on innovating and making new games.
Sorry for the rant, hope it is semi-readable.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Yes very readable.
I do agree actually. Because I had played (and pirated)Goo before, I knew what sort of excellent game it was and realized that the others bundled with it (penumbra as example) would probably also be very good. And it didn't at all feel like a gamble... as you said, normally when you buy a game for $20 or $40 or whatever it is you have no idea if it'll be *worth* that much. It's like seeing a film in theatre or something... and there's actually a Psychological phenomenon that might come into play along these lines as well. The Psych thing basically goes like this: The more choices you have (40 different films you could see) the more likely you will be dissatisfied with the choice you made. This is a pretty solid and consistent effect.
Since we (in a sense) have a nearly unlimited supply of games we *could* try but usually a limited budget, we may be dissatisfied with a decent game for a reasonable price because we wonder what else we could have had for that money. With this 'humble bundle' idea, and being able to pay what you want in a donation... I suspect the effect would be greatly diminished. Yes, you're still sending them money and getting something in return, but it's subtly different enough in process that people could end up being much more satisfied with their purchase then the would have otherwise been. Especially since they would feel good about donating to the charity as well as supporting the game developers.
In my personal case having played the game before paying anything for it, I kind of bypass that whole psych effect entirely and ended up paying what I thought the experience was worth retrospectively.
Okay now that was just me rambling, but it's fascinating all the same.
The guy(s) at Wolfire have written up a blog outlining some of their thoughts on video game piracy. It was linked on slashdot but I'll link it <a href="http://blog.wolfire.com/2010/05/Another-view-of-game-piracy" target="_blank">here</a> too.
They talk about piracy rates, inflated versus real figures, etc. It was short but interesting.
I have a similar birds-eye view myself - not being involved in any actual development, that is - I think piracy and copyright are direct products of redundance: having all the resources in the world to share music, programs, games, knowledge and so on with the rest of the world but instead keeping to yourself is a bit like inventing a pepetuum mobile and then never giving away the blueprints to anyone but few wealthy people. Indeed that's what would happen if ever did invent one, I'm sure we're all familiar with that classic sci-fi notion.
Obviously it costs a lot of time, money and effort to make games - everyone has to pay their bills - but the distribution channel is what matters in the sense of getting them to the audience. It's a paradox created by collision of two opposed worlds altogether, scarce resources (development) and total abundance (bandwidth).
This would also support all the mis-conceptions big studios have about piracy, that they directly lose money from it: it costs nothing to you to have them pirate it, so it's not a loss there either, not even in sense of lost sale (since pirates, obviously enough, aren't interesting in buying it in the first place).
If that was directed (partially or fully) at me, I'll retort by saying that my Steam user account is loaded down with games that I've purchased when on sale but rarely at full price. I don't have the money to buy a game, even a really awesome one at $50 every time so I delay gratification until it goes on sale or some other deal happens. I'm not against paying for games, I enjoy it, especially with the convenience of steam (product plug!)
I'm not a 'perfect consumer' or a saint, but I'm no devil either.
And if that wasn't aimed at me... Yeah! Lousy Pirates, thinking they can get away with that! Go Lolfighter! Yeah! Lan party at his house! woo.
1) It takes a long time to pirate a AAA game.
that is time that my net connection is slow and I am either unable to play online games, or I have to leave my computer on overnight, which if I were to do regularly would spike my monthly electric bill. Top that off with the fact that most AAA games I did pirate, I ended up not liking, and generally deleting withing an hour.
2) There are more and more sales/games placed at reasonable prices.
I have a point of $20, that if a game is below that and I think I am interested I will almost always pick it up. That is my disposable income level I guess. This means that I tend to pick up a lot of games on sale, indie games, and smaller games. It also means that I will not pirate small games which would not have been hampered by point one. So, more sales, and no piracy.
3) There seems to be an increase in reasonable demos again, though this is mainly in the indie world.
I didn't really know about World of Goo until the entire 90% piracy thing came out. The article got me interested enough to look it up, but I wasn't sure if I wanted to buy it. However! There was a demo, which I tried, and decided I did not like. No piracy, but no sale either. Same deal with Gish and Penumbra. There are also a number of games I tried the demo of, and where at a reasonable price so I picked them up (Fat Princess comes to mind).
This time around I decided to drop $10 to give the games a bit more of a shot, and because I suspect that my GF will enjoy World of Goo at least.
I also purchase around one or 2 full priced AAA games a year, as the entire concept of spending $50-60 on a video game just kinda hurts.
I have a point of $20, that if a game is below that and I think I am interested I will almost always pick it up. That is my disposable income level I guess. This means that I tend to pick up a lot of games on sale, indie games, and smaller games. It also means that I will not pirate small games which would not have been hampered by point one. So, more sales, and no piracy.
...
This time around I decided to drop $10 to give the games a bit more of a shot, and because I suspect that my GF will enjoy World of Goo at least.
I also purchase around one or 2 full priced AAA games a year, as the entire concept of spending $50-60 on a video game just kinda hurts.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Oh man, once you get a real job and have disposable income the whole cost system goes upside down. I mean, it still hurt the bank a bit if you go on a $200 game buyout, but at the same time it's different than when you're a lowlife with next to zero income.
That being said, I rarely pay $50, and since my queue of games is soooo long anyways, that game better be bloody worth my time. Otherwise it just sits around.
I have yet to meet someone who didn't enjoy World of Goo.
That being said, I rarely pay $50, and since my queue of games is soooo long anyways, that game better be bloody worth my time. Otherwise it just sits around.
I have yet to meet someone who didn't enjoy World of Goo.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I do have an actual job. Not the greatest, but a reasonable office job (good for some one sans a college degree). I mean, if I was making 60, or 70K a year instead of 30ish, sure, I probably wouldn't have as many compunctions against buying new games at full price, that and if there were more games that I thought were WORTH it. It's why I don't even pick up that many used/discounted games, there just isn't much out that I'm interested in, and what I am interested in are almost always inexpensive in the first place :P
Also, combine that with the fact that I almost flat out refuse to drop $50+ on a game with out trying it out first (be it demo or otherwise), that is why I buy very few new games. I have been burned far to often by letting my self get hyped up for a game and realizing that it really wasn't worth $50.
As for World of Goo. It just doesn't tickle my fancy. I think it is that I like puzzle games, but I dislike puzzle games that have a strong element of randomness (in this case the bouncy factor of the towers). Now that I own it, I am likely to play through it, but I also suspect that my GF will get much more pleasure out of it than I will, and at $2 ($10/5), I deem it worth it :P.