The Humble Introversion Bundle
in The Jungle
For those of you who are interested, the latest Humble Indie Bundle is up.
Pay what you want, or what you can afford, for a pack of 5 indie games. This time it's all (excluding the above average bonuses) from one developer: Introversion.
Includes:
Sale runs for two weeks, proceeds can go all to charity (EFF and Child's Play) if you choose. Pay more than the average and they'll throw in Aquaria and Crayon Physics Deluxe.
Pay what you want, or what you can afford, for a pack of 5 indie games. This time it's all (excluding the above average bonuses) from one developer: Introversion.
Includes:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ehpWYJVSaP8Sale runs for two weeks, proceeds can go all to charity (EFF and Child's Play) if you choose. Pay more than the average and they'll throw in Aquaria and Crayon Physics Deluxe.
Comments
but then again, just my opinion
It is many different developers otherwise I would say you are right. And besides, the humble part comes from the "pay what you want" and the donations to the charity organizations.
This one looks too good to pass up
It is a business, but they're very upfront about what happens with your money. If you like you can even get a pile of great games for a penny, so long as you don't mind a little guilt trip image.
Lately the Indie Royale bundles have seemed a bit more "human" to me (maybe just because I've talked with some of the guys involved), but the humble guys are still doing a good job of helping indie games. I don't expect all these bundles to stop any time soon, though. The games aren't being pushed out specifically for the bundles, there are just... a lot of indie developers out there. The indie royale guys have been contacted by over a hundred indie developers interested in having their games in future bundles, and I'm sure the humble guys have quite a few more.
And yeah, I had all of them except Multiwinia already.
I might have a couple other extra games somewhere though...
What smells funny to me in here is that indie developers used to be on the line of "develop 2d platformers with worked backgrounds and stories and game mechanics and sell poorly", hell, I've got a theory they even wanted to reinvent the platformer genre, now these bundles allow ALL that lot to just submit their games and earn money out of a never-dying source of money (because let's be honest, everyone's a sucker for charity)
Sure, you can choose who gets the money or not, but do they still eat bread crumbs?, how many people could have worked on all those 2011 platformers?, 2?, 4? (being wildly speculative here for the sake of finishing my point)
In comparison to the 450 people that worked on assassins creed 2 they're definately splitting more money for less people, they're still making a lot of money!, and there's just a shitload, a SHITLOAD of indie developers with their badly selling platformers who just board the charity wagon and end up making more money than they did before!
This is how puritans started!
Conversely, AssCreed is made by a company that can spend well over $20 million dollars developing a game, another $5m+ advertising, still have the luxury to insult their entire PC market whenever they feel like it, then see literally hundreds of millions in revenue from it in a year (and complain that 95% of their customers pirate the games). Every single employee has a salary, and not a single one of them receives a split of the profits from the game. Because it's a public company and the return is so high, it is their sworn duty to their investors to do the same the next year and the next until the horse just ain't twitching. It's the same formula used by Call of Duty, which brings in ~$1.5 billion+ a year for Activision/Blizzard. The same formula used for dozens of franchises, to the point where publishers are unwilling to even consider the idea of putting their money behind a different sort of game.
Considering nearly all of the big publishers started out as indie companies and now operate purely for profit making the same games over and over... I think I'd rather put a few dollars towards helping more games like Machinarium, Penumbra, Frozen Synapse, etc, get made than $60 towards lining pockets for a game I'll only play for a few hours anyway.
Sure, those who get picked for the bundle might be getting a bit more than Joe Average working on salary to texture shoes for an AssCreed game, but they're not exactly breaking the bank. Taking the humble bundle 3, which made 2.16 million (the most of all so far), and assuming a developer share of 55%, there would've been 1,188,000 shared between 7 games; so, roughly 170,000 per game, or about enough to pay either 3-6 people for a year or one person for 3-6 years (though I'm sure it could be stretched further). Could be a small windfall for someone looking to cash out, but for the most part they use the money to live off while working on something new rather than having to work a second job just to eat.