Introducing the Humble Indie Bundle 6(humblebundle.com)
humblebundle.com
Introducing the Humble Indie Bundle 6
http://www.humblebundle.com
70 comments
It's really hard to port games like these to Linux. Many of them use closed-source or even binary-only libraries that have no freely available replacements. You can blame the game developers for using non-free technology, but in some cases there aren't any good alternatives.
Indie game development has such thin profit margins to begin with that most developers can't justify sinking man-months of effort into a Linux port that might not produce enough revenue to pay for itself.
This kind of depends on your configuration too: Sure, you may be on a modern version of Ubuntu, but what kind of GPU do you have? Does it have modern drivers that are well-supported by the manufacturer? Does it support the variety of extensions and features that a game can rely on having on Windows/OSX? 'many of the games work fine' is only meaningful here if the games all have the same system requirements and you meet those requirements. If not, the best course of action is to try and communicate clearly to the developers that there are customers who are being shut out by system requirements, to see if there are cheap ways for them to lower the requirements.
Indie game development has such thin profit margins to begin with that most developers can't justify sinking man-months of effort into a Linux port that might not produce enough revenue to pay for itself.
This kind of depends on your configuration too: Sure, you may be on a modern version of Ubuntu, but what kind of GPU do you have? Does it have modern drivers that are well-supported by the manufacturer? Does it support the variety of extensions and features that a game can rely on having on Windows/OSX? 'many of the games work fine' is only meaningful here if the games all have the same system requirements and you meet those requirements. If not, the best course of action is to try and communicate clearly to the developers that there are customers who are being shut out by system requirements, to see if there are cheap ways for them to lower the requirements.
I understand but if a game is only linux compatible if you are using a stock dell w/o GPU running archlinux on a Tuesday when Mercury is in retrograde, there is a simple solution:
Don't advertize it as being Linux compatible. I'm not asking for miracles, just a bit more realistic honesty.
Don't advertize it as being Linux compatible. I'm not asking for miracles, just a bit more realistic honesty.
Most of the games are not graphically intensive enough to require a recent nvidia/ati card. Most incompatibilities are due to bugs that may not be discovered due to inadequate testing especially on different distros/hardware. Ideally most of these games work on all normal, recent desktop linux distributions. On many bugs are reported and many are fixed. They could put a "Warning game has received minimum/moderate testing on following distro/hardware combos:"
> Many of them use closed-source or even binary-only libraries that have no freely available replacements.
How do they port it to Linux, then? (They have to re-compile it right?)
I've developed games before and I can tell you, if you're not using propitiatory platform-dependent libraries, porting your game is a piece of cake. What I've noticed is that most of the games on Humble Bundle use a library known as SDL (Simple DirectMedia Layer.) SDL is a library that handles two main things that aren't platform-independent: creating a window and receiving events (keyboard, mouse, e.t.c.) The rest is taken care of by the cross-platform OpenGL, OpenAL, etc. libraries.
In addition, there's an even better library than SDL called SFML (Simple and Fast Multimedia Library). SFML is much more fully featured than SDL, and is C++-based and OOP. With both SFML and SDL, all you have is _just recompile_. And done!
So really, it's not that hard to port a game. "can't justify sinking man-months of effort into a Linux port" sounds a bit stretched. There are plenty of free libraries available for game dev (atleast 2D game dev), like Box2D, CEGUI (Crazy Eddie's GUI), etc. so if from the get-go you plan on supporting multiple platforms use some of those libraries, and porting will be a breeze.
How do they port it to Linux, then? (They have to re-compile it right?)
I've developed games before and I can tell you, if you're not using propitiatory platform-dependent libraries, porting your game is a piece of cake. What I've noticed is that most of the games on Humble Bundle use a library known as SDL (Simple DirectMedia Layer.) SDL is a library that handles two main things that aren't platform-independent: creating a window and receiving events (keyboard, mouse, e.t.c.) The rest is taken care of by the cross-platform OpenGL, OpenAL, etc. libraries.
In addition, there's an even better library than SDL called SFML (Simple and Fast Multimedia Library). SFML is much more fully featured than SDL, and is C++-based and OOP. With both SFML and SDL, all you have is _just recompile_. And done!
So really, it's not that hard to port a game. "can't justify sinking man-months of effort into a Linux port" sounds a bit stretched. There are plenty of free libraries available for game dev (atleast 2D game dev), like Box2D, CEGUI (Crazy Eddie's GUI), etc. so if from the get-go you plan on supporting multiple platforms use some of those libraries, and porting will be a breeze.
Not all of them use closed-source non multi-platform libraries.
Unity a closed source game framework was recently ported to linux(just the framework, not the development tools).
There is a partial reimplementation/clone of XNA called MonoGame.
If there isn't a version of a library for linux I guess they have to re-write it. If they are re-writing for mac/linux at the same time they are more likely to use(and benefit from) cross-platform libraries for those ports.
Unity a closed source game framework was recently ported to linux(just the framework, not the development tools).
There is a partial reimplementation/clone of XNA called MonoGame.
If there isn't a version of a library for linux I guess they have to re-write it. If they are re-writing for mac/linux at the same time they are more likely to use(and benefit from) cross-platform libraries for those ports.
> How do they port it to Linux, then? (They have to re-compile it right?)
Many use a WINE wrapper (or a derivative, like Cider); the same goes for OS X versions. Especially for a lot of these indie games, where a small performance hit isn't a big deal as they don't tax the hardware.
Many use a WINE wrapper (or a derivative, like Cider); the same goes for OS X versions. Especially for a lot of these indie games, where a small performance hit isn't a big deal as they don't tax the hardware.
According to wikipedia LIMBO is the only port to bundle wine(CrossOver).
I don't think that closed-source non multi platform games are too big of a problem. A lot of these games use sdl. One of the games in the new bundle uses unity which is closed source and was ported to linux recently(expect to see a lot more unity games in the humble bundle as unity is pretty popular especially for smaller/indie games). A number of others use XNA for which there is an unfortunately unfinished open source clone version called MonoGame.
A bigger problem is developer effort/binary testing on linux. One guy ported 9 of the humble bundle games to linux by himself(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryan_C._Gordon#Humble_Indie_Bun... including Aquaria). I believe Ryan/icculus did most of the porting work as well as fixing any bugs filled on his bugzilla(https://bugzilla.icculus.org/query.cgi If you see any unreported, please report) by himself. While he is a good developer that is a lot to take on for one person.
Even more importantly many games are rushed and released/ready just before (or even a bit after humble bundle release). Even "just" recompiling for a new os with the same cross platform code requires binary testing to help find unexpected problems. A number of these bugs are eventually fixed but not all of them.
A bigger problem is developer effort/binary testing on linux. One guy ported 9 of the humble bundle games to linux by himself(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryan_C._Gordon#Humble_Indie_Bun... including Aquaria). I believe Ryan/icculus did most of the porting work as well as fixing any bugs filled on his bugzilla(https://bugzilla.icculus.org/query.cgi If you see any unreported, please report) by himself. While he is a good developer that is a lot to take on for one person.
Even more importantly many games are rushed and released/ready just before (or even a bit after humble bundle release). Even "just" recompiling for a new os with the same cross platform code requires binary testing to help find unexpected problems. A number of these bugs are eventually fixed but not all of them.
With the integration of the Ubuntu Software Center both Humble and Canonical work really hard to make sure that does not happen anymore. Right now we have two games ready and the others should be live tomorrow, I can't promise zero problems but they are well tested and if you let us know we will get to the bottom of any problems, high profile Ubuntu debuts are great.
As a counter point, I run Arch. The one time I had a problem I couldn't solve, I fired off an email to the Humble Bundle support team. They had a fix for me in <5 minutes.
If you're worried about this, you can get the bundle for free, and then increase your contribution later (for as long as the bundle is still going on) once you're sure all of the games work on your computer.
Yep, just tried to install Torchlight & SPAZ.
Torchlight doesn't seem to work at all, SPAZ doesn't do fullscreen properly.
Not sure if these are proper ports or running under WINE.
Shame because I've had success with previous bundles.
Torchlight doesn't seem to work at all, SPAZ doesn't do fullscreen properly.
Not sure if these are proper ports or running under WINE.
Shame because I've had success with previous bundles.
Why do you assume wine works worse then a native port?
The windows version of Psychonauts works better under wine then the native linux port(at least for me).
The windows version of Psychonauts works better under wine then the native linux port(at least for me).
Fair warning. I only tried to run Braid on Ubuntu a while ago, and it didn't work because of some complicated driver issue (perhaps solvable for an expert, but not for me). However, I think it might work by now - at least those games are rather timeless, so you can still try again at a later time :-/
How do updates work for hundle bundles? I purchased Bastion in a previous bundle, which was version 1.3. I recently got a rMBP and it flickers a lot during some screens. I noticed patch 1.4 fixes these issues, but there doesn't seem to be a way to get a patch. Anyone know how generally we can get patches?
Log in to the Humble Bundle site and you can download new versions.
I mostly just grab the Steam keys so I don't have to worry about keeping up with new versions.
I mostly just grab the Steam keys so I don't have to worry about keeping up with new versions.
Ahh I totally didn't realize that.
It's not a lot of money, so I'm not disappointed if 1 or 2 of the games doesn't work OOTB. I usually don't bother looking for reasons why they don't work and just play the games that do.
you should buy a non-free operating system to go with you non-free game, I'm pretty sure it'll works.
please also forward this post to the manufacturer of your non-free video card, which is the most likely culprit.
please also forward this post to the manufacturer of your non-free video card, which is the most likely culprit.
I love this, even if you aren't a huge fan of games, it's a great way to donate to EFF and Child's Play and get free games.
It's interesting to see that Linux users ($8.92) on average donate around 40% more than everyone else ($5.36). Also, Windows users are cheaper than Mac users.
This is from the average donation amounts on the page.
This is from the average donation amounts on the page.
There are fewer Linux users than Mac users, and fewer Mac users than Windows users. Thus, the mean sale price for Linux users is more strongly affected by any single big sale than the mean sale price for Mac or Windows users.
I'd be curious to see the median sale prices.
I'd be curious to see the median sale prices.
Also any random Linux user is more likely to be a developer, which likely motivates them more to support the indie devs. And since Macs are 2-3 times as expensive as their PC counterparts, owning one tends to imply you have money to throw around.
Macs aren't 2-3 times as expensive as their PC counterparts. Not even 1.5x as expensive. If you spec out a system with the same components and build quality from any of the PC builders you'll end up with roughly the same price. People just ignore things like screen quality and memory speed when pricing stuff out and then compare consumer PCs to workstation macs.
Feel free to post a Mac that is 2-3x its equal though you'll be the first person in any of the times I've posted this reply that will be able to do it.
Feel free to post a Mac that is 2-3x its equal though you'll be the first person in any of the times I've posted this reply that will be able to do it.
Well, finding 2 computers that are exactly equal in specs is more effort than I care to put in, but here's the first reasonable comparison I see at Best Buy:
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/Toshiba+-+Satellite+14%26%2334%3...
Compare it to the 13" Macbook Pro (for the sake of being generous towards the Mac). It's just over half the price, has a bigger screen, more ram, a larger hard drive, and seemingly identical processor and graphics. Naturally there are give and takes on both sides (just about everything is inferior to Apple in terms of "build quality", though this is tough to put a price on), but I don't think it's unreasonable to say this is a comparable laptop, and the specs easily make up for it being $50 over half price.
I don't say this to disparage Apple, I've got a MBP myself, but whenever I look at PCs with comparable specs, I do find that they tend to be about half the price.
I'll withdraw 3x though, that probably is too high and even if I could hunt around and find one example, it's not like that would prove the point.
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/Toshiba+-+Satellite+14%26%2334%3...
Compare it to the 13" Macbook Pro (for the sake of being generous towards the Mac). It's just over half the price, has a bigger screen, more ram, a larger hard drive, and seemingly identical processor and graphics. Naturally there are give and takes on both sides (just about everything is inferior to Apple in terms of "build quality", though this is tough to put a price on), but I don't think it's unreasonable to say this is a comparable laptop, and the specs easily make up for it being $50 over half price.
I don't say this to disparage Apple, I've got a MBP myself, but whenever I look at PCs with comparable specs, I do find that they tend to be about half the price.
I'll withdraw 3x though, that probably is too high and even if I could hunt around and find one example, it's not like that would prove the point.
Worse quality screen, graphics card, audio, and slower cpu. Worse keyboard(no backlighting), worse trackpad(my missus has one they are pretty awful), thicker case.
Nothing is stand out worse but everything is just a bit worse which when your pushing the upper edges adds up to a lot of cost. Not even counting build quality.
Nothing is stand out worse but everything is just a bit worse which when your pushing the upper edges adds up to a lot of cost. Not even counting build quality.
By this logic, is anything but a Macbook comparable to a Macbook? How would you compare build quality objectively? I think it's safe to say if you're paying extra for a backlit keyboard, you're throwing around money.
Yes but they cost just as much. As you'll note I said ignoring build quality even though it should be factored in.
If you've ever had a backlit keyboard you will realize the usefulness of them. I consider them as essential as a good screen but again I just pointed out that its a worse keyboard not that the keyboard is make or break.
If you've ever had a backlit keyboard you will realize the usefulness of them. I consider them as essential as a good screen but again I just pointed out that its a worse keyboard not that the keyboard is make or break.
I guess I tried to address two issues in this. Let's put it this way: one man drives an Audi RS4, and the other has a Toyota Camry. Nobody argues that the man with the Audi has the better car, but one might infer that he also has more disposable income. That is why we assume people with Macbooks have more disposable income; they've purchased a luxury item when there is a commodity alternative. A backlit keyboard is definitely not required to use a laptop, no more than heated seats are necessary in a car. You think they're essential because you have enough disposable income that the utility of the money you'd use to buy the keyboard has become less than the utility of the keyboard. This is the notion of value. You can also, likely, afford to give a few dollars to a charity if you'd like.
Thats a fair comment but is a different discussion than the one this subthread is built on which is whether a mac is more expensive than a comparable pc. When discussing that then features like a backlit keyboard are important.
Consumer Macs are price competitive on the day of their release but their price doesn't drop over time the way PCs do. Since Macs are refreshed approximately annually, this can mean a significant differential just before a refresh.
On release day, macs are only price-competitive if (1) quality is more important than price and (2) Apple has a product targeting your needs.
When buying a computer, you don't look at specs you look at needs.
"I need a laptop to run the Internet and Microsoft Word". PC: $400. Mac: $1000 or higher if an 11" screen is acceptable. It doesn't matter that the $400 laptop has a crappy screen -- to many people a crappy 15" screen is better than a great 11".
"super fast dev box": PC: $800, Mac: $2500 (and the PC is considerably faster)
"great gaming rig": PC: $1500, Mac: ????
On release day, macs are only price-competitive if (1) quality is more important than price and (2) Apple has a product targeting your needs.
When buying a computer, you don't look at specs you look at needs.
"I need a laptop to run the Internet and Microsoft Word". PC: $400. Mac: $1000 or higher if an 11" screen is acceptable. It doesn't matter that the $400 laptop has a crappy screen -- to many people a crappy 15" screen is better than a great 11".
"super fast dev box": PC: $800, Mac: $2500 (and the PC is considerably faster)
"great gaming rig": PC: $1500, Mac: ????
I'll give you the laptop to browse the web and run word. But thats a low end task and thats not Apples target market with their laptops(hence the pro in the name).
For the others I'm going to need to see examples.
For the others I'm going to need to see examples.
"But thats a low end task".
It's also about 90% of the market. Macs have a significant share of this market -- sold to those who care more about design, stability and/or status more than price.
$800 should get you an i5 2500K, a solid motherboard, 16 gigs of RAM, a small SSD, a nice case & PS. No ECC, but it's considerably faster than a Mac Pro.
For the 1500 machine, add a killer graphics card, a secondary HDD and a Windows license. You'll even have some money left over to sub in one of those silly "gamer" cases.
That's BYO. Prebuilt stuff is generally about the same price, but comes with lower quality cases, power supplies & motherboards.
It's also about 90% of the market. Macs have a significant share of this market -- sold to those who care more about design, stability and/or status more than price.
$800 should get you an i5 2500K, a solid motherboard, 16 gigs of RAM, a small SSD, a nice case & PS. No ECC, but it's considerably faster than a Mac Pro.
For the 1500 machine, add a killer graphics card, a secondary HDD and a Windows license. You'll even have some money left over to sub in one of those silly "gamer" cases.
That's BYO. Prebuilt stuff is generally about the same price, but comes with lower quality cases, power supplies & motherboards.
The fact that people buy a high performance item for a low performance task does not make the item over priced it means they are over paying for what they need. There is a big difference.
Again, posting what you should be able to get is all fine but if you're comparing to a mac pro then until you post me a parts list for a workstation with the same quality of parts put together already then you're not really making your point.
You're not going to do that though because its time consuming and difficult to match up. Also you're ignoring the cost involved in the effort of finding/getting and assembling those parts. To be a fair comparison you'd have to go off one of the PC manufactures lists or at least add overhead for the labor.
Again, posting what you should be able to get is all fine but if you're comparing to a mac pro then until you post me a parts list for a workstation with the same quality of parts put together already then you're not really making your point.
You're not going to do that though because its time consuming and difficult to match up. Also you're ignoring the cost involved in the effort of finding/getting and assembling those parts. To be a fair comparison you'd have to go off one of the PC manufactures lists or at least add overhead for the labor.
But my point is that matching specs is the wrong thing to do. I want a machine that will compile a large code base really quickly. I can do that for $800, and it will do it faster than any machine that Apple sells for less than $4800. (12 core mac pro with SSD). The $2500 Mac Pro is better than my $800 machine at many things, but my $800 machine is superior for my needs, and that's all that matters.
Then you're arguing against something I didn't claim. I never claimed Macs were the same price as the best PCs for specific tasks. I said that a comparable PC will cost a similar price to a mac. Just because your $800 PC does what you need better does not make it a better machine. It just makes it a better machine for you.
I'm not saying that your claim is wrong, I'm just saying that your claim is meaningless. What's inside the machine doesn't matter at all, the suitability of the machine for the tasks performed on it is what matters.
Linux users really, really, really like to brag about HumbleBundle numbers. This is a talking point every single time. I view it from the perspective that after charity/tip they pay one whole dollar to each dev. A whole dollar! It's less impressive from that viewpoint.
0% of linux users have any of these games, some percentage greater than zero of windows users will have one or more.
>0% of linux users have any of these games //
If there are Windows users that already have them then chances are there are Linux users that already have them (for their other [other ...] OS partition).
If there are Windows users that already have them then chances are there are Linux users that already have them (for their other [other ...] OS partition).
Exactly. I'm a Linux user, I already have a copy of Torchlight (which, incidentally, was a fantastic game and well worth the price on its own). It's sold well over a million copies by now, there is going to be some overlap in that number and Linux users.
In the past, Humble Bundle has occasionally used strong sales of a bundle as a reason to release some of the games in that bundle as Open Source. If they'd consider pre-committing to that based on target thresholds, I'd donate to this in a heartbeat; we need more good Open Source games.
Open-sourcing some games seems like a really good idea, but I think a lot of the Humble Bundle games typically fall into a category where design is much more significant than technology. It's one thing to allow modding on the Source engine, which would otherwise be out of reach for most developers. But given the code for Braid, how would the community improve on it? It's clearly the vision of one man, and it's been developed fully. A lot of indie games focus on fine game balance, distinctive graphics design, or plot to differentiate themselves, where I think of Open Source as a very technically-oriented model. Do you have examples of games you think would benefit from being opened up?
I can see two major cases where it seems like a particularly big win.
First, quite a lot of indie games build an engine and then numerous variations of levels to support a plot. Braid, Bastion, Iji, Super Meat Boy, Gish, World of Goo, and many more where those came from follow that model: impressive engine, pile of well-designed levels, plot. In those cases, the ability to create more levels and add some technical variations can nicely extend the lifespan of a game.
Second, and even more importantly, the much broader space of design ideas in indie games means many more interesting components with unusual variations. Braid has a physics engine that supports time-based mechanics. Super Meat Boy has an extremely impressive record-and-replay mechanism (used to great effect at the end of each level to show you all the ways you died simultaneously). Several indie games have very impressive lighting models. The Bit Trip games have music syncing engines. Many indie games have impressive dynamic-content-generation engines. The more of these components that become readily available, the more impressive the starting point for any future indie game.
First, quite a lot of indie games build an engine and then numerous variations of levels to support a plot. Braid, Bastion, Iji, Super Meat Boy, Gish, World of Goo, and many more where those came from follow that model: impressive engine, pile of well-designed levels, plot. In those cases, the ability to create more levels and add some technical variations can nicely extend the lifespan of a game.
Second, and even more importantly, the much broader space of design ideas in indie games means many more interesting components with unusual variations. Braid has a physics engine that supports time-based mechanics. Super Meat Boy has an extremely impressive record-and-replay mechanism (used to great effect at the end of each level to show you all the ways you died simultaneously). Several indie games have very impressive lighting models. The Bit Trip games have music syncing engines. Many indie games have impressive dynamic-content-generation engines. The more of these components that become readily available, the more impressive the starting point for any future indie game.
> The more of these components that become readily available, the more impressive the starting point for any future indie game.
I'm not sure to what extent these things can be recycled(other then for ideas).
Actual advantages I see:
Fixing bugs/maintaining long term/packaging. This allows people to spot bugs easier, contribute back code, and generally maintain the game better(fix anything that break thanks to old platform assumptions).
Porting to other platforms(especially arm, maybe android these days), many who open source games allow you to use a copy of the data for one platform on any platform.
I'm not sure to what extent these things can be recycled(other then for ideas).
Actual advantages I see:
Fixing bugs/maintaining long term/packaging. This allows people to spot bugs easier, contribute back code, and generally maintain the game better(fix anything that break thanks to old platform assumptions).
Porting to other platforms(especially arm, maybe android these days), many who open source games allow you to use a copy of the data for one platform on any platform.
I feel like the last Humble Bundle might have set the bar too high for the following bundles.
I know this would wreck their whole sales strategy ("X amount of time left"), but I wish you could go back and buy an old bundle for something like double the average or whatever made sense for them.
I doubt the developers want to have their games available permanently on sale. So unless you really want to pay $50-60 for old bundles, it won't happen.
It makes more sense just to buy the stuff you want directly from the developers. Or wait for another sale.
It makes more sense just to buy the stuff you want directly from the developers. Or wait for another sale.
They pretty reliably give the previous bundle for free if you pay more than the average for the current bundle, but don't bet on it.
can someone explain to me how you can make money on a game like Rochard (one of the games in the bundle)? There is such an incredible amount of detail in the background in each scene, it looks like few thousand hours of work just that.
Basically you don't.
Most of the games business is a high risk, high reward gamble. New IP much more so than working with an existing franchise. This is in no way unique to a game like Rochard, it'd apply equally much to $0.99 iPhone games or AAA games launching on all platforms and needing to sell 3 million copies to break even.
In this case the original target market was the PS3 store, and my understanding is that the very highest selling indie games there have lifetime sales in the half million unit range. And the sales figures are likely obeying a power law, with the median sales in the thousands of units. It does seem like a pretty horrible place to be selling to.
For Rochard, we can try to make a rough estimate of the cost. First of all the studio making the game was formed for an overly ambitious project (Earth No More), which was scrapped after several years. Mostof the team dispersed, but a skeleton crew started on a new game, and shipped Rochard around 1.5 years laters. The credits show 15 people, but I doubt they would all have been on the project full time. So let's guess 10-15 man-years of work.
On the funding side, clearly they won't have had much if any money left at the start of the project. Early on they sold some part of the rights to the game to an outside investor for 400kEUR.
Even if we ignore overhead, the cost of things like voice acting, and assume Finnish pay levels, it seems clear that the team wasn't working for full market salaries. Maybe they just really wanted to work on games rather than CRUD apps. Or they all had significant equity, and were hoping to hitting it big with that 1% surprise hit.
Judging by Rochard not appearing on the top 20 most sold lists on the PSN, it seems like a fair bet that it did not make a profit there. I don't know whether it flopped completely or had mediocre sales. For the purpose of making money, it doesn't really matter. There's a good chance that they'll make more from the Humble Bundle than from PSN. Even so, it doesn't look like a project that would have broken even for the investors, or for anyone working on it at below market wage.
(Edit: Which is a shame. It was one of my favorite games last year, and I certainly didn't mind paying for it again as part of the bundle).
Most of the games business is a high risk, high reward gamble. New IP much more so than working with an existing franchise. This is in no way unique to a game like Rochard, it'd apply equally much to $0.99 iPhone games or AAA games launching on all platforms and needing to sell 3 million copies to break even.
In this case the original target market was the PS3 store, and my understanding is that the very highest selling indie games there have lifetime sales in the half million unit range. And the sales figures are likely obeying a power law, with the median sales in the thousands of units. It does seem like a pretty horrible place to be selling to.
For Rochard, we can try to make a rough estimate of the cost. First of all the studio making the game was formed for an overly ambitious project (Earth No More), which was scrapped after several years. Mostof the team dispersed, but a skeleton crew started on a new game, and shipped Rochard around 1.5 years laters. The credits show 15 people, but I doubt they would all have been on the project full time. So let's guess 10-15 man-years of work.
On the funding side, clearly they won't have had much if any money left at the start of the project. Early on they sold some part of the rights to the game to an outside investor for 400kEUR.
Even if we ignore overhead, the cost of things like voice acting, and assume Finnish pay levels, it seems clear that the team wasn't working for full market salaries. Maybe they just really wanted to work on games rather than CRUD apps. Or they all had significant equity, and were hoping to hitting it big with that 1% surprise hit.
Judging by Rochard not appearing on the top 20 most sold lists on the PSN, it seems like a fair bet that it did not make a profit there. I don't know whether it flopped completely or had mediocre sales. For the purpose of making money, it doesn't really matter. There's a good chance that they'll make more from the Humble Bundle than from PSN. Even so, it doesn't look like a project that would have broken even for the investors, or for anyone working on it at below market wage.
(Edit: Which is a shame. It was one of my favorite games last year, and I certainly didn't mind paying for it again as part of the bundle).
Dustforce dev here. We (4 people) just lived super cheaply in a shed and apartment, working day and night for a year and a half. Expenses were about $25k per person per year (pretty much just food, rent/utilities, beer). Lived off of savings and prize money from a prototype of the game.
These games look pretty good, unfortunately I literally can't spare any more money this month.
Would it be a dick thing to do to pay $0 for this bundle and promise myself to pay a lot more for the next bundle (even if the games suck)?
Would it be a dick thing to do to pay $0 for this bundle and promise myself to pay a lot more for the next bundle (even if the games suck)?
No. They're offering you the games at whatever price you can afford, you're allowed to take them up on their generosity! If I were you, I'd pay the minimum $0.01, use the torrents to minimize their costs, and increase the amount you're paying later.
As an alternative to torrents, if you're playing on Windows you can just take the keys they give you and put them into Steam, rather than downloading off HIB servers.
You have to pay $1 to get a steam key.
The default split gives a large chunk of money to the devs. The devs involved in the next bundle maybe(usually are) different than the devs involved in this bundle. You would stiff someone but overpay someone else. If you give it all to charity, their charities stay pretty stable across bundles.
You can increase your payment later, usually.
Uh oh - I wasted a lot of hours on Torchlight. Luckily I had to return it (complicated story). I think I should pass on this bundle, too dangerous.
I keep buying these and never seem to have time to actually play all of the games :(.
I keep hoping that they will release Trine 2 as part of the bundles. I know it's only been less than a year since Trine 2 came out. Humble Bundle introduced me to Trine 1, which was the first game I've completed in ages.
'Pay more than the average of $5.50 to unlock Dustforce!'
Genius. This should just keep pushing the price up and up as each person pays more than the average. Wondering how this will work out.
Those paying less than $5.50 are probably paying a LOT less than $5.50, so the average may stay fairly stable.
The bundle is fascinating as the page gives many different pricing signals. Other factors being equal I think people don't like to miss out on things. Mentally as this one game has a unlock restriction it 'must be a better game', I think the risk of missing out in the best game by going under $5.50 will encourage people to pay over the average and still be able to mentally reconcile their pricing reasoning as to why 'they' got a good bargain.
People paying a lot less are also already factored into the average and I see no specfic factor driving low payers to be greater in quantity than usual. Hence why I love this approach.
People paying a lot less are also already factored into the average and I see no specfic factor driving low payers to be greater in quantity than usual. Hence why I love this approach.
I'm a FP gamer, if some of these were FP I'd love to buy them.
I initially had issues on an older machine & updated ubuntu, followed the threads (it was a common issue), followed the debug & fix steps, but to no avail. I chalked it up to the hardware but with a brand new linux box and new (months later) download of Trine it still didn't run. I haven't bothered spending another hour searching down and going thru all the fix steps. It looks like there might be a new, possibly working version by now but it's been months and months and I've basically forgotten about it.
I don't expect everything to work OOTB in linux, but I'm using a popular distro, many of the games work fine, and if I'm paying for a "Linux compatible" game I expect it to be Linux compatible with a reasonable small number of clear steps without spelunking thru a dozen forum threads &c.. This is not "free" software, I paid for it and expect it to work.
I want to support humble bundle but it's too frustrating to buy a game and have it not even load.