Gala Stress Test too.
You're not overworrying, we've started seeing early access games getting bundled too...but until we know if sales quantity doesn't compensate low pricing we don't really have much to go on assuming bundling is bad for industry in the long run.
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Completely missed that one. This makes the list even scarier to look at.
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I am not well informed enough to make a judgment on this. Do indie devs get better income from having their games in bundles? 'cuz if they do, then bundles is not a problem at all.
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It depends. There are some reasons to bundle games. One is getting more people to know their titles = thats more sales (and it works). Another one is getting a boost on their incomes to continue working on their next project. So, i think it depends on the site the games are going to be bundled. If it is something like humble, and if we take for example the current indie 11, each dev/team can be earning 100200k in the end if my guesses are right (it has potential to reach 3m4m tho). If it is a less known site, it could be 1k~15k probably e/ dev (not really sure enough, i could be wrong). But yes, it's profitable, everything helps. The bundled games generally get a boost on their sales after that, they become more known to a wider audience, new games need exposure, old games need the profit for sequels/new projects.
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Also, it may not necessarily increase $ as much as they'd like, but it is useful for marketing purposes. They get to report a higher number of unit sales and make themselves look like a sexy product to customers/investors. Hence, you always see the line "# million copies sold!"
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It also reminds me of that rather ugly crash in the '80s. The market was over-saturated with games that rarely offered something new from what has been released up until that point, and even more rarely did they offer actual good quality. Quality ain't a problem here and I don't think it ever will be, but the over-saturating bit? Oh boy...
Isn't the point that this isn't the same as the 80's video game crash - at least not in the indie space? The stuff being pumped out almost constantly is wildly different, varied and advanced.
Yes, some of the stuff being pegged onto the smaller bundles is pretty much dross and there's a lot of 'Greenlight scraping' where they play the 'get the game on Steam' card to generate sales/word of mouth about games, but that's a different problem.
The big problems are up at the top-end/in AAA games - there's no risk taking, just largely iteration on established themes, with rising development costs and corporate blunders being made left, right and centre in order to keep shareholders happy by returning record profits at consumer expense.
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Wildly different, varied and advanced is a large overstatement. Most of the games fall into one of many already existing themes and "genres", such as the "interactive stories" like Dear Esther and Gone Home, the metroidvanias, rougelikes or survival, procedurally generated or "blocky" (i.e. We-Wanna-Be-Minecraft) types. The actual new stuff we get that is radically different from what we have every day is there, sure, but it's rare. Hotline Miami, Brothers and Papers Please is pretty much the last I can think of, although I haven't played too many of the newer indies. The rest, and the vast majority of them, are just already existing games with some tweaks to them, wether or not they're horrible or fantastic.
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I used to buy them all because as a former Xbox user the deals were just so good! Now I have so many games, and many that I can't see myself ever playing that I only buy bundles if I know that I want to play at least one of the games.
Might be bad on the industry, all depends on how much those games were earning prior to bundles. If it's one last push for a successful game then that's fine; if it's the only way for an indie to make anything then it's not good.
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I think it really is case by case. I don't think we've (Blink) included any game that had robust sales right before the bundle. They all had dipped by the point they agreed to bundle with us. I even tend to target games that have been completely overlooked by bundlers (i.e. Blue Toad Murder Files in BB#2), or they've been resistant because of ridiculous sales gimmicks that devalue their products for months after.
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I'm kind of intrigued by what you mean under those sales gimmicks there. Could you be more specific without the name-dropping of devs?
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A lot of developers are genuinely concerned about how low the per key price becomes with most bundles now. That's not an issue with Humble Bundle obviously because the overall sales would make anyone forget it. But that's not the case for everyone else. Eventually the per key price dips soo low that it just becomes absurd. And resellers, traders and task sites jump on them so that the value is potentially screwed for months. Hard for them to ditch sales tactics that they've been relying on for years.
That's not even getting into how low the dev cut is for some bundles.
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Bundles are fun and all, getting a shitload of games for really cheap is always fun but this is getting out of hand.
edit: replacing fun with nice feels more appropriate now that i think about it, the bundle buying fun already went away a long time ago. These days i'm more like; meh another bundle, and then i try to arrange a bundle split so i don't get stuck with a giant notepad file full of random Steam keys for games i already own because they were in 3 other bundles before.
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just over worrying. half the time they're repeats anyway, so its not like brand new stuff is getting bundled constantly, those that are new to bundles tend to be old and on sale many times beforehand, and the ones that are new usually actually need the attention(like the greenlight sales, or many of the indies)
besides http://hitboxteam.com/dustforce-sales-figures apparently it works out better than you'd think
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I think it is getting a little out of hand. Where I was buying humble bundle BTAs before (the main ones), now I find myself only going for $1 tier bundles or flat-priced bundles unless I really like the BTA games, yet I'm spending a lot more overall on bundles. I like the fact that they introduce me to new games that I wouldn't otherwise try, let alone buy, but I'm starting to want to save the money I would be spending on bundles and rather just get games I actually want on sale. This is difficult though with so many tempting bundles.
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I feel exactly the same. First I bought bta regularely, then it skipped to the 1$. Now I even hardly buy the 1$ unless I really like the games. Buying the btw has become quite exceptional. (For most of the time I already have the bta games cause I really wanted them).
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I've spent more on bundles in the past 3 years than I spent on games for the 20 years before that.
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i only buy bundles if it has something i want. if people are buying bundles cause the yare just compelled to by obcessive impulse then they just need help. no different that someone going shopping constantly for no reason and their house being full of stuff they will never ever use. too many people use the "but its charity" as an excuse to feed their own impulses. if they cared that much about the charity part then they would just outright donate to charity without the prompt of getting something in return. at the very least they wouldnt spend the bare minimum if charity was the main concern/push to buy.
as far as it being bad for the industry that is entirely up to the devs/pubs that are putting their stuff up for these bundles. if they can afford it then fine if they cant and they still do it then its their fault. no different than anything else.
its not like going out and buying 200 metric tons of food and watching it all spoil and rot and go to waste. game keys and virtual items are not in short supply.
also there is tons and tons of people that dont buy or even concern themselves with bundles at all ever. a site about steam games or gaming in general will skew that view cause its a site full of people that are into bundles and it seems that forum culture tends to hype bundles like its the cool thing to do. if you are a gaming hipster and dont buy bundles then you arent really a gaming hipster i guess.
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Doing so makes this thread hilariously ironic. I couldn't resist doing it though.
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And there is Gamersgate's Build-A-Rockstar-Bundle too... (but maybe it's too expensive for that)
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It's really a poor bundle and for 5 $ actually overpriced compared to sales/past bundles.
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Your link for the reboot 1.0 bundle isn't correct btw
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Hmm. Trying to decide whether to buy Flying Bundle 6 or just pick up Hero Siege from IndieGameStand.
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New Get Loaded offer coming in about 11 hours as well, although they are usually not that good
Edit: Groupees "Build a Greenlight Bundle 5" also just launched
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Yeah I think I'll just stop counting them, the point has been made already. Now we know almost twice as much bundles than we knew when I first posted the thread.
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It really depends on the 'lifecycle' of a game. I'm also worried if games that were released less than 6 months ago end up in a bundle. I see bundles as a good way to show older games to people for a great price, which means the devs still get a bit out of an otherwise pretty 'dead' title and might it's also a form of advertising new games from them. There's certainly a flood of new bundles lately, but I'm not sure if it's just a phenomen for a bit or if it'll stay like this (and eventually have an impact on the indie game market).
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Yeah, my wallet is not happy with me this month. Though I should say thanks for the info because I didn't know about the Blink bundle and that had nearly all games I was interested in. I hadn't even known about Blue Toad Murder Files either, so just introduced me to a new game too.
But yeah, just in the past couple of days I've gotten the Blink #2, Gala Capsule, Debut #10, and Bundlestars Neo/Retro. That and I'm debating on what tier to get of this week's Humble weekly sale as well (Raven is just too tempting, but the $6 tier is almost a given)
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lol i tend not to look at bundles, cause i can never afford them, and there are enough games i want, i just end up irritating myself if i start bundle shopping, but yea, bundles seemt o be very common lol
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So, after doing some minimal research, I found out that in the timeframe of one week starting from the oldest of these bundles, roughly 11 released. That's an average of 4-5 game per bundle, counting them with having the BTA and non-BTA amount of games in mind. Actually might be a bit more than that too; I didn't do the math though, and there's no need to. My point is, I find this alarming, since even if you buy only ONE of these every week, you'll get that average 4-5 games for yourself, and there's no way in hell you're completing that many within a week, unless you're completely at home for that week because of sickness or something.
It also reminds me of that rather ugly crash in the '80s. The market was oversaturated with games that rarely offered something new from what has been released up until that point, and even more rarely did they offer actual good quality. Quality ain't a problem here and I don't think it ever will be, but the oversaturating bit? Oh boy...
I love the indie game industry. It pulled me out of the nice but rather droll and lifeless world of Xbox 360 games (exceptions apply though), and I have found an insane amount of new favourites within even a year, let alone the last 3 years. But this time, I'm worried about it a little bit. Low-cost bundles don't earn a lot for gamedevs, even if the majority of the income goes to one developer (hey, check out Prince Caspian's posts in the thread about the Puppygames weekly sale to get an idea, and that's freaking Humble, the most successful of all of these sales); and gamers get discouraged to play the vast majority of their stuff thanks to their backlog. I know I had that reaction at least. I have been a happy buyer so far, picking up most of the good offers, but I find myself rarely if ever playing the games themselves. Collecting stuff is one thing, but if I don't intend on doing that (which I really don't intend to do), what's the point of getting them? I'll refrain from buying these unless I want to play some of the games right away. Otherwise, it's cheaper to buy the games on a single individual sale, than overall getting all the bundles out there.
What do you think of this? Is this a real and threatening thing, or am I just over-worrying this whole thing?
As a fun thing, here's a list of what bundles I counted for those 11 released ones; maybe not the most accurate thing and I really didn't do the math, but I don't think it matters:
This is all not even counting Indiegamestand and quite possibly some other obscure bundles.
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