Humble Bundle #3 is Live | Hacker News Reader

Humble Bundle #3 is Live

humblebundle.com

336 pointsDysiode122 comments

The way that they preselect an amount $1 above average is extremely clever. It appeals to people's need to see themselves as above average without costing them anything substantial.

Screenshot: http://screensnapr.com/v/QciSbr.png

and looks like they're a/b testing it; http://i.imgur.com/NsjwG.png

Yep. The JS looks like they are doing it with Visual Website Optimizer.

A/B/C testing: http://goo.gl/68ZXm

I'd be curious to know which version was the most effective in the end.

Oh, I totally would have fell for that!

I got the scenario that janzer posted, and I opted for $5 since I wasn't too excited about any of the games and just wanted to support the cause. I felt a little cheap because the cheapest example was $10, but felt justified based on the selection of games. If $5.81 was the default option with "above average" label, I would have went with that.

Indeed, and I went for it in a shot - worked very well.

And it will gradually increase the average every time someone chooses that option.

I thought the same when I saw it.

Weirdly enough, though, the average was at about $4.40 when I saw it earlier today, and it is $4.27 now.

Wonder if this technique might be driving some people to pay more (I will do it as soon as I get home), but not enough to offset all the people that just want lots of games for no money at all.

There is also the possibility that it is cannibalizing their higher-paying customer base. For instance, perhaps if I hadn't been presented with that option I would have paid $10 instead. In that case it would drive the average down rather than up.

Presumably that's why they're A/B testing it. :-)

If the average is currently $X after N purchases, that means they have taken in $(N * X). When the next person pays $(X + 1), the total is now $((N * X) + (X + 1)) == $(((N + 1) * X) + 1). The new average is $(X + (1 / (N + 1))), which is guaranteed to be higher than the old average.

Yes, the average after purchase (AAP) would be greater than the average before purchase (ABP). However, the AAP of $10 is greater than the AAP of $X+1.

The question is to what extent the $X+1 purchases depress greater purchases, as well as to what extent the $X+1 purchases increase smaller purchases.

The answer can only be determined by actually testing it.

I'd love to be a fly on the wall for the A/B test, but I still think something a wee closer to

http://images1.bingocardcreator.com/blog-images/hn/deep-disc...

would kill both the A/B tested options. Bringing in people's psychological need to be above average is great, but I might do that by putting a nice 37Signals style yellow highlight on one of the expensive options (for some value of expensive which would pay for more than a Big Mac) and say "24% of people went for this"

I'd love to see your variation tested too but the data-driven "above average" feels much less accusatory and supportive than subjective labeling of "poor student" and "valued contributor". Makes me wonder if poor students are less valued?

Also the fine-grained payment distribution scrollbar controls make me feel empowered and better about my participation in this cause. Getting rid of them would disappoint me.

This reminds me of someone's donation button on some open source project, it was something like:

    Donate [$5 — buy me a beer] [$20 — buy me dinner] [$100 — buy me a gadget]

Personally, "Tired of overpriced games from soul-crushing megacorps laden with spyware and DRM?" really puts me off.

Are you tired of underpriced games from small indie dev shops without spyware or DRM?

It's a somewhat antagonistic statement, and those can rankle.

If you don't mind me asking, what did you use to make that mockup image?

I Believe it's Balsamic Mockups http://balsamiq.com/products/mockups

ooh nice one!

Hope you don't mind me using that mockup for one of my own experiments :)

Go for it. I'd love to know if it works out for you.

For people who are interested in the business story behind the Humble Indie Bundles, the creators gave a talk covering Bundles 1 and 2 at the 2011 Indie Games Summit:

http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1014437/The-Humble-Indie

One of the take-away messages they had was "always target Mac and Linux, because it's a bit more work but you'll double your revenue".

As a Windows user - seeing that the software available for different architectures says to me that the code is more than likely robust and well debugged.

The thing is you have no guarantee that the Windows binary have been generated after the port was done. Also, no guarantee it's the same source tree and not different forks of the same base.

These bundles are all great. I keep pointing them out to my non-gaming friends as much as possible.

I've dumped my consoles in the last year and moved to finding 'indie' game devs like these because, as the old saying goes, 'It's not about graphics, it's about gameplay'[citation needed] and I don't care how many polygons you can throw at /next big game/ it is almost invariably yet another FPS.

I don't think it's fair to say it's "yet another FPS". I think that people who only play Indie titles are missing out just as much as those who only play huge AAA releases.

What about people who only play Dwarf Fortress?

You're missing out too - and I say this as someone who used to only play DF. DF is amazing, but there are tons of other games that are just as amazing or nearly so (Minecraft, Fallout, Terraria, Portal, Spacechem ... dear deity, Spacechem. If you buy one game this year, buy it). None of them really compare to DF in learning curve or sheer complexity, but they're all really good.

Who's got the time though?

I view it similarly to any other varied hobby. If you like to cook you can either choose to cook American food all the time or you can branch out and try different styles.

Although, the difference is that hunger and food are pretty constant in relation to each other where as there are just masses of video games. But I think the principle is close enough :)

The problem with this comparison is that an average meal doesn't take upwards of 20 hours to prepare. For someone working full-time, completing a game can be a large time investment.

Generally I play games maybe 2-3 hours a week max due to the double whammy of having a family and working at a startup :) This means for the average game it might keep me busy for a few months at a time. DF on the other hand...

Well, ignoring the atypical nature of the HN crowd: most people, really. According to the BBC [1] the average (non-startup founding...) person spends 28 hours watching TV per week. That's plenty of time to do play games.

[1] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-12651728

The same can be said for a number of old games as well. GoG's Summer Gems daily sale had a bunch of games that can't possibly compare graphically these days but still surpass modern games in many ways (e.g. Independence War which I would argue is unique in the space shooter genre).

That and my aging single-core computer simply can't keep up with many AAA tiles.

> I've dumped my consoles in the last year and moved to finding 'indie' game devs like these because, as the old saying goes, 'It's not about graphics, it's about gameplay'

Ironically, this is pretty much what made the Wii such a success in the Moms & Dads demographic ...

I absolutely agree, though I've found myself heavily driven to retrogaming for the most part, replaying old games I never played as a kid...and having a blast!

A commenter on habrahabr.ru+ noticed (http://habrahabr.ru/blogs/gdev/124990/#comment_4110999) that there are Russian black marketers buying bundles for $ 0.01 and reselling for around 50 rubles ($1.50) that, unfortunately, may drive the average price down. Supposedly, people who can't be bothered to get a credit card or Webmoney account buy from them.

I'm worried how the pay-what-you-want model accommodates this behaviour? I hope clients buying directly for a reasonable price will always outnumber the black marketers or people intentionally buying for $0.01 to cause loss, but I don't know for sure.

+ habrahabr.ru is Russian IT news blog filled in large part with content translated from Hacker News.

Since there's no DRM you can't help it if people are buying one key and then burning a bunch of CDs, but that won't affect the average price much. Seems to me that if they're selling license keys for $1.50, the best way to counter this is to change the download screen title to:

    Thanks for purchasing the Humble Indie Bundle #3 for $0.01!

... if the customer thinks that's fair, so be it, but it might at least encourage the "resellers" to pay slightly more.

Alternatively, I don't think setting the minimum payment to $1 would be at all incompatible with the "pay what you want" slogan & worthwhile if it eliminates the payment fees problem.

(But what would I know? I've bought all four, and last time 'round I felt like I got my money's worth just out of Braid.)

They seem to have cottoned on to this: if enter a price of less than a dollar, you need to fill out a re-captcha.

    Orders under $1 must authenticate with reCAPTCHA to help cut down on costly abuse.

vvvvvvv is awesome by the way. You can try it here (assuming you have flash installed/enabled): http://www.kongregate.com/games/TerryCavanagh/vvvvvv-demo

Not only that, but they just upgraded to VVVVVV 2.0, which has a level editor and bunch of really good new levels. I'm a huge fan of the game, and this is like the best thing that happened to me today.

snagged in this bundle after mostly ignoring it despite people raving. i played Metal Storm on the NES and nothing i saw from vvvvvv looked like it trumped that, but i plan to try it out. i'm sure it has more charm that doesn't come through in most people's videos demoing it.

Always excited to see another Humble Bundle. I purchased right away and gave a greater proportion to Wolfire in hopes of encouraging further bundles sooner (not that I paid that much, but I don't have that much money right now :\). The Linux support is what makes this such a happy deal for me.

Interesting stats. There appear to be as many Mac users as Linux users, and Linux users pay 2x more than Mac users.

I guess Mac users spend all their money on OS upgrades :)

This is a really interesting statistic actually. I got the last 2 bundles and I'm a Mac user. I am definitely pro-Mac OS. Seeing those stats made me pay a little more.

I am also an iOS dev and try and keep up on trends. I'd wager most Mac users are also iOS users. And current stats indicate that most iOS users are willing to spend money on software.

So why the stinginess here!?

iOS users get many chances to spend money on games. Linux users only get a few chances, so when a Humble Bundle rolls around, they jump on the opportunity. You can bet that iOS users spend more money (total, not per-game) on games than Linux users, because of the App Store.

Like avg $15 a year lately...

Linux version pays the best average amount. Is there any message?

This has probably more to do with the fact that Linux users are quite often part of a community that promotes this kind of thing.

Also the statistic don't account for people with multiple systems. Windows on the desktop for games, Linux in the desktop for development and OS X on the MacBook is not an uncommon setup for developers.

You can have your contribution factored into all three operating systems, apparently.

Yes, Windows and MacOS users spend more money on buying software so their budget is already stretched, while Linux users have money to spent.

Or Linux users cannot assess the worth of software as they are not used to buy software.

Both probably not what you wanted to hear, and probably not the real reason. I just wanted to point out that we can project everything into the fact that Linux version pays best average amount.

Or "I'll pay more for this to reward these people for making games for my platform, and more developers will hopefully follow."

Or more likely because linux has very few games, where as windows has vast amounts. I have bought every humble bundle but never played a single game, I just give them $10 each time to support the idea. I typically spend ~20 hours a week playing games.

"The tiny proportion of people who use Linux on the desktop will pay more for your game if you frame it in the context of 'look, you can be superior to the people who use those other OSes'?"

I buy then under "Linux" because I'd like to see more Linux games, but I only very rarely actually play them under Linux. Because it's way too much of a hassle to actually do it. My reasoning is that, perhaps (and it is certainly optimistic), a greater adoption of games on Linux might make the process of getting them to work (and, similarly, the process of developing for the platform) less obnoxious.

It's a hassle to install the deb and launch the game? It's much easier than installing games on Windows, and that's saying something.

I just bought it and I'm trying to run Crayon Physics Deluxe on Arch Linux

    $ ./crayon
    ./crayon: error while loading shared libraries: libjpeg.so.62: cannot open 
    shared object file: No such file or directory

Sigh.

Edit:

for anyone who cares, the (undocumented) dependencies are at least:

* nas from the repos

* libjpeg6, libtiff4, libpng12, libssl098 from AUR

Also libssl098 from AUR. If anyone is not doing it already, install yaourt and/or aurget, they make AUR packages much easier to install.

Note that most of these problems come from a closed-source application A) being linked against old versions of stuff and B) not using statically-linked libraries. I know that statically-linked libs are widely hated but at least where you know newer versions break compatibility, you should include static libs if your app is closed source. Of course, an open app can be rebuilt and/or tweaked as necessary so static libraries aren't needed there.

The one thing that would make HIB more exciting would be an immediate release of source for all games involved. I know many participants in HIB1 did this after HIB2, but that's not the same thing.

EDIT: Oh, and it appears Crayon Physics Deluxe must be launched by ./launcher, NOT ./crayon.

These installation issues will go away as quickly as someone puts a PKGBUILD in AUR. :D

> These installation issues will go away as quickly as someone puts a PKGBUILD in AUR. :D

I'm on my way

EDIT: it will take a while - ldd crayon / ldd launcher has a lot to say, there is no official icon and it is getting late here.

I've been using yaourt as long as I've been using Arch (about two years now) and I love it. Great package management tool!

On Ubuntu, I also had to install mikmod.

Installing mikmod solved the mikmod dependency, then the launcher was complaining "error while loading shared libraries: libsmpeg-0.4.so.0: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory" so install libsmpeg0 but now the launcher simply says "Failed to execute 'crayon'." The customer service folks are wondering how to get it working on Ubuntu as well. :-/

Directions from the author (I think) on installing Crayon Physics on Linux. Doesn't work with my touch screen yet...

http://www.kloonigames.com/forum/index.php?topic=7684.msg199...

Any advice for "/lib/tls/i686/cmov/libc.so.6: version `GLIBC_2.11' not found" error?

It might be because all of the games have been released on Windows and Mac before (many over steam), and so Windows/Mac users are more likely to already own a copy. Exclusive linux users, on the other hand, are less likely to have a copy of any of the games already.

That has been the case in every bundle. Linux pays more than Mac pays more than Windows.

I would suggest that Windows users cover the entire range of users, including a lot of minors. It's the most accessible and prevalent OS, and therefore people with the least amount of money are most likely to be using Windows.

For Mac users: Macs are without a doubt more expensive than WinPCs. Serious question: can you get a new Mac laptop or desktop for under $800? These people have more money to spend on computers and more money to spend in general.

For Linux users... I don't know. I would posit that Linux users tend to be more educated than the average person (based on personal experience), and that more education correlates with more income (this I can actually cite: http://www.bls.gov/emp/ep_chart_001.htm). I know, a stretch, but I to me they are reasonable arguments, if lacking in evidence.

> can you get a new Mac laptop or desktop for under $800?

For low values of desktop and ignoring hackintoshes, yes: http://store.apple.com/us/browse/home/shop_mac/family/mac_mi...

> For Linux users... I don't know. I would posit that Linux users tend to be more educated than the average person (based on personal experience), and that more education correlates with more income (this I can actually cite: http://www.bls.gov/emp/ep_chart_001.htm).

I'd think more of "games starved" and "want to entice game developers".

There's not many games released for Linux, so when they are released, people get very excited.

There are very few opportunities for Linux users to buy games?

I'd like to thank the Wolfire crew for making these marvelous games available at a reasonable price - and especially for the Linux support. :D

Lame question: What techniques are used to show real-time stats like that on a web page? I assume those are truly real-time, anyway.

I'm no web developer, but this feature really strikes me as cool in this particular instance. I rarely fancy overly-busy web pages, but these stats seem very nicely executed; interesting in and of themselves, yet clean and nice visual presentation.

They are using some form of AJAX (JavaScript talking directly to their server without reloading the page).

In this case they appear to be using PubNub. http://www.pubnub.com/how-it-works

They're constantly requesting a JSON file about once a second. Example contents, formatted: http://pastebin.com/uMv7d8xS

Seems like excessive transfers. I achieved a "real time" counter by having requests return a start value and a rate of change per second. The GUI would then update every second with the estimated values. My AJAX requests would happen much less often and update the start and rate of change.

This is always absolutely awesome. I chipped in over average this year but I'm dismayed by the people throwing in less than a buck, you're just making the developers pay the CC companies!

Surely they wouldn't put the transaction through unless they were getting money from it though?

That's a good point! If they're not going to make any money, there's no sense in even taking it. Though, it might be illegal to sell something and then not accept payment. (Fraud? Money laundering? I don't know, but it seems potentially sketchy.)

It's not fraud or money laundering. You don't see people refusing payment for the simple reason that most people would never give their stuff away for free.

I didn't mean to say that it is fraud or money laundering, just that it might look like it.

Anyway, what's the difference between giving something away for free, and selling something and receiving $0?

I recall hearing that's the reason Proun requires at least a $2 payment

As sad as it may sound, I know some... let's call them pathetic individuals... who pay 0.01$ exactly because of this fact. But oh well, they are usually pretty laughable with their feeble attempts at trolling, anyways, so I stopped bothering quite some time ago.

I wonder how the Mac App Store and any upcoming App Stores for Windows will impact these various software bundles. Does the Mac App Store allow bundling? If not, this would be a nice add-on feature.

Hammerfight is an excellent game, very fun and beautifully rendered.

I hope they make a sequel.

The youtube video showing the youtube video was a nice touch. Recursion: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E4c6PWtE9mI&feature=playe...

The promo video is fantastic. Reminds me of those car demolition show commercials: THIS WEEKEND...CARASAURAUS REX...THE FIRE BREATHING...CAR EATING...ROBOT MONSTER DINOSAUR! Live at the civic center, tickets available now!

The promo video is great, and had me smiling the whole time. John's voice is recognizable and hilarious.

I actually kicked up a couple more bucks towards Humble tips just for that promo video -- it gave me a good laugh.

I'm starting to feel foolish every time I look at a indie game in the steam store. Bought all four bundles, which are about a quarter of the steam games I own.

these are awesome, i just do a $25 and let them decide how to balance it all out. question though, any chance for an iOS humble indie bundle!?

apple doesn't allow for 3rd party sales, best you could hope for is a jailbroken humble bundle.

Think creatively. Create a humble bundle 4 app with an interface that allows you to play any of the included games within the app. Have it be a free download with IAP of various amounts to allow people to show their support that way.

Apple's 30% cut would be a downer, but it could be done.

It could be three apps with buttons to activate the purchase in the other apps (or one could create a separate pasteboard just to store activation data)

Didn't Capcom did something like that with their old console games? I think they had an app with some demos and were selling their games as IAP. Might work!

Then the apps wouldn't be DRM free which for me is one of the selling points of the Humble Bundles.

The average is less than 5 bucks. That's simply pathetic. If I remember correctly, it was a couple of bucks higher in the earlier editions.

People haven't started paying $2000 for it yet. It may still grow.

Yeah, in the Frozenbyte bundle Notch and Garry helped in a big way.

Pathetic, how so?

The people paying that amount could already own the games, they could already donate to charity. This is pay what you want for a reason, a large portion of people purchase just because it's a donation thing. If someone has a spare $5 why don't they spend it here? It isn't pathetic, it's better than nothing.

"It's better than nothing"

Agreed.

Introversion managed to stay alive through selling their four games for $5 on Steam. That's ultimately not too much better than the current average bundle sale (http://forums.introversion.co.uk/introversion/viewtopic.php?...).

These deals tap into the reservoir of people who aren't invested enough in the games to pay full price (I forget the exact term for that), and these games certainly aren't new, and each has been on sale on Steam at least once so the people who were going to buy for full price likely already have.

Price discrimination. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_discrimination

Not sure what your message is exactly, can you clarify?

Dysiode said they forgot the term, Wilduck reminded us.

I'm not speaking of price discrimination at all. That would be Valve releasing a game at full price and then a week later putting it on sale for 25% off. This doesn't qualify as price discrimination because they're games that have been around. The value for buying earlier is that you've owned it and had the chance to use it reasonably longer than everyone who is getting it now.

I'm speaking of the specific market of fence-sitters who may have pirated the games but in this case are willing to throw a couple bucks at the games. Those people who who you never would have gotten money from otherwise.

This is my first time buying one of these bundles. I started to play games again this week, so I figured "what the hell?" I paid the pre-selected $1 above-average payment for this bundle.

If I have a great time with these games, I will probably double my payment next time. If I don't, I probably won't buy the next bundle at all. Either way, I can get my feet wet again with games with a low barrier-to-entry price.

Also, let's not forget that the cost of production of digital goods is essentially $0, and you could view this as an alternate channel for game developers to make some extra sales while getting people pumped about their future games.

Don't forget you can increase your payment for this bundle if you really enjoy them.

Also, I wouldn't write off the next bundle if this one doesn't suit your fancy. In my opinion the games in this bundle are more casual than games in previous bundles (I wouldn't consider Aquaria, Revenge of the Titans, Penumbra, et al. to be all that casual anyway).

Not that you need to worry about the next bundle at this point X3

Good points, thanks!

I thought VVVVVV was pretty hardcore. (Or maybe I just suck at platformers!)

I already have three out of five of those games on steam, and I bet a lot of other people do too; they've been on sale enough times. It's also very early in the campaign; as I recall there were a number of 'high rollers' that donated very large amounts (IIRC, Notch donated over $10,000). Once they come in the average might go up a bit.

Notch already dropped $2K even and is sitting at #2 right now, "@witnessgame"(who I'm guessing is Jonathan Blow) beat him with $2,718.28

Waiting for someone to beat him out with $3,141.59.

I don't think so. At the time of writing, they're close to a $100k in sales with many more days still to go. If you multiply that by the average developer share you'll end up above $10k per indie dev (that number also is going to go up significantly over the next days). That makes Humblebundle a nice bonus for developers who already invested their time into making these games. Equally important, it gives them exposure to an audience who might otherwise not have tried those games at all.

Wow, "3 hours ago" they were under $100k? They're at $235k now. $40k/hour in sales ain't too shabby. It's amazing watching the total-revenue number grow.

$26k in sales per dev (and counting) ain't too shabby either. Good on them.

Also, heh, how many names do you recognize out of the top 10 contributors list?

I don't consider myself to be a fan of that kind of music, but I always enjoy the Humble Indie Bundle ad. It's so awesome. :-)

These guys rock, they always do a great job on the pitch video too and this one might be their best.

Anyone else get 'cogs' to work on the mac? 10.6.6, 13" 2010 mbp, and cogs won't start.

As awesome as this is, I'm quite bothered with the payment options. As it stands, I can't pay even if I wanted. I don't have a CC and all of Paypal, Amazon and Google are utter no-gos for me. It makes me a sad panda that options like PaySafeCard aren't as widespread as I would like them to be.

Why are Paypal, Amazon and Google all no goes for you? I've heard a lot of negativity about Paypal for example but that is entirely from the merchants position.

For Paypal (and partially for Amazon):

You might have heard of the shit they pulled with Wikileaks (freezing accounts, withholding money, kicking them out of the service for no reason etc). And that wasn't the first time they did something like this, at least for Paypal. I refuse to fund such - in my opinion - criminal activities.

And for Google:

Call me paranoid, call me stubborn, but I'm one of those people who avoid Google like the plague and are extremely critical of them in general (I'm not a hater, though, there are quite some good things which Google does, I just refuse to use their services).

What about a prepaid Amex card? (I'm assuming you consider VISA and MasterCard to be criminal as well due to their Wikileaks behaviour.)

I think HIB did due diligence by offering CC, PayPal, Amazon, and Google. I honestly think you're an extreme outlier and would fall into a fraction of a percent of their users. I'm not saying that it's OK to marginalize you, but if I were them, with complete honesty I would have thought that those four options would cover everybody, and then doing something like Bitcoin would be going an extra mile. I've never heard of PaySafeCard (not to say that it can't be cool if I haven't heard of it, because it is), so I think it may have a long way to go before it's widely accepted.

Edit: You elucidated why you aren't using these services here http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2809572, but really you've painted yourself into a box. It's not that you can't use those services, it's that you won't. I understand why you don't want to (really, I feel you, I'm an idealist too), but at a certain point I just have to bite the bullet and if I want something bad enough and I can only pay for it in certain ways, then I'm going to do it.

You're right, I kind of miss-phrased that. And yes, I am aware that I'm part of a very tiny fraction of customers. My post shouldn't be understood as a demand or anything, I was just rambling.

Oh, and for PSC: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paysafecard , if you (or anyone else) is interested. It's based in the EU (Austria to be exact) and is used and promoted here, but it's pretty much unknown in the US (and the rest of the world) as far as I know, so I'm not really surprised when people tell me they've never heard of it.

Email the Bundle guy. Historically, he will give you the bundle for free and later will try to set up a payment method you can use next time.

You might be interested in this option then: BTCDeals.com is reselling the bundle for Bitcoins: https://www.btcdeals.com/humble-indie-bundle-3/ . (Although I assume they will use CC themselves to buy the bundle, so that might still be a show-stopper for you.)

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