Humble Indie Bundle back with Humble Frozen Synapse Bundle | Hacker News Reader

Humble Indie Bundle back with Humble Frozen Synapse Bundle

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117 pointsjolan44 comments

I like the new twist where you only get the extra games if you beat the average. It's always pained me a little bit to see how low the averages have been on these things for some quality games. I understand that the participants in these bundles are willing to accept those prices or they wouldn't do this so it's not as if they're unfair or anything, but I'd hope that people would have given better value judgments. I hope this new twist helps!

I have bought all humble indie bundles so far. I was always paying below average.

I didn't have time to play any of the games though so I have probably not exploited anyone's hard work (yet).

May I ask why you were paying below average? The average has always been what I would call "ridiculously low" and, except for some form of financial hardship, I don't understand what good reason there is for not ponying up a more respectable amount.

This will probably offend some people but I grew up in a culture of not paying for information. Piracy was for long time the only way to obtain interesting software in my country.

If I'm hitting some paywall while searching for something crucial for me I always go extra mile to find the thing I need (or equivalent) without paying.

I sometimes pay when acquiring software but I don't view it as paying for but rather as voluntarily supporting a cause.

That's the case with Humble Indie Bundle. I think the idea of "pay what you want" is worth the support.

While the average price may seem low, I was under the impression that everyone involved with these bundles considered them wildly successful.

Of course they're wildly successful: they're selling a number of copies they otherwise wouldn't and make a good chunk of change for the devs and for charity. But that doesn't mean I can't be sad at the low averages as well.

It's a great incentive to pay more than average but it's nothing new. The 2nd bundle already included the 1st one if you paid more than average. Source: http://blog.wolfire.com/2010/12/Your-Humble-Bundle-just-doub...

It's kind of new. The second bundle included the first one by default for a while and eventually the added the "pay more than average" trick. It's an entirely different game to start it that way from minute one.

I don't remember that it was included by default. When they decided to add it, they offered it to existing customers and made it available for new customers if they paid more than the average price. They made it clear: "For all ~180,000 customers, this is complimentary." and "For new customers, we're trying an experiment: to unlock the Humble Bundle #1 inside of your bundle, just choose a price that is above average"

But I agree, it wasn't from minute one.

From what I remember, what I got (I think it was the second bundle) was only the second bundle. Then, after a few days, they emailed me to say "since you paid more than average, here's the first bundle as well, free of charge!".

I might be mistaken, though.

Don't forget that the Humble Bundle guys are also backed by a $4.7 million venture capital investment by Sequoia: http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/34255/Humble_Bundle_Backe...

Puts an interesting spin on the whole situation. The sliders are set to give the organizers 15% of the gross, and they claim that when all is said and done, that's approximately the rate that they actually get.

How many more bundles until Sequoia turns a profit? What's been the total gross so far?

Anyway, an interesting business / promotional model.

I assume (with zero inside knowledge) that the Humble Bundle guys have big(ger) things planned in the future - otherwise what's the point of taking that much funding in the first place?

I don't know. The bundle with Machinarium and Auditorium - that was truly awesome with original games that were one of a kind. but this one... it is a bundle of, essentially, the same run-and-shoot game. Maybe it's me getting old, but this is just not interesting.

Frozen Synapse is not a run and shoot game. Instead it is a turn based tactics game.

Description of Frozen Synapse reminds me of RoboSport, glad to see games like this are still being created.

And World of Goo (and VVVVVV). But after watching http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9jJrUY27O0Y i really think this is also a very cool and interesting game.

That's what I thought too. I've always been interested in Frozen Synapse because of the strategy part (Which reminds me of the old Rainbow Six games) so this is a chance for me to get it cheaper than normal.

Don't get the negative vibes here (complaining about the number of games included, for example).

I watched the trailers and videos for that game [1] and _wow_, this will be the 3rd? 4th? (got every one so far, I guess) bundle I'll purchase. It's quite on topic as well, in my opinion: The idea is so frikkin' simple. Well executed (didn't play yet, but the videos and reviews so far are promising), this is a well played "launch". I'm impressed.

1: http://www.frozensynapse.com/media.html

Not really a "bundle" when you just have one game. I hope that the Humble Bundle people don't make a habit of this, the inconsistency will diminish their brand significantly imo.

I am a little annoyed with how Mode7 is handling this. I bought it for full price a while ago (because everyone said it worked great in Wine, and it does). Still no linux download for their previous customers!

They should have

1) quietly released the linux build to their customers so that we could find bugs (and I am hearing there are a lot of bugs, good luck getting it to run on nvidia)

2) waited three months (while polishing the linux build) and been the big title for the next "real" bundle

I don't know Mode7, but as an indie-developer myself I can tell that you that if HIB knocked on my door I wouldn't tell them to wait 3 months.

I am not sure you realize how much of a king-maker/lottery HIB is.

For one developer I personally know whose game was on one of the previous bundles, it single-handedly brought him from losing with little to no chance of ever recouping costs to paying for more than a year of salaries for the 3 people involved thereby financing their next game.

That's mostly due to the money HIB brought in directly but also due to bringing a lot publicity that helped them after the bundle was over.

It's basically the indie-games equivalent of a brand new unfunded startup getting a phone call from PG asking if they want to join the next YC, starting in 1 week - you don't say no to an opportunity like that.

I seriously doubt the "one game bundle" was HIB's idea. (Or rather, I really hope it was not. Does not bode well for the future.)

And I know exactly how profitable the Bundles have been. This de-values the bundle.

Here are the options:

1) Do a one-man-show today, with just you. This is what Mode7 is doing. (The included Frozen Byte stuff does not count, it is a rehash of the worst selling HIB. Desperate!)

2) Wait for the real HIB in December-ish and release with 4 other games.

How does being part of a bigger bundle hurt you? This is not like "join the next YC, starting in 1 week", this is like "you have not have coffee or a shower and are still in your PJs, but get down to the board room and pitch right now". YC's value is that it is a group event, with lots of startups. HIBs value is that it is a group event with lots of games. This is not a group event. It is one game, with a desperate attempt to recoup more from the least popular past HIB.

    I seriously doubt the "one game bundle" was HIB's idea.

Whose idea do you think it was? Mode7 is hardly in a position to dictate HIB how to do their bundles, if they're not interested there is a long list of other developers waiting to replace them.

I seriously doubt this wasn't HIB's idea.

    2) Wait for the real HIB in December-ish and 
    release with 4 other games.

And get 1/7 of $x million instead of 1/3. It was a gamble but looking at how much money it has brought in after scarcely a day - seems pretty much the same as the average of the other bundles.

Whether or not it's a good idea for HIB is a good question (I don't know the answer but I can see both pros and cons).

But Mode7 are making out like bandits and would have been fools to turn this offer down.

I find it much more likely that Mode7 said "Hey HIB, we just finished a linux port yesterday. Can we be in your next Bundle?"

HIB has been approached by developers before. There is quick profit and massive exposure in the HIB. Case in point, the devs who have asked to be in the bundle for free, just for the exposure.

HIB might have had to ask devs and make offers in the early few, but not now.

Regardless, let's not get distracted from the central point: Frozen Synapse is a great game :-)

(Still no linux client for their previous customers though.)

Thinking about it more, this may have well been HIB's idea, if only because it is so different and they are very curious/experimentive people.

If this bundle works out well, I could see them trying to float an entirely new business model. Something similar to Woot, with a new game every two weeks. Not sure if this is good or bad. It would certainly be hard on my wallet.

Besides... "All of the games work great on Mac, Windows, and Linux."

Not completely true in my experience (Fedora 64bits) with previous bundle. I guess Linux support it's less important, and 3D makes everything more complicated :(

Could you detail the problems you had? IIRC everything worked for my on Ubuntu 64bit.

No docs at all; some of the games refused to start and after some research playing with ldd and some guessing I found I had to install 32bits libraries (the 64bits version -when available- didn't work either, I don't remember why).

After that, it looked like my graphics card wasn't properly supported and I didn't know it before buying the bundle (again: no docs at all!). I've played some OpenGL games without problems, but I know that kind of thing sometimes happens.

I was happy to contribute, but after all the efforts I couldn't enjoy the games and I got the feeling that Linux support was really bad :(

Yeah, the Linux ports often are written specifically so that the game can participate in the bundle and have not been widely tested prior to release. Most of the developers do not appear intimately familiar with *nix convention and create confusing launch processes, etc. Crayon Physics Deluxe, for instance, had binaries crayon and launcher, and if you tried to launch crayon directly you'd get many more complaints than otherwise (since supposedly launcher tested for various libs and then called crayon with the right options to work with the installed envrionment).

Ryan Gordon is contracted to port several of the games and has bug trackers on his site icculus.org.

Most of the problems with Linux versions get worked out in the first few weeks, though, it just requires a bit of patience, and the HIB is one of the best points of reference Linux gamers have to demonstrate that they're willing to pay for commercial games in order to encourage further development.

> [...] and the HIB is one of the best points of reference Linux gamers have to demonstrate that they're willing to pay for commercial games in order to encourage further development.

And that's why I was happy to contribute, although I didn't have any fun doing it!

> Crayon Physics Deluxe, for instance, had binaries crayon and launcher, and if you tried to launch crayon directly you'd get many more complaints than otherwise

Last I checked, Firefox did the same thing :p

Firefox follows a convention where the actual binary is firefox-bin and launcher is just firefox. Lots of other nix apps do this, especially statically linked apps. If I had seen crayon-bin and crayon, I would have tried crayon first; however, I just read the ls until crayon and launched that directly, only seeing launcher on second examination. I know that you're not supposed to launch x-bin directly, it usually has a launcher script named just x.

They kept on adding more games to the last bundle. I don't know if this one is going to be the same but I'm interested to see if they add more this time too.

Now they've added SpaceChem!

> if you pay more than the average price, we'll throw in the entire Humble Frozenbyte Bundle — a $45 value!

Exactly! If you pay more, they will throw in an additional bundle.

So it's still the "bundle" of one item plus an additional actual bundle of several items.

Does anyone else really care though?

For those who haven't played Frozen Synapse yet, to me it feels like 21st century chess.

I understand having too many games and having to cut some out.

I don't understand having too little games. There's dozens of indies who would love to have their game in one of these bundles.

They really shouldn't release these bundles that often. Last bundle had some really great games. And they included an earlier bundle. It was around 10 games. For this one all you get is Frozen Synapse. Personally, I was never really interested in that game. Maybe if they released a proper bundle with a lot of variety, I'd be willing to put down some money. I only played 3 or so games from the last bundle even though I had access to 10. I wasn't interested in the other 7.

Ha Linux customers (including myself) pay twice the amount as Windows customers!

To the people complaining here - seriously? Are we so used to just torrenting everything that you can't throw a few bucks at this? The average purchase to get all of the games is currently $4.53.

Not a big Frozen Synapse fan here but I like donating to the EFF through these things. Since they have Amazon payments it is dead simple and it helps me expand my Steam library. In the past they have added more games later in the offer, hopefully the trend continues.

I play games, I buy games.

I looked at this Web site and didn't have a clue what it was all about.

Either I'm irredemably dim, or their front page could do with some work.

Try reading the text. I mean, the tagline is: "pay what you want ... get games" and this is repeated like everywhere.

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