Humble Indie Bundle Hits One Million In Sales... Goes Open Source
from the something-special-each-day dept
We were just talking about how the Humble Indie Bundle of video games continued to exceed expectations by doing things to make fans like them even more -- such as adding more games to the bundle after people had already bought -- and comparing that to EA's strategy of limiting the resale market with coded content. One strategy involves exceeding expectations and giving people reason to be excited (and reasons to be happy to spend) and the other... does not.As the official "one week" Humble Indie Bundle offer comes to a close (though, they'll still keep offering it afterwards), it's nice to see that the effort easily soared past the $1 million mark (including over $300,000 going to charities -- including the EFF). But, beyond that, Wolfire continues to make things even cooler for people. First, it open sourced one of the games, and followed that up by announcing that three others are also going open source (World of Goo is remaining closed, as is the late addition of Samorost 2). Once again, the focus is on doing things that excite the community, build loyalty and give people a reason to want to buy, rather than making people feel guilty or annoyed about buying.
There really are tremendous lessons here for anyone building a business today: focus on ways to delight your customers, rather than pissing them off; and focus on giving people real reasons to buy, rather than just feeling entitled to define the terms under which they buy and looking for ways to limit those who want to interact with you in a different manner.
Filed Under: business models, humble indie bundle, open source, positive experience, video games
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Excellent, so not only are they creating an ethical business model, but they are also funding the efforts of those who seek to create and maintain a legal system that enables ethical business models to succeed against the big corporate efforts that seek to lobby for a legal system that unethically benefits them unfairly. Good news, it seems like we are finally beginning to organize ourselves, and the funds necessary, to combat our corrupt system.
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But Mike!
(Did I hit all the luddite defeatist TAM rhetoric talking points?)
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Re: But Mike!
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Re: But Mike!
There is no fundamental difference in these software titles than there is in the music scene of late: I.e. offering DRM free titles and giving the fans a reason to buy. We have seen it work at all levels; big, medium, and small. So in my opinion, there is nothing here that wouldn't work on for all the dev houses.
There is something for everyone to learn in this experiment, and its just what Mike has been saying all along: CwF + RtB = PROFIT????
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Re: But Mike!
You forgot the opposite side of the spectrum.
"This will only work for small dev houses."
Which is contradictory but TAM would have thrown it in anyway. Plus your rant was about 1000 words to short. But great first try. ;)
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Re: But Mike!
you forgot to mention supporting terrorism and hurting the corn farmers.
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World of Goo could use a few more levels, but that also wouldn't benefit much from making it open source.
Lugaru has a lot of space for improvement, however, though I can't say how much can be done with a game that involves giant bipedal rabbits punching each other. The other games in the bundle will also benefit greatly from being open source.
Btw, does nobody see a connection between this development and how Linux users were the most generous in this experiment?
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Uhh, no.
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not sure where people get that attitude, but i wish theyd all go somewhere and try to out stingy each other where i dont have to be subjected to them :P
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I guess those sick kids would be sponging off me too by your insane logic.
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By the same token, nobody has lost anything. The people who donated more felt the thing had more value that $0.01 because of reasons other than the base price. To them the open sourcing is either irrelevant or a bonus.
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However studies have shown that giving stuff away improves your mental and physical health.
What you have paid for is a longer and happier life - which cannot be taken away from you!
Ever heard of "treasure in heaven"?
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So you can get the games for free, *if* you're in a position to pull the source from Mercurial and build them yourself. Most people don't how to do that, and many of those that do will quite happily pay someone else to do it for them. Plus, as is frequently mentioned around here, getting games (even DRM heavy ones) for free is a trivial task for any even remotely tech savvy PC gamer.
See, this is what connecting with fans means: we give the developers money because we like what they're providing and the way they're providing it, and want them to continue doing what they're doing.
(Hell, I'd already bought World of Goo on Steam ages ago and still gave the WoG developers a cut of my contribution to this deal)
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P.S. To clarify one point though, they're still selling their games, but the source code is now open source and some of the art assets are available under a non-commercial license.
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source code does not equal the art,music and voice work that's an integral part of these games, those things are NOT free and will still be charged for.
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Secondly, this ADDS value to the products I just bought. It's not as if they forbid me access to the source code because I donated to the cause before they opened it.
These people put their money where there mouth is, and PROVE that you can make money by not pissing off their customers. When are you going to do that?
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The fact that your scenario is valid, and could be a complaint is completely irrelevant because so few of their fans made the complaint.
They have connected with their fans because they UNDERSTOOD them and their community. They understood that the customers that just paid for the games would see the games going open source as an added benefit rather than seeing it as slight to those who just paid.
This is the heart of CwF. It is also the reason that a good company can produce easily copied products and have a working business model. Although it is easy to take their current games and resell them or copy them, they understand their target audience better than the guys that can "steal" their ideas - and that understanding will always keep them ahead of the competition.
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Lugaru is not free-as-in-beer. The engine has been open-sourced but the content is still for-pay, similar to Doom and any number of other games that have been open-sourced over the years. License details haven't been announced for Aquaria, Gish, or Penumbra yet, but I assume they'll be similar.
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Gotcha.
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in the case of these Indie games, they are making the content more accessible, not less.
it has nothing to do with the size of the company, and everything to do with the dubious logic behind the actions and the positive and negative effects of said actions.
EA's actions are, at best, neutral and irrelevant. a nice bonus, but not going to bring them any extra attention (has the number of games that provide extra, 'pay to get this via the console's network' stuff exceeded those that don't yet?) as it's been done before. at worst it is equivilant to 'you bought this software and now we'll sue you if you ever install it on a second machine or have a second user use it on the same machine, ever' ... which has already been shown to be stupid.
the indie bundle, at least as presented here, is 'hey, guys, you know that cool, hassle free stuff we were offering before, which you payed us for? well, now there's more of it, and, bonus, if you want to we're going to give you the tools you need to make it more awesome if you so desire' which is to say, at worst, it does nothing (roughly analogous to EA's best result) and at best... ok, i've no got a complete grasp on the possiblities here, but it would Seem to be that other people can make more games, or mods, or whatever, to the games, adding value at 0 cost.
hopefully someone a bit more knowledgeable than i in that department can clarify the last bit. I'm not a programmer.
that said, if you can't understand the distinction, that's a problem with your thinking, because the two situations are quite different.
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I dunno, like 20 minutes ago?
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Humble Indie Bundle:
- You get 5 Games
- You only pay what you want
- You can decide who the money goes to
- You get no DRM and no nastyware
- They run on Windows, Linux and Mac
- Some of the games have gone open-source (or will go open-source)
- The games are decent (subjective)
EA:
- You get a locked up game...
- ...with no prospects of ever being "open" or "moddable"...
- ...loaded with DRM and who knows what more...
- ...runs on windows...maybe...
- ...and only has half the features
- You can pay top $$$ for the *privilege* of having a complete game
- In the end, you get the same EA sports crap (subjective)
Guess who my money's going to?
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Basically giving me 2 more reasons to buy the package.
In EA's case, they ask more money for the privilege of playing a second hand game.
How are those two even remotely the same?
And in the case of EA, it's indeed punishing their customers. Because if I were to download a pirated copy, I wouldn't need to pay extra to play it.
But if I were to buy that game second hand (which is perfectly legal), I'd have to pay extra to be allowed to play that game, basically equaling the price of a second hand game to that of a retail first hand game. What would be the point for me to buy that package? What would be my reason to buy it in that case?
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I thought I was clear, so I apologize if the differences between the two approaches was not evident. It certainly has nothing to do with the size of the company involved -- not even close. I've happily talked up plenty of smart business model decisions by big companies.
The issue here is simply the nature of the promotion. In the case of the Humble Indie Bundle, it's focused on not trying to restrict what anyone can do (hell, you can get everything for free if you want and they don't care). It's about giving people a good reason why they proactive *want* to give money to the company.
EA on the other hand, is working on a business model that is the opposite of that. It's focused on blocking people from doing what they want. It's a model based on restrictions in an attempt to leave them no choice, but to pay (if reluctantly).
I think the difference is pretty self-evident, but if you still think they're the same, perhaps you could explain why.
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@21 fixed it for you
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If thats panhandling, then I will get my pan, and handle the hell out of it.
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