The Humble Indie Bundle 290
supersloshy writes "Last year, 2D Boy, the developers of the popular independent game World of Goo, had a pay-what-you-want birthday sale with curious results. For the next seven days, Wolfire Games is attempting the same kind of sale, but with some new twists. Wolfire Games' Humble Indie Bundle contains five independent games (World of Goo, Aquaria, Gish, Lugaru HD, and Penumbra) with no DRM and they are all cross-platform. In addition to directly supporting the developers of these five games, part of the money also goes to the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Child's Play Charity. No matter how much you spend, you also get to choose who your money goes to (charity only, developers only, evenly, or custom)."
Re:Cheap, Fast, Good (Aha!) (Score:5, Insightful)
Aha!
If I pay a lot for it, that will make it fast and good
Re:Ayn Rand, do you hear me? (Score:5, Insightful)
Not true. Ayn Rand-types won't necessarily pay zero for this. You're assuming they give no thoughts to future desires and only think of immediate costs and instant gratification, and that just isn't true.
The developers get advertising, which they would otherwise have to pay for -- hence a measurable, monetary cost and a selfish desire on their par. Their similar stunt with World of Goo led me to purchase other games they developed because WoG showed me they were delivering quality, entertaining games. I no longer purchase games for any system without trying them out first. I've been burned too many times with over-hyped commercial games that turn out to be shit and a waste of money.
Because *I* want these developers to continue what they are doing -- a selfish desire on my part -- I will pay cash towards that end. Consider it an opportunity to invest in future products by these developers. Speculation in the market, or an investment in future return if you will.
Re:Ayn Rand, do you hear me? (Score:2, Insightful)
Freedom allows us to fulfill our desires, not just our basic needs. Food and shelter alone are not enough for happiness.
Re:Ayn Rand, do you hear me? (Score:5, Insightful)
Which they shouldn't.
I'm sorry, what? There is no "should" or "shouldn't", there's merely what is. And clearly these people are eating just fine. So anything or anyone that says they shouldn't is plainly wrong. What you fail to grasp is that people are willing to pay something more than they necessarily have to for the knowledge that they are contributing and therefore encouraging future work - both from those particular individuals and others who can see from that example that talent and hard work can be enough to make a living.
In other words, there are plenty of consumers who need only the carrot (the prospect that their payment will be rewarded by production of future works) to pay fairly. Unfortunately most established industries are managed by people who like you who continue to deny what's actually happening with the belief that their philosophy will prove true in the end, and therefore always fall back to the stick method of threatening, DRM-encumbering, and generally treating their (potential) customers like criminals.
Wish they would do more of this for consoles (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Ayn Rand, do you hear me? (Score:5, Insightful)
Noble, but sad (Score:2, Insightful)
I've seen plenty of these experiments; especially from musicians. What ends up happening is everyone pays jack squat for the application and the artists scratch their heads dumbfounded that all the fans, claiming they were sticking it to the man by pirating music, are now sticking it to the artists. That being said, I'll probably contribute even though I'm not interested in the product (as I have before) because I dreadfully want to see this work.
Re:Ayn Rand, do you hear me? (Score:3, Insightful)
For some of us, programming is about recreation. Slashdot likes car analogies, so how about this: I know people who make money working on cars, and I have friends who do the same thing for themselves on the weekend because they enjoy it.
You know, there are lots of individuals and businesses whose business plan includes giving something away for free. It absolutely does help pay the bills.
Re:Ayn Rand, do you hear me? (Score:4, Insightful)
Altruism is always a disguised form of selfishness. Even anonymous donors donate because it makes them feel good.
Re:BSD is *fully* supported: Mac OS X (Score:3, Insightful)
Because you don't own Apple-approved hardware to run it on, but you want (legal) BSD anyway?
Re:Noble, but sad (Score:2, Insightful)
Except that I wasn't planning on buying it at all. Now I'll buy it and pay something for it. Something > Nothing.
I'd imagine that most people who wanted it would have already bought it by now. They're squeezing money out of people who wouldn't have bought it at the higher price.
Although, I have a feeling that sales will plummet after this week.
Re:Cross-platform (Score:1, Insightful)
I agree, this is a great and legitimate means of getting people involved with supporting the work of the people who make the medias we know and love.
Information Age economics in action, effin awesome. The customer determines what value the information product has, to them, then pays that amount. This, in my opinion, is the evolution of open market economics in the information age, and is a fine model for other digital industries to follow (rather than shove copyright and IP down " customers' " throats). I've watched them for a couple hours, and seen them gain $20kUS in that time. Go man, GO!
Missing option: (Score:3, Insightful)
I abstain from buying because I don't think I can pay enough for so many games in good conscience. The games are decent, and the 20 USD I can afford now wouldn't do the games justice.
The whole "experiment" is useless without this option, in my opinion. They're going to see a bunch of people paying 1 cent going to EFF and conclude "what a bunch of cheapskates", when there is a good amount of people who either could buy later (after the offer limit), or refuse to buy that many games hands-down, because they actually *value* those games at 70-80 USD and think it's too much money to spend.
These kind of people won't show up in the statistics.
Re:Ayn Rand, do you hear me? (Score:5, Insightful)
True. Even after taxes, it is likely comparable to the salary he would have earned if he had stayed on at the math department.
And he earned it working on his life goal, crafting video games. Whereas, I spend each and every day having my soul sucked out in a monotonous grind of code reviews and ever shifting and contradicting requirements.
Re:Ayn Rand, do you hear me? (Score:3, Insightful)
Altruism is always a disguised form of selfishness.
That's some pretty bizarre bullshit. That's right up there with concluding that every human behavior is logical and can always be explained. In aggregate, maybe there is a small tendency for altruism to improve the status of the altruistic. But for individual actions, you could never make that claim that an altruistic person always expects a benefit.
Not to mention that Rand felt that altruism was ethically unsupportable. That claim has led her followers to propose some really zany ideas.
just went over 80.000 $ (Score:3, Insightful)
Biggest problem for such Indie-Developers is imho not the intentional lack of DRM and the resulting unlicensed copying of the games, but the lack of media coverage. As the numbers show, there are enough people out there who are willing to pay for games, even if they could get them for free. And I was one of them.
btw. while I typed this, the counter went over 84.000 $. I wonder how much they'll collect over the remaining 6 days.
Re:Missing option: (Score:3, Insightful)
That is $20 they otherwise would not get at all, so go for it. It is also about 3 times the average.