Tales of the Rampant Coyote

Adventures in Indie Gaming!

Indie Strategy Bundle Deal

Posted by Rampant Coyote on March 6, 2010

Only until Monday:

Indie Strategy Bundle Sale

This bundle includes three excellent indie strategy games (Gratuitous Space Battles, Solarium Infernum, and AI War), plus two expansion.

This makes me unhappy. Why? Simple: Our budget is toast right now, and I can’t afford the bundle. And it’s a pretty killer-awesome deal on games I really want. Not that I have to play them or anything, mind you.

But I wanted to make you all aware of the deal.  It’s awesome, and it’s 100% indie – direct from the developers, who decided to pull their resources together and make this happen.

Enjoy.


Filed Under: Indie Evangelism, Strategy Games - Comments: 8 Comments to Read



  • badTiming said,

    I wish I didn’t have 2 out of 3 of these so I could take advantage of this offer.

    This is a great idea for them and a killer offer on some great games.

  • Demiath said,

    I’m not sure I like the current variant of the indie bundle concept, which seems to get more and more popular (other examples are the recent “The Indie Bundle” and UK-based Get Games’s ongoing indie sale). Regardless of the difference between buying each of these games individually as opposed to getting this bundle, I’d be willing to bet that the almost full retail price of 50$ is going to come off to many people as too expensive for a collection of indie games (especially given the “indies-should-be-free” ideology currently in vogue).

    Thus, I personally think it would have been better if they waited until each developer had already cut the price of its individual product at least once, and then made a 25-30$-ish bundle instead. But best of luck to these brave entrepreneurs, obviously…

  • Rampant Coyote said,

    Is there an “indies-should-be-fee” ideology in vogue? Who’s spouting that off (besides the usual Internet living-in-parents-basement mouth-breathers that claim all software should be free, and they’ll pirate it all to prove their point)?

    What I *HAVE* learned over the last couple of years is that permanent changes in price do very little for sales – slashing a game’s price in half does NOT, generally, double the sales. In fact, most indies are reporting that after an initial bump of sales, the game usually returns to something pretty close to its previous sales level.

    What does have a pretty impressive effect, though, is temporary discounts. A sale. It works for me – I think half the games I bought last year were while they were on sale… even the ones on GOG.COM, where the sale price amounted to something like a measely buck-and-a-quarter. I mean, seriously. $1.25? Why should that make a difference? The games are dirt-cheap *all the time*. Rationally, I realize that it makes almost no difference in price, but when I see an opportunity to get something I wanted to get anyway for a discount (for a limited time), I reach for my wallet pretty quickly.

    The flip-side, though, is that these sales happen frequently enough that I talk myself out of buying a game sometimes to wait for it to go on sale.

    I think these kinds of bundle-deals are a different approach that gives you the advantage of a sale, yet actually doesn’t build up the expectation of it being a regularly occurring event.

    At least, that’s my guess. Somebody with more marketing savvy than me can put on their beanie and correct me.

  • Silemess said,

    We reach for the wallet at the mention of a “limited time” and “sale,” because passing opportunities isn’t a good survival strategy. Then the little voice we’ve trained over the years to try to save us says “But do we really want/need to?”

    That little voice gets overruled when it _is_ an object we’ve been contemplating and turned down previously; whether or not we turned it down because of price/time/ability to use it is immaterial.

    Example: Solarium is one I’ve been looking at for a while. I was just about set to pay for the bundle until the $50 reinforced the little voice. I just bought two new games last weekend that I’ve barely begun to play and adding three more titles? Wonderful Indie titles yes, but three more that I won’t have time to play for at least another 2 weeks?

    So… This evening I’ll browse the other two games and see if I like them. If I do, then I buy. Otherwise, it’s cheaper and better for me to grab them individually when I can appreciate them.

    PS: Thanks for posting a heads-up about this! Not that my wallet needs any help going on a diet, but I have decided that my gaming needs are going to be met by Indies. Mentioning their (and your) games as well as these sales really helps me to meet that goal.

    PPS: Sorry for rambling.

  • Rampant Coyote said,

    LOL – You read my rambling, so I’ll read yours. I think yours is better stuff anyway 🙂

    Almost all of my gaming budget this year went to indie games, XBLA titles, or retro / older games through discount online services like GOG.COM or Steam. I was kinda impressed. I bought a NWN 2 expansion from Best Buy (which I still haven’t played). And Persona 4 was bought last year. My wife bought me Brutal Legend for Christmas. I think that’s it.

    So my own game-purchasing habits have definitely changed.

  • Rubes said,

    Well, it *is* your birthday coming up, isn’t it?

  • Rampant Coyote said,

    Ugh, don’t remind me. I’ve had too many of those now.

  • Silemess said,

    Which is why we have to seek comfort by purchasing those items which would prove that the passing time is spent enjoyably.

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