Bundles of Trouble

Posted by Rampant Coyote on March 17, 2015

I’m in a bundle right now – the Indie Royale Mixer 16 Bundle. And it’s ridiculous. I mean… ten games for chump change. The kind of money you find under seat cushions. Like I said earlier, at this point it’s really just marketing for the next Frayed Knights. Get the first game practically free, so you’ll buy the sequel!

So if I rail against bundles a tiny bit here, realize that I’m happy to admit I’m officially part of the problem. But I’m not really railing against them. I’m actually working to get my brain around them and understand the Brave New World in which we as game producers and consumers live.

Last night, I went a little nuts on a few available bundles, and I picked up what I’d once have considered almost a two-year supply of games. 23 titles, in total. Plus DLC. 23 games. Back in the day, I considered myself lucky if I picked up one game a month, on the average.

But I’d play the crap out of that one game.

Not so much nowadays. When I’m getting games in bulk, I may install less than half of them, and might only get around to playing half of those within the next 12 months. I mean, it’s great – I end up trying games in these bundles that I’d have never taken a chance on otherwise. Sometimes I find some gems. Indies get a pittance from me even if I never play their game.

The point of these bundles – what it SHOULD be – is marketing. Just like the old days of PC shareware games, where you could get the first episode of Doom or Duke Nukem or Jill of the Jungle for free, and it acted as an extended advertisement for the other games in the series – which usually cost between $15 and $30 a pop. Buy the whole series, and save $10…

In the Real World of marketing, that’s how it’s done (to my knowledge). You do those big discounts to get people in the door. Get people to know who you are, what your product is, and used to you coming around. You get involved in coupon books or whatnot. But unless your product is way overpriced (and no matter what a tiny but vocal group of complainers on the Internet whine about, video games are nowhere near overpriced), you don’t depend on that as your primary source of income. That’s what you do to prime the pump.

I don’t know about all the indie developers out there (not by a longshot — there’s way too many of us now), but it feels like the bundle idea is turning into something else. It’s a quick hit for cash and something of a dumping ground for games. And… is that it?

One of the challenges of the shareware thing in the 90s was that there were soon “too many” shareware titles (dozens and dozens to choose from – kind of adorable by today’s standards). Another, IMHO, was that they really gave too much away. I mean, if you played to the end, sure, you’d hit a cliffhanger and want to play more. But even then, when players like me played the crap out of our much more meager offerings, that was relatively uncommon.

Of course, as a gamer, I really appreciated that. I mean, I played the shareware version of Doom to death long before I forked over the cash for the whole series. More games, more free stuff to play! PC gamers on a limited budget could be pretty satisfied with the wide assortment of shareware episodes available.

I find that pretty analogous to our situation today. As game developers, we need to find a way to leverage the steep-discount mentality that’s taking over these days and use them for more than just a dumping ground to squeeze a few hundred dollars out of our titles. I guess the “freemium” marketplace is exactly that mentality – going back to giving away the game for free as an attempt to up-sell paid content to the user.

We indie developers just need to get smarter about it.

Filed Under: Game Development, Indie Evangelism - Comments: 6 Comments to Read



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