
Introducing the Humble Indie Bundle 6 - vibragiel
http://www.humblebundle.com
======
sequoia
Negative Nelly warning: I've bought a couple of these bundles but won't buy
another. One big selling point of the bundles is that they are cross-platform
compatible, and that's one of the reasons I buy, as I have Ubuntu on my home
computer. Unfortunately, at least some of the games which are advertized as
working on Linux simply did not work for me, Trine in particular (which is sad
because that game was the main reason I bought the Frozenbyte bundle).

I initially had issues on an older machine & updated ubuntu, followed the
threads (it was a common issue), followed the debug & fix steps, but to no
avail. I chalked it up to the hardware but with a brand new linux box and new
(months later) download of Trine it _still_ didn't run. I haven't bothered
spending another hour searching down and going thru all the fix steps. It
looks like there might be a new, possibly working version by now but it's been
months and months and I've basically forgotten about it.

I don't expect everything to work OOTB in linux, but I'm using a popular
distro, many of the games work fine, and if I'm paying for a "Linux
compatible" game I expect it to be Linux compatible with a reasonable small
number of clear steps without spelunking thru a dozen forum threads &c.. This
is not "free" software, I paid for it and expect it to work.

I want to support humble bundle but it's too frustrating to buy a game and
have it not even load.

~~~
kevingadd
It's really hard to port games like these to Linux. Many of them use closed-
source or even binary-only libraries that have no freely available
replacements. You can blame the game developers for using non-free technology,
but in some cases there aren't any good alternatives.

Indie game development has such thin profit margins to begin with that most
developers can't justify sinking man-months of effort into a Linux port that
might not produce enough revenue to pay for itself.

This kind of depends on your configuration too: Sure, you may be on a modern
version of Ubuntu, but what kind of GPU do you have? Does it have modern
drivers that are well-supported by the manufacturer? Does it support the
variety of extensions and features that a game can rely on having on
Windows/OSX? 'many of the games work fine' is only meaningful here if the
games all have the same system requirements and you meet those requirements.
If not, the best course of action is to try and communicate clearly to the
developers that there are customers who are being shut out by system
requirements, to see if there are cheap ways for them to lower the
requirements.

~~~
winter_blue
> Many of them use closed-source or even binary-only libraries that have no
> freely available replacements.

How do they port it to Linux, then? (They have to re-compile it right?)

I've developed games before and I can tell you, if you're not using
propitiatory platform-dependent libraries, porting your game is a piece of
cake. What I've noticed is that most of the games on Humble Bundle use a
library known as SDL (Simple DirectMedia Layer.) SDL is a library that handles
two main things that aren't platform-independent: creating a window and
receiving events (keyboard, mouse, e.t.c.) The rest is taken care of by the
cross-platform OpenGL, OpenAL, etc. libraries.

In addition, there's an even better library than SDL called SFML (Simple and
Fast Multimedia Library). SFML is much more fully featured than SDL, and is
C++-based and OOP. With both SFML and SDL, all you have is _just recompile_.
And done!

So really, it's not that hard to port a game. "can't justify sinking man-
months of effort into a Linux port" sounds a bit stretched. There are plenty
of free libraries available for game dev (atleast 2D game dev), like Box2D,
CEGUI (Crazy Eddie's GUI), etc. so if from the get-go you plan on supporting
multiple platforms use some of those libraries, and porting will be a breeze.

~~~
elithrar
> How do they port it to Linux, then? (They have to re-compile it right?)

Many use a WINE wrapper (or a derivative, like Cider); the same goes for OS X
versions. Especially for a lot of these indie games, where a small performance
hit isn't a big deal as they don't tax the hardware.

~~~
rat87
According to wikipedia LIMBO is the only port to bundle wine(CrossOver).

------
sswezey
I love this, even if you aren't a huge fan of games, it's a great way to
donate to EFF and Child's Play and get _free_ games.

------
ashray
It's interesting to see that Linux users ($8.92) on average donate around 40%
more than everyone else ($5.36). Also, Windows users are cheaper than Mac
users.

This is from the average donation amounts on the page.

~~~
pflats
There are fewer Linux users than Mac users, and fewer Mac users than Windows
users. Thus, the mean sale price for Linux users is more strongly affected by
any single big sale than the mean sale price for Mac or Windows users.

I'd be curious to see the median sale prices.

~~~
powrtoch
Also any random Linux user is more likely to be a developer, which likely
motivates them more to support the indie devs. And since Macs are 2-3 times as
expensive as their PC counterparts, owning one tends to imply you have money
to throw around.

~~~
sanswork
Macs aren't 2-3 times as expensive as their PC counterparts. Not even 1.5x as
expensive. If you spec out a system with the same components and build quality
from any of the PC builders you'll end up with roughly the same price. People
just ignore things like screen quality and memory speed when pricing stuff out
and then compare consumer PCs to workstation macs.

Feel free to post a Mac that is 2-3x its equal though you'll be the first
person in any of the times I've posted this reply that will be able to do it.

~~~
powrtoch
Well, finding 2 computers that are exactly equal in specs is more effort than
I care to put in, but here's the first reasonable comparison I see at Best
Buy:

[http://www.bestbuy.com/site/Toshiba+-+Satellite+14%26%2334%3...](http://www.bestbuy.com/site/Toshiba+-+Satellite+14%26%2334%3B+Laptop+-+6GB+Memory+-+750GB+Hard+Drive+-+Champagne+Silver/5560019.p?id=1218704973366&skuId=5560019)

Compare it to the 13" Macbook Pro (for the sake of being generous towards the
Mac). It's just over half the price, has a bigger screen, more ram, a larger
hard drive, and seemingly identical processor and graphics. Naturally there
are give and takes on both sides (just about everything is inferior to Apple
in terms of "build quality", though this is tough to put a price on), but I
don't think it's unreasonable to say this is a comparable laptop, and the
specs easily make up for it being $50 over half price.

I don't say this to disparage Apple, I've got a MBP myself, but whenever I
look at PCs with comparable specs, I do find that they tend to be about half
the price.

I'll withdraw 3x though, that probably is too high and even if I could hunt
around and find one example, it's not like that would prove the point.

~~~
sanswork
Worse quality screen, graphics card, audio, and slower cpu. Worse keyboard(no
backlighting), worse trackpad(my missus has one they are pretty awful),
thicker case.

Nothing is stand out worse but everything is just a bit worse which when your
pushing the upper edges adds up to a lot of cost. Not even counting build
quality.

~~~
alanctgardner2
By this logic, is anything but a Macbook comparable to a Macbook? How would
you compare build quality objectively? I think it's safe to say if you're
paying extra for a backlit keyboard, you're throwing around money.

~~~
sanswork
Yes but they cost just as much. As you'll note I said ignoring build quality
even though it should be factored in.

If you've ever had a backlit keyboard you will realize the usefulness of them.
I consider them as essential as a good screen but again I just pointed out
that its a worse keyboard not that the keyboard is make or break.

~~~
alanctgardner2
I guess I tried to address two issues in this. Let's put it this way: one man
drives an Audi RS4, and the other has a Toyota Camry. Nobody argues that the
man with the Audi has the better car, but one might infer that he also has
more disposable income. That is why we assume people with Macbooks have more
disposable income; they've purchased a luxury item when there is a commodity
alternative. A backlit keyboard is definitely not required to use a laptop, no
more than heated seats are necessary in a car. You think they're essential
because you have enough disposable income that the utility of the money you'd
use to buy the keyboard has become less than the utility of the keyboard. This
is the notion of value. You can also, likely, afford to give a few dollars to
a charity if you'd like.

~~~
sanswork
Thats a fair comment but is a different discussion than the one this subthread
is built on which is whether a mac is more expensive than a comparable pc.
When discussing that then features like a backlit keyboard are important.

------
JoshTriplett
In the past, Humble Bundle has occasionally used strong sales of a bundle as a
reason to release some of the games in that bundle as Open Source. If they'd
consider pre-committing to that based on target thresholds, I'd donate to this
in a heartbeat; we need more good Open Source games.

~~~
alanctgardner2
Open-sourcing some games seems like a really good idea, but I think a lot of
the Humble Bundle games typically fall into a category where design is much
more significant than technology. It's one thing to allow modding on the
Source engine, which would otherwise be out of reach for most developers. But
given the code for Braid, how would the community improve on it? It's clearly
the vision of one man, and it's been developed fully. A lot of indie games
focus on fine game balance, distinctive graphics design, or plot to
differentiate themselves, where I think of Open Source as a very technically-
oriented model. Do you have examples of games you think would benefit from
being opened up?

~~~
JoshTriplett
I can see two major cases where it seems like a particularly big win.

First, quite a lot of indie games build an engine and then numerous variations
of levels to support a plot. Braid, Bastion, Iji, Super Meat Boy, Gish, World
of Goo, and many more where those came from follow that model: impressive
engine, pile of well-designed levels, plot. In those cases, the ability to
create more levels and add some technical variations can nicely extend the
lifespan of a game.

Second, and even more importantly, the much broader space of design ideas in
indie games means many more interesting components with unusual variations.
Braid has a physics engine that supports time-based mechanics. Super Meat Boy
has an extremely impressive record-and-replay mechanism (used to great effect
at the end of each level to show you all the ways you died simultaneously).
Several indie games have very impressive lighting models. The Bit Trip games
have music syncing engines. Many indie games have impressive dynamic-content-
generation engines. The more of these components that become readily
available, the more impressive the starting point for any future indie game.

~~~
rat87
> The more of these components that become readily available, the more
> impressive the starting point for any future indie game.

I'm not sure to what extent these things can be recycled(other then for
ideas).

Actual advantages I see:

Fixing bugs/maintaining long term/packaging. This allows people to spot bugs
easier, contribute back code, and generally maintain the game better(fix
anything that break thanks to old platform assumptions).

Porting to other platforms(especially arm, maybe android these days), many who
open source games allow you to use a copy of the data for one platform on any
platform.

------
nuttendorfer
I feel like the last Humble Bundle might have set the bar too high for the
following bundles.

~~~
duck
I know this would wreck their whole sales strategy ("X amount of time left"),
but I wish you could go back and buy an old bundle for something like double
the average or whatever made sense for them.

~~~
TillE
I doubt the developers want to have their games available permanently on sale.
So unless you really want to pay $50-60 for old bundles, it won't happen.

It makes more sense just to buy the stuff you want directly from the
developers. Or wait for another sale.

------
oliveoil
can someone explain to me how you can make money on a game like Rochard (one
of the games in the bundle)? There is such an incredible amount of detail in
the background in each scene, it looks like few thousand hours of work just
that.

~~~
jsnell
Basically you don't.

Most of the games business is a high risk, high reward gamble. New IP much
more so than working with an existing franchise. This is in no way unique to a
game like Rochard, it'd apply equally much to $0.99 iPhone games or AAA games
launching on all platforms and needing to sell 3 million copies to break even.

In this case the original target market was the PS3 store, and my
understanding is that the very highest selling indie games there have lifetime
sales in the half million unit range. And the sales figures are likely obeying
a power law, with the median sales in the thousands of units. It does seem
like a pretty horrible place to be selling to.

For Rochard, we can try to make a rough estimate of the cost. First of all the
studio making the game was formed for an overly ambitious project (Earth No
More), which was scrapped after several years. Mostof the team dispersed, but
a skeleton crew started on a new game, and shipped Rochard around 1.5 years
laters. The credits show 15 people, but I doubt they would all have been on
the project full time. So let's guess 10-15 man-years of work.

On the funding side, clearly they won't have had much if any money left at the
start of the project. Early on they sold some part of the rights to the game
to an outside investor for 400kEUR.

Even if we ignore overhead, the cost of things like voice acting, and assume
Finnish pay levels, it seems clear that the team wasn't working for full
market salaries. Maybe they just really wanted to work on games rather than
CRUD apps. Or they all had significant equity, and were hoping to hitting it
big with that 1% surprise hit.

Judging by Rochard not appearing on the top 20 most sold lists on the PSN, it
seems like a fair bet that it did not make a profit there. I don't know
whether it flopped completely or had mediocre sales. For the purpose of making
money, it doesn't really matter. There's a good chance that they'll make more
from the Humble Bundle than from PSN. Even so, it doesn't look like a project
that would have broken even for the investors, or for anyone working on it at
below market wage.

(Edit: Which is a shame. It was one of my favorite games last year, and I
certainly didn't mind paying for it again as part of the bundle).

~~~
lifeformed
Dustforce dev here. We (4 people) just lived super cheaply in a shed and
apartment, working day and night for a year and a half. Expenses were about
$25k per person per year (pretty much just food, rent/utilities, beer). Lived
off of savings and prize money from a prototype of the game.

------
jiggy2011
These games look pretty good, unfortunately I literally can't spare any more
money this month.

Would it be a dick thing to do to pay $0 for this bundle and promise myself to
pay a lot more for the next bundle (even if the games suck)?

~~~
Flimm
No. They're offering you the games at whatever price you can afford, you're
allowed to take them up on their generosity! If I were you, I'd pay the
minimum $0.01, use the torrents to minimize their costs, and increase the
amount you're paying later.

~~~
batiudrami
As an alternative to torrents, if you're playing on Windows you can just take
the keys they give you and put them into Steam, rather than downloading off
HIB servers.

~~~
dlat
You have to pay $1 to get a steam key.

------
Tichy
Uh oh - I wasted a lot of hours on Torchlight. Luckily I had to return it
(complicated story). I think I should pass on this bundle, too dangerous.

------
emilioolivares
I keep buying these and never seem to have time to actually play all of the
games :(.

------
sfaruque
I keep hoping that they will release Trine 2 as part of the bundles. I know
it's only been less than a year since Trine 2 came out. Humble Bundle
introduced me to Trine 1, which was the first game I've completed in ages.

------
evolve2k
'Pay more than the average of $5.50 to unlock Dustforce!' Genius. This
_should_ just keep pushing the price up and up as each person pays more than
the average. Wondering how this will work out.

~~~
bryanlarsen
Those paying less than $5.50 are probably paying a LOT less than $5.50, so the
average may stay fairly stable.

~~~
evolve2k
The bundle is fascinating as the page gives many different pricing signals.
Other factors being equal I think people don't like to miss out on things.
Mentally as this one game has a unlock restriction it 'must be a better game',
I think the risk of missing out in the best game by going under $5.50 will
encourage people to pay over the average and still be able to mentally
reconcile their pricing reasoning as to why 'they' got a good bargain.

People paying a lot less are also already factored into the average and I see
no specfic factor driving low payers to be greater in quantity than usual.
Hence why I love this approach.

------
jebblue
I'm a FP gamer, if some of these were FP I'd love to buy them.

