

THQ Humble Bundle ends at $5,097,373 (THQ President contributes $10K) - pdknsk
http://www.humblebundle.com/?thq_hn

======
joshschreuder
This is over 50% of their market cap of $9.6M, and looks like it caused at
least a little bump in their share prices: <http://tinyurl.com/bwzblvy>

~~~
IheartApplesDix
A little bump being +25%

I had no idea that THQ was in such dire straits. Looking at their Humble
portfolio, they have a diverse set of technologies here. It's a real shame
that they aren't able to monetize them better. When you look at other
publishers, they tend to stick with a single technology, but THQ never had
that huge AAA hit that they could keep iterating on cheaply to print money.

CTG Engine, 4A Engine, Essence Engine, GeoMod Engine. There's a lot of
technology here. (2 internal) 4A is probably their most advanced.

If I were them, I'd focus on making a CoD clone with the 4A Engine. Perhaps
the graphical superiority could appeal to a more hardcore audience that would
fill out as GPU technology catches up.

~~~
rtkwe
That might be part of their problem. Instead of making a big AAA game they
keep reinventing the engine. It seems most really successful game studios have
1-2 engines that they're very good at producing good games on. They may update
often but it's rarely an entirely new engine. (See Valve, ID, etc.) Making a
new engine for every game can't help their delivery times.

~~~
sliverstorm
Which makes you wonder, if they are really engine folks, maybe they should be
an engine company?

~~~
rtkwe
Possibly, I don't know much about the engines behind THQ's games really. To
become just an engine company requires a well rounded and adaptable engine.
There's probably some market for a superb niche engine but that is a weak
position to put yourself in as a company.

They might be reinventing their engine so often because they can't get a good
future-resistant engine out of it.

------
andrewfelix
I know that this wasn't meant to save THQ, but considering the flagship titles
that were made available, that amount of money is not very impressive.

It is a drop in the ocean relative to the development costs of those games.

Most of those titles would have made more in their first day on store shelves.

EDIT: Also worth mentioning that the THQ president might have donated 10k in
order to push up the average price.

~~~
ekianjo
A brief calculation assuming: \- first 100 000 purchases without THQ president
intervention between 3 and 5 dollars \- 10k intervention at 100 000 point \-
subsequent purchases made above average pricing seem to indicate the 10k THQ
"push" made the average price jump 10 cents at least (conservative
estimation), providing a resulting boost in profit of 70 000 dollars (again,
conservative estimation, probably).

<http://www.codeskulptor.org/#user7-h9oPfIQh4l-0.py>

Somehow I do not think the Humble Bundle should allow the creators/publishers
to modify the average price since it's more or less like insider trading in
the stock echange: once you modify the average price you reap the profits -
it's highly unethical and here it clearly shows the 10k expense from THQ
president made a 60k profit for THQ.

~~~
rtkwe
You assume the president's purchase came fairly early at the 100k mark. Later
the delta from his donation continues diminishing rapidly. Any later than half
way through and the delta is less than 2.5 cents and following the rest of
your assumption gives them only 10k. Not to mention that the money is split
between the donation options. (Default split on the Amnesia Fortnight is 70%
to the developer, which I think is higher than the normal default)

Taking that into account the numbers vary too wildly to begin speculating on.
And beyond that it also raises large amounts of money for charity.

------
asb
I'm personally counting that fact that HIB V manage to pull in more money
($5,108,725
[http://support.humblebundle.com/customer/portal/articles/281...](http://support.humblebundle.com/customer/portal/articles/281031-prior-
bundle-statistics)) as a win for those of us upset that this offer moved away
from Humble Bundle's DRM-free roots.

~~~
fafner
But HIB VI managed to pull in only $US 2m and HIB V had Psychonauts. So I
think this is actually not a win. It clearly shows that big titles draw the
money whether they have DRM and Windows-only doesn't even matter. (to add to
it: Psychonatus was DRM-free but the Linux port was totally broken when
released.)

And to game companies it's certainly interesting as well. It shows a great way
to make some additional money off some older titles and get some PR. I
wouldn't be surprised if we see similar offerings in the next year.

(I hope that if it happens: id does a true HIB and uses this as an opportunity
to release Rage for Linux.)

~~~
mattmanser
Psychonauts was in HB V (and was unfortunately dreadful, awful controls, bad
camera, terrible graphics, potential to have been great). Bastion was the real
gem in that bundle, such an amazing game. That bundle was a lot better than 6
and packed with great games, with Sword & sorcery, Super Meat Boy, Limbo and
Lone Survivor. That bundle was brilliant.

HB6 was disappointing, too many platformers, Torchlight was repetitive, SPAZ
was the only game I really loved in that pack. It even had _two_ brick
breaking games in it, a genre dead (and deservedly so) since the 90s.

~~~
tekmate
you're probably alone with that opinion

psychonauts is one of the best games of all time, being released in 2005 on
xbox it looked amazing, the artdirection is still great on the pc port today
and with controller it plays amazing.

while bastion is good it's nowhere near the quality in writing, creativity and
gameplay

~~~
dagw
Personally I loved everything about psychonauts (played the original xbox
version), except the game play. Story, art, writing etc. etc. all amazing, and
all rate among the best ever seen in a game. Unfortunately the actual gameplay
let it down.

I agree that Psychonauts writing and creativity is better than Bastion, I
found Bastion to be a better actual game all around.

~~~
fafner
The bugs in the Linux port let me down. I played quite a bit of Psychonauts
and enjoyed it. Certainly some things are annoying (like finding those arrow
heads). But the biggest disappointment was that the game was constantly
crashing and you had to look up the bugtracker (at least there was a public
one) for workarounds and wait for the few patches that were released.

Bastion was a fun game but not really creative.

------
bentrengrove
I wonder if he gave 100% to THQ.

~~~
franciscoap
95% charity (THQ included?), 5% Humble tip.

<http://twitter.com/Jason_Rubin/status/279014483085631488>

~~~
rtkwe
Charity is Childs Play and Red Cross. What president would lump his company in
as charity?

~~~
franciscoap
It was a joke re: THQ's precarious situation.

