Gaming New Humble Bundle

[Clydefrosch]

there will never be a good reason for notch to enter a hib.

if at all, he might consider to put in some kind of advanced demo, to boost the bundle sales in general, but there will never be a complete minecraft in hib. hes just making way to much money

 

[sweenish]

your logic is flawed.

humble voxatron debut? that was an alpha, and previous bundles like the frozenbyte bundle have included the promise of a game when it's finished. One of the HIBs featured two games in beta, of which only one has seen official release (revenge of the titans, cortex command is going slowly).

notch has always supported the HIB crew with his sizable donations.

minecraft has been available since may 2009, and was featured in a previous bundle with a free month of play.

in the last bundle, the binding of isaac was offered as an extra. that game was two months old at most.

not to mention that minecraft meets the HIB requirements (windows, mac, linux; notch is the indie dev other indie devs hope to be, etc.)

i don't see how the fact that it just went "gold" would negatively affect its appearance in a HIB. you're more than welcome to disagree with me as i'm just speculating, but at least attempt to form logical reasons.

Because of this:

I doubt it will ever be in a bundle becuase its a cash cow and notch and everybody else knows it

HB is great for lesser known / games that are just starting up / devs that want to raise publicity. But Minecraft is already selling millions and would not be a profitable move to enter it into the HB. The fact that it has just been released supports this even more in that even more people are going to buy it. HB would just be a step backwards for Minecraft.

those other posts (coolboy and joe) are good reasons. your additions are not. world of goo, braid, crayon physics, trine. those are all very successful games in their own right. not on the same scale as minecraft, but successful nonetheless.

and HIB would be great for minecraft. sure, a bunch of people would pick it up for cheap, but minecraft will still continue to be expanded upon, and paid DLC is in the works. the larger the post-beta userbase, the more people there are to pay for that stuff. i wouldn't call that a step backwards at all.

while it's very possible that it will never be offered, i'm still holding out some hope. i think it can still happen, and that notch would be fine with it. it's also for charity.

back to the indieroyale sub-topic, i'm glad i waited. i own breath of death on 360, and i don't care for a card game. the other two games haven't piqued my interest enough, either.

 

[Rydian]

Why would minecraft join a bundle in order to sell themselves for a lot less than they currently do?

Games like Cthulu Saves The World are freakin' $2 on steam anyways, whereas Minecraft's like $25+ now.

 

[sweenish]

your argument applies to every SINGLE game in a HIB. so it's kind of invalid, since HIB's continue to happen. one answer is to drum up awareness, which minecraft doesn't need. another is to support charity, and i think that's what can bring minecraft into one. only two decent rebuttals so far, and they were the same rebuttal anyway. it makes me wonder if any of you have actually bought these things.

you're also cross comparing between two different kinds of bundles whose pricing structures don't make them very comparable.

 

[Rydian]

Minecraft already has a ton of sales, and is selling regularly for $27. If Minecraft were to join the bundle, it's profit would drop by a large amount, while it would likely not get a large relative increase in sales, since it's already incredibly popular. This most likely equates to a net loss.

On the other hand, many of these games didn't have many sales and sold for less, usually $5-$10 (going as low as $3). This means that when their price is reduced for the bundle, they're making a larger percent of their profit than minecraft would. For example the average price for humble is generally $0.75 per game (assuming 4 games and an average price of $4, with some to the humble company and charity), so something like Breath Of Death VII is still making 25% of it's profit per game, and selling a ton more games than it usually would. Even if it "only" sells four times what it normally would without the advertisement it'd still be as much as selling 1/4th of the copies normally... and let's face it, 150,000 purchases in a few days is way beyond what most indie games get normally, so games like Breath Of Death are likely seeing a large net gain (especially since it's digital and the sales use Steam's bandwidth). I mean at the average price, that's $112,000 in a few days. Small indie game makers certainly have a monetary reason to join.

On the other hand... minecraft would be making about 03% of it's profit... and is already selling tons (4 million total so far), the bundle wouldn't be nearly as large of an increase while also representing a large loss in profit per title given.

 

[sweenish]

we're getting into a repeat cycle.

i will acknowledge this. your (rydian's) argument does get better when more detail is added, as opposed to wizerzak. but you didn't address the fact that notch would be growing his DLC purchasing userbase by a large amount if it appeared in a bundle. this could easily offset any "losses" from the purchases not being full price. which is another point. every HIB sold can't equate to loss of profit for any game in a bundle, since it's very possible that the same user would never purchase that game at full price.

it's still just speculation on my part. i'd like to see it in a bundle. i gave my reasons. i believe that my reasoning is sound. i found some of the contradictory arguments to be lacking any solid form of logic. that's all. it's fine that you disagree, i just find it easier to have disagree on good terms when both sides have good arguments.

 

[Rydian]

Minecraft doesn't have any DLC, and I've never heard anybody in Mojang mention the possibility of adding any.

 

[Joe88]

he already mentioned DLC

all Alpha buyers get all DLC for free
Beta and Retail buyers will have to pay for DLC but will still get regular updates

this was back in nov/dec 2010 right before it went beta

I bought MC the day before it went beta because of that

 

[Wizerzak]

we're getting into a repeat cycle.

i will acknowledge this. your (rydian's) argument does get better when more detail is added, as opposed to wizerzak.

I could quite easily have added more detail, and Rydian is saying exactly what I could have said. I just decided to give up when you refused to believe that Minecraft wouldn't profit from being included in a HB.

Games (ie. from the developer's point of view) enter the HB for 2 reasons:
1) To raise popularity / awareness - Just because they're already on Steam it doesn't mean the game is well known.
2) To increase sales for the developer - Basically what Rydian said, 150,000 sales in one day is far more than what that game would probably achieve in 2 months (depending on the game).

Minecraft would not profit from any of these as:
1) It is already VERY popular, virtually anybody who hasn't been living under a rock for the past 2 1/2 years has heard of this game.
2) It is already selling at a desirable rate for £17, thus reducing it to 30p would DEFINITELY not be a profitable move (unless Mojang's financier has a mental age of a 2 year old).

Your only other point is the one about charity, Notch can obviously see it would not be a wise move to enter Minecraft into the HB (for the above reasons) but has instead already donated over $6000 (probably more but that's all I can be sure of) in previous bundles which I'm pretty safe to say is a very significant amount.

Also, don't bother with questioning me on the DLC thing, whether it's true or not I don't care for if it is true then I point you to reason number 1. It would not gain enough new publicity (if any) to make up for lost sales with DLC. Plus, before you say about people who buy the game in the HB wanting to get the DLC; if people are not willing to pay merely £17 for a game they care that much about (that they want DLC) then I would be highly surprised if they would be willing to pay the difference in bonus content.

 

[mthrnite]

The only reason i can see for putting Minecraft in a bundle is if Notch wanted to charitably support small devs by being the big dog that draws people to the bundle.

 

[Joe88]

he almost always give $2000 to each bundle

 

[Hells Malice]

The only reason Minecraft wouldn't be in the bundle is because trolls would abuse the HELL out of it, making a hundred troll accounts for a dollar.
It would have to be added on as a "pay above the average!" thing, but even then it'd do more harm than good. Most people that want MC have MC.

 

[Joe88]

then once the sale is over im sure they will sell them a little below retail to make profit off of it

 

[Wizerzak]

then once the sale is over im nure they will sell them a little below retail to make profit off of it

Exactly, yet another reason as to why it would be a bad idea.

 

[Rydian]

Ah, didn't know about DLC but I haven't heard any plans for it.

And Notch supports indie stuff with advertising on his twitter a lot, if that counts.