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The Frozenbyte Bundle Hasn't Breached $1M USD

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  • #31
    Just bought the bundle even though I currently only have a laptop with Intel gfx.

    Reminds me that I better download all games also from the previous bundle before the DL links disappears..

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    • #32
      Originally posted by MaxToTheMax View Post
      [*]One of them is, let's be honest, not a very good game (Shadowgrounds.)
      Seriously? I thought it was pretty damn good. Different strokes, I guess.

      While in general I'd agree with your suggestion to go towards AI-focused gameplay, there's still plenty of room for straight-up shooters. It's an action game first and foremost. AI-oriented games are much closer to the puzzler realm, even if the way you beat the AI is with spraying lots of bullets. (There's a strong argument to be made that all games are puzzles, and that all puzzles are riddles, and hence all games are just very elaborate riddles. Granted, going by the logic, in all games you play a role, so all games are role-playing games, and hence Quake 3 is an RPG...)

      I'm a lot less in love with the second game, Survivors. It's nothing but endless waves of enemies, and the multiple characters things is just making it harder to get invested in the story and personalities of each. Haven't had nearly as much fun with the second as I did with the first.

      Trine is on my list to play next, probably this weekend. My ASUS gaming laptop is back in for RMA yet again, and my desktop is usually booted into Linux where nothing ever works right (go go Open Source quality control), so it may have to get held off.

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      • #33
        Originally posted by PsynoKhi0 View Post
        Does anyone else feel like $0.01 purchases shouldn't be allowed?
        Sure. It's ridiculous and even if 50 thousand sales were from $0.01 buyers, thats just $500. Doesn't seem like a lot to loose compared to the total income. I saw a lot of $0.01 and $1 sales. Just look at the average windows price when this article was published ($3.99), and the final price just 12 hours later ($3.91). The windows average just went down with every passing day, while the average linux price kept on climbing.
        Sure... linux user don't want to pay for games, as opposed to windows users who do... right...

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        • #34
          Originally posted by numasan View Post
          Just bought the bundle even though I currently only have a laptop with Intel gfx.

          Reminds me that I better download all games also from the previous bundle before the DL links disappears..
          They delete those without warning?

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          • #35
            Originally posted by devius View Post
            Sure. It's ridiculous and even if 50 thousand sales were from $0.01 buyers, thats just $500. Doesn't seem like a lot to loose compared to the total income. I saw a lot of $0.01 and $1 sales. Just look at the average windows price when this article was published ($3.99), and the final price just 12 hours later ($3.91). The windows average just went down with every passing day, while the average linux price kept on climbing.
            Sure... linux user don't want to pay for games, as opposed to windows users who do... right...
            Well, that kind of knocks "pay whatever you want" and "Humble" in the head, doesn't it? The whole idea behind this business model is that anybody can pay whatever they think the games are worth, even if they think they're worth a single penny. I don't believe the sales numbers show that Frozenbyte got hurt on this deal at all. $900,000.00 in two weeks hardly strikes me as the income of a company who got shafted by skinflint customers, you know?

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            • #36
              Originally posted by Larian View Post
              Well, that kind of knocks "pay whatever you want" and "Humble" in the head, doesn't it? The whole idea behind this business model is that anybody can pay whatever they think the games are worth, even if they think they're worth a single penny. I don't believe the sales numbers show that Frozenbyte got hurt on this deal at all. $900,000.00 in two weeks hardly strikes me as the income of a company who got shafted by skinflint customers, you know?
              Yeah, it's a marketing thing.

              "Pay whatever you want" has a nicer ring to it than "Cost is $2.00 minimum, and we hope you pay more than that."

              I'm sure the idea is that if you do that, the average payment would actually go down because a lot more people would decide that $2.00 is a fair price rather than choosing $5 or $10 when left on their own.

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              • #37
                Originally posted by Larian View Post
                Well, that kind of knocks "pay whatever you want" and "Humble" in the head, doesn't it? The whole idea behind this business model is that anybody can pay whatever they think the games are worth, even if they think they're worth a single penny.
                I wasn't thinking about that. It makes sense when you put it that way. Whatever people pay, it counts as advertising at least, so in the long run it may yeld greater profits.

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                • #38
                  At the very least, all transaction fees should be passed on to the user. So if you pay a penny and the payment processor wants 25 cents, then the end-user is charged 26 cents. To prevent the company from losing money on a transaction.

                  If they already do that, then each sale is movement, no matter how puny. But I really want to find all the people who pay only 1 cent and punch them in the mouth.

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                  • #39
                    Originally posted by allquixotic View Post
                    But I really want to find all the people who pay only 1 cent and punch them in the mouth.
                    Well that is what you have to expect with a "your own price" model. People pay for "what they feel it is worth to them". It is a perceived value and if a person feels that they should only pay 1 cent then that's the the price. If you disagree with them that is different issue. I'm sure many of them only entered in 1 cent because "nothing" wasn't an option.

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                    • #40
                      Here's another thought that could maybe help encourage people not to be cheap asses:

                      Take all the payments, on all the platforms, and average them to generate one overall average for the HIB. Then, offer some kind of exclusive incentive for those who pay more than the average was at the time that they check out (even if "more" is 1 penny). You can do this by letting them set their price then click "Checkout", and if they try to checkout with a value less than $CURRENT_AVG + 0.01, give them the sales pitch that if they checkout with $CURRENT_AVG + 0.01 or more, they'll get the benefit. Feasible incentives might include:

                      * Exclusive in-game items or bonus content
                      * Access to entire games that are not available without raising the average
                      * Early access to games that will be made available to "ordinary" HIB purchasers at a significantly later date
                      * A personalized message from one of the developers of one of the games

                      Other ideas that may increase revenue without harming the open concept of the HIB:
                      • Have a cute, interactable, animated character on the webpage (Flash or HTML5) who reacts to your typing in the donation field with encouragement if you lowball or jubilation if you go higher, and also make comments each time you increase/decrease allocation to the different groups involved (Wolfire, the developers, and the charities). Character should be taken from one of the games.
                      • Tiered benefits structure, like you see on PBS stations in the U.S.. The rock bottom benefit package would be: access to the "heart" of the games offering (i.e. 60 - 75% of the games), and the price range would go from like 1 penny to $5 USD. The next step up would give you access to all the games, but the ones still in beta would be unavailable to you until the beta is finished / the HIB fundraiser is over.
                      • Lay out a plan for unlocking content, releasing source code, and liberating the assets based on the total amount of revenue during the fundraiser. For example: at the $1M mark you could throw in a bonus starting item or quest for all players of the game. At $1.5M you could release the source to one of the games. At $2M you could throw in a bonus starting item for a different game, and make the first game's assets free (as in freedom) under the GFDL or Creative Commons or so. At $2.5M you could release source for the second game and introduce an in-game bonus for yet a third game. And continue this structure until you have potentially provided people the chance to unlock bonuses, release source, and liberate assets for all the games (provided that the total revenue reaches a certain amount). Doesn't have to be a simple linear scale either, the higher echelons can spread out a little bit.

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