Humble Bundle #3 is Live (opens in new tab)

I'd love to be a fly on the wall for the A/B test, but I still think something a wee closer to

http://images1.bingocardcreator.com/blog-images/hn/deep-disc...

would kill both the A/B tested options. Bringing in people's psychological need to be above average is great, but I might do that by putting a nice 37Signals style yellow highlight on one of the expensive options (for some value of expensive which would pay for more than a Big Mac) and say "24% of people went for this"

and looks like they're a/b testing it; http://i.imgur.com/NsjwG.png

And it will gradually increase the average every time someone chooses that option.

Oh, I totally would have fell for that!

I got the scenario that janzer posted, and I opted for $5 since I wasn't too excited about any of the games and just wanted to support the cause. I felt a little cheap because the cheapest example was $10, but felt justified based on the selection of games. If $5.81 was the default option with "above average" label, I would have went with that.

Indeed, and I went for it in a shot - worked very well.

"The tiny proportion of people who use Linux on the desktop will pay more for your game if you frame it in the context of 'look, you can be superior to the people who use those other OSes'?"

I buy then under "Linux" because I'd like to see more Linux games, but I only very rarely actually play them under Linux. Because it's way too much of a hassle to actually do it. My reasoning is that, perhaps (and it is certainly optimistic), a greater adoption of games on Linux might make the process of getting them to work (and, similarly, the process of developing for the platform) less obnoxious.

That has been the case in every bundle. Linux pays more than Mac pays more than Windows.

I would suggest that Windows users cover the entire range of users, including a lot of minors. It's the most accessible and prevalent OS, and therefore people with the least amount of money are most likely to be using Windows.

For Mac users: Macs are without a doubt more expensive than WinPCs. Serious question: can you get a new Mac laptop or desktop for under $800? These people have more money to spend on computers and more money to spend in general.

For Linux users... I don't know. I would posit that Linux users tend to be more educated than the average person (based on personal experience), and that more education correlates with more income (this I can actually cite: http://www.bls.gov/emp/ep_chart_001.htm). I know, a stretch, but I to me they are reasonable arguments, if lacking in evidence.

This has probably more to do with the fact that Linux users are quite often part of a community that promotes this kind of thing.

Also the statistic don't account for people with multiple systems. Windows on the desktop for games, Linux in the desktop for development and OS X on the MacBook is not an uncommon setup for developers.

Yes, Windows and MacOS users spend more money on buying software so their budget is already stretched, while Linux users have money to spent.

Or Linux users cannot assess the worth of software as they are not used to buy software.

Both probably not what you wanted to hear, and probably not the real reason. I just wanted to point out that we can project everything into the fact that Linux version pays best average amount.

It might be because all of the games have been released on Windows and Mac before (many over steam), and so Windows/Mac users are more likely to already own a copy. Exclusive linux users, on the other hand, are less likely to have a copy of any of the games already.

There's not many games released for Linux, so when they are released, people get very excited.

There are very few opportunities for Linux users to buy games?

Pathetic, how so?

The people paying that amount could already own the games, they could already donate to charity. This is pay what you want for a reason, a large portion of people purchase just because it's a donation thing. If someone has a spare $5 why don't they spend it here? It isn't pathetic, it's better than nothing.

I don't think so. At the time of writing, they're close to a $100k in sales with many more days still to go. If you multiply that by the average developer share you'll end up above $10k per indie dev (that number also is going to go up significantly over the next days). That makes Humblebundle a nice bonus for developers who already invested their time into making these games. Equally important, it gives them exposure to an audience who might otherwise not have tried those games at all.

I already have three out of five of those games on steam, and I bet a lot of other people do too; they've been on sale enough times. It's also very early in the campaign; as I recall there were a number of 'high rollers' that donated very large amounts (IIRC, Notch donated over $10,000). Once they come in the average might go up a bit.

People haven't started paying $2000 for it yet. It may still grow.

I think HIB did due diligence by offering CC, PayPal, Amazon, and Google. I honestly think you're an extreme outlier and would fall into a fraction of a percent of their users. I'm not saying that it's OK to marginalize you, but if I were them, with complete honesty I would have thought that those four options would cover everybody, and then doing something like Bitcoin would be going an extra mile. I've never heard of PaySafeCard (not to say that it can't be cool if I haven't heard of it, because it is), so I think it may have a long way to go before it's widely accepted.

Edit: You elucidated why you aren't using these services here http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2809572, but really you've painted yourself into a box. It's not that you can't use those services, it's that you won't. I understand why you don't want to (really, I feel you, I'm an idealist too), but at a certain point I just have to bite the bullet and if I want something bad enough and I can only pay for it in certain ways, then I'm going to do it.

Why are Paypal, Amazon and Google all no goes for you? I've heard a lot of negativity about Paypal for example but that is entirely from the merchants position.

Email the Bundle guy. Historically, he will give you the bundle for free and later will try to set up a payment method you can use next time.

You might be interested in this option then: BTCDeals.com is reselling the bundle for Bitcoins: https://www.btcdeals.com/humble-indie-bundle-3/ . (Although I assume they will use CC themselves to buy the bundle, so that might still be a show-stopper for you.)

I don't think it's fair to say it's "yet another FPS". I think that people who only play Indie titles are missing out just as much as those who only play huge AAA releases.

The same can be said for a number of old games as well. GoG's Summer Gems daily sale had a bunch of games that can't possibly compare graphically these days but still surpass modern games in many ways (e.g. Independence War which I would argue is unique in the space shooter genre).

That and my aging single-core computer simply can't keep up with many AAA tiles.

> I've dumped my consoles in the last year and moved to finding 'indie' game devs like these because, as the old saying goes, 'It's not about graphics, it's about gameplay'

Ironically, this is pretty much what made the Wii such a success in the Moms & Dads demographic ...

I absolutely agree, though I've found myself heavily driven to retrogaming for the most part, replaying old games I never played as a kid...and having a blast!

As sad as it may sound, I know some... let's call them pathetic individuals... who pay 0.01$ exactly because of this fact. But oh well, they are usually pretty laughable with their feeble attempts at trolling, anyways, so I stopped bothering quite some time ago.

Surely they wouldn't put the transaction through unless they were getting money from it though?

I recall hearing that's the reason Proun requires at least a $2 payment

This is a really interesting statistic actually. I got the last 2 bundles and I'm a Mac user. I am definitely pro-Mac OS. Seeing those stats made me pay a little more.

I am also an iOS dev and try and keep up on trends. I'd wager most Mac users are also iOS users. And current stats indicate that most iOS users are willing to spend money on software.

So why the stinginess here!?

Like avg $15 a year lately...

They are using some form of AJAX (JavaScript talking directly to their server without reloading the page).

In this case they appear to be using PubNub. http://www.pubnub.com/how-it-works

They're constantly requesting a JSON file about once a second. Example contents, formatted: http://pastebin.com/uMv7d8xS

Then the apps wouldn't be DRM free which for me is one of the selling points of the Humble Bundles.

apple doesn't allow for 3rd party sales, best you could hope for is a jailbroken humble bundle.

As a Windows user - seeing that the software available for different architectures says to me that the code is more than likely robust and well debugged.

Since there's no DRM you can't help it if people are buying one key and then burning a bunch of CDs, but that won't affect the average price much. Seems to me that if they're selling license keys for $1.50, the best way to counter this is to change the download screen title to:

    Thanks for purchasing the Humble Indie Bundle #3 for $0.01!

... if the customer thinks that's fair, so be it, but it might at least encourage the "resellers" to pay slightly more.

Alternatively, I don't think setting the minimum payment to $1 would be at all incompatible with the "pay what you want" slogan & worthwhile if it eliminates the payment fees problem.

(But what would I know? I've bought all four, and last time 'round I felt like I got my money's worth just out of Braid.)

They seem to have cottoned on to this: if enter a price of less than a dollar, you need to fill out a re-captcha.

    Orders under $1 must authenticate with reCAPTCHA to help cut down on costly abuse.

Not only that, but they just upgraded to VVVVVV 2.0, which has a level editor and bunch of really good new levels. I'm a huge fan of the game, and this is like the best thing that happened to me today.

snagged in this bundle after mostly ignoring it despite people raving. i played Metal Storm on the NES and nothing i saw from vvvvvv looked like it trumped that, but i plan to try it out. i'm sure it has more charm that doesn't come through in most people's videos demoing it.

The promo video is great, and had me smiling the whole time. John's voice is recognizable and hilarious.