We have a short update for you today, since we're trying out something new: we're participating in a game bundle sale. The Monday motivation bundle by Indie Gala.
This is a new thing for us and we're of two minds about joining a bundle like this. So we've decided to jump in and run the experiment :). Both to see the effects on sales and other stuff and to see how we feel about this. A small note: when I talk of bundles, I mean pay what you want-bundles where people can get games for extremely low prices. Not the bundles you sometime see on Steam with, for instance, all games from one publisher for half price.
First off, joining a bundle with a game of which the sales have slowed down makes a lot of sense form a sales perspective. You get (some) money directly from the sales in the bundle. You also generate attention for your game, both directly from the sales and indirectly because people will see their friends playing your game on Steam. On top of that, those who have the game on Steam will be notified when you update your game, generating another round of potential attention (thus Steam activations are never bad from that perspective). And on top of that, we just want people to play, and preferably enjoy, our game. Joining a bundle gets Powargrid in the hands of players :).
On the other hand, there are also downsides. The immediate question is whether you may hurt the sales you would have otherwise made for a higher price. While this may be a problem for better known titles, this effect is negligible for Powargrid. A more important downside is that people who have bought Powargrid at full price, or even during a sale, may feel cheated. We'd really hate that, since we're especially fond of the people who have decided that this game we made is worth their hard-earned cash. We never felt that way ourselves when seeing games we own appear in bundles, but we can imagine that could be different for others.
On top of that there's the indirect effects. Looking at bundles from a market perspective, they could trigger or hasten a race to the bottom. If that happens, there will be a point where it becomes foolish to pay full price -or even half price- for a video game. Why that's bad for the market needs no additional explanation I assume :).
First off, joining a bundle with a game of which the sales have slowed down makes a lot of sense form a sales perspective. You get (some) money directly from the sales in the bundle. You also generate attention for your game, both directly from the sales and indirectly because people will see their friends playing your game on Steam. On top of that, those who have the game on Steam will be notified when you update your game, generating another round of potential attention (thus Steam activations are never bad from that perspective). And on top of that, we just want people to play, and preferably enjoy, our game. Joining a bundle gets Powargrid in the hands of players :).
On the other hand, there are also downsides. The immediate question is whether you may hurt the sales you would have otherwise made for a higher price. While this may be a problem for better known titles, this effect is negligible for Powargrid. A more important downside is that people who have bought Powargrid at full price, or even during a sale, may feel cheated. We'd really hate that, since we're especially fond of the people who have decided that this game we made is worth their hard-earned cash. We never felt that way ourselves when seeing games we own appear in bundles, but we can imagine that could be different for others.
On top of that there's the indirect effects. Looking at bundles from a market perspective, they could trigger or hasten a race to the bottom. If that happens, there will be a point where it becomes foolish to pay full price -or even half price- for a video game. Why that's bad for the market needs no additional explanation I assume :).
So the conclusion is that it's in the interest of the individual company to add your game to bundles, while it's in the interest of the market as a whole to not join in bundles (and the same goes for subscription based game services). This is pretty close to the definition of the tragedy of the commons, with which I'm quite familiar given my background in environmental sciences. In my day job, I spend every day battling that very mechanism (specifically on the topic of energy / climate, but the tragedy of the commons is applicable to all environmental problems). So my gut instinct is to avoid things that invoke the tragedy of the commons.
Having said that, it's quite possible the analogy doesn't quite hold up. In environmental sciences, it's pretty clear that the tragedy of the commons is at work. For game bundles, there may be other effects. For instance, they may get people who normally wouldn't play games to try them out, in essence growing the market. Gamers may try a game genre they normally wouldn't play. People who can't afford games at full price or who would normally pirate them may be convinced that paying for the real thing is preferable if the deal is so good.
Adding everything up, we felt there were more than enough reasons to say yes when the nice folks at Indie Gala invited us to join the Monday motivation bundle. Not least because theorizing can only take you so far; you'll need to experiment to really understand how things work. So we joined their bundle. Be sure to have a look there :).
- Willem -
Having said that, it's quite possible the analogy doesn't quite hold up. In environmental sciences, it's pretty clear that the tragedy of the commons is at work. For game bundles, there may be other effects. For instance, they may get people who normally wouldn't play games to try them out, in essence growing the market. Gamers may try a game genre they normally wouldn't play. People who can't afford games at full price or who would normally pirate them may be convinced that paying for the real thing is preferable if the deal is so good.
Adding everything up, we felt there were more than enough reasons to say yes when the nice folks at Indie Gala invited us to join the Monday motivation bundle. Not least because theorizing can only take you so far; you'll need to experiment to really understand how things work. So we joined their bundle. Be sure to have a look there :).
- Willem -