me neither :(

it's a shame not everything is unlocked. but also another price drop in 29 sales?
so in the end it will be like what? 50 cents?

Maybe they'd get more impulse purchases if they threatened to raise the price in a bit, without specifying when? ;)

The way it works right now, people may still wait for the end and hope the organizers get desperate enough to throw the games at them for as good as free. It's a bit sad to see all these great games sold off for (probably) less than a subway ride.

I think it might be more clever to lower the hurdles for unlocking bonus content and not those for the price drops, since the bonus content is something all participants benefit from and it's something to look forward to and achieve for all of us together, while the price drop is something that encourages less social behavior (waiting until the end and only paying the minimum) and only rewards individuals. The bonus content also raises the value of the bundle, while the price drops devaluate it.

Hm, and speaking of devaluation, so far I've been a supporter of indie bundles and even defended them against criticism, since I really like them, but reading some of the comments in the Blackwell Bundle thread makes me rethink some of my opinions. It's really a bit shocking to think that once a game has been in a bundle, it's not considered worth the full price anymore. With bundles being such a common everyday occurence that you can now count on all popular indie games to be bundled and discounted sooner or later and customers deciding to wait for it rather than spending actual money, I'd be very sceptical, scared or angry about this development, too, if I was an indie developer.

Gemini Rue OST has been added to my account :)

i dont think its just because they been in a bundle their value has decreased it's more that people already have them (especially if they been in a bunch) or think they will come in another bundle again and just wait for it.

also as someone in the blackwell topic posted atleast the first three games feel more like episodes rather then each being a full length game.

i seen many games on desura that are sometimes 15 euro that were in bundles that cost like 3-4 euro total. but the developers choose to get into such a bundle, and they do get more buyers that way though even though they get less for it.
i dunno how it turns out in the end, but if they dont like it they shouldnt participate anymore in the bundles.

and yes there are too many bundles.

I'm not so sure about that. What does the pricing matter to the people who already own the games? I think it's the people who don't own them yet who tend to complain about it, because they feel if others got the chance to pay less before, they themselves shouldn't be required to pay the full price now. The amount of money they're willing to spend on such games then depends on the prices others paid for it and not on the enjoyment they might get from them, which is a way to look at things that's encouraged by all the sales and bundles, but IMO it's not a very healthy approach.

You're right about people prefering to wait for games to appear in another bundle, and I guess that's okay, but some make it sound as if the previous inclusion of a game in a bundle entitles them to get it for very cheap now, too, and so they complain about "too high" prices.


Even if some people feel that way, what's wrong with that if they're sold in a bundle? So you don't get one full length game but four episodes that more or less add up to one full length game. Same difference, at least to me. Probably even better than one full length game that ends with a cliffhanger (and the sequel never sees the light of day). From what I gathered there are several games like that in GOG's catalogue already.


Well, that's what I was thinking. Maybe for some it would be better not to participate. Of course that's completely up to them, I'm just saying I'm beginning to understand the indie devs who are reluctant to discount their games, if that creates such an entitlement mentality and results in huge sell outs (big profit for a short time, next to no chance of regular sales afterwards). Then again, maybe those who complain about supposedly high prices are just a vocal minority and the games still sell fine at full price. Who knows.


Out of curiosity, what makes you say that, if you're not looking at it from a developer's point of view? Which downsides does it have in your eyes?

I find that kind of reasoning stupid. It's like complaining about the price because someone bought the game when it was on sale.


Probably just vocal minority, but we'll never know unless we ask indie developer(s) about it. My guess is that, most of people that want the game, get it in bundle for next to nothing, and then, how many people are left who want to play it?

Can I give my point of view for this one, even though you asked lugum?
I find it amazing how indie developers jump on bandwagon most of the time. As soon as one bundle surfaces, we have bunch more within a week. Just look at all those bundles we have ATM.

Do you mean that the amount of bundles leads to a decrease in quality, because everyone wants a piece of the pie, but not every indie game is good?

Partially, but I don't really think it's related to amount of bundles available. Most of bundles I've seen have at least one game that is there even though it's much worse quality than the rest of it. I guess it has something to do with someone wanting to make quick bucks out of it, but as long as most of the bundle is alright I can live with that.

Its well known by now some people will always complain about the price being too high on every single release. In some cases i agree, in some not.
I think indie developers sometimes just ask too much for a game then it's actually worth (especially if the gameplay time is not that big) and in Blackwell's case i think it should be $10 without sales , no more.
Just as some non-indie developers/publishers might be asking higher prices then GOG wants it to be.
But also compare them to (Kickstarter) games like Tex Murphy and see what you get there for the same $15.

In a way there is nothing wrong with 3/4 smaller games that can be seen as 1 big one.
But why not make those small games 1 big one in the first place and let them be chapters?
Because some Developers try to cash it out more by making them smaller.
Personally i never liked the whole episode thing either. you play a game, that lasts a couple of hours and then you have to wait a month or two till you can play further.
Just as what will happen with Dreamfall which i believe you talk about with the cliffhanger thing.

My point about there being too many bundles was partly out of the developers point of view.
Although for buyers it will be hard to keep up with all the bundles out there and eventually they can only spend that much on certain bundles and have to skip other ones.
Plus with that much around it's hard to keep track of the good bundles too.
What you said to Ironstar, i think it will decrease quality. and it should be about quality not about quantity.

And it was Leroux's quote, pff the quoting here can be so annoying.

Ah, okay. Well, I guess we just differ on this one then. :)

As for the bundles, seen from a customer's point of view - I like choice, which includes the choice to skip a bundle because its quality doesn't convince me, or even the choice to completely ignore all those bundles altogether, in order not to add to my backlog and to spend my money on more important things. I also like surprises. Actually some of the bundles had games I hadn't heard of before and didn't think of much at first glance but that I ended up enjoying. Sure, other games turned out to be more akin to Shovelware, but that's a gamble I'm willing to risk for a few dollars. The appeal of bundles for me is also to try out things I would have been hesitant to spend a lot of money on or i wouldn't even have known about.

I understand that some people prefer someone else taking over the selective process for them because they don't have the time and/or don't enjoy experiments and that for them bundles containing only popular and very polished games are more attractive. But I think those are just different target groups. They could for example subscribe to the Humbkle Bundles newsletter and just ignore all the others.


As for the Blackwell games, YMMV, but I think $15 isn't really that expensive for a game. It's not a lot more than you'd pay for a book or a movie. And I haven't bought retail games in a long time, but back then when I did, you'd pay $15 for a budget edition of a 2-3 year old game and consider it cheap.

I also don't really care about gamelength as quality in itself. I don't regret paying $10-$15 dollar for a one and a half hour movie I end up loving, and in the same way I'm willing to pay a similar amount for 2-5 hours of fun with a story-heavy game. And I much preferred the short but focussed adventure games of WadjetEye, Size Five Games, Amanita Design, Freebird Games and Brawesome to AAA point-and-click adventures of the late 90's or the new millenium years that lost me halfway through because they just weren't gripping enough for their appeal to last for so many hours and they felt long-drawn-out with unnecessary boring puzzles put in the way of the story just to lenghten the game.

In that recent interview between Tim Schafer and Ron Gilbert, they admitted that even they did have to think of puzzles they could insert in the story retroactively, just so the game was longer. I didn't mind it when they did it, because they were good at keeping the balance, but in this regard I prefer quality over quantity, too.

And regarding the episodic nature of the Blackwell series, I think you do the games an injustice. Despite being connected, I think they are still self-contained stories. If Dave Gilbert had abandoned the series after part two, he'd have left us with two interesting and finished stories nevertheless. I believe you could play the parts independently, and fully enjoy them on their own. And none of them ends in a cliffhanger. You could just as well accuse an author of writing short stories instead of putting all those ideas into a novel. I think there's a reason for the fact that the Blackwell games all have different titles and no numbers in them.

Besides, indie developers have the right to try and get paid for the effort they put into their games. And even those pixelated AGS adventures cost a lot of time and work to finish and I don't think the idea behind making them short is greed. Not saying that you meant to imply that, but what you wrote sounds a little bit like that and I think that's unfair to Dave Gilbert and such small developing teams as his. He started as a one-man-team, as a hobby writer and programmer when being unemployed; if he'd worked on the one big full length Blackwell game for years, who'd have funded his project, who'd have compensated him for his work and made it worth his time? I guess the chances of the Blackwell project being abandoned would have been a lot higher that way and we wouldn't even have a single Blackwell game now.

Well, Deception really does end with a sort of cliffhanger. Not the "oh no, Rosangela is tied to the train tracks!" type of cliffhanger of course, but still...

Oh. Well. I'm still in the process of playing through Deception, so ... point taken. ;)

But I thought lugum was still talking about the first three games feeling more like episodes than full games.

Actually IIRC, if you listen to the commentary of Blackwell Legacy, Dave Gilbert says that he started on the Blackwell series because he wanted to get into episodic games.

Don't worry about the Deception cliffhanger - the current case gets wrapped up, it's just that something else opens up which makes you really long for the next installment :)

I think the first three games of the Blackwell series are a good example of episodic games done right. I'm not a big fan of episodic games myself (although I enjoyed Sam & Max Season One, but I bought it as a complete package). Especially not when there's a chance that they will be abandoned before the story arc is closed. But like I said, I think the first three Blackwell Bundle games work fine even on their own. I'm a bit more wary of games with numbers in the title, like Insecticide Episode 1 (the sequel of which was indeed abandoned on PC), Lylian Episode 1 or The Journey Down Chapter One.