Maybe I should have clarified, that I wasn’t thinking bundle organizers… of course gotta agree that bundle creators need to think of their offering, to see how it could harm/benefit them.

I was thinking more of the devs who think that now HB “sold out” or “isn’t indie anymore” etc. — from customer perspective, that really shouldn’t matter as long as the offering is good…

So, in a way I feel you + me argued bit different things here.

That’s the reason why people cue in front of certain stores to buy some particular product: because it has an apple logo; they are loyal to that brand and get excited about their products. That’s why Nokia dominated the mobile business on the last decade: the brand Nokia was attached to certain values that the consumers appreciated. This is over now and almost no one is considering choosing that brand when they are buying their next phone. Some people have strong feelings against the brand “Microsoft” and like to put dollar signs when they spell the name of that company, and some other people are happy with their products so far and will see new products attached to that brand with a positive bias. Human psychology, that’s how consumerism works. Marketing 101 indeed.

And there might be people who are oblivious to the brand and evaluate every single offering with a completely rational, clinical eye, like you claim, but I don’t think that’s a majority of the consumer base.

“Indie” is also a brand. People now have particular expectations about a game if it comes branded as “indie”, the graphic style, the gameplay, etc, in opposition to that other brand “AAA”. Some people feel attracted to the “Indie” brand, some people not. Which is a bias either way.

“Humble Indie Bundle” is also a brand, regardless of that fact being intentional from the guys who run it or not. Everything that is for sale has a brand perception attached to it, in the sense that people will regard stuff coming from the brand as similar to other stuff that has come from that same origin before.

So why must you, in your particular case, as an individual who is a potential customer, care about that brand, from a rational point of view? I agree with you, you don’t have to. But why do “Humble Indie Bundle” have to care about their own brand? Because that’s how a majority of their customers will judge them each time they are deciding to purchase or not one of their products. Because that’s what customers do. In my opinion, if you are selling consumer products, you should be aware of these things.

The bundles from “Humble Bundle” are making 10 times more money per bundle than their competitors “Indie Royale” and “Indie Gala”, according to publicly available figures. Why do people do that? Why do people, as a group, spend 10 times more money on one of these bundle brands rather than the others? Certainly, there’s brand value here, problably achieved through the curation process so far, the popularity of the featured games, or maybe because of the effort put in easing the payment process, or maybe because it’s always been “indie”, “drm-free” and “multiplatform”. Or maybe a combination of all those together. It’s probably different for each one individual if you ask him. But there’s a brand, and breaking it means a risk of loosing the customers that care about the particular values of the brand that have been abandoned now, even if there will be other customers who don’t care about those particular ones.

By the way, if the purchase of a pay-what-you-want product was done in a purely rational fashion, no one would be paying some of the sums we are seeing each time, of hundreds and thousands of dollars. The rational thing for each individual customer would be to pay the absolutely minimum to get the games, just a couple of cents of a dollar. And that sum would be the average, since everyone would be rationally paying that same amount. Then customers would also get all the bonus material that gets unlocked when you pay the average. However, some people are paying more, for a whole variety of reasons, from the purely sentimental to trying to influence the future bundles by “voting with the wallet”. See, customers are not always rational. That’s why, if you have a brand, you should look after it.

I do agree that newest humble bundle is a different, and can have impact on how HB does in the future. Consistency is important in strenghtening the perceived imago, and “indie only” aspect really got thrown out of the window in the latest offering.

HB just left puperty and plays with the big boys now. More famous games => more $$$. Understandable, I would do the same.

I’m curious if they keep following this path and abandon indies. At least the stats on the HB site say “YES”.

IMO many indies see/saw the HB guys as like-minded. But now that they sell a bundle of “corporation” games they seem to have run over to the enemy. It feels like treason.

The truth is: HB does not represent the average indie. They just sell top-notch games. From indies. Up to now. They proved to gross millions. So it was just a matter of time when a stock company like THQ would take notice.

HB seemingly started as side project to fund Wolfire. Wolfire is (or was?) indie. Maybe that’s the reason why people think they should sell just games of their own kin?

I don’t have the answer, but as long as the companies act well, Im okay with people voting with their wallets to determine what is important…

Not saying my view would be “right”. It’s merely an opinion.