WTF Humble Bundle?! "Indie" my ass.

[Fiskmasen]

I just paid for the "Humble Indie Bundle 4" so care to tell me why the HELL I'm staring at a big, bloated pustule of an EA logo? I support indie gamers so that they DON'T feel the need to sell out to the scumbag sequel shitters. And to be the worst of the bunch, the one that I have actively and effectively boycotted for over two years?

I'm not happy about this, and the only reason I don't go change my "developer" slider down to zero is that the actual indie devs don't deserve to be screwed over because EA and HB pulled a fast one.

Settle down. To be quite honest I don't think anyone gives a shit about your predicament.

I assume it's Shank you're referring to in your insane ramblings. Fact is, Klei Entertainment is an independent developer. All EA has done is give them a few bucks in order to get the game out on Xbox Live Arcade. Klei received no funding from EA while developing the game.

Also, I really don't think, judging by your hilarious sense of entitlement, that you gave the guys any more than five bucks, but still: "All" that money you gave to the developers directly is not going into EA's pockets.

This extreme ignorance of what a publisher really is within the gaming community really has got to stop. It used to be fun to watch you idiots go frothing at the mouths with wild claims that "Publishers are ruining the industry!!!", "I won't buy another EA game EVAR! What do you mean EA is publishing Mass Effect? Oh well, I guess I'll just buy that one. BUT NO MORE!!!" but now it's just sad.

 

[Akirai]

Hell, I thought this was going to be interesting. I get that EA isn't indie, but what do you have against it as a company?

I'm boycotting EA. Mostly because their limits on my ownership rights are unacceptable. Their aims to disable me from reselling games (firstly with invasive drm, then with online pass, now with origins) go against my fundamental rights as their customer making every deal I, and all other customers, make with them impossible to justify even if the developer is indie.
Well, until now. Humble Bundles decided the level of 'DRM'. My ownership right isn't being perverted. Theoretically I could let this one slide.
Except that, that would mean I'm not boycotting EA as they're still getting my money. Which I said I would never do until they changed their own publishing practices.
So what I've done for now is set the developer slider to zero, the hb slider to zero and the charity slider to max though I don't think that'll have any effect on the processed payment. If I have the time I'll try and contact HB to see whether the proceeds actually do go to EA or whether they are channeled directly to Koei and re-adjust my sliders.

 

[The_root_of_all_evil]

It is just a video game. I don't see the big deal.

You do realise you're on the Escapist, right?

 

[veloper]

''Shank is a 2D side-scrolling beat 'em up developed by Klei Entertainment and published by Electronic Arts.''

Indie developer, with EA as publisher, no problem there right?

Here is their website http://kleientertainment.com/ They are definitely indie I'd say.

Indies don't have publishers by definition. They self-publish. Indies don't go to a publisher to borrow money for their project.

Maybe there needs to be a new definition of indie then.. Because they are hardly Bioware.

Plenty of useful definitions around already.

Bioware are a large game studio: they're big and a part of a publisher.
Bioware used to be a big developer: big and working with a publisher (atari back then).
Mojang are indie: they self-publish.

Errm I kind of meant that the current definition puts Klei on the same level as Bioware which seems kind of skewed since they are clearly a relatively tiny company yet they have a large publisher.

How about simply calling Klei a "small developer" then. Problem solved.

Surely a small developer is deserving of inclusion in the bundle then. Since it's not exactly like they are rolling in cash.

We'll call it the humble small developer bundle then.

Indie =/= poor. Mojang are indie and they are raking in the money. Going indie on the PC can be very smart.

In the same way buying lottery tickets can be very smart.

Though I take that back, as more people have won the lottery than be successful independently on the PC.

No, it has less to do with luck and more to do with knowing you can make a game that people want. You fail if you produce crap.

Even less succesful indies like Jeff Vogel are still sticking around, because the niche for his type of RPGs is big enough to support him.

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

Medal Of Monor was once a proud military FPS series; it predates Call Of Duty by a good bit and was a lot better back in its day. Did you ever play MoH: Allied Assault on the PC? Or Frontline on Gamecube/PS2? Those were great games! But EA mutated it from its former strong, singleplayer-focused roots into an attempt to directly attack CoD, which they already had Battlefield for.

This is not entirely true. The first several Medal of Honor games were made by the same people who would later go on to found infinity ward. The way I understand it, EA screwed them in much the same way as Activision would later screw their successor studio, so they quit, founded Infinity Ward, and made the first Call of Duty, which was basically Medal of Honor with a gimmick that they called "shell shock[footnote]"Shell Shock," in Infinity ward terms, is that feature in modern FPSs where your vision gets blurry when an explosion happens close to you, but doesn't actually kill you[/footnote]." CoD was single player focused through the original Modern Warfare, and it wasn't until MW2 came out that it really became a multiplayer focused series, instead of a single player series that also had solid multiplayer. Medal of Honor was actually the best existing property EA had for taking CoD head on; Battlefield, by comparison, is in an entirely different subgenre of shooter, when speaking mechanically. The only thing the two series had in common prior to BF3 was the window dressing.

OT: I've been buying the bundles, but lately I haven't had time to play the games, so I didn't realize Shank was published by EA. That said, I do agree that once you have backing from a big publisher, you're no longer an indie studio. The whole thing about indie devs is that they're independent from the publishers; they don't need their help to make money, which gives them freedom to do all the stuff that the publishers have been afraid to do of late -- mainly publishing 2D games and developing risky ideas in general. It's kind of silly to call something published by EA indie, even if the dev published two games on their own prior to this one.

 

[veloper]

''Shank is a 2D side-scrolling beat 'em up developed by Klei Entertainment and published by Electronic Arts.''

Indie developer, with EA as publisher, no problem there right?

Here is their website http://kleientertainment.com/ They are definitely indie I'd say.

Indies don't have publishers by definition. They self-publish. Indies don't go to a publisher to borrow money for their project.

Maybe there needs to be a new definition of indie then.. Because they are hardly Bioware.

Plenty of useful definitions around already.

Bioware are a large game studio: they're big and a part of a publisher.
Bioware used to be a big developer: big and working with a publisher (atari back then).
Mojang are indie: they self-publish.

Errm I kind of meant that the current definition puts Klei on the same level as Bioware which seems kind of skewed since they are clearly a relatively tiny company yet they have a large publisher.

How about simply calling Klei a "small developer" then. Problem solved.

Surely a small developer is deserving of inclusion in the bundle then. Since it's not exactly like they are rolling in cash.

We'll call it the humble small developer bundle then.

Indie =/= poor. Mojang are indie and they are raking in the money. Going indie on the PC can be very smart.

In the same way buying lottery tickets can be very smart.

Though I take that back, as more people have won the lottery than be successful independently on the PC.

No, it has less to do with luck and more to do with knowing you can make a game that people want. You fail if you produce crap.

Zynga says hello.

Alright then, you may even succeed with crap, if you produce the right sort of crap that we here may not like, but many other people do.

 

[Freaky Lou]

Medal Of Monor was once a proud military FPS series; it predates Call Of Duty by a good bit and was a lot better back in its day. Did you ever play MoH: Allied Assault on the PC? Or Frontline on Gamecube/PS2? Those were great games! But EA mutated it from its former strong, singleplayer-focused roots into an attempt to directly attack CoD, which they already had Battlefield for.

This is not entirely true. The first several Medal of Honor games were made by the same people who would later go on to found infinity ward. The way I understand it, EA screwed them in much the same way as Activision would later screw their successor studio, so they quit, founded Infinity Ward, and made the first Call of Duty, which was basically Medal of Honor with a gimmick that they called "shell shock[footnote]"Shell Shock," in Infinity ward terms, is that feature in modern FPSs where your vision gets blurry when an explosion happens close to you, but doesn't actually kill you[/footnote]." CoD was single player focused through the original Modern Warfare, and it wasn't until MW2 came out that it really became a multiplayer focused series, instead of a single player series that also had solid multiplayer. Medal of Honor was actually the best existing property EA had for taking CoD head on; Battlefield, by comparison, is in an entirely different subgenre of shooter, when speaking mechanically. The only thing the two series had in common prior to BF3 was the window dressing.

Oh, I see. That's interesting to know. It also explains why the early CoD games were so similar to MOH.

 

[veloper]

''Shank is a 2D side-scrolling beat 'em up developed by Klei Entertainment and published by Electronic Arts.''

Indie developer, with EA as publisher, no problem there right?

Here is their website http://kleientertainment.com/ They are definitely indie I'd say.

Indies don't have publishers by definition. They self-publish. Indies don't go to a publisher to borrow money for their project.

Maybe there needs to be a new definition of indie then.. Because they are hardly Bioware.

Plenty of useful definitions around already.

Bioware are a large game studio: they're big and a part of a publisher.
Bioware used to be a big developer: big and working with a publisher (atari back then).
Mojang are indie: they self-publish.

Errm I kind of meant that the current definition puts Klei on the same level as Bioware which seems kind of skewed since they are clearly a relatively tiny company yet they have a large publisher.

How about simply calling Klei a "small developer" then. Problem solved.

Surely a small developer is deserving of inclusion in the bundle then. Since it's not exactly like they are rolling in cash.

We'll call it the humble small developer bundle then.

Indie =/= poor. Mojang are indie and they are raking in the money. Going indie on the PC can be very smart.

In the same way buying lottery tickets can be very smart.

Though I take that back, as more people have won the lottery than be successful independently on the PC.

No, it has less to do with luck and more to do with knowing you can make a game that people want. You fail if you produce crap.

Zynga says hello.

Alright then, you may even succeed with crap, if you produce the right sort of crap that we here may not like, but many other people do.

But far more likely you will fail. Do you have any idea the sheer numbers of people who have failed to sell a signifigant amount of their game? No, of course you don't, because you're the kind of person who, when they hear about Mojang, thinks results like that are actually typical.

Look up Jason Rohrer for an actually typical example.

What a pointless ad hominem. I know alot more about this than you and now it's up to you to make your case why you reckon the odds at winning the lottery is higher than making a living from indie games.
You can't, because it's absurd, but try anyway.

 

[veloper]

''Shank is a 2D side-scrolling beat 'em up developed by Klei Entertainment and published by Electronic Arts.''

Indie developer, with EA as publisher, no problem there right?

Here is their website http://kleientertainment.com/ They are definitely indie I'd say.

Indies don't have publishers by definition. They self-publish. Indies don't go to a publisher to borrow money for their project.

Maybe there needs to be a new definition of indie then.. Because they are hardly Bioware.

Plenty of useful definitions around already.

Bioware are a large game studio: they're big and a part of a publisher.
Bioware used to be a big developer: big and working with a publisher (atari back then).
Mojang are indie: they self-publish.

Errm I kind of meant that the current definition puts Klei on the same level as Bioware which seems kind of skewed since they are clearly a relatively tiny company yet they have a large publisher.

How about simply calling Klei a "small developer" then. Problem solved.

Surely a small developer is deserving of inclusion in the bundle then. Since it's not exactly like they are rolling in cash.

We'll call it the humble small developer bundle then.

Indie =/= poor. Mojang are indie and they are raking in the money. Going indie on the PC can be very smart.

In the same way buying lottery tickets can be very smart.

Though I take that back, as more people have won the lottery than be successful independently on the PC.

No, it has less to do with luck and more to do with knowing you can make a game that people want. You fail if you produce crap.

Zynga says hello.

Alright then, you may even succeed with crap, if you produce the right sort of crap that we here may not like, but many other people do.

But far more likely you will fail. Do you have any idea the sheer numbers of people who have failed to sell a signifigant amount of their game? No, of course you don't, because you're the kind of person who, when they hear about Mojang, thinks results like that are actually typical.

Look up Jason Rohrer for an actually typical example.

What a pointless ad hominem. I know alot more about this than you and now it's up to you to make your case why you reckon the odds at winning the lottery is higher than making a living from indie games.
You can't, because it's absurd, but try anyway.

Okay, I'll prove it mathematically. Number of independent games on the internet when we count independent work that aaccumulates over the years is approximately 40 million (because remember, we count free to play crap like Farmville and every single one of its derivatives and knockoffs, as well as independent knockoff tetris clones, as all are competing for peoples attention).

No there's not nearly as many, but try making a list anyway.

The odds of winning a lottery, correctly guessing 5 numbers in Powerball is just over 38 million. That'll net you 20 million dollars for a 1 dollar ticket.

Your odds for the lottery are one in 38 million. Your odds in the indie scene are one in 40 million, as those are the odds of people seeing your game. Thus, mathematically you are safer making money in the lottery. Simple.

Since you already admitted to both farmville and minecraft being succesful and indie in your opinion, we're already well below those 1 in 38 million odds of yours. Even then you're crazily overestimating the number of indies and not recognizing enough the succesful games.

You wasted your time in any case, because odds exist for people who don't understand the system. Minecraft and farmville didn't succeed because of chance; the games succeeded because people want to play them.
The designers didn't set out to directly compete against the big studios with a cheaper knockoff, but rather to make something people would like and the big publishers didn't have on offer yet.
That's why they succeeded. It's not about beating dumb odds, it's about having the right product in the right place.

 

[veloper]

''Shank is a 2D side-scrolling beat 'em up developed by Klei Entertainment and published by Electronic Arts.''

Indie developer, with EA as publisher, no problem there right?

Here is their website http://kleientertainment.com/ They are definitely indie I'd say.

Indies don't have publishers by definition. They self-publish. Indies don't go to a publisher to borrow money for their project.

Maybe there needs to be a new definition of indie then.. Because they are hardly Bioware.

Plenty of useful definitions around already.

Bioware are a large game studio: they're big and a part of a publisher.
Bioware used to be a big developer: big and working with a publisher (atari back then).
Mojang are indie: they self-publish.

Errm I kind of meant that the current definition puts Klei on the same level as Bioware which seems kind of skewed since they are clearly a relatively tiny company yet they have a large publisher.

How about simply calling Klei a "small developer" then. Problem solved.

Surely a small developer is deserving of inclusion in the bundle then. Since it's not exactly like they are rolling in cash.

We'll call it the humble small developer bundle then.

Indie =/= poor. Mojang are indie and they are raking in the money. Going indie on the PC can be very smart.

In the same way buying lottery tickets can be very smart.

Though I take that back, as more people have won the lottery than be successful independently on the PC.

No, it has less to do with luck and more to do with knowing you can make a game that people want. You fail if you produce crap.

Zynga says hello.

Alright then, you may even succeed with crap, if you produce the right sort of crap that we here may not like, but many other people do.

But far more likely you will fail. Do you have any idea the sheer numbers of people who have failed to sell a signifigant amount of their game? No, of course you don't, because you're the kind of person who, when they hear about Mojang, thinks results like that are actually typical.

Look up Jason Rohrer for an actually typical example.

What a pointless ad hominem. I know alot more about this than you and now it's up to you to make your case why you reckon the odds at winning the lottery is higher than making a living from indie games.
You can't, because it's absurd, but try anyway.

Okay, I'll prove it mathematically. Number of independent games on the internet when we count independent work that aaccumulates over the years is approximately 40 million (because remember, we count free to play crap like Farmville and every single one of its derivatives and knockoffs, as well as independent knockoff tetris clones, as all are competing for peoples attention).

No there's not nearly as many, but try making a list anyway.

The odds of winning a lottery, correctly guessing 5 numbers in Powerball is just over 38 million. That'll net you 20 million dollars for a 1 dollar ticket.

Your odds for the lottery are one in 38 million. Your odds in the indie scene are one in 40 million, as those are the odds of people seeing your game. Thus, mathematically you are safer making money in the lottery. Simple.

Since you already admitted to both farmville and minecraft being succesful and indie in your opinion, we're already well below those 1 in 38 million odds of yours. Even then you're crazily overestimating the number of indies and not recognizing enough the succesful games.

You wasted your time in any case, because odds exist for people who don't understand the system. Minecraft and farmville didn't succeed because of chance; the games succeeded because people want to play them.
The designers didn't set out to directly compete against the big studios with a cheaper knockoff, but rather to make something people would like and the big publishers didn't have on offer yet.
That's why they succeeded. It's not about beating dumb odds, it's about having the right product in the right place.

Because of course as soon as any indie developer makes a game, every person on the internet is immediately alerted. Yessir, there is absolutely nothing on earth that gets as much exposure instantly as a person with a marketting budget of nothing.

Those are the odds of being noticed - of anyone even acknowledging your effort. Because, here's a shocker, no-one will play your game if they don't know it exists, and part of being indie is you get next to no exposure.

You can't think of a solution for that solved problem in this day and age? Succesful indies use social networks. With the right game and the right contacts you can create the snowball effect.
Just uploading a game and hoping to get noticed gets you nowhere, so spread the word. Again it's not about hoping for a chance, it's about working at it.

 

[chaosyoshimage]

You know what would be great? If EA would keep helping developers like this. Allowing them to get their work done while maintaining creative control. That would be great. Good games and new ideas would flourish. I have absolutely no problem with that. I may not like many of EA's business practices, but this is unquestionably a good one.

Probably the most sensible post on this thread so far. I completely agree.
On a separate note, seeing your avatar directly before reading your post made me think a blood-coated vino crawled down from the ceiling right next to me with crazy eyes reading your post on my computer. That would be flippin' scary XD. And it's still dark in my room so..yeah. And yes, that last part was completely random.

Just warning you, but there is a guy on here with a blood drenched vino as their avatar, which would obviously be more frightening than mine. I continue to envy that avatar.

And thank you for the compliment.

Gasp! Baccano! fans!

Oh yeah, OT, yeah, curse EA for publishing a small indie dev's game!

 

[Charles McGuffin]

What do I have against EA? Either you're new to gaming, or a BF3 fan... They're the Microsoft of the gaming world though Sony is trying to catch up in the race to the bottom...

...where Nintendo has been waiting for 10 years.

How doe your comment make sense? It doesn't even contain an arguement.

 

[The Artificially Prolonged]

Not bothered shank is only EA published game I've bought that didn't have any annoying DRM or have steam run out of cd keys and find myself waiting a couple of days before I could even play it. And the other great games of the humble bundle helped sweeten the deal, so I'll just let it slide that EA have managed to slip one by me

 

[soulsabr]

you know it cost money to have them servers up right? money that not even humble tips can pay maybe they needed some extra sponsorship who cares would we flipping as much of a shit if it was activision? are we being charged extra? Nope all I see is pay what you want still and you pay over the average amount get two games free I see all this but hey you don't want to buy it because "EA IS TEH DEVILZ!!!!11" fine by me I on the other hand am gonna enjoy cave story+ super meat boy and BEAT.TRIP RUNNER from the bundle and am gonna try the other 3 later good day to you sir

Yea, it sure does cost money. Guess what! There are plenty of us who'd gladly run a server gratis if they'd let us. I think I'll go play some more quake. Thanks, ID.