The Humble Indie Bundle #3 Roundup

Pay-what-you want is a pricing system where buyers decide how much to pay for a commodity. One of the most notable examples of this pricing system being used was when Radiohead allowed fans to choose what price they paid for their album In Rainbows.

We have also witnessed this pricing system being used in the computing gaming industry. Indie developer Wolfire Games has previously offered a series of game packaging experiments (Humble Indie bundles) that allow users to purchase DRM-free independently developed video games for the Windows, OS X, and Linux platforms. Their first bundle generated nearly .3 million from 138,000 customers. The second bundle of games was even more successful, generating a whopping .8 million. The third Humble Bundle sale featured five games from the Indie developer, Frozenbyte, generating revenue of slightly less than million.

Humble Indie Bundle 3 is the fourth Humble Bundle. Launched on July 26, the bundle includes the following games: Crayon Physics Deluxe (Kloonigames), Cogs (Lazy 8 Studios), VVVVVV (Terry Cavanagh), Hammerfight (Kranx Productions), and And Yet It Moves (Broken Rules). These games were originally released in 2009 with the exception of VVVVVV which was released last year, and originally they cost together about . The Indie Bundle lets you decide what to pay, even as little as a single cent. The size of the downloads range from 25MB to 103MB with all the games having fairly modest hardware requirements. Puzzle games are well represented in this bundle though most tastes are catered for.

The important of commercial indie games should not be underestimated. Indie games are becoming more popular and successful, in part because they rely more on innovative ideas rather than large budgets. A good range of indie games could be an important element for Linux becoming mainstream on the desktop.

Even after only a few hours after the bundle was launched, payments totalling in excess of 0,000 had been received. As you can see from the screenshot above, one of the interesting things to note is that Linux users are willing to pay significantly more than their Windows and OS X counterparts. At the time of writing, the disparity between the average purchase price for Windows and Linux users has widened even further. This is not an isolated occurrence. We also witnessed the same phenomena with the earlier bundles. We hope this trend encourages other indie developers to release Linux versions of their games. A steady release of profitable indie games may encourage larger developers to release their games for Linux too. Sales of bundle #3 are already in excess of {sp_content}.5 million.

Don't leave it too long before you check out the Humble Bundle website, as the bundle is only available for a fortnight.

Now, let's scrutinize the 5 games that feature in the Humble Indie Bundle #3. For each game we have compiled its own portal page, providing screenshots of the game in action, a full description of the game, with an in-depth analysis of the features of the game, together with links to relevant resources and reviews. Our personal favourites are Crayon Physics Deluxe and Cogs.

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Last Updated Wednesday, July 27 2011 @ 05:24 PM EDT