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Oxeye Game Studio and Wolfire Games join Humble Bundle Mojam
As if the basic premise of Mojang's 60 hour Humble Bundle charity programming marathon weren't enough of an incentive for you to hand over as many of your hard earned dollars as you want, the Minecraft developer is now being joined by Oxeye Game Studio and Wolfire Games, who will be creating their own 60-hour indie experiences.Wolfire's game will be based off the same crowdsourced premise as Mojang's, which is an RTS shoot 'em up steeped in an ancient Egypt/steampunk setting. Oxeye Games, on the other hand, will be combining the second-place and second-to-last-place options from the genre poll by constructing "a dungeon crawler beat 'em up set in a post-apocalyptic World War II."All three teams are live streaming their progress at the official Humble Bundle site, and there's still about 20 hours left to go make your donation and claim your games before the event comes to a close.
The Humble Indie Bundle: Leaving no customer behind
The charitable, almost casually presented collection of indie games, The Humble Indie Bundle, was born from an earnest approach to customer service. Wolfire Games offered a user-determined price point, ditched DRM, shared earnings with charity organizations and targeted multiple platforms -- including Windows, Mac OS and Linux -- when it launched the first Humble Indie Bundle in May 2010. "It was very relaxed and very good for the customer," said Jeffrey Rosen, co-founder of Wolfire Games and Humble Bundle Inc. "We didn't want to leave anybody out." Rosen and Wolfire's John Graham elaborated on their "leave no customer behind" approach at a GDC panel on Monday morning, emphasizing the importance of including platforms like Mac OS and Linux in addition to PC. The decision to spread beyond Windows was informed by Wolfire's prior experience selling its own games, with anthropomorphic bunny basher Lugaru HD racking up doubly strong sales through Mac and Linux support. Linux users seemed particularly grateful for the support -- when the first bundle concluded after racking up $1,273,613, Linux users had spent the most with $14.44 on average. "If you reach out to them, they want to take care of you too," John Graham said.
Lugaru shows why game devs should support OS X and Linux
Jeff Rosen of Wolfire Games has an intriguing post up about why developers of videogames like himself should go out of their way to support the OS X and Linux markets. Their game, Lugaru, is available on Windows, OS X and Linux, and the upcoming sequel, Overgrowth, is also being developed for OS X. Rosen says right out that the prevailing opinion, that the smaller markets aren't worth developing for because the audience isn't there, is just plain wrong -- Mac sales accounted for a full half of Lugaru's sales. The people who are buying software, his data seems to say, are using Macs.And he has five main points why it's worth the time and effort to release builds on these smaller platforms: you have sites like ours (and the great Inside Mac Games) to talk about your game for you. We Mac gamers respect companies that take the time to make sure we have just as great a gaming experience as our PC counterparts, and we talk about it when they do. He says that a Linux version gained them a mention on Slashdot, one place they'd likely never have been mentioned if they were "just another Windows game." And power users are often Mac users as well -- you want someone who will spend an entire night coming up with new content for your game just because they love it so much? Mac users are nothing if not disturbingly obsessive about the software they love.Good points all around. Many game developers, both large and small, continue to scoff at the Mac markets as too small while at the same time wondering why they can't get a foothold of a community on the Internet. Of course, releasing a Mac version doesn't guarantee you higher sales and a rabid group of fans -- you have to make a good game first and foremost. But some of the most influential and insightful game players online are Mac users, and by shrugging them off as "not a big enough audience," you're shooting yourself in the foot.
