In case you haven’t noticed, Another Star is part of the latest Indie Royale bundle. The Debut 20 Bundle, to be exact.
Bundles have become a really controversial issue among developers. When the concept of indie bundles as we know them began with the first Indie Humble Bundle back in 2010, it was really well received. But the first Humble Bundle was a novelty. Now bundles have become as commonplace as sliced bread, with dozens of sites and brands dedicated to selling them.
To many, bundles are a waste of time for developers (with the usual exception of the flagship Humble Bundles that sometimes manage to break the million dollar mark). Many of these bundles go for less than a single game by itself, which in turn must be further cut down and shared by all the companies involved. Thousands of sales are likely to result in only a few hundred dollars at most. The devs then have to provide support for hundreds of copies of a game from which they received less than a dollar each, and post-purchase support is one of the single most frustrating and time-consuming tasks in the entire development and lifetime of computer software.
When Indie Royale contacted me about putting Another Star in a bundle, I was hesitant. It was fairly short notice, I felt it was too early to put it in a bundle, I knew the returns would likely be small, and I knew it could bite me in the rear end with an onslaught of support emails I’d have to respond to.
But I also really needed the publicity. After thinking it over, I changed my mind and accepted.
As of yesterday, Another Star had only sold 64 confirmed copies. (It’s actually sold at least one more copy than that, but FireFlower Games uses a monthly reporting format instead of a daily or realtime one. I haven’t gotten the report for October yet, but someone noted they bought it during a recent sale.) As of writing this, that number has increased by eightfold. As already noted, this doesn’t translate into much as far as dollar amounts go. I don’t think I can discuss exact numbers, but I haven’t made very much despite almost 500 copies of the game being sold so far today. But I knew that going in.
Now for the flip side. The bundle has been on sale for six hours now. In that time, I’ve gotten roughly a hundred up-votes on Greenlight. That’s more than the past three months combined. The last time I broke one hundred up-votes in a single day was in the first week of the Greenlight campaign, and the day isn’t even over yet. I seriously doubt a steady pace of 100 votes every 6 hours will keep up through the entire two weeks of the bundle deal, but if I can manage just 200 votes a day, that’ll get me into the top 100 games on Greenlight, which puts Another Star that much closer to getting on Steam. Being on Steam is not some kind of magic bullet, especially these days with so many indie games available through the service, but the importance of being on that storefront cannot be understated.
It’s too early to say whether participating in this bundle was a good idea or not, but I hope it was. If it nets me enough to finally earn a payout from Desura, I think I’ll be content if nothing else.
Regardless, the game is in the hands of 500 more people today. I hope they enjoy it.
