Disappointment is the word best used to describe what’s happened here. The Bundle In A Box has had good intentions from its inception – the promotion of adventure game titles, indie game developers and supporting a very worthy charity. Yet it went further than just offering a pay-what-you-want bundle with the Indie Dev Grant.

The original intention regarding the grant was to reward a single developer, as voted by the public, a sum of $2,000 once 15,000 sales of the bundle had been reached. That was the hope but it seems that those sales won’t be reached unfortunately. Regardless, the Indie Dev Grant was going to offer the winner a substantial sum of money anyway.

Now, this doesn’t happen too often in our humble corner of the world, but after the voting was opened to decide the winner of the Indie Dev Grant, some fraudulent activities took place. As written up in the clarification post by bundle organizers Kytarro Games, some people began “abusing the system and cast[...] hundreds of votes on particular games”. The intentions behind this are obvious – to bypass the fair rules set by voting procedure in order to obtain the free money. It’s an ugly thing to have happened, especially concerning something with such honest and good intentions.

Understandably, Kytarro have reset the voting and made the process more secure in order to avoid such a scenario happening once again. This following sentence from the bundle’s organizers really sum up both their and our thoughts on the matter:

“We never really believed people would ever try to hurt and game such an initiative; never really suspected anyone would insult the vibrant indie gaming community is such a cheap way.”

It happened though, so we have to accept that for what it is and move on. The positive thing is that you can now vote on the game you think deserves the Indie Dev Grant by visiting this page and proceeding with the clicking. You should seek more information on all of these games by also clicking your way over to this page where a myriad of information awaits you.

Let’s just hope we don’t see a repeat and everything goes smoothly. You have until tomorrow, that’s June 6th 2012 to clarify, to cast your vote so do so quickly! The Bundle In A Box is still very much available as well but only until tomorrow, so go and purchase that already!

It’s rare that we see a great amount of post-release analysis in any area of the gaming industry, but that’s exactly what Rob Hale of Squid in a Box has provided on the subject of his most recent release, Waves. His findings? They might surprise you.

As of yesterday, the game had sold 15, 238 units, 96% of which were purchased through Steam. Furthermore, 53% of the game’s total sales came as part of Steam bundles, with 15% stemming from its status as a Steam Daily Deal. Of course, that means that a substantial number of sales have been below Waves‘ full selling price, a regular pitfall for almost every indie developer with any connection to Valve’s distribution service.

But perhaps that’s not the point, and Hale’s thoughts appear to reflect this notion. What’s been more problematic, however, appears to have been two key wildcards that Hale asserts didn’t quite fall in the game’s favour: advertising and media coverage.

At its most tangible level, Hale cites that advertising on prominent sites is, to say the least, expensive, with the prospects of making a return on one’s investment being somewhere in the region of slim to none. From a slightly more subtle standpoint, the 90-day delay with regards to any incoming advertising funds making their way into Hale’s bank account was, quite possibly, a more emphatic curveball in the equation, with the three-month turnaround rendering the entire advertising process a torrid, unpredictable affair.

According to Hale, the issue of advertising also permeated into what he considered to be the limited media attention the game accrued in the build-up to its release. He states that while major retail gaming sites have typically shown a reluctance to venture into the domain of new intellectual properties, particularly those developed independently, indie-focused sites, in spite of the coverage they lent to the game, also fell victim to the rapidity at which the gaming news media operates, rendering news relating to Waves short-lived at the forefront of typical headline lists.

]]> http://www.diygamer.com/2012/04/brainwaves-rob-hales-offers-sobering-postmortem-on-waves/feed/ 0