How hard is it to "piggyback" on Indie bundles?

[Austintatious]

I've seen a few games made in RPGMaker do this before. Like it doesn't even cost anyone any money and it dramatically increases your exposure. There's so many to choose from these days too. Do they care if you're exclusive?

 

[The Black Swordsman]

U mean the ones that cost like 2 or 3 bucks at most? Theyre all over steam XD

 

[Shaz]

Explain what you mean by "piggyback on indie bundles" first.

 

[Austintatious]

By piggyback on indie bundle I mean become a free/low-tier incentive for getting the bundle. Plenty of people do this but the specific example that comes to mind for me is Mibibli's Quest. It's for a different 'maker called Stencyl, but it's totally free and this Ryan Melmoth guy got it tacked on to the Humble Indie Bundle that most recently had RPG Maker VX Ace in it. That bundle is why I'm here today. But also I would never have played Mibibli's Quest if it wasn't for my exposure to it from the indie bundle and now I'm talking about it, giving him free advertising: http://ryanmelmoth.itch.io/mibiblisquest

It just seems like a win-win for everyone to "tack yourself on" to indie bundles. Has anyone here done this before? What was your experience?

 

[Missile]

I've seen a few games made in RPGMaker do this before. Like it doesn't even cost anyone any money and it dramatically increases your exposure. There's so many to choose from these days too. Do they care if you're exclusive?

With Humble Bundle, it's worth it. Any other time, however, and things get a lot bleaker. /r/gamedev had a thread a while back (https://m.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/308pdt/groupees_net_revenues_how_much_did_you_get/) giving some numbers to chew on.

Also have to keep in mind that bundles will give you more exposure, but they also might drive down the perceived "worth" of your title. A lot of the RM titles in Humble Bundle were either published by Degica or were free (like Star Stealing Prince), so that's likely the ideal way to do it!

 

[Andar]

It can be done, but you have to think on it from the other side:

Your game will only be included in such a bundle if it improves the bundle.

This might be just a number of games improvement on bundles that basically "shotgun" small games, but those bundles aren't exactly a way to improve the way people think about your game.

But to be included in a bundle with better games, your game needs to have a minimum quality itself, or the Bundle creator wouldn't want it in its bundle.

And then there are technical requirements - a lot of bundles require your game to be on Steam (or at least greenlight), and that either requires you to pay the greenlight fee yourself, or find a publisher that likes your game enough to handle your game as part of their portfolio (which requires quality again).

Yes, independent DRM-free distribution is possible, but again that has its own requirements...

 

[Indinera]

Bundles are totally random and a few of them can trigger decent figures, whereas most don't.

If you're a lucky person, go for them, especially if your game doesn't sell on its own.

If you're unlucky, avoid them, especially if your game sells. Easy logic.