Introversion

[Chris]

As we pass 180,000 sales of the Humble Introversion Bundle, I can’t help but feel astonished. This is the biggest single sale Introversion has ever done on any platform, even beating the epic Steam promotions we run from time to time. It roughly equates to one sale every six seconds. And the best part of all - the part that makes me most happy, is that this promotion has doubled the number of people who have played our games. 180,000 is more copies than our best selling game Darwinia ever sold, and the Humble Bundle includes all four of our games, so that means twice as many people have now played each of our games than before the bundle. That’s pretty cool. As the principle game creator here at Introversion, that’s the biggest thing for me.

And let’s not mess around, the revenue is pretty good too. When it’s all divided up we’ll see about one quarter of the total revenue you see on the Humble site - and I’m sure Humble won’t mind us revealing that, because it’s obvious if you’ve look at the default sliders. That’s one quarter of a pretty big number, and that revenue will keep us going for a long while. And we’ve done it while raising over $200k for some very worthy charities.

If you haven’t bought it yet, please take this opportunity before time runs out. You get Desura keys for all the Introversion games now, along with Steam keys and the source code to all our games. The Subversion tech demos in particular are only available through this bundle - they will not be on sale anywhere else once the promotion is over. This is your only chance to get your hands on them. One of the things that drew us to the bundle was the possibility of releasing tech demos - because we thought all our Subversion tech was going to rot in a box somewhere and never see the light of day. The structure of the Humble deal lends itself well to experimental releases like this, and I’d love to see more developers willing to release their “failed but cool” prototypes. So please, buy the bundle and help support Introversion.

It’s taken us a long while to bring this together. We first chatted to the Humble guys way back in March, and discussed the possibility of an Introversion bundle over a round of Disk Golf in San Francisco’s Golden Gate park. It may not be widely realised just how much work goes into something like the Humble Bundle - many people probably think we just hand our game installers over and it’s done in a week or two. The reality is that we’ve produced new and updated versions of all the games on all three platforms, as well as getting the tech demos ready for release, and producing video rushes for the Humble guys to make their awesome promotional videos. On top of all of that, we also had the treasure hunt and the Prison Architect timelapse video to launch at the same time, all of which had to be ready in advance. Behind the scenes, we moved our entire website over to Amazon Web Services in order to handle the inevitable load spike we’d experience on the big launch day. We also knew we’d be cramming during September and October to get the IGF submission of Prison Architect ready, and to cap all that off both Mark and myself had children around the same time! The Humble guys got quite used to hearing our babies crying during our frequent skype calls. We even prepared a talk for GDC about Subversion's failure and the subsequent rise of Prison Architect from the ashes, but alas the GDC organisers didn't bite and we were turned down. Our one failure! But we’ve had an incredible pace at Introversion for the last few months now, and it’s feeling really good.

And Wil Wheaton donating and tweating about us? It may seem like an odd highlight given the massive success of this bundle, but Star Trek : The Next Generation was a massive show for me and Mark when we were teenagers. I used to watch it literally every evening, thanks to endless nightly repeats on Sky Tv. Having a character from that show - Wesley Crusher - directly messaging us is like being contacted from another world, one that has never previously been accessible. I guess that’s the power of twitter, it doesn’t obey the usual actor/viewer divide. Mark says he actually met Wil Wheaton once at a Star Trek convention, but he was too star struck to open his mouth. So you’ll understand why when Will says “thank you for making such wonderful games. Uplink has consumed my life!” on Twitter, it’s quite a big deal.

(What did happen to Wesley Crusher anyway? After his failed starburst stunt he dropped out of college and then levelled up into some sort of demi-god with bullet time powers? It’s never been fully clear to me.)

Big thanks to everyone who has bought the bundle already. Stay in touch for more updates.

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[xyzyxx]

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheWesley

[microchip08]

Can we pre-Bundle people get special veteran icons in DEFCON in order to feel mildly superior to everyone else? :P

[Mas Tnega]

You will have your Silver Loyalty Badge and you will like it.

[Xocrates]

Speaking of which, I should be about a week away of upgrading to the gold badge (yay?)

Also, considering I own 3 copies of every Introversion game (and that's because I gave away one or darwinia and multiwinia each) I can't stop wondering how much people like me are messing up those "doubled players" stats.

[Cooper42]

Xocrates wrote:

Speaking of which, I should be about a week away of upgrading to the gold badge (yay?) Also, considering I own 3 copies of every Introversion game (and that's because I gave away one or darwinia and multiwinia each) I can't stop wondering how much people like me are messing up those "doubled players" stats.

Yeah, I imagine a fair few here re-bought the games, but that's hardly a percentage point of 180k...

Also, on badges; I'm due a shiny platinum badge as my original account was created back in 2004.
Mr. Meanie (aka NeoThermic) refused to change my forum name, and hence this new account looks all young-some. I did, however, somehow get my Darwinia beta badge moved across. So I'm in an odd position of having a badge from the original beta and a join date two years after the game was released...

[Xocrates]

You actually get the beta badge if you beta-test some of the patches. That's how I got my darwinia one (I joined after defcon had been released).

[jelco]

If you include the keys that I both bought and got donated for those competitions and dedicated servers for Multiwinia, I've (kind of) owned between 4 and 10 (had to recount to make sure) copies of every IV game. I've had people call me crazy for it. Honestly I bought the Humble Bundle purely because I wanted the tech demos and source code access (even though I'm pretty sure I'll not really every do anything with the source code and the tech demos will probably lose their novelty value after a month or so). Having the games on all platforms is a nice bonus but I'm not that sure I'll use it that much. So here I am with over a dozen copies of your games and still buying more.

It may have calmed down here a lot over the past few years but there's still something curious about Introversion and this community that somehow makes it worth the money and time I've sunk into it. Also seeing life on the Multiwinia ladder again is somehow quite exciting. Seriously I'm quite scared Prison Architect will have some kind of great community formula to it that will convince me to build something like the ladder all over again (and I'm already having trouble finding the time and motivation to get actual studying done here ).

Also my cat is having loads of fun with my collection of Foamwinians (and the Fluffwinian) I dug up again when you announced the Bundle.

Jelco

[Cooper42]

jelco wrote:

Also my cat is having loads of fun with my collection of Foamwinians (and the Fluffwinian) I dug up again when you announced the Bundle.

I started sewing together my second Fluffiwinian last night as I'd left it for so long! Thanks again to The Goldfish!

[ynbniar]

jelco wrote:

...there's still something curious about Introversion and this community that somehow makes it worth the money and time I've sunk into it.

Well put.

[cody_au]

I'm afraid I'm the one responsible for slightly skewing your numbers.

I bought the Introversion Humble Bundle thinking, "Finally! I get to own these games I've wanted forever." But then when I went to activate them on Steam, I found that I had already bought them on Steam during some previous sale and never gotten around to playing them.

So, (x * 2) - 1 as many people have played your games. My bad. I'm really sorry. But don't cry for me... I did get Dungeons of Dredmore out of it after the fact.

PS: When are you going to make some more Darwinia keychains?

[Pentadact]

Amazing! So happy it's paying off for you guys.

[Feud]

Xocrates wrote:

Speaking of which, I should be about a week away of upgrading to the gold badge (yay?)

It must not be automatic, as mine hasn't kicked on yet.

[RobinB]

Congrats! Glad to see everything working out. Looking forward to Prison Architect, too!

[Montyphy]

Feud wrote:

Xocrates wrote: Speaking of which, I should be about a week away of upgrading to the gold badge (yay?) It must not be automatic, as mine hasn't kicked on yet.

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