Humble co-founder talks about the Nindie Bundle
Nintendo Life recently had the opportunity to speak with John Graham, the co-founder of Humble. Graham was asked all about the Humble Nindie Bundle, including the lineup, region-locking issue, and more.
Head past the break from some excerpts from the interview. You’ll find the full discussion here.
On whether he was surprised Nintendo came through…
You know, I wasn’t sure how things would play out, but I think with anything like this it needs somebody that believes in the promotion idea on the other side. We’ve been working with great guys at Nintendo that figured out what this opportunity was, and I’m very proud of its performance so far.
We try to be the friendly guys that talk to everyone and we strongly believe that, where there’s valuable digital content, Humble Bundle can be very useful.
On the Humble Nindie Bundle performance thus far…
I’m a little superstitious so I try not to make too many hard bets in advance. It gets interesting because this is a promotion only for people in the Americas, and we weren’t quite sure ahead of time exactly who in our existing audience is in the Nintendo community. So there are a couple of X factors here, but I’m very proud of the performance of this promotion; it’s doing really well, and I think it’s meeting my expectations if not exceeding them.
On the Humble Nindie Bundle lineup…
Certainly. We’ve got a great set of Indie games here, so it’s in line with our Humble tradition of promoting amazing Indie games, and when we saw the intersection of that with what’s on the eShop, we realised we probably had something and should go for the promotion.
On any challenges with the Wii U/3DS eShop platforms…
Since Humble Indie Bundle 1, when customers asked whether we could include Steam keys, we’ve had some infrastructure for just administering keys that unlock digital content. Nintendo just generated a batch of keys on their side and that’s all it takes.
The key component is on the curation side – have we got a batch of content that people are going to value and get excited about? That’s always the more interesting challenge, the game key part was easy and Nintendo was easy to work with.
On whether he foresees a future where something like eShop products are sold through Humble in different ways…
I don’t want to speak for Nintendo directly, but if we take the Steam example, that’s pretty progressive-minded in that a if a developer wants to produce and distribute keys, Steam is pretty awesome about getting them into developer’s hands to use as they see fit. I think an open-door policy can only strengthen your platform long term, instead of building a walled garden to keep people out you can do things to bring people in.
As crowded and noisy as the internet and online connected world is, it’s critical to be thinking about that long term strategy instead of just “oh, we do things this way, and this is how we wall the garden”. So kudos to Nintendo for even trying this experiment with us, and I do hope it leads to other things and that it’s smart business to be open to the world instead of trying to close yourself off.
On the region issue…
Of course we always try to be as inclusive as we can be, and region-locking is not ideal. This is a case where we – and Nintendo – pushed as hard as we could to be inclusive, we got as far as we got for this promotion. I sincerely believe it was the right call to run the promotion, and help as many gamers as we could in getting this initial experiment out of the door. I do hope it leads to big things in the future. I have seen blog posts around in the news where Nintendo execs have been considering whether they want region-locking to be a thing in future iterations of consoles. The way things are currently designed it just wasn’t possible for this promotion, but we’re nevertheless really excited to be doing it.
On the average purchase price ($9 or so) in comparison to other current bundles or PC promotions…
I think this is a higher average than many, and we tend to see that when we’ve struck a chord with a vigorous community that can galvanise in one direction. I think we saw that, for example, with the Sid Meier bundle – if you’re really into Civilisation games you’re really into the promotion, and you don’t want to just get a small piece, you want the whole thing. I think that’s what we’re seeing with the Nindie bundle.
On the choice of Code.org as the charity…
It’s always collaborative, but Nintendo gets credit for pushing to have that awesome organisation as part of its promotion.
Overall thoughts…
This is a big deal, a new frontier, and we’re really excited not only to have this initial experiment out of the door and being successful, but to look into the future and see what doors it may open next.
On the definitive factor driving buzz for the Nindie Bundle…
Well, we’re doing something new, as I said it’s a new frontier. But also the content is awesome. These are fantastic Indie games, and I guess we have a platformer theme going on here, but if you look at it each game is different and emphasizing a different aspect. We’ve got puzzle platformers, some stealth platformers, world crafting platformers, skateboarding platforming. Whoever you are as a gamer, there’s at least one or two – or maybe all – of the games that can get you excited.
