Any news on the next Indie Gala? Thread - Bundeals

I believe it's my turn to get it so just wondering if anyone has heard anything? I'll put a few bucks back for it, hope it's a good one, the last few were a bit disappointing.

well actually i did a search and found this tweet. it's 4 hours old.
IG8 warming up.... Ghosts, knights, tanks, villages, supercars, wizards, battleships, planets, swords, machine guns... for your pleasure!

Any guesses as to which games these might be?

I got no guesses, the hints are way too vague, they could be almost anything.
There's got to be at least 10+ possibilities for each one.

Part of me is looking forward to a new bundle but part of me just can't manage to care after the last few IG put out.
IG used to be descent, their games have never really been top notch but their prices used to be much lower and that compensated for it.
I have no issue dropping $4-5 on Indie Royale but they consistently have good (not to mention relatively recent) games up for sale.
The last few IG offerings have had games anywhere from a year or so old back to the mid-1990's.
At least in my mind, anything very much older than 4 years doesn't have much if any monetary value.
That is largely just because games older than that start developing compatability issues.
I have no issue buying a 10 year old game on GOG because they actually fix and maintain the games.
However I have a major issue with spending any amount of money on a game that doesn't work out of the box (so to speak) and requires hours or days of my time to get running properly.

The prices and pricing structure they have is yet another issue.
The last several IG bundles have moved into this 2 tiered model where they throw a few games up for $1 and then require upwards of $6-8 for the rest on the second tier.
I recognize that some other bundles do that too but given the low quality of most of the games that IG offers it just doesn't work.
I've found myself often already owning the 1-2 decent games from the first tier and there then only being 1-2 games in the second tier that would have any interest to me.
So I either drop $1 and get stuff I already own and a couple of low interest items that I didn't have yet or I have to spend 6-8x as much to get the 1-2 games from the second tier that together don't have enough value to justify the purchase.
When you could pay what you felt the bundle was worth as a whole without a minimum this bundle worked but without it.... not so much.
(Just for reference I paid $2-4 when it was truly pay what you want)
Another way they could go that would work for them would be to make IG build a bundle style.
Let people pick and choose what they want.
Groupees does this, the whole set of stuff totals something like $6-9 (with better content) and you don't have to buy anything you don't want.
IG's full price would need to be more like $4-5 tops with their level of content but I could totally see it working.

I know this got kinda long but that's my view on IG at this point, I haven't spent more than $1 on the last few and I don't see that changing unless they either rework their buisness model or start providing significantly better games.
At the prices their bundle is going at these days they would need content on par with humble bundle and I just don't see that happening, given their history.

good point Grump. reading this made me think of something. since GOG does do stuff to maintain these older games. maybe they should start the "Old School Bundle" 4 or 5 'older' games bundled for a sweet price. someone contact 'em

That would be pretty awesome roxo.
The only issue I've ever had with GOG is that their prices are a bit high given the age of the games but I still buy from them during the weekend sales.
It's still more expensive than steam or gamersgate even on sale but its worth it most of the time, just to have the game work properly and know it will continue to work properly into the next OS and hardware generation.

It would be great to see them do a bundle that puts the games at a higher discount than the weekend sales.
It would give me more reason to buy from them over other distributers, no drm, no compatability issues present or future, and at a more affordable price.
All in all, it sounds like a very enticing deal.
Even if the bundle ran $7-10 it would still be a good price for 4-5 GOG games, so long as the quality of the games is consistent throughout.
Meaning all 4-5 are of roughly the same ratings level or something and not having 1-2 good games and 3-4 meh... level games.
Most of their stuff seems pretty good though so I'd not be too worried about it.

Something I'd really like to see them get in their shop in general is the various bioware games.
Not so much the mass effect stuff mind you, though that wouldn't be bad either.
More like kotor or jade empire.
I know kotor 2 isn't bioware but I'd like to see that on GOG as well.
It just showed up on steam recently but steam doesn't fix their games so it's going to have all manner of issues.
I honestly don't know why they bothered, GOG is the only place I'd buy a game that old from.

i'm with ya there. kotor 2 and jade empire were so fun. i liked kotor 2 better(kotor had the better story) but pt. 2 had the different classes of Jedi/Sith like the weapon master, sith lord, etc. and any game with kung fu is usually cool in my book.

They sound like fun.
I unfortunately never got to play them when they were new, I don't think I even knew they existed back then ( I wasn't much into rpg games before a couple years ago).
I had heard about kotor from a friend a couple years ago and made the mistake of buying that in a steam sale for $2.50.
Not a huge loss, money-wise but it took something like 5 days to get it running properly on my system.

The game hadn't been maintained well at all, it technically runs if you're willing to stare at a tiny 800x600 box on a 1920x1080 screen but that just sucks to do.
There are some widescreen fixes out for the game, it's entirely possible to play the game at 1920x1080 and it actually works pretty well, right up until you hit your first planetary transition movie.
At that point... insta-crash.
The transition videos couldn't be scaled up to higher resolutions, even attempting it caused crashing, so the game had to be set up to leave the videos in tiny mode while the rest of the game ran at full monitor resolution.
There were also a few of the movies that just for whatever reason couldn't be played even at their normal resolution and those actually had to be removed in order to get the rest of the game to run properly on a consistent basis.
Otherwise, you never knew when a crash and 10+ minutes of game play loss were just around the corner.

That experience and a few others like it are largely what prompted my 4 year policy (almost never paying for games more than 4 years old).
The risk of having to deal with something like that scenario again is a good bit higher the further past 4 years you get, and isn't worth any amount of money to me.
I'm totally willing to pay for an old game if it is fixed and maintained like with GOG but that's the only way.
That's kinda why I want to see all 3 games up on GOG.
I could always just download the games and spend the time to fix them myself, but Id rather just play a working copy of the game and pay a little bit of money to not have to go through that again.

I never got to finish playing kotor, while I did manage to get it working acceptably eventually, the computer I was using flaked out a bit more than half way through.
I made the apparent mistake of buying an ASUS gaming laptop (yet another "never again" experience) and even after 3 different RMA sessions it still isn't fixed.
It's taken so long I may end up having to just restart kotor, not to mention the fixed installation is gone, which means I'll have to go through the trouble shooting process all over again.
I kept some notes on what I did to fix the game and it would probably take less time this time around but it's still a pain in the ass and I'd much rather just get a working copy from GOG.

i never played any of them on pc. didn't have one at the time. i played them all on xbox. and i think all of them are compatible with 360 if you have on of those. i know jade empire is for sale on the xbox live store for 10-15 bucks

I do have a 360, though I don't buy things off the marketplace in general.
The prices tend to be high for whatever the item is and they never go on sale as far as I know.
It looks like Jade Empire is at 800 msp and interestingly enough I have just a bit over that on my account from various monthly giveaways so I might consider that.
Neither of the kotor games seem to be on there though sadly.

I do tend to prefer a mouse and keyboard interface for bioware's games though.
You said you played them all on xbox, how well does that work with a gamepad?
Also, I'm not sure how the downloadable games are handled.
Are they account bound or console bound and do I need a gold subscription to download things off the market place?
I don't have gold so that's why I ask, doubt I'll ever buy it really.

I looked into xbox live gold after buying my console but what it is exactly you are paying for seems vague at best.
you can't access neflix, hulu, youtube, etc. with out gold and yet microsoft has nothing to do with any of them.
They are either things you pay for outside of the gold subscription or are free to begin with.
As for the online multiplayer, as best I can tell the servers are hosted by the game dev/publisher companies, not microsoft and MS doesn't even run servers for games that have had their original servers shut down like "gun hounds" i think it was called.
It seems like MS just charges a tax on anyone who wants to use internet features of any kind through their console and that just seems wrong to me.
Especially considering that both other major consoles allow you to do the same things at no additional charge.

Anyway thanks for the heads up on Jade Empire being on the marketplace.
If it isn't console bound and doesn't require live gold, I might pick that up with my freebie points.

I'm not Microsoft's biggest fan, but the whole 'Xbox Live charging you again for your internet scam' has helped keep me away from picking up a 360.

And GOG is too expensive for a lot of their games - DRM-free shouldn't be a premium!

I tend to agree that drm free shouldn't cost more and I don't buy modern titles off GOG as a part of that.
I do however understand the older titles costing a bit more than elsewhere though.
They are having to spend time and therefore money to pay their employees to fix up the various issues that time and new software/hardware have caused.
That said, I always wait for the sales as I do think that even given the extra effort on their part, their prices are still a bit high given the age of the games.
50% off at the bare minimum is really the only way it's worth it to buy from GOG.
It's just too expensive otherwise, especially for the modern titles since they can cost as little as 1/4-1/5 of what GOG charges for them.

All games from the Marketplace are Account Bound, you'll never lose them. i've had to switch 360's before and was able to get all my games back. kotor might be better with a mouse and keyboard but Jade Empire is SO much better with a gamepad, trust me. it doesn't play like a typical bioware game. it's more of an action game with the martial arts and all. there different characters to choose from and each has their own (numerous) styles of fighting. very replayable for just that reason alone. but it does have rpg elements just like kotor or mass effect so its not just an action game. if i remember it also has the good/evil options too.

I have such fond memories of this game and played the shit out of it. just talking about it makes me want to play it again. the character animation is very good also which makes all the kung-fu look awesome. if you have the money just lying around on your account, i highly suggest picking it up. i don't think you'll be disappointed.

you don't need a gold account for it either. and you can buy from the marketplace if you have a silver account. if you do get it let me know how you like it.

also here's a link for games that are backwards compatible for 360. it mainly for the discs, but if you do use a game disc (not the downloadable title from live) you have to have a hard drive and not just the internal memory.

---------------------------------------------------------------------

Now to get to the whole paying for a gold account thing. to me it's worth it. i have a 360 and a ps3. the ps3 has free online and all but it sucks. badly. so i'm happy to pay $40 a year for a gold account(get mine from amazon). now if you don't have friends on 360 that you game with, it might not be worth getting but if you do, it's a must.

1st- there's Party Chat. a group chat for you and your friends that works no matter what. if you're playing different games. if i'm on netflix, whatever i'm doing. ps3 doesn't even have cross-game chat. so if me and a friend are playing different games, we can't chat.

2nd- It just works so much better. the updates are the main thing. ps3 has the Looooooongest updates imaginable. when i bought Little Big Planet, i had like 12 updates that took over 1 hour(not kidding or exaggerating) to update before i could play. the system updates are even worse. and just games in general. if you buy a game online, you have to download AND then install it. takes forever.... but 360 is so much faster, it downloads and installs at the same time and does it much faster.

I could go on but those 2 reasons alone are enough for me to shell out a few extra bucks a year.

Edited by: DoctorRoXo

Alright, I'll look into picking up Jade Empire on the marketplace.
I appreciate the recommendation and extra details.
I didn't know Jade Empire was an action rpg, I just saw that it was made by bioware and I've enjoyed their story telling in the past so I wanted to give it a try.
Since it was Pre-Mass Effect I kinda figured the play style would be more like kotor.
I'm honestly glad to hear that it has a more action oriented play style, that was the one thing about kotor that bugged me, I loved the story but I wanted to be able to do actual real-time combat with my jedai.

As for live gold, I don't really know anyone that games online on the 360 so the main thing it would do for me is just nexflix, etc.
I don't see a good reason to spend money to stream something we already pay for and that doesn't cost a service fee on either of the other consoles or through a roku which I also own.

I'm not sure where you've gotten live gold for $40 a year, that's not a terrible price, the standard price is $60 and amazon has it at just under $50.
The only time in recent memory that I've seen it down at $40 is when a special was being advertised through xbox live and even then, they had a condition in the
fine print that after a year the subscription would auto-renew at whatever full price was at that point.
If MS actually offered live gold at $40 a year and didn't force netflix and the other unrelated services through it, I might consider it.
As it is though, it just feels kinda drenched in the stench of microsoft's ever-present greed.

jade empire has the same style story and conversation tree(i guess thats the word) that most bioware games have if i remember correctly. you'll see whether what you're about to say is gonna be good or evil and all that.

amazon and other places online will have live gold on sale for $40 a few times a year. just have to keep an eye out. i use www.slickdeals.net

slickdeals looks pretty nice, have you used them much, are they reputable?
It largely looks like people posting about sales on other sites, kinda like we do here.

that's exactly what it is. people just post deals on there like we do here. they have a games section too, i find a lot of the deals i post on here there.
its basically just 1 big forum.