“We want to get people playing games, not just buying them”: new bundle site Digiphile goes back to basics

When the first Humble Bundle launched as a studio initiative in 2010, it was a novelty: a compilation of indie games at a bargain price, which drove huge sales volume. Fifteen years later, bundles are commonplace and subject to the same abundance problem as the rest of the industry: there are more games than players have time to play, and bundles are another sales channel in a sprawling marketing mix.

A team composed of ex-staff of Humble Bundle (owned by GamesIndustry.biz parent IGN Entertainment) aims to solve this by going back to basics. The headline promise of Digiphile is no more than two bundles per month, each paying a minimum of 5% of the face value to charity, with absolute transparency on how the buyer’s money is split between publisher, charity and platform.

Additional charity donations will unlock bundles of exclusive digital content, with 100% of that revenue going to that charity.

The ambition is to scale that into an engaged community dedicated to recommending games and books – and a series of quality-of-life improvements for both buyers and publishers, including the ability to trade in bundle games that you already own and effective showcasing of smaller titles alongside headline bundles.

Driving installs and conversation

The foundation of this is emphatically human curation, by the core team of six staff supported by external guest curators (the inaugural Return of the Immersive Sum bundle is blessed by YouTuber 2 Headed Hero, with further collaborations planned for future bundles) and eventually, the Digiphile community. The platform aims to solve a number of long-standing industry frustrations with current bundle sites of which the biggest, says co-founder Alex Hill, is “getting players beyond just getting sales.” The existing model moves units but doesn’t necessarily get people playing them, explains fellow co-founder Marcus Hess.

“Someone would buy a bundle, but they wouldn’t play all of the games in them, or they would just buy it for one specific piece of content. How do we get more people to play more games that are in these promotions – how do we get them to just install the game? Our long-term goals are building community features that are rewarding and incentivizing you for playing these games and for being part of the conversation and being part of not just collecting, but playing and playing each of these titles and giving your opinion on ’em. We think that’s much more valuable than just unit sales, and we really want to move back to getting people playing those games versus just buying them.”

“We’re planning to bring people in and try to encourage these conversations that we always wanted to see while we were at Humble Bundle,” says Hill. “What did we do, what did we do wrong? What would you like to see in the future? What are some of your favorite games? What did we miss? We’re trying to build the community organically through natural conversations that we always wanted to have.”

“It’s making the users more than just a transaction on the site for not only ourselves but for our publishers,” adds Hess. The goal is “getting people to talk about these games, having us lean in to the games that are in each collection, giving more of a reason to why they’re in there than just a blanket bundle or promotion without much experience. That recommendation you get from a friend as to why they’re playing the game is much more powerful than just delivering a parcel of gifts to somebody.”

For this reason, there won’t be automatic recommendations, or anything approximating AI.

“We’re definitely not doing any kind of algorithms,” says Hill. “We’re definitely not doing any kind of recommendation engines. It’s all going to be human to human. We think that’s both the most effective and also the most beneficial.”

The other problem publishers and developers want to solve is, of course, discoverability. The Digiphile pitch is a strict focus, rather than overwhelming users with multiple deals. “When there’s a lot of bundle activity happening or a lot of games coming out on Steam, it can be really hard to get your game into the conversation,” says Andy Franzen, the third of the three founders. “That’s why we’ll be focusing on no more than two Headliner Collections at a time, which will usually be about seven games.”

“You come to our site, we’ve aligned our influencer, we’ve aligned our site activity, and we’re pushing everyone to engage with this specific genre or theme at this time. And then if it’s not your theme, if it’s not your wheelhouse, we’ll have something different to follow it up. But we’re always going to focus on this one thing.”

This is paired with a clear charitable benefit for each purchase, with the option to give additional donations beyond the 5% included with each bundle. Donations beyond a specified amount can unlock a charity tier granting bonus items like an original piece of art commissioned by Digiphile, partner soundtracks, art books, and other content. Extra attention will be given to following up with the charities, so that buyers of each collection will receive an update post-purchase on what their donation actually funded, in the hope of creating “a very positive feedback loop on all charitable activity on the site,” says Franzen.

Solving the already-own-it problem

If a bundle contains a game you already own, you’ll have the option of verifying that it’s already in your Steam library and then trading it in for credit to spend on another title from a different bundle. The team are hopeful that users will value an alternative option that’s also been human-curated, and both the platform and the publishers benefit from knowing that Steam keys aren’t vanishing into the void or the grey market. (The platform will only support Steam at launch, although it’s in conversation with other platform holders).

Alongside this the Digiphile platform will spotlight new indie games. “We’re hoping to bring in the majority of our users through large premium bundles and from there, keep them around for indie spotlight promotions that we think deserve more visibility” says Hill. The team describe this as something they wanted to do at Humble Bundle, but couldn’t make a business case for – and still can’t. It is “definitely not going to be a money earner for us,” says Hill. “We’re doing it because we want to help support the smaller developers. Part of the reason why we’re doing all this is that we get to just do things that we think are cool and different, and one of them is to support indie devs getting some attention.”

“Other platforms, if you’re not spending money, there isn’t really anything to do. We’re setting out to change that.”

At launch, the site is a straightforward storefront and a subreddit, but future updates will build out the social features with a view to “giving people a reason to come back even when they’re not spending money,” says Frantzen. “Other platforms, if you’re not spending money, there isn’t really anything to do. We’re setting out to change that.” The team has bootstrapped the launch without external investment, in the hope that the site will be successful enough to fund future development.

The ultimate goal is to go beyond a pure games focus and become something akin to Letterboxd or Goodreads, with a robust community united by recommending and curating, and seeing the recommendations of others – both in the community and beyond. “Rotten Tomatoes always did “five favorites” with directors and actors and I always thought it was a missed opportunity when they didn’t also have those things to purchase,” says Hill. “They just convinced me these are great movies, why am I not able to buy them right away? We want to ultimately get to that point. We’ll be starting with something a little closer to home, but that is our ultimate goal.”