Why is the Japan Relief Bundle so Weak?

[crkrueger]

Looking at DTRPG, I see that there are a couple of publishers who have put up products for $5.00, but the official "Bundle" is 3 products.  Why the weak response?  Japan's a first world country so doesn't need the help?

[Tommy Brownell]

Looking at DTRPG, I see that there are a couple of publishers who have put up products for $5.00, but the official "Bundle" is 3 products.  Why the weak response?  Japan's a first world country so doesn't need the help?

Charity fatigue.

Not just from the companies, but from the customers.

I actually know of people who complained about "having" to buy one of the recent bundles because there had been so many.

[crkrueger]

I'll probably end up getting a couple, and I suppose I can understand fatigue from the buyers, but the idea is you're getting a great deal on all the previous bundles.  Charity fatigue from the publishers, I guess you can only give out so many discounts.  Still, seems a little odd to me.

EDIT: Or I guess I could read my fucking e-mail.  Apparently organizing a huge bundle effort costs too much to do them chain-style, so they're doing it a different way.

[Ian Warner]

Too many disasters too little prep time.

Rest assured though Postmortem will be releasing a bundle of Japan inspired goodness for Japanese Red Cross next week!

[danbuter]

I think it's great that they do so many relief bundles now. But seriously, rpg's are a very low profit career, and if every publisher gives away their stuff every time there's a disaster, especially when we have one multiple months in a row, there won't be any publishers left. They'll all be out of business.

[Pseudoephedrine]

Charity fatigue.

Not just from the companies, but from the customers.

I actually know of people who complained about "having" to buy one of the recent bundles because there had been so many.

Products like this are actually one of the very few kinds of giving that cause donor fatigue, because they don't involve or engage the donor with the cause, just with the transaction. Those "Would you like to add a dollar onto your purchase today to support...?" situations are almost as bad.

The confusion and complexity the people setting these up feel probably comes from doing it retroactively. They oughta take a leaf from real disaster-based fundraising and plan the packages preemptively and then simply tailor a few details whenever the next crisis happens. We have a couple disasters a year, and they tend to hammer the same extremely poor areas over and over (with a handful of exceptions, like this Japanese earthquake).

Preplanning would give companies a chance to vary the contents of the package over time to generate maximum interest in their products according to their marketing depts, giving them a reason to donate good product

[Spinachcat]

How could DriveThru address Charity Fatigue?

[Pseudoephedrine]

How could DriveThru address Charity Fatigue?

As I said, they could coordinate the contents of bundles more closely with upcoming release schedules & preemptively secure the rights to redistribute older games (especially OoP ones). This is basically just a low-level sponsorship arrangement, and the key to any sponsorship arrangement is the deliverables and added value each side can offer the other.

Companies should be encouraged to treat the disaster bundles as ways to distribute pdfs for upcoming games and products and to drum up interest in older products, especially ones that are hard to find in print, or gems that were overlooked and that the company would like to give people a second look at.

This would involve pre-planning, of course. However, this kind of transaction (which is only in the penumbra of charitable giving) is really more about the quality of the product than anything else, because as I said, it doesn't build engagement with the cause or the charity. In a way, the disaster becomes advertising for the bundle.