A year in the gaming industry is a life in terms of human years. After that period a game’s sales start to decrease, which may not a big problem if you are EA, Activision, or Sega, but it is if you are a small indie developer.

What gave the kiss of life to many struggling indie developers was the promotion of Indie Bundles, an experimental movement where a gamer pays a fraction of a game’s original price and purchases a bunch of acclaimed indie games along with many other goodies.  The success of these bundles showed that  there is a great deal of goodwill toward small indie developers and that many people  understand how difficult it is to keep the games coming.

Humble Indie Bundle, Indie Royale, Indie Gala, Be Mine Indie Bundle, are some of the names of bundles we come up almost in a daily basis, even EA wanted to gain some indie momentum and launched the EA Indie bundle but that’s a whole different story.

With this article we want to give an inside look to all of you who like to collect bundles, giving you information on what model each bundle operates and what games should you expect when purchasing one.

The Indie Royale Bundle

Indie Royale is a fortnightly indie game bundle website that provides four great independent gaming experiences every two weeks at seriously low prices.

The Indie Royale Bundle typically runs on a weekly model where price will automatically increase as more people buy the bundle. Generous purchasers, however, who choose to pay more than the current minimum earn various bonuses in the shape of chiptune soundtracks (This bonus was also available to those who pre-order).

The basic idea of The Indie Royale Bundle is that the sooner you buy the bundle the cheaper the price will be. Indie Royale tries to offer as many different versions of each game as possible. If a game has Mac and Linux versions available alongside the Windows versions, the people at Indie Royale will make sure to offer these as part of your bundle.

Through Indie Royale Bundle existence some critically acclaimed games and higly popular games have been part of the bundle, such as Futuremark’s unique multiplayer FPS Shattered Horizon, PixelJunk Eden, Nuclear Dawn from Interwave, Defense Grid: The Awakening,  Flying Wild Hog’s Hard Reset, and Lodge’s cult classic action-adventureThe Void, to name a few.

The Humble Indie Bundle

The Humble Indie Bundle is a series of game bundles that are sold and distributed online at a pay what you want model. The games offered are multi-platform, DRM-free, and buyers get the chance to set the revenue split between the developers, charities and humble bundle organizers. If you pay $5 or more for a bundle you’ll get a Steam key in addition to DRM-free direct downloads.

As of 18 August 2012, the The Humble Indie Bundles have raised over $19.5 million in total revenue. The most recent Humble Indie Bundle for the PC  was The Humble Indie Bundle V launched on May 31, 2012. It included Amnesia: The Dark Descent by Frictional Games, Limbo by Playdead,Psychonauts by Double Fine Productions, Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP by Capybara Games, and their respective soundtracks. Over $1.8 million through more than 244,000 purchases were made within the first 15 hours of coming live, making it the fastest-selling bundle to date.

On June 7, three more games were added to the bundle: Braid by Number None, Inc., Super Meat Boy by Team Meat and Lone Survivor bySuperflat Games for those who had either previously purchased the bundle or bought it afterwards beating the current average price.Total sales broke $4 million a little over a week into the sale, after these additions the sale completed with more than $5.1M in total sales with nearly 600,000 bundles sold.  The most successful package until that day date was Humble Indie Bundle 4 that included games, like Cave Story +, Shank, Super Meat Boy, Bit.Trip.Runner, that has shifted 435,250 units bringing a total revenue of $2.37 millions.

Unlike the Indie Royale Bundle, Humble Indie Bundle doesn’t have a planned release schedule and the only way to find out about their bundle releases is sign up to their newsletter and be among the first to know about their future humble ideas.