Lately I''ve been thinking about shareware. It seems that it is a much better solution than commercial game development. It doesn''t take as long to make a game, so you can pump out more. You make about as much as a professional company does for each game sold. You don''t need as many employees (if any), and you don''t need office space, computers, etc. for them. With this it seems that shareware is an excellent solution. What are the downsides of shareware, because there must be some, otherwise everyone and their brother would be making a killing off this. Thanks!

Hold on, I think your posting contains the answer to your question: who told you shareware games make the same amount of money as retail games? Sure, and the band in my local bar gets the same gig fee as Snoop Dogg.

You''re confused that MOST commercial games don''t make any profit for the developer AFTER deducting the development fee.
If it has cost 800K-5M to produce the game, then that gets deducted from the pubs profit and then there often won''t be anything left over for the developer.

BUT the developer has received 800K-5M USD to produce the game, which means each team member received a few thousand in wages per month to work for 12-24 months.

Nobody will pay you to make a shareware game, and most shareware games make no money whatsoever. Only one or two per year make anything (a few thousand+). The chance you write that particular game are almost zero, and then who cares about a few thousand dollars? What you''re going to do? Buy a new toilet?
Forget the stuff about those two shareware authors claiming they earn millions. That''s bull and they say it cause they know no-one is there to check it. That''s the reason why there are no shareware millionaires; Doom shareware is about the only game that did really well (and don''t think it''s easy to copy what happened there).

The only way you can earn millions in the game industry is to write a commercial game yourself and sell it. And that''s hard, but not impossible (and lots of money is way cool!).

Mark

Ambrosia Software is a pretty good example of successful shareware developing, though they work a bit different then what you stated...

As Mark Stated shareware does not make the money that commercial software does. However provided you can feed yourself while you are making shareware and you keep on doing it until you have a number of titles for sale, then you can make enough to start treating it as a full time paid job and live off it. But it does take an investment of time to reach that point. Of course if your games are utter rubbish you wont make anything at all.

Dan Marchant
Obscure Productions
Game Development & Design consultant

Oops, I forgot about publisher-funding. But do you think it''s really possible to make something like $20-40k/year doing shareware?

quote: Original post by tuxx
Oops, I forgot about publisher-funding. But do you think it''s really possible to make something like $20-40k/year doing shareware?

surely simple math is the answer to this.

if your product is :
$10 then you will need to sell 2000-4000
$15 each is 1300-2600 etc...

do you really think you can produce a game that 2000+ people will pay for via online or mail in payment? Youd need advertising to shift that many units, not just word of mouth.

Check for your answers the forums on Dexterity,

http://www.dexterity.com/forums/showthread.php?s=dd65c69169176136df9dad19b192983a&threadid=459&highlight=live+from+shareware

http://www.dexterity.com/forums/showthread.php?s=dd65c69169176136df9dad19b192983a&threadid=432&highlight=live+from+shareware

"As Mark Stated shareware does not make the money that commercial software does."
Erm., Obviously you won''t sell as many, because the games are only sold online, not at Wal Mart and every game store like a retail release.

If I were you, I would take advice from people who have experience in shareware and actually know what they''re talking about, not these clowns.

"What are the downsides of shareware, because there must be some, otherwise everyone and their brother would be making a killing off this."
a)Some people can''t write code
b)some people can''t finish a project
c)some people have no art or design skillsd)Some people make a "game" in one night and try to pass it as shareware
e)Some games are no fun or there are better games like it so they just don''t sell
f)Some people don''t know how to market or advertise

That''s like saying "anyone can write a book and sell it, so why doesn''t EVERYONE do it and get FILTHY RICH!!!!"

Thanks for your information so far. I think that when I become a better programmer (and a better artist and musician) I''ll make a shareware game as an experiment, and see if it sells at least one copy.

quote: Original post by Umbongo
do you really think you can produce a game that 2000+ people will pay for via online or mail in payment? Youd need advertising to shift that many units, not just word of mouth.

Jeff Vogel was making that during his Exile/Nethergate days. I don''t recall much, if any, advertising for Spiderweb.