I am currently making a reasonably simple topdown RPG for win9x. The system is quite flexible, allowing for as complex a plot as you want, and as many creatures, characters, items, etc as you want. It is in VB. I am thinking that I will make a reasonably simple game, just to see if the engine works nice. My question however is; When I release it should I bother trying to make money on it? I could, potentially, release the game and require a payment for people to receive to creator. On the otherhand I could release the creator, and then send the game and all the graphic tiles to those who register. The creator itself is very easy to use, and looks clean. It allows the user to generate and import all the graphics, text, and other info that the game will need. The game program can then read the files created in order to play the game. I actually started off by making the creator to make the creation of the game easier, but I have started making it more flexible. I decided to do all this as an experiment to see how good a game I could do in VB, with no intention of making money. For that matter I was only going to distibute to a few freinds. Realisticly, is it worth it to me to try and make money? How much do shareware games typically bring in? How many of you would be interested in my product? How much effort would it take me to do a shareware release properly? Why run? You''''ll only die tired.

I''d release it for free. If you get a big following (unlikely btw, that''s just how these things are) then you could try charging for your next game. View this first one as an advertisment.

I''ve made good money on shareware games. They provide a steady source, though it''s not much. If the game''s reasonably good, and you advertise via banners on sites, etc. you can generally make about $2000 a year from it. Not much on just one game, but if you have more than one...plus sequeling works well.

Release it as freeware, trying to get money for it is probably not worth the bother... if people like it they´ll remember you for it, if they like it a lot they´ll send you an email.
Once you have collected 1000 "I love your game" mails you can think about charging for it.

Eep. I sorta agree with Hase. Scary.

OK, I'm an old fart.

But I seem to remember an article in PCWorld about a billion years ago that claimed that shareware was just about dead.

Then DOOM arrived.

The moral of this story is that if it is of sufficient quality, then people will by it. Advertise on USENET, if you have WEB space, get a .com address, redirect, jazz the site up, and post your 'Press Release' (try AVAULT, GAMESPOT, GAMEDEV, yada, yada, yada).

Shareware is living and kicking!



D.V.

Edited by - DeltaVee on April 13, 2001 7:40:15 PM

DeltaVee

as much as I´d like to believe that, i think that shareware is dead. Probably for good. Most of the formerly big shareware companies have switched to full retail games (Apogee for instance).
And (even if taking into account that you are an old fart and probably remember the good ol´ times a bit differently than us young folk), Doom was a hell of a long time ago. And most of what came after that (all the Quakes for instance, and the next doom as well) was not shareware anymore.

I guess it´s just not feasible anymore.....

Hase, where do you come up with that goofy notion?

Shareware is bigger now than ever before. And it''s growing at a tremendous rate. There are several reasons for this:

1. High-quality tools are available that make professional application development almost *too* easy. Everything from MS DevStudio to Borland Delphi.

2. The Internet has made distribution of shareware also almost *too* easy.

Getting your product noticed is a different issue, but there is almost no barrier to entry in terms of creating and distributing a product.

On top of that, a lot of *retail* software is becoming indistinguishable from "shareware". Commercial software is increasingly being sold over the web in the same manner that shareware is.

There are a lot of developers, including myself, who make their living off of shareware. And there are more every week.

Dead? Bah. You''re misinformed.


DavidRM
Samu Games

Well, I took a good look around and looked at what people were playing these days. And I´m sorry but there wasnt much shareware among that.

Sure there´s a lot of shareware on the internet. But just because it´s there doesn´t mean it´s alive.

You´re right, it´s probably not correct to call it dead, but it´s definitely not what it used to be. Shareware has become more the domain of small devgroups or single developers. Big firms just don´t bother with it anymore.

And I´m still not convinced about web sales. And I´m not just babbling here, I have a game prototype that could match with any of the other shareware/online sale games out there. But in the end we decided that it was not really feasible.

Maybe I´m wrong and have made a big mistake but the general impression I got was that shareware does not really pay anymore. Even if I get my product on egames and various others sales won´t be that exciting, right?

So, what we did was conclude the project (we thought a playable prototype was enough to show off what we could do) and now we´re trying to sell ourselves to a bigger company. And it´s not going all that bad.

So, no offence intended, but IMO shareware is not really the way to go anymore....

I am pretty sure the only problem is that there is too much shareware out there and too less chances for a developer to get the needed attention (or PR).

For example: Smugglers got pretty good reviews from the sites that looked at it. I send it now the second time to download.com and haven''t heart a single word from them. I guess they never ever looked at it.

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"How many copies of your game have been sold?"
"I could tell you...but then I would need to shoot you."