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Why Port To PC? Shareware Still alive!
An anonymous reader writes "Here is an interesting interview with Tom Anthony, describing why Ambrosia Software are porting their Mac games to the PC market. Do you think their games can really sell after being ported? I thought shareware was dead, but all their games are still using shareware as well."
I know after years of not having any money, and using shareware for free, I LOVE that I can afford to pay people who make shareware, and support independent software.
Recent shareware fees paid:
- 10 licenses of the Opera web browser
- A ton of Chank's fonts
- Limewire
- UltraEdit
Plus PayPal tip-jars to the great Quanta, MusicBrainz, and even websites like Ryze.Whenever I need a program/tool, the first places I look are TinyApps (very small software for Windows), and Tucows.
I sure HOPE it's not just me that's out there doing what I can to support the independent shareware programmers!
They are basically giving you a 30 day period to test the game. The games will not be complete until you register the game. After 30 days, you are expected to register if you like the game or utility.
Originally, the games were open and you could complete them without registering. But as of late, Ambrosia has restricted how far you can go. You get a good taste of the game and it usually makes you want to play more. It is a great method that has worked for them. And hopefully PC users will appreciate it when EV Nova Windows is released.
Oh, and I have plenty of experience with Ambrosia. I moderate a forum of theirs. Great place to be for mac users. And soon PC users.
www.ambrosiasw.com
'Give me one more medicated peaceful moment'
Where did you get the idea that shareware on the PC has bad connotations? Maybe in the applications category, yes, but as for games, can you say Commander Keen, Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, Doom II, Duke Nukem 3D and Quake?
Anyone know of a shareware site that lists crippleware as such, and not calling "X Lite" (where Lite means crippled) proper shareware when it's only a thinly veiled marketing release?
You might want to try the aptly named NoNags.com. Unfortunately, it only lists Freeware, not shareware, which has the potential to exclude some good things.
I pretty much agree with you. I used to recommend PKZip, but then they started installing an "adbot". Yuck. Nagware is a cold. Adware is the flu. Spyware is anthrax. No wonder shareware isn't what it used to be--it decided to make biological weapons so now a coalition of freeware, bundled software, and Open Source is bombing it to smithereens... sorry... too much war on all our minds.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Sure I can. But the problem with your list is that the most recent title was released in 1995. Shareware used to be alive and kicking. The question is if it is just suffering from a little exhaustion, or laying down to die.
There is a reason that successors to those titles didn't follow the shareware model anymore. When presentation became a really big deal in computer games the binary sizes became to big to distribute them over modem. Now we have broadband and people are able and willing to download files hundreds of megabytes big (just look at the mod scene for various shooters; EV:Nova is over 100Mb as well). But sometime in the intervening years the perceived difference in quality between boxed and download-able offerings became big enough to tarnish the image of shareware games for good
Now for the Mac side of things: Just around the time that PC gaming really took off we started to get starved for games. While big games where ported the overall selection was small. So we had no choice than to take a closer look at what shareware had to offer.
Maybe shareware will make a comeback on the PC side. People are complaining about a lack of innovation in games anyway (and as far as I know most PC shareware games are 'yet another puzzle game' anyway). Big publishers are reluctant to take risks with new ideas. Broadband is getting really popular. Maybe these factors combined will keep the scene alive long enough until the medics arrive.
Hank! White!
As a shareware author, I can definitely say that shareware's not dead, although the term "shareware" is getting old. You can read about the history of shareware at the Association of Shareware Professionals website -
History of Shareware
Shareware is really just software that is marketed as 'try before you buy'. I don't refer to shareware on my website - I just refer to a free trial.
There are many Independent Software Developers working on games, utility type programs, and small niche software.
More so, I'm finding that there's not a lot of shareware authors interested in the Windows market. It may be the case where the market suffers from two problems: it's so potentally large that it's hard to let people know you have a new game and secondly, there's more people on the Windows side that I would think would look for cracks and codes to avoid the registration than there are on the Mac side (mostly due to numbers again, mac users generally have some sort of loyality to those that develop good software for the platform). So having more choices for shareware games is a good thing. Sure, you can argue that a lot of good games can be found via Flash or JAva, but Flash and Java still has some limits that can't faithfully be used to make the same type of games that you can do on the native system programs.
So here's to good luck to Ambrosia for success in this venture.
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
Ambrosia created a slew of the best shareware games ever seen for Mac, starting in 1992. They proved that shareware could actually be profitable. The quality of these games puts some commercial games to shame - it's on par with Nintendo's bug-free quality. The one that made them famous, Maelstrom, was ported to Linux. Ambrosia's games have historically been highly, highly addictive, especially Escape Velocity and it's sequels. I have to wonder, though, how well received they will be in the PC market which has an order of magnitude more games than the Mac.
Who moved my sig?
Doom 2 was a retail release, not shareware--and it sold something like 10x as many copies as there were registrations for Doom 1.
Quake was released as retail as well, although it was a little more complicated than that.
For recent examples of successful shareware games, I'd look more at things like Bejeweled and such from PopCap, or the Exile/Avernum games from Spiderweb Software.
Of course, there's still plenty of unsuccessful shareware these days; I've written some myself, but I'll spare you the link.
GCC, KDE and The Gimp are not freeware but Free Software, it's not quite the same thing. You can look here for more information on the subject :
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/categories.html
They're not backporting their older EV games as they stand, but are porting them to EVN as TC plugins. So they should be playable for PC users when they become available, since plugins should work as well on a PC as they do on a Mac.
And the brethren went away edified.
On my PalmPilot the rate is currently 100%.
Most Losedows crippleware I have tried out can be replaced with GPL stuff; e.g. PSP->Gimp, UltraEdit->Emacs. Everything else I use is freeware or demoware that's actually useful in its demo form (trillian, proxomitron (yeah I know, Shonenware, but they don't have any mp3s for download and I don't buy CDs just to see if they're any good any more), treesize, ivt), or stuff for which we have a site licence or my job justifies a corporate licence (winzip, Visual Studio). Still looking for a free equivalent of ClipMate but I'll be buying it soon if I can't find one.
In fact, this is one of the very worst examples I have ever seen! Even worse is that the idiot spams forums like OSNews with ads for his crap.
Oh, and if I ever see another VB Image Viewer that the author thinks warrents a $35 price then I swear I'll go postal. I'll do it, I really will.
I both buy shareware (Pontifex, Snood, silly games like that) and sell shareware (http://www.jbrowse.com/products/axe) and I'd say the system is still working just as well as it was in the Epic/Apogee era -- better, even, because credit card payments are quite easy to process now and shareware is well suited to Web business.
What's more, the level of organization in the shareware world is increasing -- the PAD XML format (PAD files describe shareware/freeware products) makes finding shareware (for the customer) and keeping it up to date (for the seller) easier than ever.
Even big-name games are sometimes still released as shareware (without using the word per se) -- Unreal Tournament 3 springs to mind.
Whence? Hence. Whither? Thither.
In fact, shareware has been co-opted by many mainstream software vendors! For example Macromedia and Adobe: You can download limited time trial software from their site and pay online to license. Sure, the days of going to the computer store and buying 3.5" floppies with shareware for $3.00 each are gone, but now most software vendors let you try before you buy.
-- $G
I don't recommend beginning a game of EV Nova unless you have a whole weekend ahead of you. It's just too easy to lose track of time upgrading/customizing your ship(s), skirmishing, making big profits on trading routes, and trying to figure out what to do next to get the story (or stories, depending on how many threads your pilot has gotten on) to the next level.
You keep thinking to yourself... I'll just finish this set of hyperjumps and dock, then I'll save and quit. Oh, wow a new ship, well, let me just try it out. Jeez, a new weapon, and I only need a few million credits more to get it. If only I could capture a derelict Leviathan to carry all those biological weapons from Codec to that other star system...
Next thing you know, it's 18 hours later, you haven't eaten or slept, and you're still just a little bit away from putting it down. Damn thing is insidious... and worth the $30 I paid for it. The only thing missing is a network/team play mode. Now that would be cool - inter-system real-time warfare. 8)
Ambrosia is looking at porting *one* of their games to Windows. Not all of them. Not several of them. One.
Those mac clones used Apple's ROM. It would still be their IP.
Time for some tasty Shiner Bock!