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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."
If the game is interesting and worth playing, then why not port it? So you open your product to an audience that you wouldn't have had otherwise.
I've never heard of this series of games, but I guess that if it was a hit on the Mac it'd probably have some success on the x86 platform.
Is shareware really dead? I don't think so. I still buy the occasional game after downloading a demo version. It's not called shareware anymore but it feels the same to me.
If I like it, I buy it.
Huh?
Agreed, despite the best efforts of software crackers to try and kill it.
All I want is a kind word, a warm bed and unlimited power.
I'm skeptical as to how well this will work. The mac community is different, chiefly in that there is some sense of community. A certain desire to support companies that develop for the platform.
...wow, that metaphor came out badly.
I know there are a decent number of people who actually bought ambrosia games despite already having the pirated codes to use them.
The Wintel world is a much bigger place, so you're fishing from a bigger pond, but I don't think the fish will be so generous about going after the bait on the hook when there're plenty of other ways to get a worm without having a big barbed spike driven thru your cheek in the form of money.
"The worst tyrannies were the ones where a governance required its own logic on every embedded node." - Vernor Vinge
towards companies like this afloat. ;))
In the Unix/Linux world, we're used to quality freeware (gcc,kde,gimp) and we look first for a product that is free, and are reluctent to look into shareware. (generally speaking; I know that all you reading this have ordered from and sponsor shareware developers
In the mac and windows worlds, however, there's still a large, thriving market to be had from shareware.
So, in the end, no; this news doesn't surprise me.
They are still using the shareware model for selling their software.
Even though there isn't as much familiarity with the company in the PC market, they can have a much smaller market penetration and still do as well or better. Remember that the Mac market is still only about 1/10th the size of the WinTel market.
I'd say they'll do even better than the usual shareware company since they'll have a lot of word-of-mouth already going for them.
I'm a shareware author and a lover (and frequent purchaser) of shareware. I can assure you, shareware's far from dead...in fact, if there's a shareware solution to a problem or need, I'll usually buy the shareware rather than buying COTS software.
Q: "Why do sound techs say 'check 1, 2'?"
A: "Cause if they could count any higher they'd be lighting techs."
I feel the same way. I think more and more shareware is becoming bigger. In the last year or two it seems like devlopers have taken two routes with shareware. Some try to "lock" down their products and tie registeration keys into the actual hardware used, while on the other hand some people don't worry about it and charge a modest amount for thier work. These are the people that I believe are seeing a payoff for their hardwork.
I remember one of Ambrosia SW's selling points used to be that they made shareware for the Mac only. This, believe it or not, was one of the ways they poured on loyalty from the Mac community. I think it's great that they're still in business and branching out.
If you've never played one of the three Escape Velocities, you're in for a treat.
BTW, isn't there an Escape Velocity linux clone, or is that of Maelstrom I'm think of?
In my experience, Mac shareware is on average much much better than Windows shareware. Especially shareware games. I've played a few games that were ported from the Mac to Windows, and rarely are they as good as the Mac version, possibly (probably) due to a poor job of porting.
So I figure, if you're going to port to another platform, do it right.
These days I refuse to support shareware unless there is no alternate free software solution. Why? Because I value source code as much as I value the freedom to share.
How we know is more important than what we know.
How many Mac (pre-OS X) users out there don't remember playing great games like Maelstrom and Apeiron back in the day? Escape Velocity, too, was an awesome game, but I loved Ambrosia best for their classic games. Ambrosia made, in my opinion, the greatest shareware games for the Mac by far. Anyone who hasn't heard of them has missed out. Those were the days... =)
How sure are they that this will work? The mac software market is very different from the PC software market.
While on Windows, the word most commonly associated with 'shareware' is 'crap', this is not the case on the mac. Due to the smaller marketshare, selling boxed copies of software on store shelves isn't a winning plan for anything but the largest players in the mac software biz. Because of this, a great deal of excellent software is released for mac.
Where on windows shareware has long since been given up as a dead end, the mac shareware market is alive and well, producing and supporting a large number of excellent programs. As a mac user, many of your staple programs would be shareware, not boxed commerical (this is one thing that really strikes a lot of 'switchers' as strange).
Just because they can make a good profit selling shareware on the mac doesn't mean it'll extend to windows. They'll probably do better actually selling boxes (bargin stuff, like what you'd find in the checkout line, not alongside the $50 large production games) rather than selling shareware in the windows market, simply because to windows users, a physical box implies that it's a real piece of software produced by a real company (a thought not common among mac users).
Shareware ain't dead but if it does die, it will probably be due to overzealous copy protection schemes.
I use a shareware application called Crosstrainer and I really enjoy using it - however, the copy protection they use generates a unique key based on something in my profile, so I can't even run it under multiple users in Windows 2000 and I have to email them whenever I reinstall as well. I have had to save a crack for their software just in case they ever go out of business too.
Any shareware devs out there - don't bother trying to "overprotect" your software. It will be cracked, but there are a lot of honest people out there willing to support you - don't alienate them!
Robots are everywhere, and they eat old people's medicine for fuel.
Shareware died when they put it on CD. Ambrosia is a lone island of very good developers who produce some of the best stuff around. They use simple and addictive game play and great graphics. IMO any single person doing shareware is hopeing to develop the skills to get a software contract, shareware will send 'em crazy. Get help, now!
regards from an ex-shareware writer(?) my MacUser Nomination was not enough to have people pay for games etc.
There was an unknown error in the submission.
I still have a shareware app on the market that brings in a couple registrations per week. Shareware was flooded in the late nineties with a whole load of crap, much of it written in VB. Probably 90% provided one tiny little feature, so you'd end up using 50 of them to provide the complete functionality of a better app. As a result, overall shareware registrations dropped dramatically -- there was a far smaller percentage of apps worth registering.
It's a testament to certain apps that they still survive well under a shareware model. Shareware certainly works, but only if you aren't charging too much and don't deliver a big ball of crap.
Anyone remember Bungee? Once a Mac-only shop...started doing windows ports. Then the Redmond Machine slurped them right up. Now the poor developers are stuck doing X-box games.
Noooo! Nooooo, Ambrosia! Don't be that guy!
That? That was a pigeon.