Shareware

Submitted by bodgey on
Forum
Job and Work Experience

Hi everyone,
This is my first post and I'm not sure if this is the right place for it, but here goes.

I'm making a small 3d demo that I can show to a small game company and was wandering if it's better to put in a lot more effort and get some friends to help with art and stuff, and actually create a complete game (a reasonably small one) and try to sell it as shareware.

Now I have two questions:
1. Can you actually make any money off an average shareware game? I'd consider $100 a month a success.
2. Would a developer be more impressed with a finished game or a really good demo of a spinning cube with all the effects I can chuck on?

Thanks a lot,
bodgey

Submitted by Barry Dahlberg on Mon, 27/09/04 - 7:59 PMPermalink

You can make money off shareware but will you? It can take alot of work and it might take you a few games to find a succesful formula. This site has a bit of info for interested developers:

http://www.dexterity.com/articles/

Personally I would be far happier seeing a finished game than a fancy spinning cube and I'm sure most developers agree. Make a simple game and make sure to really finish it including menus, sound effects, high score screens etc. That will show people that you can stick to a project and complete it rather than just copy pasting a bunch of OpenGL tutorials onto your cube.

Hope this helps!
:)

Posted by bodgey on
Forum
Job and Work Experience

Hi everyone,
This is my first post and I'm not sure if this is the right place for it, but here goes.

I'm making a small 3d demo that I can show to a small game company and was wandering if it's better to put in a lot more effort and get some friends to help with art and stuff, and actually create a complete game (a reasonably small one) and try to sell it as shareware.

Now I have two questions:
1. Can you actually make any money off an average shareware game? I'd consider $100 a month a success.
2. Would a developer be more impressed with a finished game or a really good demo of a spinning cube with all the effects I can chuck on?

Thanks a lot,
bodgey

Submitted by Barry Dahlberg on Mon, 27/09/04 - 7:59 PMPermalink

You can make money off shareware but will you? It can take alot of work and it might take you a few games to find a succesful formula. This site has a bit of info for interested developers:

http://www.dexterity.com/articles/

Personally I would be far happier seeing a finished game than a fancy spinning cube and I'm sure most developers agree. Make a simple game and make sure to really finish it including menus, sound effects, high score screens etc. That will show people that you can stick to a project and complete it rather than just copy pasting a bunch of OpenGL tutorials onto your cube.

Hope this helps!
:)