Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: goetz@cs.buffalo.edu (Phil Goetz)
Subject: Re: Financial rewards?
Message-ID: <CI5vJJ.KnJ@acsu.buffalo.edu>
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Organization: State University of New York at Buffalo/Comp Sci
References: <2eo5ql$pvs@crl.crl.com>
Date: Fri, 17 Dec 1993 04:09:19 GMT
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In article <2eo5ql$pvs@crl.crl.com> rbro@crl.com (Richard Brodsky) writes:
>I am almost finished with my first attempt at writing an interactive text 
>adventure. I'm just curious as to the money-making potential of such a 
>game if released as shareware. I realize of course that alot depends on 
>how good the game is, but I am interested in anybody's experience with 
>releasing original IF as shareware. Does it make more sense to release a 
>"crippled" demo version than to expect people to register and cough up 
>the dough after they've already got the goods?

I can share my shareware experience:

Xasteroids:  I posted Xasteroids on comp.sources.games and in
~ftp/contrib on EXPORT.LCS.MIT.EDU.  I asked for a $5 donation.
Over 3 years I've received approx. 100 mail messages of appreciation,
four or five modified versions, numerous excuses why a person couldn't
afford $5 or couldn't mail it to me from overseas, and 3 checks for $5.

HackerDOS:  A superset of DOS 3.3 for the Apple // (faster, took less disk
space, offered TYPE command, undelete, hex/dec translation, showed space on
disk, extra tracks option, lowercase conversion for ][+ers, etc.)  I sold
about 20 copies in 1984 for $5 through a one-paragraph ad in Computist.
Each copy was unprotected (a DOS, after all) and the documentation asked for
a $5 donation.  Never got one, unless some of the people I mailed disks to
for $5 already had it.  I doubt that, since they all came within a month or
two of the ad.

Oh, and Inmate?  Was never shareware.  I tried to market this myself by
taking out a half-page ad in Computist, asking $20.  No one answered it.
Computist had a circulation of 5000 at the time.  Inmate is available via
ftp on ccosun.caltech.edu in /pub/apple2/8bit/games/inmate
(need an Apple ][ simulator by Rich Skrenta which I put on ccosun.caltech.edu
in /pub/nyet/apl2em/incoming a long time ago, which might have moved;
also available from me, but the game is much slower simulated).
(I should write an article for Computist about the cool copy-protection
system I devised for Inmate, whereby you could make a backup copy that
could not run, but you could copy the backup over the original if the
original lost data, and it would work again.)

Phil
goetz@cs.buffalo.edu

This doesn't count as a whine!  He asked!
