[Raven]
It's a damn long time since Doom was originally released by Apogee (1992), and one hell of alot has changed since then.
As little as a decade ago, selling your software as shareware, or the more popular PD (Public Domain) ment that while audiences were initially small, you would get a bigger following by word of mouth.
Remember this is when games like Doom sold for $19.99, and most people didn't buy it because it was too expensive. Game Consoles, and the advent of the 'pure' publisher company has changed that.
This unfortunate shift in the mid-90s (about the time Windows 95 appeared), really hit a blow to Shareware/PD developers everywhere. Games development was no longer about making something fun, but making something that could be sold world-wide.
At the same point in time, companies stopped producing the easy languages. Gone were the days when you could buy a computer and it would come with a form of BASIC that allowed you to create your own software that performs as fast as any of the professionals. It was a dawn of the 'C Mod Programmers'... people who would take engines and create thier own new variation.
The problem isn't, that the industry doesn't take developer like those found here, and at blitz seriously. Nickelodeon has actually published several Blitz3D games over the past few years, including the one currently found on Square CD-Roms for Kellogs. What is to fault here is actually the developers.
On the world-wide scale of games, believe it or not.. your Desktop PC is lowest on the food chain. Right behind the Nintendo GameCube.
This has been the case since, well actually forever. There was a brief stint while the 32bit consoles were appearing, that the PC had it's moment in the sun. On the whole, the market really has always been the smallest on the IBM-Compatible PC.
Only the computers of the 80s really had much popularity, and by today's standards... most shareware developers are reaching about as many people for the same price.
Thing is, £5 now doesn't go quite as far as it did in 1984
(A year when the Mini Cooper was being sold for £450, heh yup that's like half a months pay for most teenagers now)
While it can be said on a big publisher, you get alot more money for developing games... there is a price to pay.
You don't get full control of what is to be developed, sometimes you get no control past little content factors... like colours of a uniform. You don't get to set prices. You have to work to strict deadlines, if you can't make it, then the publisher has the right to work you like a dog until it is.
Believe it or not the unfortunate reward from all of it, is you get to only do development. You don't have to worry about advertising or such.
You would think in a world where the internet is in almost every home in the 'free world', that this would mean that Shareware would reach more people than ever. Funny how you have to spent hundreds, thousands sometimes millions on advertising just for enough people to notice you.
Although Elitist Independant Developers would turn thier nose up at people like those here, for not using C/C++. These same people would snub you for not using OpenGL, and also are often extremely hypocritial as they more often than not use a game engine like Axiom, Ogre3D, Torque, etc..
Yet something you can always depend on, is the fact that professional developers.. often do have great respect for a successful shareware developer, and on occasion they will actually envy the freedom that people have when they are their own boss.
What I'm trying to say is..
Through all of the changes over the past 25years have been immense for the Hobbiest/Shareware Developer, the fact is those are the people that created the fine games industry and have made it the success it is. After all this time, the Public Domain scene is no different than ever. Everyone is still struggling, still trying to be seen, but god love 'em still having a blast in what they're doing.
You might not be published, seen, or even acknowlaged, but honestly.. who cares?
