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Geek Culture / Shareware

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Andy Igoe
22
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Joined: 6th Oct 2002
Location: United Kingdom
Posted: 1st Apr 2003 01:40
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Enough is enough, i'm in download technical support hell!

I've been thinking about my impending crisis of having to pay for a better web host just to overcome the bandwidth issues I get when I launch my games, and to get the features onto the site I would like to have.

One possible solution is to move away from the unique Banshee divorceware license (if you really like the game send the women flowers from us) partly because i'm single at the mo anyway and partly because Nik's leggier half hasn't had any flowers yet... x-d

I was thinking about writting slightly higher quality more in-depth games than we currently release under a traditional shareware license: Download the game and sell expanded features. However I suspect all this will actually do is create less downloads of the 'demo' and result in just half a dozen sales.

Before too many suggestions come in, i've been to over 100 free web hosts so far and not a single host supports the features Banshee needs, let alone wants.

NEEDS
100mb-250mb web space (projected use this year)
High intermittant bandwidth (on game launch) although regular use is just a trickle.
Remote linking to files.
Downloadable .zip and .exe files.
Segmented downloads (for download accelerators and resuming tools - we have this now but it cuts out during high bandwidth use when it is needed the most!)

WANTS
NO ADVERTS! Under any circumstances. We've never had them, we're never going to.
Pearl and/or Php support for half decent forums.

To get that I have to pay, and as other threads have described of late i'm not exactly strait from the set of Dallas so the games are just going to have to pay for themselves in some form, so i'm starting by looking at shareware and hopefully not having to go any higher than that.

So I was wondering if anyone here has any actuall experience of shareware and could offer some guidance on the subject. Where to advertise the games, how much to charge, and most importantly of all, hits v's sales ratio.
Pneumatic Dryll, Outrageous epic cleric of EQ/Xev
God made the world in 7 days, but we're still waiting for the patch.
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Shadow Robert
22
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Joined: 22nd Sep 2002
Location: Hertfordshire, England
Posted: 1st Apr 2003 02:16
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Advertise at Fileplanet, use them as a link and use 1on1 for your site as £8/month gets your everything you need (less than £120/year which includes the Domain+Subdomains)

you'll get alot of revenue this way - especially if you setup a PayPal point on the site for use.

Tsu'va Oni Ni Jyuuko Fiori Sei Tau!
One block follows the suit ... the whole suit of blocks is the path ... what have you found?
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Kangaroo2
22
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Joined: 26th Sep 2002
Location: United Kingdom
Posted: 1st Apr 2003 04:17
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I agree. But stay away from Paypal as they in the last 3 months have introduced a seriously, seriously stupid sign up process for new purchasers which puts many customers off. Shame as they used to be excellent. Worldpay is an ok alternative, Or Shareit - they'll even produce backup CDs if your customer wants one

OneandOne are fantastic - their service is excellent and their space is quick and reliable, with high bandwidth

Coming Soon! Kangaroo2 Studio... wait and quiver with anticipation! lol
samjones@kangaroo2.com - http://www.kangaroo2.com - If the apocalypse comes, email me
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Shadow Robert
22
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Joined: 22nd Sep 2002
Location: Hertfordshire, England
Posted: 1st Apr 2003 07:24
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they've got a new sign up on paypal? hmm i should check it out - i've been using them for a year or so now so not in the loop about the new signing up stuff
(^_^) ya know i only set it up for the FMTau online shop (which funnily enough i'm still waiting for >> nudges martyn) ... at this point i think i'm gonna end up setting up something more professional anyways, i mean we do have our first large product to be sold from here (not sure how i'm gonna finance distribution at this point though) and gonna setup a direct link to a business account.

mom's recently pushed me into getting an Alliance and Leister Account (one day i'll get one with a US Bank, promise ) so i've got the choice of them or Natwest. Hmm decisions, decisions... anyone any ideas?
hey i've been having that arugment again with my brother too, cause when i was over there i saw an advert for 'Loyds TSB' and in the advert they have a tune playing... now i reckon that tune is 'The Hyrule Symphony playing Zelda's Lullaby' but he reacons that i'm an idiot (yes we have deeply indepth arguments like that lol)

anyone fancies clearing it up and telling him that i'm right feel free to

Tsu'va Oni Ni Jyuuko Fiori Sei Tau!
One block follows the suit ... the whole suit of blocks is the path ... what have you found?
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Kangaroo2
22
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Joined: 26th Sep 2002
Location: United Kingdom
Posted: 1st Apr 2003 20:12
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Now, any new customer who wants to purchase something using penpal, pays a £1.95 registration fee, which is fair enough. Its only after paying this they find out that they can't then actually purchase the product till they have their own special paypal password, again fair enough. Trouble is, the password isn't sent to your email straight away, ooooh no. It comes with your credit card statement through the post! That means most ppl will have to wait at least a month before they can order the product they wanted, even after paying their £1.95! Hmm so, you say, why not just phone up your credit card issuer and ask for the details over the phone? Because the credit card companies are so sick of ppl doing that, they then phone up Paypal and complain, Paypal shut down your account, but keep the £1.95! Its BulSh*t and there has been much upcry, including major coverage in pc magazines

Such a shame cos PayPal used to be great

As for Banks, Lloyds TSB are the best for business banking, but imho they're all as bad as each other, you're prolly better off with a building society

Coming Soon! Kangaroo2 Studio... wait and quiver with anticipation! lol
samjones@kangaroo2.com - http://www.kangaroo2.com - If the apocalypse comes, email me
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Andy Igoe
22
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Joined: 6th Oct 2002
Location: United Kingdom
Posted: 1st Apr 2003 20:37 Edited at: 1st Apr 2003 20:38
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I had a TSB Jeans account when I was a lad, I moved house at the same time that I got a proper 'adult' account (current account) and every two weeks thereafter for six months I went in to the bank to ask them to change my address, cancel the cashpoint card and PIN number that they'd sent to my old house, and despatch a new one.

I've been with Barclays ever since!

Anyway back to the point. It's a shame about Paypal because I was hoping to use them because they give so much more control, i've contacted Worldpay in the past and really didn't like their terms of business - I was trying to negotiate a deal that was plausable and they just wanted to categorise me as a big business (because of the features I wanted) and charge me several thousand pounds... Nothing negotiable.

I don't like companies that refuse to negotiate at all and just have a standard policy on a take it or leave it basis, because if ever there is room for an inch i'm the kind of guy that gets the mile served up on a silver platter by a 20 something bikini-clad Brazilian lass - and after you've had that, half an inch just doesn't compare. (note: All I wanted was a CC of the transactions sent to other members on the project so that there was irrefuteable evidence that nobody was being ripped off with sales statistics, well it was a while ago, perhaps they are better now).

I guess the best solution is to offer the customer what they want by including both Paypal and Shareit - aslong as I don't make the purchase screen confusing as to how to buy it by including lots of unexplained options

Now the other killer question, marketting the game?

I tried uploading Episode V: Battle for Hoth to fileplanet this morning, it just sat in a que all morning until I had to go to work which was over an hour... It was very unclear what services they actually offer - I just upload to them and then link and they're ok with that?

Has anyone who's released shareware over the net before an idea of how many sales per hits they had, roughly? It would be useful information to know so I can estimate the kind of uptake i'll get.

Pneumatic Dryll, Outrageous epic cleric of EQ/Xev
God made the world in 7 days, but we're still waiting for the patch.
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Martyn Pittuck
22
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Joined: 27th Aug 2002
Location: United Kingdom
Posted: 1st Apr 2003 22:10
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PneumaticDryll you got MSN?

Get on there and i think i can get you some hosting on the cheap...

The Outside is a evil place to be, too much light, too much noise and too many distractions....
I went outside once and my FPS rate dropped to 5.
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Andy Igoe
22
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Joined: 6th Oct 2002
Location: United Kingdom
Posted: 1st Apr 2003 22:15
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Banshee Studios does not support or condone the use of Microsoft products.

Pneumatic Dryll, Outrageous epic cleric of EQ/Xev
God made the world in 7 days, but we're still waiting for the patch.
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Shadow Robert
22
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Joined: 22nd Sep 2002
Location: Hertfordshire, England
Posted: 2nd Apr 2003 00:56
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Banshee Studio's is cutting its own nose off dispite its face i'm afriad then...
DarkBasic inherintly is a Microsoft based product as it requires DirectX - so no matter the OS you use it on, its still a Microsoft Product being used to power it.

i'd suggest you rethink the sense in what you've stated

Tsu'va Oni Ni Jyuuko Fiori Sei Tau!
One block follows the suit ... the whole suit of blocks is the path ... what have you found?
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the_winch
21
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Joined: 1st Feb 2003
Location: Oxford, UK
Posted: 2nd Apr 2003 01:29
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One problem with shareware is that it is almost as easy and cheaper to get full games from a p2p network than to register.

There is a difference between supporting microsoft products and using them because there is no alternative.

I only really use windows for Dbpro and a couple of games and it's a step backwards.

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Kangaroo2
22
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Joined: 26th Sep 2002
Location: United Kingdom
Posted: 2nd Apr 2003 02:01
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I agree that unfortunately Shareware is less viable now, as most popular products are available on Kazaa or other p2p networks, and many cracks / serials are widely available. It seems most ppl will use them without thinking nowadays

Coming Soon! Kangaroo2 Studio... wait and quiver with anticipation! lol
samjones@kangaroo2.com - http://www.kangaroo2.com - If the apocalypse comes, email me
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Andy Igoe
22
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Joined: 6th Oct 2002
Location: United Kingdom
Posted: 2nd Apr 2003 03:40
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lol Raven, remember you are only a tourist when you are in America - you don't have to take on the mindset

My opinion of p2p networks lowered vastly when Morpheus got taken over, used to be great, now it sucks. Perhaps a reasonable defence is to do what everyone else does, get the biggest file I can find, rename it do my games name and publish it on the networks... When that's been sussed do a version of the actual program, only heavily bugged, prefferably scrambling a few random .dll's from the system folder every time it is run.... It aint a virus if you wanted to download it! And it's hard to complain about a product you obtained illegally!

Oh boy am I evil.

Pneumatic Dryll, Outrageous epic cleric of EQ/Xev
God made the world in 7 days, but we're still waiting for the patch.
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Shadow Robert
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Joined: 22nd Sep 2002
Location: Hertfordshire, England
Posted: 2nd Apr 2003 06:38
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lol not really taking on the mindset... pretty logical reasoning - and he doesn't have to use DarkBasic Pro, there are a good few multi-OS languages, suchas PureBasic which i believe i've plugged a few times.

i hate the bloody thing, but it works over 3 OS's - you can use APi's in it - you can setup system specific compile commands - setup inlines, etc...
if i could only stand to use it would be a pretty powerful basic.
Especially as you can code Assembly into it too and export DLLs (^_^)

Tsu'va Oni Ni Jyuuko Fiori Sei Tau!
One block follows the suit ... the whole suit of blocks is the path ... what have you found?
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Martyn Pittuck
22
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Location: United Kingdom
Posted: 2nd Apr 2003 15:34
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so no msn

The Outside is a evil place to be, too much light, too much noise and too many distractions....
I went outside once and my FPS rate dropped to 5.
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iac249
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Joined: 26th Mar 2003
Location: USA
Posted: 3rd Apr 2003 18:49
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Quote: "I've been thinking about my impending crisis of having to pay for a better web host just to overcome the bandwidth issues I get when I launch my games, and to get the features onto the site I would like to have.
"


Try http://www.hostonce.com

1. $4.95USD / month
2. Free Domain Name
3. Unlimited Webspace
4. Unlimited Data Transfer
5. Unlimited POP3 Email Accounts and Autoresponders
6. Full support for MS ASP, CGI, Perl, and ODBC
7. Free subdomains
8. Free Domain Name Transfer. International domains OK.
9. High-speed connections
10. No banners ads or pop-up boxes
11. SSL Secure Server functionality
12. SQL Server 2000 Database connectivity
13. Free Statistics for website
13. No set-up Fee
14. ASP and ASP.NET support (they might also support PHP on linux)

That's a very good deal, I think. My friends and I use this host, and we've never had any problems with them.

- Corey
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