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PC Games (Games) Entertainment Games

Shareware Amateurs Vs. Shareware Professionals? 34

Posted by simoniker from the are-you-slipshod-or-not? dept.
Thanks to an anonymous reader for pointing to a Gamedev.net article called 'Shareware Amateurs Vs. Shareware Professionals'. The article, by shareware game developer Steve Pavlina, starts: "Why is it that some shareware developers seem to be hugely successful in financial terms, growing their sales from scratch to generate tens of thousands of dollars in income, while the vast majority struggle to generate even a handful of sales? The answer can be found by exploring the difference in mindsets between both groups."
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Shareware Amateurs Vs. Shareware Professionals? More

Shareware Amateurs Vs. Shareware Professionals?

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  • $0.02 (Score:4, Interesting)

    by chota ( 577760 ) <chrishota@gmail.com> on Thursday June 05, 2003 @02:05AM (#6121576) Homepage
    Well...

    I must say I disagree with most of the stuff presented in the article. Let's take a look at two examples.

    WinZip: I bought WinZip (way back when they were NicoMak Computing) because it was a good product. It was (and I think still is) a solid product with an intuitive interface. Basically, I bought this product because it the developers knew its role. WinZip is a means to an end (unzipping files), not the end itself. Now I'm not sure, but I don't think that WinZip 1.0 had a 200-strong developer team behind it, or even what Mr. Pavlina would call a "Shareware Professional."

    mIRC: (Yes, I'm a Windows user.) I purchased a license for mIRC because it's a good product, and, for my purposes, "best in show" for IRC clients.

    So what's the moral of this post? People (me, my mother, joe user, whomever) buy software because (they percieve that) it's the best in it's particular field.

    Not to say that Mr. Pavlina's article doesn't hit on some good points; namely, that developers need to improve their products as a whole and not just improve "what they're good at" (design, programming, what have you). But seriously, something that was lacking in this article was the fact that, if you want to make money on software, you have to actually make software that does its job well, and that the end-user can actually use.

    Then again, I could be full of hot air.

    • No thank you to shareware (Score:5, Insightful)

      by amorsen ( 7485 ) <benny+slashdot@amorsen.dk> on Thursday June 05, 2003 @06:15AM (#6122229)
      I find WinZip to be hugely bloated and I do not find its interface at all intuitive. Pretty icons though. Fortunately I do not use Windows much, but once in a while I need to unzip something on a Windows machine. I really think that (the GUI for) archive handling belongs in the file manager. Besides, I tend to be helping someone else when I need to open archives. Buying licenses for all of them is not an option, and neither is putting up with the nag screen. Ah well, at least there are good free command-line archivers.

      This brings me to a larger point. Everyone who scratches an itch on Windows releases the corresponding tool for $25 as shareware. Then they discover that noone buys their product. Just take a look at the archiver section of TUCOWS. A million different GUI's for zip, all shareware. What exactly do the authors expect? They cannot compete with WinZip on features and generally their user interface is even worse. If I had to buy an archiver, I would buy WinZip. A $10 saving over WinZip is not going to make me buy something with no reputation whatsoever.

      Most software today except games is shareware anyway. You can get time-limited demos for pretty much anything that does not come from Microsoft. So what does "shareware" offer that regular commercial software does not? All I see is having to go through 20 crappy programs on TUCOWS to find one that may be slightly useful. And then having the author abandon it a month later.

      Give me proprietary software or Free Software anytime.

      • The Info-Zip 'zip' and 'unzip' programs are available for Windows [info-zip.org], as 32-bit executables that handle long filenames perfectly. Why anyone would inflict WinZip on themselves is beyond me.
        • Zip and unzip are command-line utilities. There's a GUI "wizard" wrapper, but it hasn't been updated in 3 years, and lacks basic Windows shell integration. So (for example), you can't drag a file from an archive window to a folder window in order to extract a single file into a directory.

          Yeah, I know, GUIs are for lazy people. The world is full of lazy people. Deal with it!

          • Not lazy people, just people who don't know how to use the CLI or find it not to their taste. I use zip and unzip on Windows because I'm too lazy to install Winzip and wade through the graphical UI and nag screens to find the function I want. (The Winzip interface has always seemed rather perverse and too complex for the common case - creating or unzipping an archive to/from a single directory.)

            A decent, well-thought out user interface for archivers is a different matter. I liked the system on RISC OS w
            • Maybe you're just intimidated by the feature bloat. I agree that WinZip is pretty awful, but the most basic features. But the really basic features take no studying to figure out. You just try to drag an icon from here to there -- either it does the obvious thing or it doesn't. This is less a matter of good GUI design than of simply making use of standard APIs.

              I've never used RISC OS, but I have used ZipFolders [aladdinsys.com]. Any klunkiness should be blamed on Windows Explorer, which is not an example of good GUI desig

              • Yes, ZipFolders and the like do have side effects because they need to decompress to a temporary location. On RISC OS however (and I'm sure on some other systems too) you can run stuff directly from the archive, with no temporary files. Things are decompressed as needed. The archive appears exactly like a directory, that is you'd be able to open 'package.zip/README', edit it and save it. It's really neat and it's only a shame that a similar system hasn't been implemented for the free Unix-like OSes (whi
      • A million different GUI's for zip, all shareware.

        Boy [zipgenius.it], are [filzip.com] you [izarc.de.vu] wrong [ultimatezip.de].

      • Winrar. Try it. It just feels right!

        It feels snappy, lightweigth, non-bloated, intuitive, inteligently designed. 99% of what you need can be done by right clicking your files and selecting from the menu.

        And rar compression AND crypto is better than zip.

      • I don't like WinZip either, and find Aladdin's DropZip and Expander to be much more usable. In fact, I don't find WinZip to be significantly better than the free WiZ front-end to Info-ZIP. It seems to me that WinZip is a classic example of marketing over quality; somehow they've marketed to the stage where everyone "knows" that WinZip is the way to unzip zip files.

    • Re:$0.02 (Score:2, Insightful)

      by PainKilleR-CE ( 597083 )
      So what's the moral of this post? People (me, my mother, joe user, whomever) buy software because (they percieve that) it's the best in it's particular field.

      Which is why I have not purchased either of those products, and only use one of them. As another poster already mentioned, WinZip is a rather horrid product to use as an unregistered user. I don't reward people for giving me nag screens unless their product is truly exceptional, and WinZip is not (I use WinRar myself, although the interface isn't muc

  • A rather weak article. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Soulslayer ( 21435 ) on Thursday June 05, 2003 @02:13AM (#6121594) Homepage
    An amateur is defined as someone that is either not as skilled as a professional or someone that engages in a particular activity as a hobby rather than a profession. Amateur works are frequently (but not always) constructed more poorly than professional works, but there are certainly exceptions. And in general the entire shareware market is seen as an amateurâ(TM)s field with professionals not deigning to sink so low (this is a market perspective really, not necessarily my own).

    The linked to article fails to address any new or particularly interesting aspects of shareware development and as a whole contains a lot of rather flame inducing, silly, generalizations. He should have called it, "Lazy and Ignorant Shareware Authors vs Motivated and Knowledgeable Shareware Authors." Of course then there would have been little point in writing the rest of the article.

    Not all amateurs are lazy and mercurial.

    Not all "professionals" are smart, savvy, and dedicated.
    • Well, tell you what. Find a successful shareware author (which I will arbitrarily define as "someone making their sole income from selling shareware that they develop") who will rebut each point, and perhaps I'll listen -- to them.

      As for He should have called it, "Lazy and Ignorant Shareware Authors vs Motivated and Knowledgeable Shareware Authors. ... Well, yes. The whole article deals with how to move from the former to the latter.

      Not all amateurs are lazy and mercurial. Not all "professionals" are s

    • Amateur works are frequently (but not always) constructed more poorly than professional works, but there are certainly exceptions.

      Well, maybe my perception is different because I'm a Mac user, but I generally find it's the other way around. Proprietary software is much more likely to be a buggy half-assed port of a Windows application, and is much more likely to be dropped by the maker within a year of your buying it.

      Excluding games, I've bought more shareware on the Mac than I've bought commercial so

    • You seem all hung up on the terms amateur and professional. I took them simply to mean "amateurish" and "demonstrating mastery", and I think he did a great job of contrasting the two ends of the continuum.

      I'm grateful for the advice.

      • If I'm "hung up" on the terms it is because they are what he indicated he was describing. If he had meant "amateurish" and "demonstrating mastery" then that really would have been the beginning and the end of the comparison.

        After all, that amounts to asking what could possibly be the difference between having moderate skill and great skill?

        Hmmm, perhaps the answer would be more skill.

        But we are not talking about the division between some sort of minor and major leagues of shareware software development.

  • umm nah (Score:5, Funny)

    by toddhunter ( 659837 ) on Thursday June 05, 2003 @02:30AM (#6121636)
    The answer can be found by exploring the difference in mindsets between both groups

    The answer can be found by realising that some people release great software and do well, and others release crap software and do badly.

  • Self-Referential (Score:4, Interesting)

    by robbway ( 200983 ) on Thursday June 05, 2003 @06:11AM (#6122218) Journal
    It should be noted that Mr. Pavlina only cites his own experience in the article. Since I don't have a business or economics background, I couldn't begin to agree or disagree on his points. However, his lack of comparative figures, that is, citing other shareware successes and failures based on his criteria, makes his process more of an opinion than a thesis. I'd be negligent if I based my entire shareware concept on this. However, it is thought-provoking. This looks like a great concept for an series of Slashdot interviews of shareware professionals, whom I will classify as those who sell their own shareware as their primary source of income.
    • It should also be noted that Steve served as the vice president and then the president of the ASP for several years. So although he doesn't explicitly cite other shareware developers' experiences in this article, everything Steve writes is a result of the collective experiences he's shared with numerous successful shareware developers over the years, not just his own.

  • A better question is (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Ratbert42 ( 452340 ) on Thursday June 05, 2003 @07:30AM (#6122553)
    When did time-limited demos and crippled products become "shareware?"
    • Although the parent comment comes off as a troll a bit, the question is actually an interesting one I think. Sometime during the last decade there has been a shift in what we consider shareware. It is now pretty commonplace to move beyond simple nag screens in shareware - especially games.

      The definition of shareware as per the ASP [asp-shareware.org] is "a marketing method, not a type of software or even strictly just a distribution method." So you could say that although there has been a shift to more than nag screens, th
    • As a rough estimate based on no real facts, I would guess 1996. I remember during the successful launch of Escape Velocity there was a lot of talk of the sell-through rates of time-limited or functionally impared shareware vs. perfectly functional shareware.

      Unfortunately, if you want to increase your overall sales significantly, you must provide value to the customer above and beyond the simple emotional satisfaction of "doing the right thing." Disabling the product after a length of time is a popular ta
      • (Which led me to think, "bite the troll that feeds you?" although I am in no way implying you're a troll...)
        Disabling the product after a length of time is a popular tactic with Windows Shareware authors, though not so much on the Mac where it is easier to bypass.
        Why is it easier to bypass time limits on a Mac?

        • Re:Okay, I'll bite... (Score:3, Interesting)

          by @madeus ( 24818 )
          It's tended (particulary in the past) to be easy to modify reasorce application forks to get around this sort of thing - using Apple's own freely downloadable reasource editing tool, ResEdit (or using a similar 3rd party reasource editing tool).

          Years ago I once took a game demo off a cover disk (some sort of Global-Thermonuclear-Warfare-WWIII-type-stragegy sim) and made it into the full version by just tweaking around in a reasource editor, enabling hidden and disabled menus and options (so you could save

  • A decent article (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Sherloqq ( 577391 ) on Thursday June 05, 2003 @08:01AM (#6122805)
    And I kind of agree with the title, too. To me, a professional is someone who not only knows a lot something, but also uses that knowledge to earn a living (e.g. a pro photographer). An amateur is a person, who does something as a hobby, as pointed out by another poster. IMHO, a shareware developer, who fits the "amateur" characteristics described by the article's author, will have a hard time earning much from their work, and most likely not enough to sustain themselves, thus falling into the amateur bin (ok ok, let's call it the "unsuccessful pro" bin, if it makes you feel better).

    That issue aside, I think the author has hit a lot of nails on the head there. When I compare myself and my lofty business ideas with those of my brother-in-law, then look at where I am and where he is, there is no doubt which one of us is a pro. What amateur like me must realize is that there is a way to become pro, and Steve Pavlina outlines the stepping stones to get us on our way. Focus. Drive. Determination. Perserverance. Diversity. Research. Goals. Deadlines. Discipline. All those good things that we really don't like to do unless absolutely necessary. Try it. Find a role model. You'll see. I already have mine.
  • Does anybody have an educated guess about the amount of computer enthusiasts whow rite shareware versus the "professionals"?

    Somehow I've never really thought of "professional" shareware developing as a means of living. I mean, if you are truly "professional", you probably write uhm.. "professional" software. Then again, it does make some sense to me. I think that this is one of the ways some former "non-professional" shareware programmers evolve into renowned, "professional" software companies.
    greetin
  • Am I the only person who found this deeply insulting. It basically seems to say that either you are a professional marketer, or some kind of brain-dead paranoid retard... Isn't is possible to write good software and have it sell without huge amounts of thought about marketing (which is what seems to have happened with mIRC for example)

    • Re:Most insulting article ever (Score:4, Insightful)

      by CKW ( 409971 ) on Thursday June 05, 2003 @11:09AM (#6124606) Journal
      I found the article highly useful as a personal development tool - to illuminate the things in life I could do differently to better my life - and I'm speaking IN GENERAL.

      You sound like you assumed that the author was placing you in the one of two groups. He's in all probability not an a**h*le, so that assumption simply can't be right.

      Place yourself in his shoes. He wants to list the things a person *could* do to increase their odds of eventually succeeding, and as an excellent counterpoint list the opposite, the things that will decrease your odds of succeeding.

      Just because he's seperated it up into these two camps, doesn't mean he's accusing you or anyone else who isn't "successful" of being a brain-dead paranoid retard with *all* of those listed failings. But he is trying to list some of the things you could do to increase your chances of success.

      >Isn't is possible to write good software and have it sell without huge amounts of thought about marketing

      Sure, it could happen. If you want to leave things to chance and to whatever random assortment of luck and personal attributes you've been handed in life - you can do that.

      But if you want some ideas to try and exceed whatever random thing happens to your effort, there they are. Pick and choose whatever bits you think might help you.
    • You'd have to be a "brain-dead paranoid retard" not to realize the author was deliberately showing the two extremes for rhetorical purposes, and explicitly disclaimed at the end the idea that all people are one or the other, but instead explicitly stated it's a continuum.

      >:-) (but about 25% serious.... read, people, read!)
    • Perhaps if you read the article more closely, you will see a number of things:
      1) He says that the amateur mentality results in people who feel threatened or insulted when being told how they could improve themselves. Rather than trying to improve themselves, they feel they need to correct other's criticisms. Seems we know what camp you would be in, except that
      2) he says at the end of the article that it is not evenly split. There is a wide range of types of people between the two mentalities. So your com

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