Ok, after thinking hard about this over Christmas I have decided today to stop doing Shareware. Much as I love to make games, it's not worth the stress and workload involved.

I know a few very successful shareware authors, but I think the majority struggle to get any rewards for their hard work and dedication.

So, within 2 months Reflected Games will shut down and I will go back to doing free hobbyist games. I'll also have to try to work out what I want to do for a career I guess!

However, once I am back doing free stuff:

First on my list, is a completely new version of Chaos (less of a faithful port like Chaos Funk and more of a sequel). Open Source, Open Layer powered and hopefully Online (with people's help).

Wish me luck!
Rich.

Sad to hear that things didn't go as you wanted them to in the shareware business. I'm looking forward to your fan sequel to Chaos though! Good luck!

Thanks for the kind words all..

X-G: You're doing another version too? A bit of a coincidence there.

Obviously commisserations. But I take it all titles currently released as shareware will remain shareware?

Ooohh, can I help? As can now be seen on my members.allegro.cc site (esp "Directionless Pointers") I have now attempted versions of Chaos five times! Even if it's just something menial I'd like to try and help. I've unibstructively contributed snippets to loads of other people's projects, including Elite:TNK and the 3d Xeno remake so I promise I wouldn't get under your feet.

Is this a word!

There you go with that "Some people don't own WoW" thing again. Pfff, even children in 3rd world countries own a copy of WoW.

Per this site there were 4 million subscribers as of the 30th August last year - the most recent statistic I can find. That's less than the number of Apple Macintoshes sold in the last year (source), and therefore a very small proportion of the total installed computer base. Indeed it is probably even a small proportion of the total Mac installed computer base, and us Apple computer users aren't exactly known for being in the sales volume majority. If the decision was being made purely on numbers I certainly wouldn't write solely for OS X.

It's Open Source. You change it.

I don't.

I don't know what to say, I feel a bit sad for you, however, you did great games, and I became a fan of your creation articles, it's a source of motivation for me.
Well, I'll be waiting for your new projects, don't stay away from programming, perhaps from a different point of view you will find the right way to express your talent.:)

Yes, back on topic here. Hard work and dedication doesn't make you rich. I doubt you were expecting to get rich, but I'm sure you would have liked to at least support yourself somewhat with shareware.

You'll get far more joy out of just releasing games for fun in your free time, especially if you can collaborate with others. For example, my Rebels & Lords speedhack game is simple and obviously unsellable. I could work very hard to make it worth $10, and maybe end up selling it to 50 random people. But instead, I'd rather play it in its current form with friends & family. It's enough to give me motivation here and there to add a few features.

Maybe you'll get lucky and be able to sell your game to 5,000 people at a $10 markup. Yeah, you made $50,000 - but if you spent more than a year of 40-hour work weeks on it, you've not made much money in relation to a normal programming job.

Now, I'd probably make shareware games if I could bring home $50,000 a year doing it. "Only" needing to sell to 5,000 people sounds doable. This is where people make the mistake. They stop thinking there. What you need to keep in mind is that there are thousands of other people just like you! Maybe not all are doing shareware, but that doesn't matter. A site as small as this one has about 300 active members during a single week. Now we are looking at 300 * 5,000 people needed to support us programmers. That's 1.5 million people buying our games. That's why shareware doesn't work.

I'm aware of the myth that if you "just have three or four games" then you'll make it on the combined sales. So now what you are saying is that you need to work four jobs just to make an income. No thanks, I'll keep my eight hour day job. Even if it did work, that would mean each of us were cranking out four games a year. So now we've got 1,200 shareware games among us all. I think it sounds like now you might need about eight games per person to have a chance.

It takes a very special person to be able to pull it off. You've got to be able to reach a unique audience of people who aren't being bombarded with hundreds of other shareware games. And you've obviously got to be able to make a game that stands above the other games. Even if you have a game that is worth $10, you can be sure that there are at least one hundred other ones out there that are just as fun, yet they are free.

So if you are in it for the money, go elsewhere. You can make money a whole lot easier doing just about anything else. But if you do find yourself fortunate enough to end up with a sizable fan base (at least 50,000 people) doing freeware, then it might be worth it to give it a try. (In the very least you could ask for donations or tips.) But if you are looking at starting from the ground up as a shareware developer, just forget about it.

Can't you keep the site and games you currently have there up?
I mean, you have those shareware games and the site, why do away with that if it doesn't take much to keep around?

Anyway, good luck Richard

Heh, Chaos Funk is IMO the best game you've done.
You should do like that ol' swedish team did with Fasttracker 2, release it so anyone can run it for free and put a note somewhere telling the user he would feel better if he paid for it.