I'm currently working on a bowling game, and it's becoming apparent that - in order to do it justice - it's going to be too big for a downloadable version to be practical. I mean people do have downloadable games that 60mb, but anything over 10mb and you'd pretty much have to do it all yourself. None of the typical publishers are going to touch it.

So really, I'm wondering how much of a mistake, how much of a loss, it is to make a CD-only game. I'm talking generally, and not distinguishing between a single budget retail publisher, several non-exclusive national retail publishers or publishing it myself via some burn-on-demand company, or a combination of the last two. I'm just talking about not having a downloadable version at all. How much of a loss is it and is it a mistake?

It's kinda sorta relevant how the game looks, so here's a couple of screenshots to give you an idea why it'll be difficult to make a download version and how the screenshots might look on the back of a retail box ;)

http://members.aol.com/sybixsus/bowling1.jpg
http://members.aol.com/sybixsus/bowling4.jpg

You're not the only one. There are few other people here too who are contemplating going CD-only.

We talked about some of the possible pros and cons a couple of months ago here: http://www.dexterity.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=2307

I'd say if you're going CD-only at least try to have a demo that has a decent file size. Personally I believe people will buy Indie games with large file sizes or on CD-only if they really like the game. So I don't subscribe to the 5MB rule. But I do think they're less likely to download a big demo from an Indie, especially if they're unknown. So it'd probably be a good idea to get the demo as small as possible, then offer the full version on CD.

As for me, I'm definitely having a CD version and going to heavily emphasize it. Though I haven't decided if we're going to be strictly CD-only with no electronic download available or have both options.

I have a game with a 70MB full version. I used to only offer CDs, no downloads. Then, COMPLETELY ON MY OWN WITHOUT ANY INPUT FROM ANYONE ELSE, I came up with the completely my own idea to also offer them as downloads, since it's no extra work, and each sale that comes as a download earns me the same money as a CD, but means way less work on my part. It's a win-win! And my sales increased about 40-50% immediately, and a lot of the former CD sales turned into download sales, meaning less work for those. I sell about 60% downloads on average. Apparently lots of people would rather buy downloads!

The moral of this story (in which I came up with my own original idea and didn't get it from anybody else) is simple: adding a download option is trivial, and it increases sales. Even if you think people wouldn't want downloads of something like you're selling, no sense not making it available for the ones that do! I think I sell more CDs than downloads of my 70MB game, but not by much, and I even have a javascript alert when you try to order the download, warning you away from it. Sure it'll cost you bandwidth, but bandwidth is cheaper than shipping!

Hehe good point.

One of the few reasons I thought about going CD-only is that with the CD-version I was planning to have minimal copy protection, but if I had a downloadable then I'd have to invest more time in developing better copy protection.

But the large file size of the downloadble might be its own copy protection method because most crackers / pirates don't like hosting huge files. So that will limit it to peer2peer trading and that's not always very reliable.

Originally posted by Chris_Evans
But the large file size of the downloadble might be its own copy protection method because most crackers / pirates don't like hosting huge files. So that will limit it to peer2peer trading and that's not always very reliable.

They wouldn't be hosting the entire cracked 70MB download as you expect or hope. They would be hosting just the crack to bypass your protection. That crack will not be big at all (depending on the type of protection you have). It might be an obstacle for them to download your 70MB file to begin with, but if your game sells well, they'll do it. It doesn't take long to download a file that size with a fast connection. I am sure most crackers don't use modems any more.

They wouldn't be hosting the entire cracked 70MB download as you expect or hope. They would be hosting just the crack to bypass your protection.

That's fine and all, but I'm planning for the demo to be separate from the full version. The demo would only contain a small portion of the game, there's nothing to unlock. If you want the full version, you will still have to download it seperately somewhere. If the crack sites only host the actual crack, then that means the user still has to find the full version somewhere. Either on a P2P network or use a stolen credit card to get it from my site.

I think that's probably enough of a hassle to greatly hinder the casual pirate. I'm not saying the large file size will prevent it from being cracked. I'm saying having a seperate large file size will make it hard for the cracked or unauthorized full version to be distributed.

Thanks for the information, guys.

I hate when i come back to a thread and realise there were lots of things I should have mentioned but didn't.

Yes, it will be possible to release a small demo. The demo only needs one character, one alley, one song ( if that ) and I'm sure I can keep the demo size down quite low.

Trial cracking won't be an issue for me because, like Chris, I believe in feature limitting my games so that the demo is missing huge amounts of media from the full version. They'll have to go the whole hog and warez the whole game, which will happen if it goes cd only anyway.

I should also have mentioned that I wasn't suggesting being stubborn and refusing to offer a download version. Just that it would be something I would only offer personally through ShareIt or PayPal, because the typical shareware publishers won't be interested.

I'll have a look at that other thread you pointed me to, Chris, thanks for that.

I really dont see why your game should be 70MB at all. The screenshots are ok, but we arent talking Unreal Tournament quality visuals here. I bet you can get that game down to 10-15 meg at most.
There are all kinds of trciks you can do to achieve this, they have been discussed on here many times.

(random comment) You might want to change your girlie's color scheme... she looks startlingly similar to the girl from all the screenshots of Anime Tennis Babes. :)

Originally posted by papillon
(random comment) You might want to change your girlie's color scheme... she looks startlingly similar to the girl from all the screenshots of Anime Tennis Babes. :)

(random reply) That's because this is the sequel, Anime Bowling Babes, featuring the same characters ( albeit with much higher polycounts, softskin skeleton and motion captured animation this time. )

Ahhh. I couldn't remember who made that game and thought you might have just picked up the same model. :)

Originally posted by Hamumu
I have a game with a 70MB full version. I used to only offer CDs, no downloads. Then, COMPLETELY ON MY OWN WITHOUT ANY INPUT FROM ANYONE ELSE, I came up with the completely my own idea to also offer them as downloads, since it's no extra work, and each sale that comes as a download earns me the same money as a CD, but means way less work on my part. It's a win-win! And my sales increased about 40-50% immediately, and a lot of the former CD sales turned into download sales, meaning less work for those. I sell about 60% downloads on average. Apparently lots of people would rather buy downloads!

The moral of this story (in which I came up with my own original idea and didn't get it from anybody else) is simple: adding a download option is trivial, and it increases sales. Even if you think people wouldn't want downloads of something like you're selling, no sense not making it available for the ones that do! I think I sell more CDs than downloads of my 70MB game, but not by much, and I even have a javascript alert when you try to order the download, warning you away from it. Sure it'll cost you bandwidth, but bandwidth is cheaper than shipping!

Wow! Good thing you came up with this idea completely on your own without any input from anyone else or otherwise the kickbacks from an immediate increase of 50% in sales would probably amount to a substantial check to whomever that nonexistant person was every month.

- S