Hi Dexterity crew, especially Steve.

I've been reading lately your earlier comments regarding how much money this online publishing of puzzle games is making you and I find the figures quoted by you "puffed up" or exaggerated. I think this is understandable in business and quite common as you want to entice more developers to submit games and to appear extremely successful -- but there is a limit if you want to seem credible.

I have contact with some others like me who have actually went out and specifically contacted the developers of the games featured on your website with the question "Are you making a living off your games?" -- they all replied NO. It is hard to fathom how collective commissions of all these games earns you 10,000 to 20, 000 USD a year.

I'm all for indies, I am one myself, and am actually interested in your proposed book on "making it" as an indie, but I question sincerely what your definition of "online success" is and those figures you quote associated with that as most of your games developers aren't making enough to live off. Furthermore, I also feel the online "goldmine" myth shouldn't be necessarily perpetrated as it is not realistic and only damages a realistic perspective on what indies have to do and focus upon to grow their passion for games into a viable way to support themselves.

Thanks for clearing this up. Notwithstanding, any way for you to substantiate your figures would be great and encouraging for us small developers and would-be online publishers!

Being realistic is more important then mere puffs resulting in false hope IMHO.

Mogul.

I believe the figures Dexterity promises are reasonable (given that they get to choose between many games and have very good marketing).

I wonder though, do all products published here fare well? What are the lowest royalties a developer gets from a single product? (not including the latest games which are still being marketed or the oldest - Pirate's Plunder and Fortune Raiders)

I hope this isn't too intrusive a question, particularly since I don't ask for the income of a specific product.

No deception was intended. I think it would help if I explain in more detail how our business model works. I assume you're referring to the "earn $1k-10k per month" promotion in our developer section.

First of all, be sure to read our entire Developer FAQ, so you understand how our business model works. I think anyone who does this should get a pretty sense of how everything works.

In particular, the $1k-10k per month expectation is certainly not for every game. It's only for Platinum-deal games that have built up solid distribution, and most of the developers whose games we've published thus far have not opted for Platinum deals. See this page of our FAQ for details:
http://www.dexterity.com/developer/faq-deal-types.htm

For instance, that page shows that our expectation for Silver (nonexclusive) deals is only $100 - $3000 per month. Silver games are only promoted on our own site and newsletter, so you won't see us promoting them off-site anywhere. Silver deals are popular with developers who just want to use us as a reseller to generate a small extra stream of cash. This isn't something anyone could live off of.

Also, licensing revenue is part of the expectation for Platinum deals. It's been too soon to secure any 3rd-party licensing deals for most of our Platinum games yet, so this revenue is nonexistent for most developers. None of our Dweep licensing deals closed until the game had already been out for a year.

Secondly, it takes a good 6-12 months to build up solid distribution for each game, which includes getting games placed on compilation CD-ROMs. In the past 6 months our product line went from 6 games to 17 games, and most of the Platinum games were released late in the year, so they're still very early in building distribution. Dweep, for instance, made only $500 in its first month. So for all the games we've released this year, we're not far enough "into the long run" that I would expect any of the games to have hit their stride yet. Our publishing system is not one that makes tons of money in the first 3 months of sales; that's how retail works. If you publish a game with us, you can expect to make most of your money after the first year of sales. When we publish a game, we think in terms of building a solid cashflow that will last for 5 years, but it might take a good 6-12 months to get that cash flowing smoothly from multiple sources.

Thirdly, there is a huge spread between games in terms of sales. Some games' sales are off to a great start and look very promising. Some are selling way below our expectations. See this FAQ page for details:
http://www.dexterity.com/developer/faq-best-sellers.htm

Fourthly, optimization is ongoing. Once a game has been selling for a while, we typically go back to each developer and offer them suggestions for improving the conversion rate. We have a couple updated games in QA right now. Some developers are eager to do this. Others don't want to bother because they've moved onto something new.

Fifthly, our flexibility is limited by the developer's goals for their game. If a developer wants to work closely with us to really optimize their game's sales after the initial launch, that helps a lot. Some developers, however, aren't willing to take those extra steps; once the game launches, they just want to move onto something else. So if we say, "We think we can increase your conversion rate if you do X, Y, and Z," it's up to the developer to decide if they want to pursue that.

So the "$1k-10K" per month promotion is geared towards those developers who want a long-term exclusive publisher-as-partner relationship. Most of the developers who've published their games with us so far aren't looking for this type of relationship, for various reasons. Basically, the developer looking for a long-term multi-release relationship is our ideal partner, so that's who we're trying to attract. There will continue to be many developers who just want to use as a one of many resellers to generate an extra trickle of income, but I wouldn't expect them to be able to live off the income we generate for them.

I am concerned that something on our web site is misleading though. It's certainly not my intent to make false promises about. Rather, my goal was to put up a headline that attracts our ideal developer partners (i.e. those who are seeking to commit to a long-term relationship and who do want to make a full-time living off the royalties we generate). In the long run I think it will be to our best advantage to focus our energies on these types of developers rather than to forge looser, more casual ties with larger numbers of developers. The loose ties are important for us now as we build distribution, but in the long run we're aiming to work with developers who want to build multi-release franchises with us.

So do I still believe that it's reasonable for a developer who commits to a close partnership with us long-term to expect to be making $1k-$10k per month in royalties per Platinum game after the first 6-12 months of sales? Yes, I do. Does this mean I believe everyone who publishes a game with us will make that much? No, definitely not.

We've published 11 games this year, and we've learned something new from every release. We cannot guarantee that every developer will make $1k-10k per month because we don't have that level of control. The biggest factor in whether or not the game will sell well is still the quality of the game itself. Retail publishers can't seem to guarantee a hit either. Because we don't have total control, some of the games we release will miss their mark. This is inevitable, no matter how big we get.

So what happens with the games that bomb? We and the developer will learn from our mistakes and try again, either together or separately.

I think I'll spend some time reviewing the developer section of our web site and our FAQ to help to clarify all of this better. I am concerned that parts of it might be misinterpreted if people don't read the entire FAQ (which is getting fairly long now). If you have any suggestions for what we can do to improve it, please let me know. I want to be as straightforward and direct as possible without misleading anyone about what to expect.

I should also mention that the lower limit to how badly a game will do if it bombs is pretty low. A game that misses its mark could very well see a royalty check of only $20 in a month. We lose a lot of money when a game bombs, not just from the costs of QA and launch marketing, but also from the missed opportunity of potentially publishing a winner in its place.

We've taken some calculated risks this year in publishing a variety of games. Some have panned out; others haven't. No matter how hard we try, we can't force a game to sell well if players simply don't want it. Our evaluation criteria have continued to evolve based on seeing what sells well and what doesn't. So we hope to improve our odds of publishing a hit as time goes by.

I re-read your original post, so I'm not sure if I addressed the original point or not. We're a private company, so we don't publish financial data publicly -- I figured you were referring to the $1k-10k per month promotion as being potentially misleading. So I'm not sure what other sales figures you might be referring to. We certainly make more than $10-20K per year though. Our expenses alone (office, payroll, etc) are more than $10K per month, so we wouldn't be able to operate at our current level if we made anything less than that, and we aren't sinking into debt or pulling money from outside sources. Right now I'm trying to keep as much money as possible in the business to fuel its continued growth with some exceptions. For instance, from now until Xmas we're donating 10% of all sales to charity.

Steve,

I've never understood the resistance some people have displayed towards the "$1K-$10K" part of your pitch.

I'd offer advice...but...hell...I don't have a clue what the fuss is about.

You could remove the possible income ranges from your marketing material...but I doubt it would help anything. Probably just make some people feel smug that they had forced you to 'fess up or something.

No way to please everyone, I guess.

Happy Holidays! :)

-David

Hi Steve,

Thanks for clearing this up. It appears some "oral" or albeit typed representations in the forums seems to suggest or even guarantee a large income return for publishing with you, (you stating you make an excess of 20k a year implying others would make a large chunk of that if they were published here) which I think is a little risky because one can never know how really a game will be received. Also, your interesting book proposal seems to be pitched along the same lines.

The only one thing I find possibly questionable in your web documents: the statement to the effect "publish one or two games with us to secure a steady income source", which implies a guarantee that the game will sell enough to make a living.

I didn't mean really for you to prove your financial figures, just that you should substantiate your claims that this can lead to a alternate *primary* income source for developers... which is most certaintly not the case, and exceptions do not prove the rule IMHO. I personally would love to know this would make a living
for me as a developer and allow me to quit my day job, but the reality of this is remote.

Anyways, hopefully these points will help clear things up in your web documents.

Where does Steve directly say that publishing a game with Dexterity would provide enough income to live off of? "secure a steady income source" does not imply a specific amount, it means exactly what it means -- that the income will be steady. That could mean any amount of money, the only thing it implies is that it will be steady. I think you're reading too much into some of these statements. Though it's probably a good idea to mention that the type of publishing deal will affect the amount of income.

personally, I think that if a shareware developer wanted to make a living off of their games bad enough, they would just do the marketing them selves...jeff is a good example of a shareware developer who makes a living off of their games

Part of the problem is that it's hard to be precise in describing our publishing services because each developer wants something different from us.

Some developers just want to see a residual stream of income for a minimal amount of work on their part. Others tell us they're seriously interested in publishing multiple games with us over a period of years. Still others want something in between, willing to work closely with us up to a point while still actively selling the game on their own.

Every developer has different goals and needs.

As an example, if we inform a developer about a usability issue in their game that's likely hurting sales, one developer may have a new build uploaded to us within a few hours. Another developer may say, "I recognize that this is a problem, but this game isn't a priority for me anymore, so it isn't worth the effort required to fix it." And a third developer may say, "Making this change would alter my vision for the game, and I don't want to do that." And all of them may be right in doing what's best for them.

Since one of our goals is to keep indie developers independent, we don't dictate game changes. We make many suggestions that we feel will improve a game's sales, but the developer is free to decline. While our focus may be on trying to optimize sales for a particular game, this may not be the developer's primary goal. For some developers, maintaining a certain vision is more important than optimizing sales. For others, being able to consider a game "done" and moving onto the next project is more important.

I think one thing that we may not be communicating clearly enough is that we see creating a successful shareware hit as an iterative process. The initial launch is only one milestone. You get feedback from players about what they like and don't like, and you make revisions. For Dweep we've had many different versions released, each one with slight improvements... going from version 1.00 to 1.01 ... and so on up to 1.40. One of the revisions we did over a year ago made a significant improvement in the conversion rate, some of which I wrote about in this article:
http://www.dexterity.com/articles/registration-incentives.htm

One of our biggest challenges is that most of the developers submitting games to us have demos that need a lot of work, sometimes more than is practical to complete before the initial launch. So we have to balance the desire to get the game launched as soon as possible and start generating sales with the long-term optimization goals. It's a tough process.

I put out version 1.40 of Dweep Gold earlier this year. This is a game I began designing in late 1998 and released in June 1999. And I'm still tweaking it today. I may still be tweaking this game in 2005. I honestly expect I'll sell more copies of Dweep Gold in 2005 than I did this year. And this year it was our #1 seller.

It's hard to convey that shareware is not a get-rich-quick business. It's a very slow and steady iterative process, but as you keep making incremental changes (5% here, 7% here), they can add up to a substantial income.

Originally posted by Dragon Keeper
personally, I think that if a shareware developer wanted to make a living off of their games bad enough, they would just do the marketing them selves...jeff is a good example of a shareware developer who makes a living off of their games

Many developers do decide to do this. But starting from scratch is a lot of work, and also some developers don't want to learn marketing and sales. I can say from experience that it's tough to be a good game developer and a good saleperson/marketer all in one. Some developers use as a residual source of income while they do their own marketing as well. For instance, our Silver publishing option permits us to promote a game only on our own web site and to our newsletter and customers (no offsite marketing whatsoever).

Quote from Game Design: Secrets of the Sages second edition, interview with Jeff Vogel of Spiderweb Software:

"
...But can you make a lot of money going the shareware route? "Well, no", says Vogel. "You won't get rich...but you can make a very, very good living"...

...Just how much money can a shareware game yield? According to Vogel, his games that "look crude, have no Internet play, and have rough sounds" are making SIX FIGURES A YEAR. (emphasis mine)
"

I just thought it should be noted that Dexterity is not the first company to reveal that shareware can make good money. Nor is it misleading as he is stating the *potential* which assumes full participation and an eagerness on the part of the developer. This does not describe the VAST majority of shareware developers I've seen who simply plop a game out and then sit, wait and wonder why they aren't selling.

I'm not knocking anyone but I think a number of games may have been hampered by not going for a Platinum distribution since they don't seem to be doing much marketing on their own.

[A Personal Story]
Not to hijack this thread but I felt I should share this story regarding nay-sayers and people who don't seem to "get" marketing:

In 2001 I had created collection of textures called "Urban Jungle: Inner City Textures" - basically 300 high resolution textures of decaying inner city objects for use in games, 3D art, etc. (only $29.95 through TurboSquid.com, check my website for FREE SAMPLES - *yes, that's marketing*)

Before going ahead I did some market research and sent an e-mail to just about everyone who was publishing textures asking about their experiences - do they recommend their distributor? have they done well? etc. Unanimously I was told that the texture market had bottomed out and you can't compete with all of the free material on the net. I was told by extablished companies that they ship only a "handful" of some collections over a year, sometimes none at all. I braced myself for the worst and put my hopes in an on-line distributor that some had said were crooks "they take 50%, that's too high!".

For more than a year now I have consistently sold between $100 - $200 per month in textures (that's after the 50/50 royalty split). This may not sound like much until you consider how miniscule the texture market is compared to the games market and the condition I had been told the texture business was in.

It made me go back and look at what I seemed to have done right and what other's were missing.

The biggest mistake I saw was that no one seemed to have a grasp of marketing their products. The "strategies" ranged from doing nothing, posting a website with no samples and demanding cash, or one company (which I'm sure some of you have seen) who throws banner ads all over the net and pays outrageous amounts for print ads in poorly chosen magazines. Basically - no strategy.

With very little effort on my part I got mentions on some of the biggest CG websites (including CGChannel.com which I was so proud of I took a screenshot). That's a higher profile position than paid banners because everyone reads the news section but no one reads banners anymore - and it cost me nothing!

I also got placement on the cover CD of not one but two issues of 3D World Magazine and then a month later in two issues of it's Spanish counterpart Todo3d. I framed my contributor's copies :)

I've done better than I anticipated and better than many of my counterparts despite making some truly horrendous mistakes (including having the wrong web address and contact info in my readme file, and switching .com web addresses TWICE!)

If someone is actually disappointed with their sales they need to look internally and figure out what went wrong or contact their publisher for advice and then --follow that advice--. If you are doubting whether sales this high are possible then I think you underestimate the absolutely MASSIVE size of the PC games market. Not only are these numbers possible, I would go so far as to say they are *probable* for anyone with the right attitude.

Is the glass half-empty or half-full?

Sorry to intrude again...

If anyone is interested in learning marketing I recommend:

Guerrilla Marketing - by Jay Conrad Levinson

It's an older book that pretty much pre-dates the web but it covers creating a plan, wording ad copy and press releases. It really helps get you in the right frame of mind.

There's another much older book called "Elephants in Your Mailbox" or something like that. I don't know the author but I recall it had a lot of good information on wording ad copy.

If anyone knows of any good internet specific marketing books (ones that talk about free publicity and not the wasteful, million-dollar-bankrupt-in-6-months dot com model) I'd love to hear recommendations.

Thanks for your time.

This is going to be a long post :D

I make a nice living from shareware games- and I am good friends (in real life) with 2 others that do as well. One of these 2 guys makes a nice living from just one game. However, another one of my very closest friends has struggled quite a bit. His games are really good, but people just don't seem to want to download them. And I know dozens of others who fail to make a living at it- some with very wonderful games.

There's some luck involved, but mostly it's a person's knack for knowing what others will enjoy playing. The thing is, everyone looks at their own game and thinks "Everyone will want to buy this!" That's usually not the case. A friend of mine named Ola made a game that I love called "Marbles Deluxe". I purchased the rights to the game for a flat fee. For whatever reason, I misjudged how much people would like the game, and it has flopped. I haven't even recovered half of what I paid for it- and I didn't pay THAT much. I still love the game, but I made an error in thinking others would too. I have various theories as to why, but I will never really know for sure. My other 3 titles have all done well, and since they're all 3D, their potential market is much smaller too. But for whatever reason, people like them.

When you're the creator of the game, it's sometimes impossible to see its flaws and problems that will detract from its sales. The first game I made, "Bugatron", didn't sell well at all when I first released it. But I continued to modify and tweak it, and eventually it began to make money. It continues to do well, and it's my all time best selling game.

So can a game make 10k per month? Of course. But I think it's the exception, not the norm. At the time Steve began publishing games, his only frame of reference was Fitznik, which I suspect was making that much. It's a good game, and it fit in very nicely with dexterity's lineup- a perfect match.

I am friends with a few of the developers that dexterity is publishing. One is doing very bad, another is doing quite well. So it just depends on the game. Steve has years of experience in marketing shareware games, and many developers, myself included, have copied his methods. If you self published, you might be able to make more, but you would need years to tweak how you do it. Steve offers more of a sure thing- and instant gratification. So it's your call really. But if you think you can make a game, put it on download.com, and become rich, you're dreaming :)

Interesting you should mention Marbles Deluxe. That was one of the first games submitted to us for publishing consideration (before you bought it). I remember evaluating it myself. I was immediately impressed by the polish of the game. I thought the interface was very well designed, and the artwork and music was well above average. I was already thinking "this is a winner" when I started playing. Everything about the game seemed technically correct, but I just didn't find it fun. My intuition said no, so I passed on it. Whenever we have a difficult call to make about a new game submission, we always fall back on asking, "Is it really fun to play?" Usually this cuts through the fog and lets us see clearly. Another question I like to ask is, "When you look beyond the interface, the graphics, and the sounds, what's the core gameplay here?"

In the end I still find that fun is what sells above everything else. We've turned down some really gorgeous looking games because deep down, we just didn't feel they were entertaining enough. On the other hand, if we find a game that's very fun but that lacks polish, we'll often try to work with the developer to bring the polish up while preserving the core gameplay. Getting the core gameplay to be extremely fun is perhaps the most difficult and rare quality. Recognizing it is similar to being able to recognize a diamond in the rough.

When you come up with some really fun gameplay, it can act as a seed that can spawn many products and expansion packs. Look at what the core gameplay of games like Tetris, SimCity, and Wolfenstein 3D have spawned, for instance.

Yup...

I seem to be able to make games that are fun, but I am a poor judge as to the games of others :) That's why I have little interest in publishing- because I am a bit gunshy now.

Another good example of tweaking would be my new game, "Best Friends". After my initial release, I took a lot of the user feedback, and found that some boards were too hard to complete with the mouse- but others were tougher with the keyboard- which could lead to a frustrated gamer! The game still sells well, but could do so much better with some minor adjustments.

I am making the mouse boards more keyboard-friendly, and emphasizing the keyboard as the best controller choice in the menus. I can't say for sure, but I expect a huge increase in sales from this small change- just because it will make the game more fun and less frustrating.

Fun is what it's all about, too many game companies have forgotten this, especially AAA shelf games.

Originally posted by Mike Boeh
I am making the mouse boards more keyboard-friendly, and emphasizing the keyboard as the best controller choice in the menus. I can't say for sure, but I expect a huge increase in sales from this small change- just because it will make the game more fun and less frustrating.


This is perhaps the essence of what it takes to succeed in shareware. With a retail game which players often buy without trying the demo first and with an "all sales are final" policy, if the game isn't fun, it may still sell well with the right marketing behind it. But if people download the demo first and don't like it, then it doesn't matter how good your marketing is. The right tweak to your demo can permanently double or triple your sales, but sometimes the game has to be selling for a while before you can determine just what needs tweaking.

This is something I can certainly attest to. After a series of small, seemingly almost insignificant changes to Goobs, I have seen the registration rate rise from 0.5% to a much more healthy and steady 1.3% - 1.4%. Thats about a 170% increase. I can still think of at least a handful of other things to try, but I am wondering now just how much more of an increase could be gained. ie, would my time be better spent on other things than on making further changes that might only result in a minimal improvement in sales.

I guess that is one of the most interesting things about developing & selling online; there are always questions to be answered and lessons to be learned...


Oh, and Hello!

Hello! and welcome to the forums, there was an old thread entitled Role Call (http://www.dexterity.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=10) where people would introduce themselves and what they were working on. I looked at your site it's quite nice. Judging by your games I'd say your a pretty good fit for the crowd that frequents these forums ;) Welcome aboard.

The myth that you cannot make a lot of money with shareware games seems to have gotten really entrenched lately. I guess this myth is around because it is such a hard business to succeed in, and people assume that because someone put out a game and wasn't a millionaire within a few months, that nobody makes any money.

The fact is that you can make a lot of money selling shareware games if you make a good game and stick to it for a long period of time. What people just don't appreciate is that it takes *years* to become successful in this business. If someone releases a game and then expects to immediately make a living off it, well, they are going to be in for a rude shock. It doesn't work that way.

I started writing games in 1994, I didn't make a dime till 1995, and very few dimes then. It took until 1997 until I was making more than my programming job, and until 1998 until I was confortable enough in the income to quit. That's four years to get to a living.

But if you do it right, keep improving the product, the revenue just goes up and up. Now I make more on a really, really bad day than I made in all of 1995. In fact although I have now been in the business 8 years, in 2002 I've made 35% of all the income that I've ever made in the business. So to me it's clear that the really good money comes in the 8th year of release. (But last year I said the really good money comes in the 7th year of release. I was wrong.) I have every expectation that I'll be wrong again, and next year discover that you really start making the money in the 9th year.

It takes a long time to get this kind of growth going. The first few months of a game's life it is just starting to get out there. It takes a long time to build up an installed base of users. I just released a new game in October and it is still in its infancy, it's not making nearly what I expect it to make in coming years. Only now are people starting to run into the end of the trial period. And even when they do run into the end, it sometimes takes a long time for them to order. I am still getting an amazing number of orders from people who downloaded in 2001. I still get orders from people registering 1996 versions (by mail, with the printed out order form from 1996). If you have a good product, then every day more people download it, every day the installed base of users increases, and the number of people buying just inches up and up. But it takes what seems like forever in the beginning to get this going.

Steve only just got his growth going in 1999 with Dweep. That's only 3 years ago. As far as I'm concerned, Steve's still a wet behind the ears newcomer. He's not even close to his best sales years yet. But for all I know, I might not even be close to my best sales years yet either.

The shareware games market is totally different from the retail games market. In retail, you have to make your money very quickly. That's not how it works in shareware. Although actually, if the retail publishers had any patience at all they might be surprised at how much better they would do if they adopted a slow growth approach. My best selling retail game has been on the shelves since 1998, but in 2002 is selling better than almost all previous years combined. If they would just let their products grow up, retail game publishers might be stable, profitable businesses instead of the wildly cyclical, feast or famine businesses that they are. But I digress <g>.

Tom is absolutely right. I don't think I've even made half the money I'll eventually make from Dweep's sales. It does take time to build momentum, but it's a lot easier to keep the momentum going once you reach a certain point. Even if we stopped doing new marketing and releasing new games and did nothing but continue to fill orders and handle support, I'd imagine there would be 6-7 figures in income still flowing in over the years.

Although 1999 is where I first started getting serious about shareware marketing with Dweep, I've never had a job outside the gaming industry. I started out selling games in 1992, programming them in 1993, and then started Dexterity in 1994, originally focusing on retail game development. I released my first shareware game in 1995, and it's still selling today, even though it was originally written for Windows 3.1.

If I had known these old shareware games I wrote in the mid-1990s would still be selling today, I might have spent much more time on their initial development. :)

Release shareware is like being an intellectual property investor. Just as real estate investors can generate long-term passive income by buying real estate and leasing it, games can work the same way. Each game released is similar to a real estate investor buying a new piece of property and then renting it out.

Well.... I guess I'll chime in here. I've been at this about 4 years or so now and I'm up to game #3 with quite a few new releases in the wings. I manage to make a living off my games and I work with a partner who is also living off the money (as well as some artists receiving royalties). It's not great money, but we can get by if we're frugal. I would be pretty comfortable if I wasn't splitting the money up between two people. I think 4-5 yrs to go from zip to making a living is probably about right. It's not free money. You might get lucky with your first game and start making a lot right away but chances are it'll require quite a bit of hard work and experience from you first.

I figure by end of march to end of June next year we'll have Space Taxi 2, Drop Target, a new Mahjongg Game, and a new puzzle game (as yet unannounced but both playable) out and selling. I also expect those new titles to do better than the one's I've previously released. There are a number of reasons for this. Partly this has to do with learning as I go and making improvements to my games and my marketing. Also I continue to get more exposure as I release. Each game acting as a great ad for all the others.

If Steve were selling Aargon exclusively I believe, based on my own sales, that he'd be living up to the 1000-10000$ a month. Aargon sells far better today than the first version did 4 yrs ago and I KNOW that there are many improvements I could make to the game and the marketing that would improve it's sales again. Probably I'll opt to do the game improvements in the form of a sequel.

On the subject of Marbles Deluxe... I personally really liked the game. The presentation is slick, the music is great, and I enjoyed the puzzles. I was one of the people that registered it. It's too bad it isn't doing better but I suspect that it has something to do with the lack of variety in the puzzles. One puzzle feels pretty similar to the last one. Any particular puzzle is fun, but many puzzles starts to feel a little repetitive.

Wow, great posts everyone! This type of posts always makes me to really want to return to the shareware bussiness.

And of course you throw around insane numbers for an eastern-european slave. :) Even if I am a good software engineer in the GIS/telecom sector.

Well, keep up the good work!

I'm glad I could facilitate a very candid outpouring of fellow indies experiences on modern shareware ;). Just two questions for you who are "making a living":

- Are you "making a living" strictly on online sales or do you have alternate income from selling to distributors in the form of licenses/royalties?

-In the most _strict_ and _narrow_ sense of the phrase -- "making a living": you are truly covering costs inherent to living a daily life, paying for all your expenditures in game production, marketing, and have some residual money left over from _solely_ your games sales online?

Yeah I am going to take the plunge in January after all these reasonable descriptions of what the market is and what it entails from the individual developers who have come out of lurking and posted their $.02 :p

On the subject of Marbles Deluxe... I personally really liked the game. The presentation is slick, the music is great, and I enjoyed the puzzles. I was one of the people that registered it. It's too bad it isn't doing better but I suspect that it has something to do with the lack of variety in the puzzles. One puzzle feels pretty similar to the last one. Any particular puzzle is fun, but many puzzles starts to feel a little repetitive.

That could be true. I also think that my core of games are all action- and having a puzzle game doesn't attract the attention it could. It gets about a 0.7% conversion ratio, but it's really hard to get people to download it.


- Are you "making a living" strictly on online sales or do you have alternate income from selling to distributors in the form of licenses/royalties?

Yes, I am making a living solely on online sales. I have no retail deals or anything else, but I am considering expanding into these areas.



-In the most _strict_ and _narrow_ sense of the phrase -- "making a living": you are truly covering costs inherent to living a daily life, paying for all your expenditures in game production, marketing, and have some residual money left over from _solely_ your games sales online?

Yes


I am sure I do better than 99% of the other shareware game authors, but not as well as many others. My company is only two years old- so I really hope to be able to grow from here. However, my sales have not grown in the past 6 months.