Jesster is doing well with his game Smuggler. And that is a strategy game. I think you need to go for the high quality. Because, there are Arcade games like DX Ball2 who sells very well. But they are of extremely high quality. So it isn't true that puzzle games got the best oppurtunity to sell as shareware. But this question is interesting, why can Jesster live very well from the earnings and Cliffski, also target at strategy games, not?

Is it the quality of the demo gameplay, art, etc?
Bad marketing, not a friendly orderpage/website, little submissions to download sites, reviews, etc?
I don't have a clue.

Why can longbow live from DX Ball2 and most developers who made a breakout game not. Is it really true in that case that puzzle games is the best way to go.

I dont know much about the marketing of Breakout-style games.
But I am sure that the difference between many successful games
(DX-Ball among them) and those unsuccessful ones, is their High
quality.

DX-Ball is FUN, and its way more fun because it looks (in
comparison to other games) much more stable, simplistic,
great graphics & sfx (both are simple but amazing).

Actually, from looking around Dexterity's forum members products
and I was mostly impressed by Mike Boeh's "Best Friends" quality.
Like DX-Ball, the arcade game is filled with these kind of games,
only that you can obviously see that "Best Friends" has great
graphics & smooth game animation, and sfx accordingly which i'm sure that the game was less entertaining if it was less then that.

Also, not once, I've noticed some sherware products I
downloaded from sharware sites that seemed uncompleted in
such way that you can see that the game wasnt meant to be
a great game, but a project that was published once it was
defined as "working".

I think that you can apply ideas of the last Steve's article here. It is the multiplicative nature of the success from the perspective of its underlying factors that makes DX Ball 2 being a hit. I think that guys at LDA did a great job at combining these factors together while keeping them at very high level each.

But definitely they didn't do that from the very first attempt. What is interesting I have a few friends that are hard-core DX Ball 1 players and they find DX Ball 2 somehow less entertaining. I can't catch it exactly but I myself feel it a bit less dynamic and challenging maybe. But what is more important, everyone, who I knew was playing DX Ball and can be described as a casual gamer, liked DX Ball 2 and passed on DX Ball 1 as it never existed. As I remember they were excited about additional features like big ball, etc. Also they found DX Ball 2 easier to play because you had finer control over the bouncing angles.

That is what frightens me in some way. I would have never figured DX Ball 2 being better then DX Ball 1 by myself. So LDA did its best to figure this out and implement.

Remember also that you don't have to be 10x better than the competition to get 10x their sales. Being just 10% better than the also-rans may be enough to give you 10x their sales.

The horse that wins the race by a nose gets all the first-place prize money.

@Gil: thanks for the nice words :)

I think bstone is right, it owes a lot of its success to the original DX-Ball, which was a great game. And DX-Ball owes a lot of its success to Megaball on the Amiga, from which it was derived :-)

Mike Welch and I worked in cubes next to each other at a commercial game company, we have been friends for 10 years. He has a very good knack for making games that have a very broad appeal :-)

Sadly, another factor that gave DX-Ball 2 a lot of publicity was the death of its author, Seumas. He was a really nice kid.

I think of Smugglers 2 as a chocolate rich desert. In S2 gratification is almost instant, failure is unlikely and the gameplay easy and accessible to all.

S1 worked just on this principle, as did the infamous Dope Wars (five millions downloads on cnet - makes me wonder about the conversion rate). S2 was a more complex game (offering the more dedicated player chances to improve his play) but it still stayed simple enough for a casual player to make good progress his first time through the game.

So, do your best to spoil your players.

Has anyone thoughts on the sellability of classic board games like Othello or Checkers?

Originally posted by Diodor
Has anyone thoughts on the sellability of classic board games like Othello or Checkers?

Hi,

I know most people like board games like Mahjong. Dope wars indeed is downloaded many times on download.com. Very incredible download counts. I also downloaded but I am not really interested in it. Take a loot at there website, it's very nice designed.

I liked Dope Wars and played it quite a bit. It had a somewhat absurd but very funny "look ma, I'm selling heroin" feeling to it.

I wouldn't place Mahjong in the same category as Othello or Checkers. It is more of a solitaire kind of game, not a thought demanding mind game.

@Mike: np, u've earned it.

you cant say that S1&2&Dopewars had the same market as
puzzle games.

They differ in great game-concept&originality&gameplay&interest
from other Othello&Checkers

look at gamasutra's Fourteen forms of fun ( http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20011012/garneau_01.htm ) ,
i would say that the most downloaded ones apper to excel in few
or most of the areas this article covers.