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Bofferbrauer2 on 12 July 2022
Mnementh said:
IcaroRibeiro said:

Nope, never heard of shareware, shown how much indies are willing to use it nowadays. For indie developers digital distribution is a Gods send, much easier to release and distributed their games worldwide. That's why so many games were never released outside some markets in past (many never released outside Japan)

I'm perplexed that you listed using big publishers (at risk of losing their legal rights) as a truly viable way to publishing. Seems something hard to hear if you're a small developer. 

From those games I know Doom and Wolfstein, which I'm surprised to discover to be indies. 

Well, that's the thing, the name indies didn't exist, Doom had a normal sized team for the times. Doom was released under the Shareware model, meaning the first of three episodes could everyone copy for free and include on discs on magazines (remember, internet wasn't a thing everyone had back then). For Doom the shareware version contained the first of three episodes. At the end you got this message:

That was pretty usual, about a third of the game as shareware for free copying, so that the game reached a lot of people and paying for the full version. This often involved mailing actual money bills inside a letter and getting a disk back the same way.

Doom was self-published (Doom 2 got another publisher and released without shareware as boxed version), but prior id games including Wolfenstein 3D had one of the biggest publishers at the time: Apogee Software. So was it any less "indie"? Well Apogee also released their games via the shareware model and Apogee at the time were like 10 people. So also indie after todays standards. Because pretty much every game was indie if we apply modern standards. Lot's of the "big" game publishers operated from the garage of private homes. Because gaming was so niche back then.

And that is why todays indies still have it better todays than all game devs in the 90s, as you noted. They can reach a lot of customers via digital distribution. Payment these days can be made via online payment options, not mailed in a letters as dollar bills.

And that's the point, almost everyone was what would these days be called an indie developer, and they cared about their product, not just how much money they could squeeze out of it.



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IcaroRibeiro on 12 July 2022
theRepublic said:
IcaroRibeiro said:

This is largely dependent on where you live and how successful was the game. Less successful games are pretty hard to find. 

The odds of a game being removed from digital stores are pretty much noexistintent. They getting out of print in other hand is the standard. It's in fact so common that right now the industry is living from remakes and remasters. It's a direct consequence of the absence of digital stores to preserve older games getting sold years later, with some upgrades in resolution and framers framerates they can be sold 60 USD again 

Digital is just much better to ensure a game can be found permanently... well at least in theory. Nintendo and Sony keep shutting down their stores and they should get more backslash for this. I mean... games purchased 15 years ago on Steam are still possible to find and download. Digital is not really the problem, the problem are console makers. It's not hard to understand why PC gaming is so superior.

Well this is just not true.  Just today I was looking for Marvel Ultimate Alliance 1 and 2 for PC.  Go ahead.  See if you can find them digitally anywhere.  You can't.  They have been removed from Steam and every other store.

Ubisoft has already delisting a couple of games, and more are coming very soon.

It can happens but it's rare. With physical it's the opposite, the standard is to not find the game to purchase if they go out of print. Only the popular ones are easy to find and even then you'd likely have to buy them second hand 

Remember not every country is huge for consoles like Japan where people throw their old games in the trash can on weekly basis 



theRepublic on 12 July 2022
IcaroRibeiro said:
theRepublic said:

Well this is just not true.  Just today I was looking for Marvel Ultimate Alliance 1 and 2 for PC.  Go ahead.  See if you can find them digitally anywhere.  You can't.  They have been removed from Steam and every other store.

Ubisoft has already delisting a couple of games, and more are coming very soon.

It can happens but it's rare. With physical it's the opposite, the standard is to not find the game to purchase if they go out of print. Only the popular ones are easy to find and even then you'd likely have to buy them second hand 

Remember not every country is huge for consoles like Japan where people throw their old games in the trash can on weekly basis 

It is less rare than you think.

https://delistedgames.com/



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Leynos on 12 July 2022
theRepublic said:
IcaroRibeiro said:

This is largely dependent on where you live and how successful was the game. Less successful games are pretty hard to find. 

The odds of a game being removed from digital stores are pretty much noexistintent. They getting out of print in other hand is the standard. It's in fact so common that right now the industry is living from remakes and remasters. It's a direct consequence of the absence of digital stores to preserve older games getting sold years later, with some upgrades in resolution and framers framerates they can be sold 60 USD again 

Digital is just much better to ensure a game can be found permanently... well at least in theory. Nintendo and Sony keep shutting down their stores and they should get more backslash for this. I mean... games purchased 15 years ago on Steam are still possible to find and download. Digital is not really the problem, the problem are console makers. It's not hard to understand why PC gaming is so superior.

Well this is just not true.  Just today I was looking for Marvel Ultimate Alliance 1 and 2 for PC.  Go ahead.  See if you can find them digitally anywhere.  You can't.  They have been removed from Steam and every other store.

Ubisoft has already delisting a couple of games, and more are coming very soon.

I remember in 2018 Agetec delisted all their Eshop games and when Digimon Cybersleuth Hackers memory came out the first game was delisted from PSN so the only way to get the first was to track down a physical copy.



Bite my shiny metal cockpit!

Chrkeller on 12 July 2022

I own over 100 digital games.... never had an issue.



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The_Liquid_Laser on 12 July 2022
IcaroRibeiro said:
Bofferbrauer2 said:

Ever heard of shareware? This is how most Indies sold their games before the Internet allowed to do it completely without physical media. Another way was to develop your game and then mail it to potential publishers, though they risked having to sell the rights to the games when doing so. Finally, several indies simply went and self-published the games, which in the late 90's was relatively easy (They needed just a jewelcase CD in most cases).

As for 90's indies becoming classics, Doom, Wolfenstein, Commander Keen, (well pretty much everything from id software at the time became a hit despite technically being an indie developer until their acquisition by Zenimax in 2009), One Must Fall, The Exile/Avernum series (Avernum was originally just an extended remake of Exile), Constructor/Mob Rule, ADOM, Nethack...

Nope, never heard of shareware, shown how much indies are willing to use it nowadays. For indie developers digital distribution is a Gods send, much easier to release and distributed their games worldwide. That's why so many games were never released outside some markets in past (many never released outside Japan)

I'm perplexed that you listed using big publishers (at risk of losing their legal rights) as a truly viable way to publishing. Seems something hard to hear if you're a small developer. 

From those games I know Doom and Wolfstein, which I'm surprised to discover to be indies. 

A lot of these terms didn't really exist at the time, but there were similar things going on.  No one used the term "indie", but Doom was self-published.  No one used the term "free-to-play", because they said "shareware" instead.  But shareware was a way to get a whole lot of people to try the game for free knowing that a small percentage would buy the game.  (Demo is not quite the right word either, because 3 levels of Doom is more than what most people get to play in a demo.)  We also didn't have the word "causal", but that was my impression of the people who really liked Doom and other FPS games.  My buddy kept going on about how great a game Doom was, but I didn't think the game was too special.  I realized he never went to the arcade and the only console game he ever played was Tetris.  That is why he liked Doom.  Damn casual.

Of course, I was just an ignorant "hardcore gamer" at the time.  Now I realize that gaming needs casual gamers.  That is often how new genres become popular.  I saw the same thing happen to MMOs with World of Warcraft.  It was a game for "filthy unwashed casuals".   But if casual gamers play games for long enough then they become hardcore.  And they often need to try a game for free or for cheap, because they aren't that invested in gaming to begin with.  That's how the FPS genre started.  Doom became popular, because a bunch of casuals tried the game for free.

Last edited by The_Liquid_Laser - on 12 July 2022

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Mnementh on 12 July 2022
The_Liquid_Laser said:
IcaroRibeiro said:

Nope, never heard of shareware, shown how much indies are willing to use it nowadays. For indie developers digital distribution is a Gods send, much easier to release and distributed their games worldwide. That's why so many games were never released outside some markets in past (many never released outside Japan)

I'm perplexed that you listed using big publishers (at risk of losing their legal rights) as a truly viable way to publishing. Seems something hard to hear if you're a small developer. 

From those games I know Doom and Wolfstein, which I'm surprised to discover to be indies. 

A lot of these terms didn't really exist at the time, but there were similar things going on.  No one used the term "indie", but Doom was self-published.  No one used the term "free-to-play", because they said "shareware" instead.  But shareware was a way to get a whole lot of people to try the game for free knowing that a small percentage would buy the game.  (Demo is not quite the right word either, because 3 levels of Doom is more than what most people get to play in a demo.)  We also didn't have the word "causal", but that was my impression of the people who really liked Doom and other FPS games.  My buddy kept going on about how great a game Doom was, but I didn't think the game was too special.  I realized he never went to the arcade and the only console game he ever played was Tetris.  That is why he liked Doom.  Damn casual.

Of course, I was just an ignorant "hardcore gamer" at the time.  Now I realize that gaming needs casual gamers.  That is often how new genres become popular.  I saw the same thing happen to MMOs with World of Warcraft.  It was a game for "filthy unwashed casuals".   But if casual gamers play games for long enough then they become hardcore.  And they often need to try a game for free or for cheap, because they aren't that invested in gaming to begin with.  That's how the FPS genre started.  Doom became popular, because a bunch of casuals tried the game for free.

I agree that the casuals eventually might turn into hardcore players and help establish new genres. The thing is, Doom wasn't. Because people waited after Wolfenstein 3D on Doom and discussed it online in usenet (early predecessor of internet forum) and the demos they had seen so far. That is core player habit. The anticipation for Doom was that big, that it spawned the "Smashing Pumpkins into Small Piles of putrid debris" meme, which eventually was acknowledged by the finally releasing Doom as a cheat code.

https://doom.fandom.com/wiki/SPISPOPD



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SvennoJ on 12 July 2022

A little hope for the future of gaming, dev fighting back against the BlockChain / Web3 push
https://www.eurogamer.net/dev-surprises-blockchain-sponsored-game-festival-with-talk-branding-nfts-a-nightmare

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1a8dMxaqyjWl4G6NO7mXF30CICHOJLkJxuP2Xrpky9rA/edit#slide=id.g34d3eed41a_0_45



IcaroRibeiro on 12 July 2022
theRepublic said:
IcaroRibeiro said:

It can happens but it's rare. With physical it's the opposite, the standard is to not find the game to purchase if they go out of print. Only the popular ones are easy to find and even then you'd likely have to buy them second hand 

Remember not every country is huge for consoles like Japan where people throw their old games in the trash can on weekly basis 

It is less rare than you think.

https://delistedgames.com/

Are you aware this list includes delisted games because other versions are released, right? (ex: Dragon Quest XI) Sometimes the game even gets a new launcher because of publishing issues (ex: Fall Guys). This is indeed a great website because it provides us the reason why the game was delisted

But I agree it can lead to shady practices, like Nintendo removing Tropical Freeze from Wii U store, so people needed buy they more expensive Switch version



Leynos on 12 July 2022
IcaroRibeiro said:
theRepublic said:

It is less rare than you think.

https://delistedgames.com/

Are you aware this list includes delisted games because other versions are released, right? (ex: Dragon Quest XI) Sometimes the game even gets a new launcher because of publishing issues (ex: Fall Guys). This is indeed a great website because it provides us the reason why the game was delisted

But I agree it can lead to shady practices, like Nintendo removing Tropical Freeze from Wii U store, so people needed buy they more expensive Switch version

Some people may want to play Vanilla DQXI because it looks better. DQXI-S is the Switch version ported where the Switch game was built from the ground up for Switch hardware.



Bite my shiny metal cockpit!