Re: Cnet Article on Abandonware

[Eric Shepherd <sheppy@sheppyware.net>]

in article 01c00535$9b8a1fa0$b4e08dce@paulrsm, Paul R. Santa-Maria at
paulrsm@ameritech.net wrote on 8/13/00 7:52 AM:

> Minor quibble.  Before DOOM, ID Software used the same technique
> with their Commander Keen and Wolfenstein 3D games.  I'd say that
> Wolfenstein 3D created the demand for DOOM, which created the
> demand for Quake, Duke Nukem 3D, Heretic...

Yes, that's true.  However, DOOM was the most successful example of this at
the time; Wolfenstein 3D and Commander Keen came before the Internet was a
major player in distribution of software.  DOOM came during the sudden
explosion of people joining the Internet, so that I would guess that more
people downloaded copies of the shareware DOOM than bought it on disk.

Certainly more people played the shareware version of DOOM than the First
Encounter of Wolfenstein 3D.

At any rate, id Software pioneered the "shareware demo as sales hook" era of
computer gaming, and it has worked marvelously well for them.


-- 
Eric Shepherd
Editor
A2Central.com