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Mar
03
Apogee Included in PC Gamer's 49 Greatest Devs
No one gives a flying fuck about PC Gamer these days, especially when it hurts its own credibility when it falsely makes claims of having highly anticipated game previews every month in order to sell copies, but news is news. In its April 2009 issue, the magazine praises 3D Realms (AKA Apogee from 1987-1996) for starting up the shareware business:
Apogee: Episode 1: Birth of a Sales Technique
How long should a demo be? A level? Two levels? Apogee had different ideas. Starting with the concept of "shareware" (try before you buy), they pioneered the idea that a game could be successful by giving out anything up to a third of the full game for free, and encouraging gamers to pass on the disks. This was how Doom was first sold, not to mention Wolfenstein 3D, Duke Nukem 3D, and Traffic Department 2192, which we all remember fondly. Right? Unlike demos, these offered a full game experience from start to finish, and became the standard way for indie developers to get started. Sometimes it backfired when the demo experience was too satisfying to need the rest of the game. Descent suffered heavily from this, and the model was largely phased out when demos could be easily downloaded from the Internet.
How long should a demo be? A level? Two levels? Apogee had different ideas. Starting with the concept of "shareware" (try before you buy), they pioneered the idea that a game could be successful by giving out anything up to a third of the full game for free, and encouraging gamers to pass on the disks. This was how Doom was first sold, not to mention Wolfenstein 3D, Duke Nukem 3D, and Traffic Department 2192, which we all remember fondly. Right? Unlike demos, these offered a full game experience from start to finish, and became the standard way for indie developers to get started. Sometimes it backfired when the demo experience was too satisfying to need the rest of the game. Descent suffered heavily from this, and the model was largely phased out when demos could be easily downloaded from the Internet.
Speaking of Apogee sharewares, get them here after you've downloaded DOSBox.
