Quote: "Wow, it's amazing to think that only a few years ago Public Domain Libraries would actually SELL your free games on PD compilation disks - and what's more, we'd actively encourage it. It was quite a status symbol thing to have your game carried by all the top PD libraries."
Actually this still happens, certainly it's not common over here any more but i've descovered Spanish PD libraries selling my software as I sometimes browse Spanish web sites.
Also many of the freeware listings sites sell CD's to visitors of the games listed on the site.
For me though, especially these days with the internet so commonplace, I consider it somewhat of an afront to find my games selling and making somebody else money when i've given them away for free.
There are several companies that have permission to sell particular Banshee Studios games, I take that on the chin in exchange for the publicity they bring. Likewise there are several authorised magazine covers of Banshee games as listed on my teams web site.
I like getting into magazines because their distributorship is in most cases larger than my visitor base and it brings in new visitors to my site. However there are implications, serious implications, and this is why it is damn right irresponsible for magazines to put games on a cover disk without getting permission, I shall explain...
This month I was due to release Deathmatch iLANd, which i've actually ended up delaying a few weeks anyway - what would have happened if i'd released it this month:
My teams typical monthly bandwidth usage is about 60000mb.
If I then also launched a new game I would get extra traffic from the launch, lets say the download is 8mb for the sake of argument so multiply that by a typical game launch visitor downloads of about 8,000 for the first 4 weeks (one reason why Banshee games are normally launched near the end of a month) that's 8,000x8mb = 6400mb. About one third of these new visitors also download an extra game whilst they are there: 2,666x8mb = 21000mb.
So far, for launching a game this month, I have reached 165000mb of bandwidth being shunted out of my web site.
Magazine appearances generate on average of around 5% of their readership into visitors to my site. This month I am in Computersbild Spiele which has a readership of 250,000. That's 12,500 extra visitors to the site this month.
A typical visitor downloads 2 Banshee games, which are on average 8mb in size. That's 12,500x8mbx2 = 200000mb.
So now we have 36500mb of data going out this month, it's a huge month with way more traffic than we would normally be shifting. I've agreed this with my sponsors and given the traffic estimation.
Now add Retro Gamer and suddenly I have a problem, I dont know what their readership is so i'll guess at 80000. 5% of that is 4000, with an average 2 downloads of 8mb each i'm suddenly adding a further 64000mb of bandwidth this month, taking me to 427000mb.
I dont know about you, but I find those figures very frightening indeed. If Retro Gamer had asked permission however I would have been expecting it and could have agreed the traffic level with my sponsor, and delayed Deathmatch iLANd to a suiteable date.
Instead i'm lucky in that Deathmatch iLANd was delayed by my racing, house moving, and general apathy taking up too much of my time.
The last person in the world I want to upset is my sponsor, if Banshee didn't have it then i'd be paying for each and every gb of data being transfered. Information is everything in this day and age, and giving my sponsor the wrong information over something that costs them money is a sure way to end the relationship.
Which is the biggest tool? The computer, or the muppet who invented it?
