Good Freeware bad for business?

[Skydvdan1]

Actually I have to say that of the more than 5.000 who downloaded my EDLM2005-scenery and the 12.500 people that visited my hompage and downloaded some of my tools, noone has made a donation though it's pretty easy using paypal.
This is surely the most important reason I'm thinking of going payware. I hoped that at least 0.1 percent would make a small donation.

I'm sorry to hear this. My scenery has been released for about three weeks now. In that three weeks I've had 2000 downloads at one site, 2000 at another and about 150 more at my site. It was totally planned as freeware and then my wife suggested putting up a paypal donation tag, so i did. It has definately paid off. I have gotten enough donations to cover my hosting fees for the year. So people do donate. So don't give up. I advertised at alot of FS sites before release and got the excitement level up. I got to know a lot of people and built a lot of personable relationships. So when it was released those same people wanted to donate. From what I remember your scenery just kind of showed up one day. If you want the people to donate, you have to get out there and get to know the people. Let them know that there is a human being putting in all that effort...not a machine or a corperation.

 

[Horst18519]

Interesting.

Well, I sure expected more, especially from the - as you say - "people I know out there". Well, I won't complain anymore. I hoped to get some donations and was disappointed, but that's life.

 

[Skydvdan1]

Interesting.

Well, I won't complain anymore. I hoped to get some donations and was disappointed, but that's life.

I wouldn't call it complaining. It is definately disappointing to be let down by the people you think would support you. My only recommendation would be to get your advertising started early. That way as I said before, it get's the people talking and builds excitement. Put out periodic screenshots and give the people a place on your forum to talk about the scenery. I was really surprised that you didn't win the flightsim.com developers award for the month it was released. I downloaded it but never got around to installing it. I hope you reconsider going to payware exclusively. We need designers like you in the freeware realm.

 

[Horst18519]

Thanks for that, Dan.

I guess I have to work on my PR...

I sure hoped to win an award with EDLM - actually I think there are some quiet astonishing things in it - you only have to take a close look.

But this thread is not about the success of my scenery, so let's better get back to the original question.

 

[Fern]

Turning a hobby into a business

I have a hard time following the philosophy that MY freeware may be bad for SOMEONE ELSE'S business (I don't mean anyone's in particular).

If Arno, Derek, and so many others, who create and give away their stuff AND THEIR KNOWLEDGE, had thought that way, this conversation wouldn't be taking place; FS would be just another game you buy at the store and forget about in three weeks, and the "business" fellows wouldn't have a business to talk about.

Want to have a business? Fine. If one can find enough customers, great, enjoy.

But please don't even suggest that I shouldn't give my stuff away, humble as my stuff is. Does the free stuff out there make the payware guys have to work harder on their products? So what? We shouldn't even give it a second thought.

If people are appreciative, and they are, and send donations, that is fantastic; those who want can take advantage of that. But if one can't compete with some of the free stuff, perhaps one should look at some other line of business.

F

 

[spotlope]

Of course, I can only speak for myself. I would sincerely love to make scenery and give it away every time. However, after my first big freeware project, financial reality set in. I discovered that I had a choice of either making freeware but not being able to spend much time on it, or making the majority of my work payware, and thus being able to justify the thousands of hours of work it takes to get genuinely proficient at it. I chose the latter, mainly because I found the work so interesting that I couldn't bear to only do it occasionally.

To everyone saying that it's difficult to make money doing payware, I would agree. FS Addons comprise a very small market, at least the download versions. Boxed products sell substantially better, but the developer generally gets a much smaller cut of the pie, owing to how many other parties have a hand in the production and distribution. However, in my experience, the money you earn is enough to keep doing it. As long as care is taken to produce a product that 'simmers will enjoy, and to keep the level of quality as high as possible, there's always a group of dedicated people who won't mind purchasing it.

Going payware means having to bend to someone else's schedule, sometimes develop projects that you might have less interest in personally, and spend many long hours bug-testing and troubleshooting. It's not for everyone, and the amount of aggravation you go through for the money earned is enough to drive all but the hardcore enthusiasts away.

I have nothing but the utmost respect for those who have the time and patience to turn out work for free. I wish I had the time to do it myself! Alas, being self-employed means that I have to spend more time with my head down, working on projects, than if I just gave it all up and got a "regular" job. I wouldn't trade the lifestyle for anything, though.

So the bottom line for me is this; if you make freeware and share it with the community out of the goodness of your heart, I thank you most sincerely. I try to do that as often as I can, too. Having a large field of quality freeware only hurts payware sales if the payware designers don't work twice as hard to stay ahead of the curve. Staying ahead of that curve takes a lot of time (see paragraph one), so beware! Anyone who has decided to make commercial products must remember that the wolf is always at the door. Your work needs to be well-crafted and pleasing to a large group of 'simmers, or you'll find yourself living in a box.

thanks,

 

[noshades]

Boy!! you never know when you start a Thread --it will turn into a big ole suit!!I would guess that most of the money made from payware probably comes from the ever increasing flow of new PC owners who imediately just start buying stuff right off the bat..I remember first getting Flight simulator and randomly searching dumb ole keywords and bought a lot of stuff way before I knew there was an Avsim ect..you just automatically figure its all payware at first..its probably all desighners are demo'ing and hoping one of the companies will pick you up/give you a secret access to their site and give you a cut of royalty for a new project for your works..thats how its done in the music industry,,seems the same..sighn a contract --and your work'in for the FSX..!!!

 

[artmartin]

Well, I feel I have to get into this discussion since I took the payware plunge with my first scenery project. It was not my first inclination to do so but actually the encouragement of a few local users I brought over to the house that convinced me it was of commercial quality. In looking back I'm still operating at a huge loss by charging for the product but, as others have said, my wife and kids seem much more at ease watching me sit for hours in front of my computer now. (The wife got a very nice digital camera for Christmas based on my first Flight 1 check).

I did however release a freeware scenery design tool prior to going commercial so I felt I had adequate justification in paying back the hobby for the amazing free support and tools I'd used. I think it is necessary to pay one's dues.

That said, quality freeware scenery offerings do us all good. Anything that increases the FS user base benefits everyone. It keeps people flying that have limited budgets which in turn exposes more and more of the public to the hobby. On the other hand, commercial scenery is essential because it causes people that have put a sizeable investment into the hobby to be less inclined to let their interest drop.

I'm not sure I understand the folks that create scenery objects and release them to the public with disclaimers that they not be used in commercial products. It is certainly their call and I fully understand the motivation but I think it may be counterproductive to the overall hobby. If the tree you create cuts down on some scenery designer's hours necessary to create their product, it seems that users get choices faster and the entire hobby grows benefitting us all. I would think that you would certainly deserve mention for your contribution in the primary marketing of the end product with links to your own sites. Maybe instead of the outright ban on commercial use it would be incumbent upon developers to instead insist upon contact and collaboration should someone wish to use their object.

Let's face it. There is and probably never will be any true security for a payware scenery project. No matter what kind of procedure or product key anyone puts into place on installation or initial distribution of your scenery, once it's in place in FS, it's completely open and transferrable. There's a huge leap of faith in becoming a a commercial designer. You have to appeal to the human element and basic good of your customer in order to have any real return on your energy as some of you are finding out with donation sites. My own beta testers insisted on purchasing the product even though they had fully functional copies before release. You get loyalty out of honesty, friendship, and hard work. I think whatever we can do as a designer community to make each other's pursuits easier and quicker helps us all.

Art Martin

 

[ProfessorKhaos]

I remember first getting Flight simulator and randomly searching dumb ole keywords and bought a lot of stuff way before I knew there was an Avsim ect..

That's one of the reasons I get bent way out of shape when sites like www.simnetwork.com and www.simnetwork.net snatch a copy of my stuff off of avsim and sell access to it through their "1 class membership" section. Basically, they're screwin the newcomers over for a profit... illegally I might add.

 

[Tasmanet]

My versions of EDDF are now public for more than half a year. All in all they had almost 20000 downloads.

I got not very much feedback per mail - mostly some questions about AFCAD or asking for permission to host the file.

But if I search for it in google, I get a lot of "eedback" from inside the forums. They discuss the disadvantages and the advantages, compare screenshots, test it with lots of AI planes and much more. If you want feedback - look into the forums!

Georg

Will you be willing to put in about 4 times the work it took you
to get your current EDDF up and running.

With FX that might be the hours you would be looking at.

Tas

 

[arno]

Will you be willing to put in about 4 times the work it took you to get your current EDDF up and running.

With FX that might be the hours you would be looking at.

Can we please not turn this old discussion into a new discussion about Fsx? If you want to discuss things like that please start a new topic. But I guess at the moment there is not much to discuss about FsX, as we don't have it yet and can only speculate about things. Thanks.

 

[karsten77]

Without Payware, we would have no "ultimate" addons. Only professionals could create professional software, and to create professional software it isnt enough to create out of regular work times. So professional software must have its price.

But when at this time "amateuers" want "professional" prices, no sorry that i did not need.

Ok i dont want to "shoot" someone, but what e.G. Alphasim do is the badest what i ever see. This Aircrafts are not very professional, and they want to sell them for xxx $$$... lol This stuff had to move in avsim download area and not to simshop ... bye bye Alpha...

I think sometimes every guy who mean he can create addons must earn money?

 

[ras78]

Without Payware, we would have no "ultimate" addons. Only professionals could create professional software, and to create professional software it isnt enough to create out of regular work times. So professional software must have its price.

But when at this time "amateuers" want "professional" prices, no sorry that i did not need.

Ok i dont want to "shoot" someone, but what e.G. Alphasim do is the badest what i ever see. This Aircrafts are not very professional, and they want to sell them for xxx $$$... lol This stuff had to move in avsim download area and not to simshop ... bye bye Alpha...

I think sometimes every guy who mean he can create addons must earn money?

I'm agree with you but sometimes there are many freeware products which are more and more cool and well-done than payware one.

 

[Horst18519]

I think sometimes every guy who mean he can create addons must earn money?

If I see some payware on the market (from so called "professionals") I can only say the same! So where is the difference between pros and amateurs? I gues there are only a handful of guys in the world that really live from designing, aren't there?
So there still are two sorts of amateurs: those who go payware and those who make freeware.
But actually you gave the answer yourself:
The quality makes the price.
So if I should make another scenery that's (in other's opinion) payware-niveau, I'm going to take money for it.

...well, maybe...

 

[VisualFlight]

This whole issue of payware vs freeware is simply a matter of individual choice, both by developers and by users... ... or should be. Problems only arise when the freedom or right to choose are interfered with, or when the choice is subject to disrespect or abuse.

Here's the choices:

* A developer can choose whether or not to develop an add-on, and whether or not to release it as freeware or payware (or any other ****ware for that matter, e.g. donationware, charityware, etc.).That choice is personal to the individual developer based on their lifestyle, other interests and committments, sources of income, and amount of time or other resources involved in developing the add-on.

* A user can choose whether or not to download a freeware add-on, and whether or not to purchase a payware add-on (or donate to a donate-ware add-on etc). That choice is personal to the individual making the choice, and will typically depend on a number of factors such as the availability of alternative add-ons, and the quality and price (inc. free) of the add-ons available.

Here's some examples of when the impediment or abuse of choice causes problems:

1. If people disrespect the right of a freeware author to go payware. As I've noted above, the only person with the right to make this choice is the author themselves, yet apparently there are cases where the right to make this choice is questioned and worse still, the person making the choice subject to disrespect or even abuse. Strangely this type of thing doesn't seem to occur when an amateur sportsperson goes professional, and in my opinion there should be no difference in the flight sim community.

2. If people abuse the decision to release an add-on as payware by copying or downloading it illegally, or making post-purchase copies for family, friends and colleagues etc.Usually this is justified by people, even those with supposedly decent ethical or moral values, by utilising one of the many myths which act as crutch to the conscience of those undertaking this form of abuse. Examples include "they make so much money it won't make any difference to them" or "all software should be free anyway" or "if it's any good, people will buy a legal copy of it for themselves anyway once they've tried it". All of these and many other excuses are demonstrably false, but in the end, the result is an abuse of the decision of an author to release their add-on as payware and does inflict genuine damage to the payware author concerned.

3. Where someone making a decision to purchase an add-on is misled in some way as to the nature or quality of the add-on without any recourse to a refund.

4. Where someone releasing a payware add-on with licensed data is undercut by a freeware or cheaper product using stolen data.

5. When a third party illegally charges someone for a freeware add-on or otherwise abuses the conditions under which the add-on was released as freeware.

There are probably many more examples, but the ones I've given are simply to illustrate that abuse of the individual's right to choose is the main issue which should be being discussed, not the choice itself. Against this backdrop, the poll options themselves are interesting as they seem to imply sort of collective right to interfere with what should be individual choices on behalf of both the developer and user:

* Every individual developer has the right to choose for themselves whether to create freeware (or how much freeware to create).

* Every individual developer has the right to decide for themselves whether or not to charge a price for their add-on or release it as freeware.

There is, or should be, no element of collective decision making or group pressure involved here, no disrespect for the individual choices that developers make for themselves. For this reason, the poll itself is very much in the category of "have you stopped beating your wife yet?". To give any response would be to support the idea that individual developers do not have the right to decide for themselves.

To conclude, I would suggest that the main issue in relation to freeware vs payware is the right of the individual to make their own decision, and for that decision to be respected and not subject to abuse. We are a very diverse community of individuals drawn together by a common interest in flight sim, and within that community, I see no reason why payware cannot live happily beside freeware (and vice versa) as it has done so far, but we do need to be more aware of the impact of abuse and disrespect.

John Farrie
Visual Flight

 

[Horst18519]

Welcome onboard, John.
And what a first post this is.

I can only say: wise words.

 

[VisualFlight]

Thanks. I only hope I can make myself useful at some point with practical advice to other designer/developers rather than merely expressing opinions.

John

 

[owenhewitt]

Of course, I can only speak for myself. I would sincerely love to make scenery and give it away every time. However, after my first big freeware project, financial reality set in. I discovered that I had a choice of either making freeware but not being able to spend much time on it, or making the majority of my work payware, and thus being able to justify the thousands of hours of work it takes to get genuinely proficient at it. I chose the latter, mainly because I found the work so interesting that I couldn't bear to only do it occasionally.

To everyone saying that it's difficult to make money doing payware, I would agree. FS Addons comprise a very small market, at least the download versions. Boxed products sell substantially better, but the developer generally gets a much smaller cut of the pie, owing to how many other parties have a hand in the production and distribution. However, in my experience, the money you earn is enough to keep doing it. As long as care is taken to produce a product that 'simmers will enjoy, and to keep the level of quality as high as possible, there's always a group of dedicated people who won't mind purchasing it.

Going payware means having to bend to someone else's schedule, sometimes develop projects that you might have less interest in personally, and spend many long hours bug-testing and troubleshooting. It's not for everyone, and the amount of aggravation you go through for the money earned is enough to drive all but the hardcore enthusiasts away.

I have nothing but the utmost respect for those who have the time and patience to turn out work for free. I wish I had the time to do it myself! Alas, being self-employed means that I have to spend more time with my head down, working on projects, than if I just gave it all up and got a "regular" job. I wouldn't trade the lifestyle for anything, though.

So the bottom line for me is this; if you make freeware and share it with the community out of the goodness of your heart, I thank you most sincerely. I try to do that as often as I can, too. Having a large field of quality freeware only hurts payware sales if the payware designers don't work twice as hard to stay ahead of the curve. Staying ahead of that curve takes a lot of time (see paragraph one), so beware! Anyone who has decided to make commercial products must remember that the wolf is always at the door. Your work needs to be well-crafted and pleasing to a large group of 'simmers, or you'll find yourself living in a box.

thanks,

Hi Bill,

Glad to see you around - I couldn't have stated this any better, as I can only echo your words.

Best,

Owen

 

[cadaha]

I also believe that the Freeware developer can contribute a massive amount to the FS community, I also believe tha payware developers also contribute a massive amount to the community becuase that is what we are - a community.

Some of us have decided to create software full time and also research better ways to make FS a simulator environment not just a game. Obviously there are restrictions with the FS engine that prevent us from producing a full static simulator but we strive to give the user "As real as i gets' .

Peter, Anthony, Damian and I create payware and the funds earned from the products produce allow us to reasearch (full time) ways to give the customer/user the WOW factor and also a full support structure. I have helped users on msn using remote assistance (i.e. going on to their pc and setting up the environment for them). I see that as and obligation as a payware developer to assist a user to my fullest capacity. If I did not get paid for the software we produce I would not be able to dedicate my time to new products R&D and comprehensive support.

So in a nutshell there is a place for us all and each of us has a function and place in this community. What other "Game" Simulator has the depth and breadth of expertise with regard to an entertaiment product as FS has.

We can do amazing things

Carl

 

[Steve Rosenow]

Allow me to introduce myself.

I am Steven Rosenow, known on AVSIM, Simviation, and Hovercontrol as "Bell206freak" and on C130sim.com and Megascenery's forums as "BellHelicopterfan."

I'm an avid scenery designer who someday hopes to branch out into aircraft development.

For the better part of a year, I have been working on a scenery package called "Project Washington Overhaul", a package covering one fifth the terrain coverage area of Megascenery Volume 4: Pacific Northwest. There's close to half a dozen airports included in the package, as well as more than 300 miles of coastline, and more than 1,000 miles of road all correctly placed. That's in addition to revised landclass/waterclass assignment and other features such as correctly placed scenery objects, and revised/enhanced scenery features.

As I've said, I've spent the better part of a year on this package, at first spending close to five to seven houtrs per night on it.

Will I charge for this package? Most would say I should, since I've pretty much spent a lot of money just working on it, acquiring data, etc.

But I'm not going to. Back in 2004 and again in 2005, I released a scenery package accurately depicting the Mount St. Helens area, the latter release a heavily-updated version of the first. Within days of its release, I began receiving scores of compliments from users thanking me for taking the time to create such a wonderful scenery package, and sharing it freely.

I think that, to me, is the #1 reason why I will continue to produce freeware scenery at payware-quality. For one, to give back to the community. The community has given me so much in terms of knowledge, and the freeware tools (AFCAD, Rwy12, SceneGenX Scenery generator, to name a few) to allow me to create the packages I've released or are currently working on.

The second reason is to allow those who cannot afford the means of paying for add-on scenery the ability to experience Flight Simulator above the default level.

My $.02