Defender’s Quest: By the numbers

This article by Lars Doucet contains good lessons for how to make a living distributing your games. It breaks down Defender’s Quest’s (significant) sales numbers by source, and is therefore of primary interest to indie game developers–but it contains valuable lessons for the player as well. Among other things, Mr. Doucet makes a compelling argument to embracing browser-based game demos:

This is because of the “EXE barrier.” To install a downloadable demo, a player has to click a link, download a file, navigate to whatever stupid folder their browser saved it to, double click it, be warned that the file will destroy their computer, install it, wait for it to install, and then run the game.

As I’ve said in my article Piracy and the Four Currencies, even if something is free in terms of money, it can still cost people time and pain-in-the-butt. A browser-based demo is one click and you’re playing. No money, minimal time, minimal pain-in-the-butt.

Read the full article here.