History lesson for today. The Shareware Age
“So what happened to transform the PC from the buttoned-down home of golf, chess and flight sims to the hotbed of creativity and innovation pumping out classic after classic from 1993 onward? Was it the inevitable result of technological progress? Only partially. Publishers seemed content at first to use the PC’s expanding capabilities to simply make prettier golf, chess and flight sims. How could the complacent PC games industry be shaken out of its torpor? Such a task called for nothing less than a revolutionary movement - an underground development scene, answerable to no marketing departments and dismissive of hidebound conventions about what PC users would consider ‘worthy’ uses of their sacred beige monoliths. Their success would hinge on the creation of fast, fluid, immersive games that would thrust the PC into the limelight and make Amiga owners involuntarily hiss with envy. Games, in a nutshell, like Doom. That movement was known as Shareware.”
Appoximately a third of gaming’s Lennon/McCartney story—Masters of Doom of which I just ordered my third copy, having gifted the previous two—is about clever shareware marketing. No shareware, no Doom.
