Shareware Heroes - new book which mentions Keen a lot

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clump
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Shareware Heroes - new book which mentions Keen a lot

Post by clump »

I would like to bring attention to the new book called Shareware Heroes – The renegades who redefined gaming at the dawn of the internet written by Richard Moss. I haven't read it yet, but according to the Index Commander Keen is mentioned many times. And there's even chapter named Invasion of the Vorticons. Based on the first few pages it's seems it's going to be interesting and entertainenin read with a lot of little known information and interviews with developers. Maybe there's something regarding Keen we haven't heard yet! I'll try to post a summary once I get to the parts about Keen.

Here is the homepage: https://sharewareheroes.com/

>> Full description <<

Shareware Heroes takes readers on a journey through a critical yet long overlooked chapter in video game history: the rise and eventual fall of the shareware model.

As commercial game distribution professionalised in the 1980s, independent creators with scant resources or contacts were squeezed out of the market. But not entirely. New technologies and distribution concepts were creating a hidden games publishing market – one that operated by different rules and that, at least for the first several years, had no powerful giants.

It was a land of opportunity and promise, and a glimpse of the digital-first future. This is the story of the games and developers who relied on nascent networking technologies combined with word-of-mouth marketing in an era before social media.

Building on deep archival research and featuring interviews with creators, developers and other heroes of the shareware age, Richard Moss – author of The Secret History of Mac Gaming – once again brings to light a forgotten but all too important era of game development.

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Last edited by clump on Wed Dec 21, 2022 15:22, edited 1 time in total.
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Nisaba
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Re: Shareware Heroes - new book which mentions Keen a lot

Post by Nisaba »

thanks for shareing!
btw, the website's design is awesome
out now (link) : Image
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proYorp
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Re: Shareware Heroes - new book which mentions Keen a lot

Post by proYorp »

Sounds pretty cool!
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Re: Shareware Heroes - new book which mentions Keen a lot

Post by Arno »

I got the Shareware Heroes book and I'm currently reading it.
As clump mentioned, the author did a lot of research, including interviews with developers and browsing the internet archive in search for obsolete gaming websites. It really shows, as the book is packed with information and pictures of many, many games. No doubt gaming wiki's will profit from this for years to come.

About a dozen pages are dedicated to the development of the first Commander Keen trilogy and its origin at Softdisk. Obviously, some of it was already covered in Masters of Doom. However, Shareware Heroes tries a different approach and puts more focus on the business aspects. Hence, it tells the story from the viewpoint of Scott Miller and how sales and distribution were handled at Apogee Software.

Overall, I find this book very interesting.
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