

Shareware Amateurs vs. Shareware Professionals - aerique
http://www.gamedev.net/reference/business/features/shareprof/

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_delirium
I agree this is a decent summary of amateur v. professional mindsets, but I
can't help but think many markets (including games) would be generally worse
off if everyone followed the professional mindset. There's tons of off-the-
wall, innovative games that turned out to be popular, where the creators later
admit they had no idea anyone would actually like it, but had made it just
because they thought it was a cool idea. If everyone who thought their idea
failed the basic-market-research test dropped it and found a new idea, we'd
miss out on a lot of interesting stuff.

~~~
richcollins
The only successful shareware developer that I know doesn't do any market
research or marketing. (only one datapoint)

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patio11
Don't let the title fool you, this is applicable to web apps and the like as
well. If you get one thing out of it, get the bit about funnel optimization.
Multiplicatively effective improvements are almost as powerful as compound
interest, which is itself the most creative/destructive force known to man
prior to splitting the atom.

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aerique
A quick Google didn't turn this article up at HN before. I got to it through
patio11's interview but I think it is so good it really deserves its own
submission.

It is scary to see in how many categories I'm still in the amateur column. I
guess the good part is it were even more categories in the past, so at least
there's some personal growth :-)

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teamonkey
I think it's quite an old article (5-10 years!). I remember reading it when I
was an undergrad.

Not a criticism, just a bit of reflection.

~~~
vlad
This article is at least ten years old; it certainly predates Paul Graham's
essays and most of Joel On Software.

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myth_drannon
The problem with that dichotomy is that it never shows that at some point
amateur becomes professional. Very few are born with
business/marketing/whatever skills.

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Mc_Big_G
It's interesting that his iterations were all based on customer requests and
one of the top articles on HN yesterday was "Why you should never listen to
your customers.".

