As someone who enjoyed MacHeist mostly for the puzzles rather than the rewards (I already owned everything from the bundle in which I was interested, and felt the same way about most of the heist prizes), I can't help but feel that there's a less-noticed effect going on here: general publicity. Arguments such as these — both for and against — only serve to help here.
The more publicity generated by MacHeist and its ilk, the more people will learn that there is a lot of very good indie software out there for the Mac. These are, indeed, the sort of people who won't necessarily be in a position to discover MacHeist on their own; but the very nature of MacHeist, as a fun game in itself, means that people are telling their friends about it. Word is spreading, and news is being made. I know that I didn't find out about it through reading any websites — I was told by a friend, and I told others myself. Though the economics of it all may be open to debate, I can't help but think that if there were more events such as these, and if they could simply generate more publicity around themselves, then indie software would become the starting point for many more software shoppers, simply by making them cast aside the notion that if software isn't on a store shelf, that it can't be very good.
As someone looking to become and indie developer inside the next year, I'm very pleased to see things like this happening. It only serves to bring more people from Scott's 'third group' into the second. People like my father, for whom the thought of simply using Google to find an application took second place to using an online retailer, simply because that doesn't fit with the usual perception that 'real software comes in boxes'.
by Jim Dovey — Dec 17
The more publicity generated by MacHeist and its ilk, the more people will learn that there is a lot of very good indie software out there for the Mac. These are, indeed, the sort of people who won't necessarily be in a position to discover MacHeist on their own; but the very nature of MacHeist, as a fun game in itself, means that people are telling their friends about it. Word is spreading, and news is being made. I know that I didn't find out about it through reading any websites — I was told by a friend, and I told others myself. Though the economics of it all may be open to debate, I can't help but think that if there were more events such as these, and if they could simply generate more publicity around themselves, then indie software would become the starting point for many more software shoppers, simply by making them cast aside the notion that if software isn't on a store shelf, that it can't be very good.
As someone looking to become and indie developer inside the next year, I'm very pleased to see things like this happening. It only serves to bring more people from Scott's 'third group' into the second. People like my father, for whom the thought of simply using Google to find an application took second place to using an online retailer, simply because that doesn't fit with the usual perception that 'real software comes in boxes'.