Re: [pygame] Re: Stand-alone executables

[Luke Paireepinart <rabidpoobear@xxxxxxxxx>]

Dave LeCompte (really) wrote:
> Luke Paireepinart wrote:
>   
> > Daniel McNeese wrote:
> >     
> > > and the less the game demands of him before the fun starts the
> > > more likely he is to stick with it.  If potential customers are
> > > giving up before they even get the game running, that's *bad.*
> > >
> > >       
> > I think Blizzard Entertainment would disagree with you there.
> >     
>
> I think you're wrong - your example of WoW doesn't speak to Daniel's
> original observation that the easier it is for potential customers to
> evaluate a game, the more likely they are to purchase it.
>   
I know it doesn't speak to his observation.  It was supposed to be a 
counter-observation on the time cost of setup not being a factor
in people playing a game.
> If I understand your claim, it's saying that Blizzard benefits from people
> giving up before they get the game running. I can see that discouraging
> new accounts would save Blizzard the bandwidth, customer support, and
> server space costs, but I find it hard to believe that they don't end up
> making those costs back several times over in subscription revenue from
> satisfied customers.
>   
That's not what I was saying.
He was saying it was critical that the install is as easy as possible, 
or people will give up halfway through.
I was trying to point out how many hoops people will jump through if 
they believe a game is worth playing.
Of course the comparison wasn't great, since people usually pay for WoW 
before they know all the crap they have to go through to set it up.
So it's not really their interest in the game that causes them to slog 
through hours of updates, but just that they don't want to have wasted 
the money.

Anyway, Having to install Python and Pygame is trivial.  It takes a few 
minutes, and then people can use your game.
People who write Java or Flash games rarely go through the trouble to 
create stand-alone EXEs for their game.
You may not remember it, but at some point you probably installed both 
of these technologies.
So why not the same for Python?
You don't have to reinstall it for every game.

I'd rather play a game that was just source, and not waste my time 
downloading an unnecessary installer, personally.

I see the point that end users are terribly stupid/lazy/etc/etc.  I 
guess it depends on your market.

I mean, if these are the people you're going after, don't bother making 
a Mac version. Or a linux version for that matter.  98% of your apparent 
target audience (who don't want to / can't install Python) are going to 
be on Windows.
So just make a py2exe version and provide the source for other platforms.
-Luke

> -Dave LeCompte
>
>