New games like Crystal Wizard are Setting a Higher Standard for Shareware and Downloadable Games.

Independent game developer Tate's Colony is one of a new breed of modern game creators deciding to do it all themselves. They recently released their new title Crystal Wizard and are receiving praise for its polished production, making it stand out among the crowd of downloadable, or shareware, games. Crystal Wizard is a simple game reminiscent of other puzzle or logic games, but its unique implementation on the PC and attention to detail elevate it to a calibre on par with the professionals. This title and other new releases are helping to establish a new market which gives hope to small developers - Inexpensive, easy to obtain, simple to play, games.

Retail stores have long been the outlet for buying the best games for your computer, but with the rise in independent game development over the past few years, and the competition for shelf space, a new market is emerging, and that is downloadable games. Smaller game companies with smaller budgets can't compete against larger developers with funding from powerhouse publishers. An independent developer has limited options on what they can do with their product to get it on the marketplace, and that's only after they manage to scrape the money together to finish the game in the first place.

But now a new outlet for self-published games is becoming more viable - the internet. A small company, like Tate's Colony, can create, distribute, market and sell their game themselves. To handle credit card transactions and other unwieldy business related matters, the developer can choose among several online payment processing sites. You can also try to get your game published by a downloadable game publisher who will sell your game on their site, often with non-exclusive rights, so you can continue to make money by selling the game yourself.

This all means that if you want to make a game and sell it, you absolutely can. This also means that for downloadable games, there is no quality control. The standard of downloadable games is nowhere near the level of retail, where at least somebody other than the developer has to approve, or disapprove, a project. Unfortunately, this has resulted in the term "shareware" having a bad connotation, where if your game is for download only, people will think it must be amateurish. Tate's Colony is one of a number of new game developers, though, that are proving that you don't need a million dollar budget to produce a good product, and that a downloadable game can be every bit as good as one in a box.

Download the Crystal Wizard demo at
http://www.tatescolony.com/games/cwdemo.exe

Tate's Colony is a developer of high quality downloadable games. Visit them at
http://www.tatescolony.com





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