Shadow of Yesterday: A question

[ethan_greer]

So in this thread,

After quite a bit of thought, I've decided to make The Shadow of Yesterday a free game, with a commercial hard-copy release.

Can you go over a bit of your thought processes here?  What led you to this decision?  Not a criticism, just curious.

[Clinton R. Nixon]

Sure thing.

I've lots of reasons, each of which wouldn't have led me to this decision, but collectively weighed on me.

* I really wanted to finish at least a preliminary version of the text by now. It's not finished, being in that 75% stage for the last month as I started a new job. Seeing as I wanted people to get their hands on it, I thought it might be a good idea to release it incomplete and free.

* I believe in free information. I don't use Windows or any other closed-source software on my computer, and I support the idea that information has tremendous worth, but we do a good deed by sharing that information freely. Services, on the other hand, are where money is made, like the service of getting art, typesetting a text, and printing it.

* I think that the PDF market is going to bottom out in about six months. Atlas Games did a smart thing when they released Ars Magica for free. AEG managed to be the first on the bandwagon. In six months, when most of the industry gets on board with the "free PDF, costly hardcopy" idea, people will cease to buy PDFs. I can imagine how Atlas came to their decision, reading posts about why people do and don't buy PDFs on other forums. They don't lose a single customer by releasing it that way, and probably gain quite a few.

I'm not bitter about this, though: it's actually a good deed done, helping to get more information into more people's hands for less cost.