[casual_games] future of shockwave

[Charles Parcell]

A couple things here. First, the DirGames list is made up of developers 
who not only use Director but also other technologies such as Flash. 
Director just happens to be the main focus but there are threads that 
talk about integrating Flash and other things.

Second, I want to point out that one big reason that Austin's previous 
company saw larger downloads of Flash vs. Shockwave is partly due to it 
being part of most OS installs. That alone gives it a very high 
penetration percentage. Additionally, the Shockwave installer has had 
some... issues such as having nearly 11 dialogs during the install 
process, addition of Yahoo! toolbar, and redirecting to Shockwave.com 
after install. There has been some recent changes to the install 
process, such as trimming down the 11 dialogs to 5(?) and slimming up 
the installer.

Just as an FYI, there is a Macromedia program where companies can 
sign-up to get a Shockwave installer that has NO Yahoo! toolbar or 
redirect to Shockwave.com. My understanding is that it is free but can 
only be used to installer the player within the company (such via the IT 
manager or via Intranets). Here is a link 
<http://www.macromedia.com/licensing/distribution/>

Thirdly, Macromedia just this week had their annual developer 
conference. During the conference the product manager for Director got 
up and showed of several new things that the team has been working on. 
That alone indicated that there is still company support for the 
product, even though it might not be at the level of their golden child 
Flash.

Of course the big unknown is what will Adobe do when they get the final 
green light. My bet is that Director/Shockwave will not get shelved. But 
that is just me. There are a lot of target markets that 
Director/Shockwave hit that Flash currently does not.

Charles P.


Marty Plumbo wrote:
>
> We are converting some of our dhtml games to shockwave ... My question 
> is this: What is the future of shockwave?
>
> -----  Hi, Brent.  A good place to go with questions like this one 
> (just in case you aren't already aware of it) is the "dirgames" list 
> (http://nuttybar.drama.uga.edu/mailman/listinfo/dirgames-l).  The list 
> is predominantly populated by Director game developers, most of whom 
> are using Shockwave for purposes similar to those that you are 
> currently investigating.  It's also a great source of technical 
> information and support for Director game developers.