(Before we start, could somebody put ning.com out of its misery? I get about 200 spam comments a week just from bogus ning accounts. Fire your useless “security expert” would you? Thanks!)
God bless the myriad people that code up an application in their spare time, and after years of honest work launch it up into the sky with a prayer and the hope that maybe, just maybe, it will prosper in the wild. Some do: IfranView for example. Or CrapCleaner. Two programs that I put on any PC the moment I get it installed.
This is about the apps that don’t make it. There are all kinds of death in the wild: the thousands of upon thousands of iPhone apps that smash against windscreens, burn on light bulbs and are gobbled up by fish – an endless churning of cat pianos and novelty cameras that are born and die in a matter of days or weeks. We hardly notice their passing in the seething mass of bugs that Apple breed behind their plain white screen.
And then the mangy, half dead application that staggers crazily along a precipice, howling in fear and agony as it faces the final moment. It was born too ugly to find a mate and was shunned by the rest of the pack. Its desperation is obvious and repellent – the price falls and falls but even when free no one will give it a home.
These are obvious examples – others are not. Some finely groomed, charming and clever applications arrive, earn respect and sometimes even love. And then just as they seem ripe to be the next ‘killer app’ the whole façade comes crashing down. Usually just after I buy them.
Because of my peculiar interests I probably notice it more, but it seems live video is the delusion of a small community who don’t ‘get’ that most people have no interest whatsoever. It simply doesn’t have a bridge with the lowest common denominator – I mean Poser is a niche title, but it has survived due to people who like to render 3D hardcore porn and a side salad of otherkins who like to render fairies and furries (porn). Music software will live so long as rudimentary Trance and Hip Hop are as skilled as instant noodles*.
My first complete waste was Discreet Plasma, which was carved out of 3D Studio Max specifically for VRML authoring. It cost me a cool thousand bucks and passed out in a gutter about a month later clutching an empty bottle of Malt Duck. Discreet didn’t just withdraw it – they nailed the coffin shut. Not long after I squandered my beer money on Axel3D, a Canadian VRML tool that landed on its derrière by version 2 – it now ‘powers’ a website for designing kitchens. Anyway I’ve already covered all that.
VRML was the Typhoid Mary of the mid 90′s, a poisonous shape shifter that most recently became WebGL, ready to eat up a whole new generation of starry eyed nerds. Nothing wrong with it, very exciting and so on – but it’s going exactly nowhere, where it will probably meet 3D video and sing drunken sea shanties.
Sail away, sail away, sail away.
{Along with anything to do with Microsoft’s Kinect.
We had this technology on the Amiga. It looked more primitive but you could wave your arms and operate a synthesiser filter over video in 80′s. It was called Mandala and it was THE FUTURE … until it wasn’t (in fact near impossible to find a mention of it). Not solved in the intervening 25 years – the disconnect between what can be done and why the hell you would ever want to do it.}
Anyway. Having watched so much of my software die, I have a pretty high sensitivity to the moment when you should think carefully about hiding the credit card:
- Group Buy means Good Bye. If they were selling enough they wouldn’t be offering it for ten bucks. There’s a cash flow problem and the first guy to go will be the programmer. Marketing are last out the door and they’re getting their severance pay.
- Need support? Check the Wiki! Like World of Goo, the tower can only go so high if the people that support you are in turn supported by other people who are supported by some guy who thinks he knows the answer from playing around with the software that no one has got around to documenting before they were laid off. It costs more to run this than buy a proper title.
- Offering consulting services. Suddenly the software company became a consultancy. You need a spanner and they are supplying a plumber. Sales aren’t too good when the CEO is coming around to your office with a power-point presentation.
- We’ve synergized version 5 with the cloudscape! We’ve lost our way and version 4 is last decent version before we tank.
- A new division of Microsoft Corporation. Who will suck the IP out of the company and kill off the software.
- A new focus on aircraft engineering means we can no longer support the software we sold you last week. Somebody worked out that one customer with a million bucks is better then a million with 1 buck.
- Dawn of the Dead. The website is up… it looks like they are there. But there is no one actually alive. This can go on for many years by which time it’s too late for your cash. The first sign of impending zombie crisis is when the figurehead of the company is impossible to contact.
- Public Beta. In the right hands it can be a fine way to get all the details just right. But when a company is running months late on a completely disastrous fuck up and decide to get it out anyway, you’re forced to beta test or start over. Looking at you, Autodesk.
Rest in peace visualJockey (development suspended indefinitely) and Aestesis (still breathing but free) and Patchbox and Adventure Maker (zombie website) and Monkey’s Audio (napping?) and gephex (dead) and Anim8tor (very dead) and all the others that tried and died. It was not in vain.
Hang in there Game Editor!
Kicking along is nodebox and synthedit and Hypernext and Blender and Lightworks and Caspar and all the rest of the brat pack. Shine on you bastards.
