A quite thorough and mostly chronological walk through the cottage developers of multiple video games that you know, and probably a bunch that you don't. This was a well-researched title and I enjoyed hearing about the humble beginnings of games for multiple platforms, and how their creators did or didn't realize great success from those creations. You may get a little bogged down in the many, many names of developers and the companies they founded, as I did, but the linear format does carry you through. And it features a surprisingly emotional ending. ( )

Moss' "Shareware Heroes: The renegades who redefined gaming at the dawn of the internet" brought back a lot of memories for me, someone who grew up on BBSs, early networks, and games passed along on disks full of apps, when you never knew exactly what you were going to get, but you were always worried it would have a virus attached! The book is comprehensive, though sometimes to it's detriment, when you find yourself getting one more detail than you wanted, or a story when a chapter could have ended already. Likewise, it's packed full of data, though there are occasional typos and errors. Overall however, the book is great and worth reading if you're interested in learning about - or reminiscing about - the early days of software.

Richard Moss’s Shareware Heroes: The Renegades Who Redefined Gaming at the Dawn of the Internet examines the rise and fall of a content distribution model initially predicated on the sharing of physical floppy disks, then file transfers over bulletin boards, and finally the current demo model of gaming. Moss writes of the early adopters of shareware, “They thought to forgo the usual retail channels altogether and instead embrace the sharing, communal nature of the early computing industry – an industry that cared little for such annoyances as copy protection and that gleefully passed around software of all kinds, commercial or not, across user groups and bulletin board systems” (pg. 9). He tracks the discussions across these different iterations of the internet, including Usenet, CompuServe, Prodigy, and others that have fallen out of use, meticulously documenting hundreds of shareware games from initial idea through distribution and user registration. Moss relies on extensive interviews to tell the inside story of these developments, alternating between Mac, PC, and other early versions of the home computer.

My interest was piqued by the narrative surrounding Maelstrom and Escape Velocity as well as their connections to Rochester and the Rochester Institute of Technology due to the local connection for me (pg. 188, 192). After describing all of the formative developments and experimentation, Moss arrives at Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, and Duke Nukem, which shifted expectations for shareware games and foreshadowed the modern demo system and microtransaction model (p. 203, 230). I also have memories of Duke Nukem making the rounds on 3 ½ floppy disk in my youth. Turning to the beginning of the end of shareware in the late ’90s, Moss writes, “Shareware could still be profitable, but – somewhat ironically, given the ease of mass distribution and online payment collection – turning a profit was getting trickier. Worse, shareware’s reputation was once again getting shaky, as too many programs labelled shareware were turning out to be time-limited or functionally restricted demos” (pg. 263). He portrays Tread Marks as the last glimmer of shareware’s golden days, in particular as it was combined with a dying man’s last efforts to complete and release it (pg. 290-293).

Moss concludes, “Shareware had defined itself as being a point of difference – a radical new way to sell software without the costly chains of boxed retail distribution; a faster, more direct, and more honest way to reach a customer. But now the term was no longer needed because shareware – in its various guises – had become normalized” (pg. 293). Demos were expected from the major game publishers, though they were far less generous than shareware developers. Moss’s Shareware Heroes is a great study of one facet of video game history. He’s written for other publications about video game history, though the focus of this work will interest those studying early online gaming networks. The historical narrative occasionally stalls due to all the details, but Moss’s ability to tease out individual details adds life and color to his monograph. ( )

Shareware Heroes by Richard Moss (2022) is a history of shareware development from the late 1970s through the early 2000s. The book is focused on men in America and the UK.

For the nuts and bolts of how shareware developed as a business model for games and software development in the first couple decades of the personal computer, it's an interesting and informative read. To revisit one's favorite old shareware game, it's also fun.

As a larger discourse on computer history and software development it falls a little flat. Programmers who aren't men are pretty much absent from this book. Gamers and computer users who aren't men are also pretty much absent too. The two exceptions are a non-binary developer and a developer's mother.

I realize the personal computer era was a huge paradigm shift where computers became "boy toys" and women were often actively discouraged from building one or developing programs for them despite the earliest decades having women "typists" who were programmers of the mainframes.

It also has almost no mention of software development in places other than the United States and the United Kingdom. There was a small software development cottage industry in Australia too and I suspect other places too.

Finally, as the book peters out with the slow extinction of the classic shareware model of distributing software, there's not look at the present day marker where small developers have various streaming services as their distribution method. ( )

This is a fascinating look at the shareware gaming scene in the dawn of personal computing. It's also fascinating to look at the rise of such cult classics as Doom and Quake. Otherwise