Re: what about the future?
Publicity is free (except of course for having a publicist to do it). Dom3 and new Shrapnel games appear in nearly every online gaming magazine or review site almost instantly.
Advertising costs money. Someones money. Usually the publisher. Thats one of the complaints of indies who leave big publishers for smaller ones. The advertising and other fancy features put them in a hole. It can take 1 or 2 years to payback the startup costs and start seeing profit as actual paychecks. Not to mention the so often mentioned "sales bins" that many of the pushers for the Shrapnel going the other way tend to add as something they would wait for. Those are efforts of the distributor and sometimes the publisher to recoup their costs and break even. Often happening before the profit point which means the devs see nothing.
ONE of the apparent advantages of Shrapnel to indy developers is almost instantly splitting sales. Ive seen some of the developers do ads for their own games but generally Im not sure where you would do it for Dom3. If you can think of one, let me know. Id be willing to look into it.
(But Im still holding out for a tshirt concession)
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