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Three Rings has been doing this for several years with Puzzle Pirates, Bang Howdy, etc. So not exactly new here in the US. Three Rings does offer "traditional" US subscription model, a second currency track, doubloons, for purchase with out of game money or trading in game money for the doubloons.

Maybe because you can create performant, cross-platform applications like:

    http://www.banghowdy.com/
    http://tribaltrouble.com/
    http://sunflow.sourceforge.net/

...or that in five years it will be hard to find a widescreen, 3D capable cellphone that does not support being programmed in Java?

...or that the iPhone can run Java natively in hardware?
    http://blogs.zdnet.com/Burnette/?p=338

they call Puzzle Pirates silly

Well, yeah, it is silly, but in a good way. It is supposed to be a bit of playful, lighthearted fun, not a gritty realistic pirate simulation complete with veneral diseases and scurvy....

And as the article points out, they are doing quite well with that concept. Also check out the upcoming Bang!Howdy by the same team. Java based, just like RuneScape, and Wurm Online. The last one is pretty impressive considering it is made by only two developers.

I have some more to that list:
Puzzle Pirates
Bang! Howdy
Soda Play
JSettlers

Check out the lightweight java game library (LWJGL) - it powers pretty impressive commercial games like Tribal Trouble and Bang Howdy. They work great on the three OSes you mention, have attractive 3d interfaces and are fast and more stable than many windows games I've played (CC:Generals comes to mind - same genre, but for me crashed about 50% of the games I played). Maybe they're not as gorgeous as something like Source can provide, but I think they show that Java can be a wonderful platform for many types of games.

So which of them run on Linux? I see Bang!Howdy does. I like Puzzle Pirates, so I guess I'll have to give Bang!Howdy a try (and look, I can even use my Puzzle Pirates account).

It would be nice if the IGF page had whether the game is Windows only, or has Mac and/or Linux versions. Even on the little description pages it doesn't say, so you have to go to the game's website and hunt down that important bit of info. I guess I'll do that myself and post it, if no one else does it first.

That's exactly what Three Rings is doing with http://puzzlepirates.com/ and http://banghowdy.com/.

It's a bit sad to see projects like this happen. As someone else mentioned, there's a lot of serious work going on when making an emulator.

Unfortunately, it's wasted effort. Consider that in this case the emulator writers are facing two companies not known for their patience in dealing with people violating their intellectual property: Lucas and Sony. It's only a matter of time before the lawyers come knocking.

I'm a small-scale online game developer myself, and I appreciate the work that goes into this type of effort. But, really, all that work would be better used if people would write their own games instead of trying to build emulators for existing games. Yes, it takes a bit more time and effort to write your own game, I will admit. But, we really need a wider variety of games out there. Coding a server is still a bit of deep magic. Anyone working on an emulator project would help the industry more by finding other developers able to fill in the missing pieces to make a full game. You don't have to work for years to make a WoW-killer; smaller games like Bang! Howdy can be made on a relatively modest budget and schedule.

In the end, we see more opportunities for innovation if this happens. So, please, stop focusing on making emulators and start focusing on making new games. Or, at the very least, start an open source project to make basic technology. It'll help everyone more in the long run.

My thoughts,

They're so gonna get sued by Pixar - half of their characters http://www.banghowdy.com/ are stright out of Toy Story 2...

I don't think it was mentioned in the review, but if you're wondering what GDC is (like I was), it's the Game Developers Conference.

It boggles my mind why the wouldn't have links to BANG! Howdy! or reviews of it.