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It's interface is a mess on the PC with KB/mouse. It is visually good, but nothing groundbreaking. The game really feels like a LOTRO rip-off though, except with a lot more interface and design bugs. Best RPG in decades? It may not even be the best RPG out right now. It's certainly not the best Dragon Age. I like the game so far, but I am not in love with it, the design flaws make it hard to love.

It is not just the controls. The PC port is broken. Here is the official thread on their forum: http://forum.bioware.com/topic... acknowledging the issues (4000 comments!), and here is the unofficial thread collecting the bugs: http://forum.bioware.com/topic... (long list)

Though it is not just the PC port that is broken. For shit and gigles check the last-gen thread of issues: http://forum.bioware.com/topic...

It's interface is a mess on the PC with KB/mouse. It is visually good, but nothing groundbreaking. The game really feels like a LOTRO rip-off though, except with a lot more interface and design bugs. Best RPG in decades? It may not even be the best RPG out right now. It's certainly not the best Dragon Age. I like the game so far, but I am not in love with it, the design flaws make it hard to love.

It is not just the controls. The PC port is broken. Here is the official thread on their forum: http://forum.bioware.com/topic... acknowledging the issues (4000 comments!), and here is the unofficial thread collecting the bugs: http://forum.bioware.com/topic... (long list)

Though it is not just the PC port that is broken. For shit and gigles check the last-gen thread of issues: http://forum.bioware.com/topic...

It's interface is a mess on the PC with KB/mouse. It is visually good, but nothing groundbreaking. The game really feels like a LOTRO rip-off though, except with a lot more interface and design bugs. Best RPG in decades? It may not even be the best RPG out right now. It's certainly not the best Dragon Age. I like the game so far, but I am not in love with it, the design flaws make it hard to love.

It is not just the controls. The PC port is broken. Here is the official thread on their forum: http://forum.bioware.com/topic... acknowledging the issues (4000 comments!), and here is the unofficial thread collecting the bugs: http://forum.bioware.com/topic... (long list)

Though it is not just the PC port that is broken. For shit and gigles check the last-gen thread of issues: http://forum.bioware.com/topic...

Bullshit. http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/355/index/10056886 explains, what was promised / advertised. They clearly did not deliver what was promised.

And don't give me that artistic freedom-bullshit. Artistic freedom is a constitutional right in Germany, barring the censoring of titles like Natural Born Killers, so I value this right. BUT - and this is important, this right does not stand alone. There are other rights. If you order a country side painting and get a city with no green in it, then you don't have to pay, because the contract was not fullfilled.

In other words: Had Bioware not promised very different endings, the whining of the other gamers would be whining and that's it. But this does not apply here, because they made specific claims they did not hold up to. And this is when the artist is not so free anymore. What is so annoying is the fact that people actually paid with their money and their time to get the best ending. Some used their shephards for 5 years. What Bioware and EA did here is outragious. And to have the chuzpa to claim artistic freedom over an ending that consists solely of false advertising is unbelievable.

I don't play 3rd person shooter, so I am not affected. But this is about holding the line as gamers. Clearly I don't count you as a gamer, because your posts miss the point by miles and you have no feeling for decency.

To me, this is about false advertising. And it is about a bad gaming experience in order to hold the timeframe despite the fact that people in charge promised something else. Should Bioware deliver an ending I count as holding up to the promises, I shall buy other games from Bioware. If not, I won't buy Bioshock 3 and everything else EA has to offer. They have to understand that "artistic freedom" ends when the artist acts like an entrepeneur and makes false claims. To me, they could have get away with it IF they did not make those false claims.

Had they said nothing about the ending or something like "whatever you do effects the plot, but in the end the faith of Shepherd is already written, so your achievements make no big difference in the end", I wouldn't be as pissed as I am. But they explicitly claimed the end to be different for every gamer and that all your choices make a difference in the final battle. The cake is a lie.

Don't do false claims and you are as an "artist" free to do with your product nearly everything you like. But artistic freedom does NOT give you the right to betrayal, because your rights and the rights of your customers are in a conflict here. And as much as I believe that games are art I do NOT believe that betrayal should be allowed just because it's a new kind of art. There are court decisions containing paintings or music that were ordered but the product was not to the customers demands. If nothing is agreed to, you could give him everything, including a white cube in a white room (meaning an empty picture) or something of equal artistic value. But you will not promise me a forest and deliver a cty with no trees in it. Simple as that.

I was sad I pre-ordered a collector's edition as well. But by sheer chance, I had ordered it from Amazon.com, and they were offering full refunds on Mass Effect 3 purchases, even opened copies. I hung onto my copy until BioWare's first official response , where Ray made it quite clear that EA/BioWare had no intention of admitting any faults with the product. I went through Amazon's standard automated return system and received a full refund after shipping it back. Supposedly EA/Origin, and even some Best Buys were doing full refunds as well. One key phrase for increasing the likely-hood of a the full refund is something along the lines of "the game did not live up to promises made by the publisher".

It might be worth checking to see if you can return any of your copies. If nothing else, make sure to sell all of your copies used. The only message EA truly understands is money or it's lack, so send the right message.

EA's CEO was interviewed by a German company recently and asked which upcoming EA game was his favorite. He actually said he will probably play Mass Effect 3 more than any other EA game (BF3, TOR, ...).

Steam is either loved or hated by gamers. It sure beats the old days of manual game installations, but the Steam application itself is hardly perfect. It's notoriously slow and very buggy. It embraces Adobe Flash. It fucks up and reinstalls DirectX over and over. The startup & launching time is horrendous. It doesn't halt the application when games are running. Etc etc. Origin could be worse off than Steam. I wouldn't know... I haven't installed it yet.

I'm still surprised that Steam works at all. The Source leak showcased some of the early code behind Steam, and it was written so poorly you'd want to cry.

Mass Effect 2 with its unskippable cutscenes, repetitive dialog and stupid quests is one of the worst games I've ever played.

My initial reaction was annoyance at the unskippable cutscenes, especially after doing the first mission a few times. After googling it i found this thread in which the first post describes how to make cutscenes skippable, and the second describes how to make a fast forward mode which works on both in-game cutscenes and gameplay. This is actually really handy for those long treks when you're in Fed-Ex missions as well as for bypassing cutscenes you've seen. It's not cheating, as the enemies moves equally fast when you're fast-forwarding, although I guess you could do a slow-motion mode as well. That's not really necessary in this game :)

With these hacks the game was enjoyable for me. It's a pity the developers are so hungry to extend the amount of play time that they feel like they must piss off a majority players in order to put "40+ hours" or whatever on the box. Even more annoying are those games with sparsely placed checkpoints, forcing you to re-play lots of content before you get to a tight spot.

More than one month after release, many players still can't launch Dragon Age II because of a bug in the EA DRM software. Since the first few days, BioWare has ignored the problem entirely and provided us with no fixes or updates. More information: http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/300/index/6442590

I just bought Dragon Age 1, and, guess what? It still plays fine, and it came with the expansion and all the DLCs for $39.

Sure.. unless for some reason EA/Bioware fuck up the validation server:
http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/58/index/7036701/1

You got lucky, if you'd bought it on Saturday you'd have spent four days going "Why the fuck did I just waste $39 on this piece of shit?"

Heck, while I was there, I bought KOTOR1 for $10, a game that I had pirated years ago to see if I liked it, and I was 'eh', so I decided not to buy it.

Hang on? You bought a game you don't like because it was only $10? Hmm. Give me a minute, I need to go write some really bad $10 games...

Bioware released a GUI toolset for Dragon Age: Origins on the PC; It was used to develop the game. When I mod the game with the toolset I am usually modifying textures or character models by changing the variables in the GUI & the editing files they may reference in an editor like Photoshop. So a Bioware developer doesn't need programming skill to do some of the footwork in game development. Programmers use the toolset also. I don't know much about it, Bioware runs a wiki for the toolset that describes a script as similar to C.

Just a wild guess from the performance and occasional errors on my machines, Dragon Age: Origins is a programming catastrophe and their standards aren't very high, anyway.

Aside from that, these people have cult followings in the company's fanbase. The guy could be a good choice for consulting alone or maybe just a PR move.

The graphics in DA:O were much better than DAII. I'm basing this off the demo. Check this out: Bioware already released a High Texture pack for DAII http://social.bioware.com/page/da2-patches Size: 1.08G

Yes and DA is not multiplayer. You can still find good multiplayer servers for nwn2 though . pw server

Sorry if this was posted before but the second game will have some pretty big changes when it comes to the player's character. Some people are calling it "Mass Effectication" or Dragon Effect. In Dragon Age 2 you play as a set character named "Hawke". http://dragonage.bioware.com/# . It's currently at the top page under "Dragon Age 2 announced"

You can only play as a human, too: http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/141/index/3052334/1#3052434
So, people are comparing this to Mass Effect's Commander Shepard. Personally, I don't care for it. It woks in Mass Effect 2, but Dragon Age was an entirely different beast altogether. I'd like those two IPs to be as far apart as possible. I'm not going to completely pass judgment, but from what ha been announced, I really don't care for what I read. Some people call it a "superficial" to determine your character's race, but I think it breaks the fantasy of a game when in a world filled with Elves and Dwarves and other stuff, you can only be a human. Especially after the first game established that you can choose your race. Had they only allowed you to be human in the first game, then this would have been a non-issue for me (aside the fact that we play as this pre-determined "Hawke" character).

Sorry if this was posted before but the second game will have some pretty big changes when it comes to the player's character. Some people are calling it "Mass Effectication" or Dragon Effect. In Dragon Age 2 you play as a set character named "Hawke". http://dragonage.bioware.com/# . It's currently at the top page under "Dragon Age 2 announced"

You can only play as a human, too: http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/141/index/3052334/1#3052434
So, people are comparing this to Mass Effect's Commander Shepard. Personally, I don't care for it. It woks in Mass Effect 2, but Dragon Age was an entirely different beast altogether. I'd like those two IPs to be as far apart as possible. I'm not going to completely pass judgment, but from what ha been announced, I really don't care for what I read. Some people call it a "superficial" to determine your character's race, but I think it breaks the fantasy of a game when in a world filled with Elves and Dwarves and other stuff, you can only be a human. Especially after the first game established that you can choose your race. Had they only allowed you to be human in the first game, then this would have been a non-issue for me (aside the fact that we play as this pre-determined "Hawke" character).

Not official but...

http://social.bioware.com/project/2563/

I also recently started playing Dragon Age (Bioware). . . . On the plus side, it allows a fairly free story line, with your choice of what order you want to solve the major plot points, and what side you want to be on

What?! Where's the option to join up with the darkspawn? I must have missed it. :(

I would suggest they stick more to the Blizzard style, like the methods used with Diablo, and Diablo 2. D1 was a relatively quick 16-20 hours if you trolled every square inch of the map to the end. D2 was much bigger than D1, but didn't suffer from the larger scope. There were almost no useless 'side quests' as everything was focused on the main story in some way. They did none of the 'go here and collect # of X and return to Y'. There have been very few games that I've finished over the last 10 years due to either a weak/no story line, or the game trying to be to open-ended, or simply because they sucked. They focus so much on creating huge environments, that it gets more than a little tedious to go through it all. By the time you've hit a quater of it, you pretty much have nothing left to discover except for some new scenery.

That said, I've run across a few exceptions. Half Life 2 (great story line). I've played it a few times through. I also recently started playing Dragon Age (Bioware). It's got a pretty hefty amount of those side quests, but they tend to resolve themselves without you doing much to work for them. I don't mind them accepting them and if they get solved great, and if not, no worries). The map layouts tend to allow you to resolve them just as part of your normal progression through the map and I've noticed that many tend to showcase certain uses for skills that you might not have considered (haven't cracked the manual). On the plus side, it allows a fairly free story line, with your choice of what order you want to solve the major plot points, and what side you want to be on, so they get points for that as well. They also ditched the huge world map environments that I was used to seeing in Sacred, and trips between them are without all the tedious 'hiking'. When you get to specific 'areas', the maps expand to a much larger sub-areas that are again broken down by more sub-areas that aren't shown unless you opt, or are forced to go there.

That is another important part to my way of thinking. If they try too hard to be 'free and open' as far as story line, you end up lost as to what to do or where to go next because the game provides no direction other than 'talk to blahblah' and that typically prompts a "Who the hell is 'blahblah and why can't I find him/her?". Dragon Age fortunately has a strong enough story line that even paying a minimal amount of attention will get you there and they clearly mark the target of a particular question on the map, although they don't show you how to get there.

Haven't finished this one yet, although it's been good enough for me to stop 3/4ths of the way through and create a new character out of curiosity and that's saying a lot. About my only major complaint is that it tries almost too hard for a story line, and ends up being a little heavy on dialogue. Fortunately you can just skip it with the escape key.

I have to wonder if a lot of these studios every play the entire finished product from start to finish. I suspect if they had a little more perspective of the entire game, we wouldn't see such a high failure rate in regards to games not being finished. I suspect they play their little component areas or specific parts of the project and think it's great, but rolled into the rest of it, they dont' realize just how tedious, boring, repetitive, or how difficult the entire game can get.

The best thing on PS3

Dragon Age

I was about to say almost exactly this.

If a game is multi-platform, then you will play it more (if you don't it's not worth any more to you).

Frankly I doubt this. Most of the games I play would not be enjoyable to play on my phone - the screen is much too small, and the phone hasn't got appropriate controls. I would prefer to be able to buy the games I play for Linux rather than having to keep a Windows box just for playing games, but I don't need any game which I do play to run on multiple platforms, because I'm only going to play it on one. Of course, if a game is Mac only (or Wii/Playstation/X-Box only) then I won't play it because I don't have those platforms. Making a game multi-platform expands the market for the game, but it doesn't make individual players play it more.

If a game is good, then you will play it more.

Oh, absolutely. I've played The Witcher at least 150 hours; Dragon Age about the same. Probably over a thousand of hours of Neverwinter Nights (which I only bought to support the Linux port) in its various incarnations and community add-ons. Certainly hundreds of hours of Sid Meier's Civlization, Alpha Centauri (both of which, again, I only bought because there were Linux ports and I wanted to support them), Pirates! and Railroads! Hundreds of hours on Settlers II, III and IV. And, back in the day, thousands of hours playing Elite, the video game sans pariel. In terms of hours of entertainment per unit currency, good games are extraordinary value for money.

I fins that about half the games I buy I only play once or twice. I don't resent that in the least, because the games that do work for me give me so much fun.

If a game gets extra content, then you will play it more.

Again, agreed, particularly if it comes with good modding tools and allows community-made content. After all, modding (and playing other people's mods) is half the fun of things like NWN and The Witcher.

I

Shit, and it should have been made clear, but if you look at the packaging it will say it requires DX10, which was Vista only (XP versions are dirty hacks)

Sorry, but that's not accurate. The Mass Effect System Requirements page states quite clearly that Mass Effect is supported under Windows XP.

I ran Mass Effect under Windows XP through about three times without any of the hacked DX10 versions. The only incident I had is where an updated NVidia driver caused ME to crash (I forget which version - it was circa 190.??) and a downgrade to 189.somethingelse cured it.

Dragon Age is only supposed to require a connection once, right after you bought the DLC. Once it has that confirmation you're supposed to able to play offline all you want. If that's not happening then you have a problem, it's not intended behavior. This FAQ might help.

There is DRM. You cannot even continue a saved game if you started it with premium content (like Stone prisoner) enabled, unless you are connected to the Net.

Some encounters are insanely difficult, even on Normal.
For example, a "random" encounter with a dozen tough archers. http://daforums.bioware.com/forums/viewtopic.html?topic=705371&forum=135&sp=0

There were numerous problems with the social site/game registration, patch and toolset cause serious trouble for some people. This isn't a news for games of this size, but BioWare and EA apparently are not up to the task to support this game smoothly. Information from them regarding the problems were scarce. Usually you had to decide on better informed fellow players' tips.

Uh... I don't know what to tell you except that you're completely wrong.

The patch is out right here: http://social.bioware.com/game_patches.php

Also, you don't have to be online to play the base game. However, if you have any DLC, you must be connected to the internet and logged into your BioWare account through Dragon Age to access it -- and if your saved games have any of that content in them, that means you can't load those saved games unless you're connected to the internet.

Lies and deceit The PC hasn't had a patch yet

It hasn't?

As far as I can tell, this game is only planned to be released on Windows, Xbox 360, and the PS3. My question is, isn't the PS3 running linux? Doesn't it use OpenGL? I don't know much about consoles, and some quick googling didn't turn up the answer but maybe somebody could enlighten me, does the PS3 even run DirectX? If not, Bioware must be going through a lot of trouble to port it to the PS3, and I know there's a lot more PS3 owners than linux gamers, but if they have to rewrite it in openGL then it seems like a lot of the work necessary for a linux port would already be done.

This isn't an expansion, this is just a side quest that has been ripped out of the game and is now sold separately.

I have mod points but I'd rather correct some misinformation instead.

To sum up what BioWare devs have said is that the PC version was originally going to be released back in spring IIRC, so development on features was frozen to allow that. The DLC wasn't in the game's featureset at that point, it was being developed separately by a completely different dev team for later release. The console versions were going to be released around now (there seems to be a longer release process for consoles to allow for higher certification requirements).

At some point it was instead decided to delay release the PC version to the same time as the console versions. But the featureset couldn't be unfrozen to allow the DLC, as that would have messed up the console release process. So we get the situation we have now, where the game is being released at the same time as the DLC.

In other words, while in theory a game company could do what you're saying, in this case the DLC isn't something that was "ripped out" of the game, it's something that we would have had to have waited for anyway.

I haven't played Sonic Chronicles or Shattered Steel, & I am patiently awaiting Dragon Age, but going by this list I can honestly say that Bioware has *never* let me down.

http://www.bioware.com/games/

My thoughts were that even if the gameplay of his game can match that of NWN then it's still a worse product at a higher price because the graphics can't.

Some people would find a product with lower-detail graphics more valuable because it would not require the purchase of new hardware. You mention Mass Effect, but my current PC's motherboard can't even take the CPU and RAM that Mass Effect requires.

Bioware has repeatedly had contests where they've asked the community to open up the NWN toolset, write some dialogue and send it to them. The proof is in the pudding.

CD Project Red (The Witcher) are doing the same thing, and my team has won two out of four stages of the current contest, come second in one stage, and ducked out of one; we're probably favourites to be overall winners. I have to admit I got involved in this competition to build up a modding team towards doing a commercial independent game, but I think that it's at present extremely difficult to break into even the indie games market, let alone the 'big' games market.

Also, writers are not the most sought-after talent. 3D modellers are probably that - but concept art is also important. So if you're good at storyboarding, work on your 2D art skills.

Then, find a game which you enjoy which makes it's content creation toolkit available to the community (Bioware, Bethesda, CD Projekt Red - there's a lot of buzz at present about the new Bioware toolkit which will come with Dragon Age), hang out in the forums, get a feel of which modding team has got its act most together, and talk to them.

And it should be noted that writing typical fiction or exposition is different from writing threaded dialogue in a game, hence that is why they ask people to submit basic mods made in their toolset.

This is absolutely true. Non-linear narratives which work for the reader/player/user/audience are very much harder to write well than linear narratives, and the more freedom you allow the player the harder it is to craft a satisfying narrative. This doesn't make it not worth doing - on the contrary, like the GPP, it is my ambition to produce a really excellent story-driven game.

Bioware is one company that I always seem to see writing positions open for... now whether you take that as a good thing or a bad thing I guess depends on your perspective. They usually have a written component that you can submit (ie an original story set in genre X or based on Bioware game X) which, they say, can override any educational qualification.
Austin, Texas
Edmonton, Alberta
Yes, believe it or not Bioware is actually a Canadian company.

Bioware is one company that I always seem to see writing positions open for... now whether you take that as a good thing or a bad thing I guess depends on your perspective. They usually have a written component that you can submit (ie an original story set in genre X or based on Bioware game X) which, they say, can override any educational qualification.
Austin, Texas
Edmonton, Alberta
Yes, believe it or not Bioware is actually a Canadian company.

Also, one of those have a linux client: http://nwn.bioware.com/downloads/linuxclient.html

While I wholeheartedly agree that the rootkit thing is blown out of proportion...

The initial planned release of both Spore and Mass Effect were going to have SecureROM phone home once every 10 days to verify that your game was still a liscensed copy. If you weren't connected after day 10, your game would not function. The publisher relented when they got a lot of complaints from military personel, who are often unable to connect once every 10 days. That was when the change was made to refuse to allow you to download updates without it phoning home; something many games do.

http://masseffect.bioware.com/forums/viewtopic.html?topic=629059&forum=125&sp=0

Now, having affirmed your viewpoint, I still highly disagree with the "3 installations and then a hassle laden phone call to the publisher" aspect of this.

My PCs have a tendency to go through HDs at a freakish rate, no matter which brand I buy. My old PC lost 3 HDs in 3.5yrs. My machine before that went through another 2. The same happened for my first Windows PC. I also like to uninstall a game if I'm not planning to play it for a long time, and I upgrade a PC once every 3-4yrs. If I had bought Spore with this DRM back when I got my last PC, I wouldn't have been able to install it on my current one, because I would have used up all 3 installs with HD deaths.

DRM only makes the paying customer go through any inconienence. Pirates don't even notice it.

Wow. That's some baseless grand-standing since, well, the MMO was announced well BEFORE the EA merger.

Also, I guess it's good for you that they're still making Dragon Age, huh?

I suppose Intel should ONLY make desktop processors? Or Coca-Cola should ONLY release Coca-Cola Classic? Hm?

Heaven forbid a games company should diversify the type of games they make.

ummmm.... Bioware is actually Canadian

http://www.bioware.com/bioware_info/contact/

It's not the point, anyway. I'm not saying that the DRM on the premium modules stopped all people from pirating them; but, apparently, it did deter quite a few, and, more importantly, a lot of people still bought it despite the annoyance. Atari won that round in a sense that they've got away with a very annoying DRM scheme, so now it's not surprising that they're pushing further.

(X) Legitimate gamer uses would be affected
(X) Users of gamer will not put up with it

I am the Atari producer for Mysteries of Westgate (MoW) among other D&D products. Most of you know that the release of Mysteries of Westgate has been delayed because of ongoing development of a new security system. Near the end of MoW's development last year, we realized that the traditional protection of the .exe file would not work with it so we scrambled to find a reliable commercial method that would do the job. At the time, there was no solution that met our requirements. That is why, since the end of 2007, Atari has been working hard to develop a new security system that can be used not just for MoW but for all Atari products that need protection for data files without using the traditional route of wrapping the .exe file. Unfortunately, developing this system has taken longer than we anticipated and MoW's release has suffered as a result, because it is the first product that will use this new system.

...

I realize that many of you are anxious to get your hands on Mysteries of Westgate, and I know from firsthand experience that it is a fantastic adventure. MoW has been ready to ship for a while now and we are close to finalizing the new security system that will ensure that it has its proper day in the sun. In the meantime, we are working hard to keep cool information about the game coming.

Is this better or worse than requiring a CD in the drive to play? Update: 05/07 17:17 GMT by T :According to a message from Technical Producer Derek French (may require a scroll-down) on the Bioware forums, there is indeed an internet connection required, but only for activation, not for all future play.

After the first activation, SecuROM requires that it re-check with the server within ten days (in case the CD Key has become public/warez'd and gets banned). Just so that the 10 day thing doesn't become abrupt, SecuROM tries its first re-check with 5 days remaining in the 10 day window. If it can't contact the server before the 10 days are up, nothing bad happens and the game still runs. After 10 days a re-check is required before the game can run.

This is a new one for Slashdot I think. They updated the summary with new information, and in doing so made it wrong.

"For clarity, though, an internet connection is not required to install, just to activate the first time, and every 10 days after. You can be completely connectionless for 9 days and encounter no problems playing Mass Effect. And you don't need the disk in the drive to play."

From page 2.

Taco's link is to page 1, but he didn't keep reading to see the newer information. You do in fact need to re-authenticate every 10 days if you want to keep playing.

Sounds like it only re-checks *once*, not once every ten days, ad infinitum.

A: You cannot play MEPC without an internet connection. MEPC must authenticate when it is initially run and every 10 days thereafter.

I bought (as in paid full price for) most of the games that Loki (remember them) ever ported to Linux. I still play Alpha Centauri sometimes - it still runs on modern Linux (though sadly their port of Civ3 no longer runs - doesn't get on with modern libraries in some way I haven't bothered to diagnose). I bought Neverwinter Nights when it first came out, because it was available in a Linux port (and it still runs very nicely, and yes, I still sometimes play it - mostly user-generated content, too). And I'm one of the only 597 people world-wide who have so far pre-ordered Apricot.

And that's kind of the point.

It costs money to develop commercial games; quite a lot of money. The people who develop them want to sell them. If there were enough Linux users prepared to spend real money on games, we'd have more commercial games. Over the last few weeks I've been playing (and really enjoying) The Witcher. It runs on an updated version of Bioware's Aurora engine, so presumably it wouldn't be hard to port it to Linux. But I don't expect we'll see a Linux port, because Atari, who sell it, clearly don't think enough of us would pay for it. And sadly I think they're probably right.

I've haven't found many open source game projects which are compelling to me. There are plenty of good ideas out there, and half-finished projects. Globulation is quite polished and seems to me quite innovative, and plays well; but it's also quite shallow - you'll enjoy it for a week but you won't still be playing it in a year. Oolite is genuinely good and you might still be playing it in a year - but that's largely because it is a faithful reconstruction of Elite, which is one of the great classics of computer games. Flightgear may be good but it isn't my thing.

To create a new game takes a lot of vision and a lot of work. Until you've done a lot of work it's hard to communicate the vision, so it's hard to recruit people. And even then, too many of the talented people prefer to tinker with some project of their own which they'll never get finished, than co-operate to deliver someone else's vision. I'd like to be wrong on this. But what I see on Freshmeat is lots of 'alpha' and 'beta' projects, and very little that's genuinely playable.

You may want to try Never Winter Nights by BioWare for single-purchase game (no recurring fees) or Dungeons and Dragons Online: Stormreach by Turbine for a monthly-fee for the MMO services.

You may want to try Never Winter Nights by BioWare for single-purchase game (no recurring fees) or Dungeons and Dragons Online: Stormreach by Turbine for a monthly-fee for the MMO services.