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And that's the point. The revenue stream is a priority. If they make a bad game just to cater to a real-money auction system, they aren't going to make any money because no one will play the game. If no one plays the game, no one will buy or sell items in the game. In order to make the in-game real-money auction system work, the game has to appeal to the masses first. Because of that, I disagree that this auction system has as much potential to ruin the game as you suggest. Will it change the game? Absolutely without question. Blizzard will be sure to monitor everything and regulate the supply of items given out by the game so the price stays high and they get more out of their percentage. Will it ruin the game? I'm pretty sure they won't let it. Again, the appeal of the game is the driver of the higher order revenue stream and they won't cut off their nose to spite their face.

I completely agree with this. Blizzard will likely not prioritize this in a way that causes the game to fail, and if they do, they will quickly reformulate it. They will likely build it in a way so as to optimize total revenue. And it may even be a boon to those all those who wish to trade items for real money who would have done so outside the system anyway (although I think this is quite a small minority of players).

I think while we mostly agree, we are looking at this from slightly different perspectives. You are saying something like, "this is an entertainment experience I am not interested in. People still interested in this [one of: are okay with the revenue model / like spending real money for in-game items / understand the play experience will be affected by in-game revenue steams]. Blizzard might as well maximize profit while still providing a generally good game experience for those people."

I'm looking at it more abstractly. While I'm not interested in this entertainment experience, I think that while Blizzard will certainly not ruin the game with this system, it is a compromise for extra revenue that will, through encouraging paying money for items and to some degree designing the economy around it, detract slightly to moderately from the playing experience of the average player. In turn, though, it will succeed in increasing revenue, and other game developers will see Blizzard's success and consider maximizing revenue over improving the play experience a desirable thing to do, thus moving games in general farther from the type of "once-you've-bought-it-it's-non-commercial" experience I would like them to be.

As I understand it, you're saying it's already a foregone conclusion that the games industry has irreversibly taken this path already, and I can understand that view. (Although maybe you should reconsider? There are lots of great games out there, albeit not as many AAA titles. Maybe give the latest Humble Indie Bundle a try? VVVVVV and Crayon Physics Deluxe are great games.)

I'm not so sure, but what I am pretty sure of is that in-game revenue streams of this type compromise general game quality, even if not to the point of ruining them. I would rather see other companies mess this type of system up than see Blizzard succeed while lulling the gaming community into accepting that this is the shape of things to come. There are still plenty of great games out there, and I don't want to see people stop making them because they can't compete revenue-wise with games that take your money at every opportunity yet are still enjoyable enough for people to keep playing them.

Well I have bought about 4 games for Linux in the last 6 months, and all of the Humble Bundles. You might want to look at the Linux sales figures for the Humble Bundles. So yes FOSS people pay for software.

http://www.wolfire.com/humble/
http://www.humblebundle.com/

Linux users when given a choice are even more willing to pay more than those on other Operating Systems. Windows users are cheap skates and always want something for nothing.

For me, personally? Hmmmm. I refuse to pay anything for home computer games. Oh, I did over the years, because the kids wanted them. But I won't pay for them for myself. On the other hand, I pay Runescape sometimes. I'll pay for two or three months membership, when it runs out, I'll play free for awhile. But, I won't pay for WOW, or Sony, or any of the other big name gaming networks.

I suppose that an individual game really isn't worth much on my scale of things. But, a game ENGINE might be valuable.

However - in the community, there are indeed commercial games from independent developers. Now that I've bothered to look for them, I might even pay for some to see what I think of them. . .

Anyway - you might find answers to your questions if you read about, and maybe talk to some of the indies:
http://bloc.eurion.net/archives/2011/a-list-of-some-commercial-gnulinux-games/
http://www.humblebundle.com/

Maybe those links will give you some ideas for search terms or something.

Even if you take into account the humble bundle all that shows is the average linux person is willing to spend a whopping 2 dollars for a game (average of about 11-12 bucks for a 6 game pack).

http://www.humblebundle.com/

Average Purchase: $4.97
Average Windows: $3.91
Average Linux: $11.82

Stop lying out your ass, that entire post was troll. Nevermind the Linux version of Neverwinter Nights and UT running fully.

http://www.humblebundle.com/

Scroll down, the average linux user paid almost twice as much as the average mac user, and more then 3 times as much as the average windows user.

It even updates your video card driver if it needs to be. If it wasn't for steam I'd never know when to update my ati driver. Then there are also all the great demos he can freely tryout. And while I'm at it, http://www.humblebundle.com/, they are steam compatible and as cheap as your heart desires, and one of them happens to be a 2d platformer, although I haven't played it at all.

http://www.humblebundle.com/?key=mR8F7yMf6F bundles #1 & 2 ........please donate 2 - 3 times as much (though of course you dont have to) to bundle #3 (if you use this link)

Actually it is. Have you played it? Probably not--thought so.

Flamebait. Yes I own it. Would you talk to your parents like that? If not, then don't talk in a tone like that. Also don't be PC and say but I don't have parents! It's a hypothetical question, i.e, what if.

Uh what? That was completely unintelligble and made no sense.

Amnesia, while an amazing game, is simply a point-and-click game.

Oversimplifying the game. Also off-topic.

No, not off-topic. Completely on-topic. Your response: "Amnesia is a casual game." My reponse: "It is a casual game." Yes, very off-topic. And yes, it really is. It has no other mechanic than looking through rooms, opening doors, experiencing a story, etc. Adventure games: identical. There is no other game mechanic found in other games like RPGs (massive amount of items, leveling,combat), strategy games (building of units, strategy, currency and resource management), shooters (different weapons, different ammo, sometimes level building, and multiplayer). You're 110% wrong here.

And again, my point exactly. Strawman arguments. You dwell on one word, the "casual" one, when my entire argument was about Linux not having a realistic business market.

Ah here we go. Finally some meat, but with something ad-hominem.
http://www.gamespot.com/pc/adventure/amnesiathedarkdescent/news.html?sid=6286090 -- buy once, play everywhere.
http://www.humblebundle.com/ check the Linux graph, it's significant. Again, buy once, play everywhere.
The Unreal Tournament series were also ported to Linux, until a few years ago.
The wikipedia article on Linux games (there are many, and games like Nethack are played daily [citation: http://alt.org/nethack/perday.html, able to play locally].)

You proved my point 1000%. Did you even read what you wrote? It's the same 6-7 games Linux zealots mention *every* single time *every* single year, oh for the past how many years now?

And nethack? Are you serious? A game that's how many years old? 25

Are you listening to yourself? Because you're just proving my point so easily it's like you're just walking into it.

My point is that there ARE games that sell well, and also run on Linux, but as lots of people point out, nobody really does ports because it's not "established." A Valve establishment would be a great boon for Linux gaming.

And as your post has shown, that is 100% wrong.

Yea, totally worth the X millions devoted to development, marketing, production, art direction, distribution, etc., for Linux

Take your false cynicism and bitterness and educate yourself. The only extra cost is development: artwork, models, particles, etc. don't change. There wouldn't be a chicken and egg problem if more people did double ports to Mac and Linux instead.

Only cost? yes artwork doesn't change. Only just about *everything* else. So again, there are millions of extra dollars needed, work, resources, and man-power. But that doesn't count, right!

Actually it is. Have you played it? Probably not--thought so.

Flamebait. Yes I own it. Would you talk to your parents like that? If not, then don't talk in a tone like that. Also don't be PC and say but I don't have parents! It's a hypothetical question, i.e, what if.

Amnesia, while an amazing game, is simply a point-and-click game.

Oversimplifying the game. Also off-topic.

And again, my point exactly. Strawman arguments. You dwell on one word, the "casual" one, when my entire argument was about Linux not having a realistic business market.

Ah here we go. Finally some meat, but with something ad-hominem.
http://www.gamespot.com/pc/adventure/amnesiathedarkdescent/news.html?sid=6286090 -- buy once, play everywhere.
http://www.humblebundle.com/ check the Linux graph, it's significant. Again, buy once, play everywhere.
The Unreal Tournament series were also ported to Linux, until a few years ago.
The wikipedia article on Linux games (there are many, and games like Nethack are played daily [citation: http://alt.org/nethack/perday.html, able to play locally].)
My point is that there ARE games that sell well, and also run on Linux, but as lots of people point out, nobody really does ports because it's not "established." A Valve establishment would be a great boon for Linux gaming.

Yea, totally worth the X millions devoted to development, marketing, production, art direction, distribution, etc., for Linux

Take your false cynicism and bitterness and educate yourself. The only extra cost is development: artwork, models, particles, etc. don't change. There wouldn't be a chicken and egg problem if more people did double ports to Mac and Linux instead.

What % of desktops are Linux? 2%? It's not worth the development effort for a mainstream consumer product, especially given that a fair number of that 2% aren't gamers anyway (if they were, they'd be on Windows!).

Since a significant number of Windows desktops (I'm inclined to say "majority", but I can't back that up) are running in corporate or government environments they shouldn't be classified as "consumer" targets.

If you look at the recent Humble Bundle game sales, around 60% of sales were to Windows users and about 20% each to Linux and Mac (OSX). Interestingly the Linux users also paid the most per sale, then OSX users, with the Windows users bringing the average down.

This is a decision each individual company will make based on potential sales. I'm not so sure it's worth investing in Linux in this respect and the Mac ships with NVIDIA card, doesn't it (I don't own one), which may explain why their support for GL is much better than ATI's.

I take it that you've not seen the results of the Humble Bundle sales? For the 232,854 purchases made the average purchase was $7.84. Windows users paid $6.68 (85%), OSX $9.27 (118%) and Linux $13.78 (175%). Linux users, the supposed "sponging" FOSS OS users, paid the most per sale.

If you don't want to make a buck out of Linux users, sure, ignore them. But given the lack of competition for Great Games on Linux and their apparent willingness to pay good money for them, it sounds like a foolish move to me.

Because despite what Linux users say about wanting things like gaming every time I see someone actually try to support Linux by catering to them, like Cedega or Loki, they end up going tits up.

GNU/linux users paid more individually then both Mac users and windows users for the humble indie bundle 1 and 2 (which included the games from bundle 1 as well) and they were about 1/4 to 1/5 of paying costumers. Put that in your pipe and smoke it.

Humble bundle

To address your points:
6: Big whoop. Stated from the beginning that they were aiming more for a console experience, not a PC experience.
7: There are a bunch of Indie games on Onlive:

AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!!
Braid
Madballs in Babo: Invasion
Shatter
The Ball
The Maw
Trine
World of Goo

In fact, Onlive was the #3 contributor for Humble Bundle 2: http://www.humblebundle.com/

I'm sure there are more on there, but those are the ones that immediately come to mind. I'm sure if Notch approached Onlive, they would have no problem adding Minecraft once it is out of beta.

8: News flash: already a problem with consoles. People manage somehow.
9: Can't resell your PC games already. Publishers are already looking to eliminate console resale as well. Probably a moot point by next console gen.
10: Whatever. If they can make it subtle, and the ad crap doesn't physically touch my machine, I don't care.

Seems people have forgotten to mention (or a simple reminder) that the Humble Bundle 2 was offering 11 games for less than $10 bucks ... ALL with NO DRM!!!

I, too, was looking into purchasing some Ubisoft games, but instead of dealing with their DRM while paying 50+ bucks for a single game, I found myself getting pushed toward these indie developers who are selling non-DRM games of decent quality on the cheap! Even better, is that the Humble Bundle 2 had the option for me to decide to pay more later to reward the developers if, as I'm playing through these games, I found the developers did an awesome job and deserve more compensation for their hard work for a job well done (rather than being ripped off from the start if it in fact ending up being a poorly developed game)!

If you some how haven't heard of the Humble Bundle 2, you can research about it and sign up to hear about the next Humble Bundle release here.

I used to be one as well - after being burned enough times I never bought a game without first getting a working cracked version. Then that became too much of a hassle. Fortunately about the same time as publishers started switching to DRM there has also been a rise in good games being sold without DRM or copy protection (high profile examples: Good Old Games, World of Goo, the Humble Bundles and the Indie Bundles). Now I don't even consider buying a game unless I can use it on my own terms.

http://www.humblebundle.com/

$1,710,374.77

I can't quite hear you over how wrong and haughty you sound, what now?

Total dollars spent versus the cost of the port. All the average says is how much a few people are willing to pay, but if that comes from a hundred Linux customers versus a thousand Windows customers, that's only $136.20 from Linux compared to $628.00 from Windows. And that ignores the cost of the port.

Looking at the pie chart on the Humble Indie Bundle site, Linux accounted for just under a quarter of sales while Windows was more than half of sales. Total sales was $879k, so Windows was roughly $450k to Linux's $200k. Dividing by the averages, that's 71656 Windows customers and 14684 Linux customers, indicating that there were almost five times the number of Windows customers as there were Linux customers.

More importantly, the real numbers to compare are that $200k estimate versus the cost of porting the code to Linux in the first place (I'll discuss support later). Considering that proper planning should make any software already ported to MacOS easier to port to Linux, the cost justification should be there, but that really depends on the developers' proficiency in preparing the code for abstraction (most software will still release Windows first just to get it out the door and to get the money rolling in before working on ports, implying that MacOS could see its port before Linux).

Support: The easy solution is to provide minimal support to Linux users so as to minimize cost. Obviously, this isn't the best model for customer retention, but I'm not sure there would be complaints if such a policy were properly disclosed and the price were discounted.

Also, if you aren't done with your gift shopping, and have another geek in the family and friends, or a kid you want to introduce to the concept of people working because the love their work, and not necessarily for money, gift them the Humble Indie Bundle #2. Yes, that is back, and you can donate all you pay to the EFF. Linkage: http://www.humblebundle.com/