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well .. you still can

I disagree. I've read a few of the other blog posts from Wolfire that have been posted on Slashdot in the past. It seems to me, their views (Wolfire) are very much aligned with the majority view held on Slashdot. That is, that DRM is an ineffective combatant against piracy and that it only hurts legitimate customers.

If you read the link that you posted, more carefully, they point out that they are not taking action to stop piracy of their games. Their stance is that any kind of digital restriction imposed on their games could negatively affect a paying customer. He goes on to point out that the trade-off of hurting just one customer is a compromise they are not willing to make, just in order to combat the seemingly marginal effect of piracy on their sales.

If you check out some of the other blog posts on their website, they talk about how piracy is overstated and has a marginal effect on actual sales. In other words, piracy is not creating a loss in sales, because the pirate would never have been a paying customer in the first place. The motivation for piracy may vary from the inability to pay, compulsion to download, or even the challenge of cracking digital imposed restrictions. However, the average pirate may not be downloading software, music, or movies simply to use it. That is simply an ignorant point of view taken by the likes of the BSA, MPAA, and RIAA to justify overstated loss projections. What is more likely, and realistic, is that consumers get no value out of the respective products and sales have declined with value proportionately. It may be true that some consumers have turned to piracy for media they expect to consume, but the actual loss effects on the bottom line have very little to do with the majority of pirates.

So the question remains, how many paying customers do you have to piss off with digitally imposed restrictions before it has a real, and noticeable, effect on your bottom line?

Except they said they still don't feel like they got "ripped" off, whereas apparently Ubisoft feels ripped off if your net connection is spotty.

Do some reading: http://blog.wolfire.com/2010/05/Saving-a-penny----pirating-the-Humble-Indie-Bundle

Seriously, they make over a million bucks, donate over 300k to charity, and are completely happy; but you want to make mountains out of molehills when they don't even feel that way!

And according to the FAQ, Frictional Games is offering the rest of the Penumbra series to Humble Bundle purchases for $5...

Which means another 2 more games for $5.

Hobbleware will be the downfall of the big gaming companies is mroe like it. Already we have examples like the humble indie bundle http://www.wolfire.com/humble who has almost made 1mil in a week by touting DRM free non restrictive, multiplatform gaming. Indie developers are quick and agile, can adapt to the market, can beat large company prices ($60 for DRM laden shit, or $10 for Indie "free spirit" stuff) and are more apt to try radical gaming concepts out. Some of the biggest games in the market have been created by gamers via modding (cstrike). I say, let these asshole keep whining about piracy and hanging themselves even more, by the time they realize how stupid they are it will be too late. The only real threat is when they start lobbying for draconian laws and enforcement regarding all games.

See this for an explanation why.

Short explanation of the link: Since pirates do not pay, they can download more than they could ever afford. So for a large part of what's pirated you couldn't force payment in any manner, since the money to do so simply doesn't exist.

I know of people who have enormous collections spanning thousands of movies, games, and music CDs, most of which they haven't even tried once. It seems that once somebody gets into that particular mindset they operate on a "Oh, this sounds interesting. *Adds to queue*" basis, and by the time it's done downloading they often don't remember what it was and why they have it.

Those people are largely unaffected by all this. If they can't get a copy of Nintendo's latest game, oh well, they have downloaded 20 others last week. And what they download is all pre-cracked already.

The people who it does affect though are the legitimate customers. I remember getting very angry (which doesn't happen very often to me), when I purchased Neverwinter Nights, and couldn't use it. Turns out the morons printed the CD key in a font that made B/8, O/0 and such indistinguishable. After 15 minutes I finally figured out one that worked, and I still don't know if that's the one I was supposed to use, or just a similar key that happened to work, and that will prevent somebody else from playing. I bet the pirates don't need to put up with that.

So don't buy into this protection nonsense, and support few people who view this sanely.

See this for an explanation why.

Short explanation of the link: Since pirates do not pay, they can download more than they could ever afford. So for a large part of what's pirated you couldn't force payment in any manner, since the money to do so simply doesn't exist.

I know of people who have enormous collections spanning thousands of movies, games, and music CDs, most of which they haven't even tried once. It seems that once somebody gets into that particular mindset they operate on a "Oh, this sounds interesting. *Adds to queue*" basis, and by the time it's done downloading they often don't remember what it was and why they have it.

Those people are largely unaffected by all this. If they can't get a copy of Nintendo's latest game, oh well, they have downloaded 20 others last week. And what they download is all pre-cracked already.

The people who it does affect though are the legitimate customers. I remember getting very angry (which doesn't happen very often to me), when I purchased Neverwinter Nights, and couldn't use it. Turns out the morons printed the CD key in a font that made B/8, O/0 and such indistinguishable. After 15 minutes I finally figured out one that worked, and I still don't know if that's the one I was supposed to use, or just a similar key that happened to work, and that will prevent somebody else from playing. I bet the pirates don't need to put up with that.

So don't buy into this protection nonsense, and support few people who view this sanely.

That is why I highly recommend Comodo Internet Security as it is free for personal use, so no subscriptions to run out, low resource ( according to process explorer it is using a whole 15Mb and 0% CPU while running both the firewall and AV) and most importantly IT WORKS. I have relatives that are "clicky clicky" happy and will pick up more viruses than a Bangkok Whore, and Comodo has kept their machines squeaky clean.

Now as for TFA, I'd have some questions before I'd believe their "results", for example-What percentage of those that donate don't list their OS? Does their game equally appeal to Windows users? How many Windows users have downloaded the game? does their product mainly appeal to those looking for free stuff?

I know that this is the first time I've ever heard of this bunch, and looking at their "games list" here I don't see anything that would really appeal to a Windows user. Lets be honest here folks, it isn't like Windows users are hurting for quality top notch games. From Good Old Games to Steam, from the Amazon bargain bin to the latest AAA titles, it isn't like Windows users have to scour the backwoods of the Internet for games. My guess is since there is less Linux games it is simply easier to get noticed on that platform, whereas we Windows gamers frankly have games coming out our ears and don't really look much at the indy stuff unless it makes a big splash like World of Goo.

http://www.wolfire.com/humble They keep a running tally of the number of sales on the front page... it's 61606 as I post.

Civ 5 was going to be my first PC game purchased in literally years (besides the humble indie bundle, who could pass that up? But I'm talking about going to a store and buying a box.) But I am diametrically opposed to Steam's attack on First Sale law, and will not purchase any game which uses Steam again. I already went through it with Half-Life 2; I did not find any of the mods worth playing, so to me the game has zero replay value, and I would like to re-sell it, but I can't, even though I bought it on a disc at the store. Just say no to Steam. I will not be paying for Civ 5.

If you pay $100 or more (split any way you like), you get a complimentary EFF Pioneer Level Membership.
Source.

Lugaru's got a demo.

Which Distro?

Ubuntu. And which version of Windows?

XP? Then you don't have DirectX 10. Vista/7 Only? Then XP people hate you. And professional, business, personal, what?

What sound system?

OpenAL, which will run on anything, including Windows and OS X. That's about as retarded as asking what graphics library you should use.

Lack of easy to install 3d drivers for nVidia and ATI. Actually the drivers for nVidia and ATI are pretty easy to install but probably beyond what some people will want to do.

Same exact thing, word for word, applies to Windows. The only difference is whether or not the OS was preloaded -- so buy a Dell with Ubuntu, problem solved.

I would love to see it but Linux and OSX are not that alike.

They're both Unix. They both use OpenGL.

on OSX you just target quicktime for audio and video playback.

According to another poster, quicktime for audio is deprecated in favor of a few APIs, including OpenAL -- in other words, if they've done this right, it is exactly the same on Linux and OS X. What else you got?

No need to worry what "legal" codecs are available.

Two big duh moments here.

First, you're a game developer. You can include codecs with your game, and you can encode your audio however the fuck you want. There is nothing stopping you from using Vorbis and Theora, as other developers have in the past.

If you really need the superior quality-per-bit, and you don't want to rely on your customers having a certain codec installed -- might fly for OS X, certainly won't for Windows -- you license. And that same exact license will cover your use of that codec on any OS.

Is Valve going to start targeting OpenGL?

No, their OS X port runs on magical pixie dust. Of course they're targeting OpenGL!

So basically every technical argument of yours is pure, unadulturated FUD and BS. Why are you still at +5 insightful?

But the real issue is lack of customers. I just don't see that many Linux users that don't dual boot into Windows for gaming.

And Mac users don't? Given the demographic, I'd expect Mac users to be able to afford the extra Windows license, even Parallels so they don't have to reboot.

If you don't get new customers it doesn't pay off.

Bullshit.

OSX offers a bigger pay off

See above. Also, it seems to me that more Mac people would be willing to dual-boot and/or run Parallels, and would have the funds to do so.

and fewer development issues.

Nope, pretty much every development issue you raised is completely moot, especially if they already have an OS X port.

Please read this blog post: http://blog.wolfire.com/2008/12/why-you-should-support-mac-os-x-and-linux/

There are lots of game companies that don't use DRM...and what's more they have come out and made a point of it. Examples: Wolfire, 2dBoy, and Unknown worlds, just to name a few.

What these guys are doing: http://www.wolfire.com/overgrowth.
Sure they are living in their parent's basement, but they seem genuinely talented, both artistically and technologically. Other game developers that are trying to cater to billions have already given up and have nothing to complain about.

I'm not sure what portion of Steam's sales they account for, but Steam does distribute a decent number of indie games, and Mac sales often account for a disproportionate share of indie-game sales, possibly due to Mac users being culturally more into "pay $10 for an app" mindset, and less competition from AAA titles.

I feel bad for Vimeo. They made an innocent video to show what a fun-loving bunch of wacky kids they are at their little Web 2.0 start up. They probably thought that like other various mashups and non-malicious infringements that their video would either fly under the radar or become a success such that the content owner would appreciate the attention drawn to their work and see the positive aspects of it.

You should read this before feeling too sorry for Vimeo: http://blog.wolfire.com/2009/01/vimeowned/

They deleted a number of indie developer's personal videos showing off their games due to copyright violations (I am pretty sure you are allowed to demo your own game). World of Goo and Fez are probably the two most notable examples to have had their videos pulled without warning.

I can't really feel bad for Vimeo here. Vimeo is well known for removing indie developer's video game videos without warning (see the Wolfire vimeowned post -- World of Goo and Fez are two other examples). Vimeo claim this is because of some copyright fears -- even though the developers obviously have the rights to show their own games!

Looks like the tables have turned -- maybe if Vimeo had policed actual copyright violations instead of taking down video game developer's videos they would not be in this situation.

As someone who has an upcoming indie game appearing on Steam, here are my thoughts.

First of all, there is no shortage of competition for Steam. Steam is definitely the biggest, but they are not doing anything anti-competitve.

Unlike the console market, it is not uncommon to see a game sold on Steam, D2D, Impulse, and the 15+ other contendors simultaneously, from day one, in addition to being sold by the creator directly. In fact, even earlier than day one, due to the trend of preorders.

If Steam pressured developers into exclusive deals (which they could easily do, due to their size), then sure, I would be kind of pissed. The fact of the matter is that Valve isn't doing that -- they are simply acting like a big, friendly store where developers can put their game for sale. They have been great dudes so far.

As someone who has an upcoming indie game appearing on Steam, here are my thoughts.

First of all, there is no shortage of competition for Steam. Steam is definitely the biggest, but they are not doing anything anti-competitve.

Unlike the console market, it is not uncommon to see a game sold on Steam, D2D, Impulse, and the 15+ other contendors simultaneously, from day one, in addition to being sold by the creator directly. In fact, even earlier than day one, due to the trend of preorders.

If Steam pressured developers into exclusive deals (which they could easily do, due to their size), then sure, I would be kind of pissed. The fact of the matter is that Valve isn't doing that -- they are simply acting like a big, friendly store where developers can put their game for sale. They have been great dudes so far.

Come on people - we all know Linux on the desktop is profoundly less user friendly than Apple or Windows.

No, no I don't.

I still think linux makes almost no sense for non-techies.

I've seen non-techies use it every day.

The biggest problem are "power users" -- the non-techies who want to do more, but don't know any way to do that other than buy new software and hardware from Best Buy.

It also does not make economic sense for a university to support a platform until there are significant number of people using linux.

Well, a story like this helps. Or take Lugaru, for an example of why you should support Linux anyway. In particular, look at this:

3. Vocal minorities
Having a Linux build meant coverage on Slashdot. This of course generated huge interest in not just the Linux version of Lugaru, but the Windows and Mac versions too.

Imagine if some obscure community college happened to have a decent program, fair prices, and awesome Linux support. Don't you think Slashdot coverage would help there?

5. You canâ(TM)t choose your power users
In the same vein as the above, you never know who the movers and shakers are going to be in your community. In Wolfireâ(TM)s case, we are forever indebted to Wolfire forum regular, Silb. He actually reverse-engineered portions of Lugaru and made a kick-ass, extremely popular replacement campaign for the game, providing a huge amount of extra content to other people. His single, epic thread has been viewed over a hundred thousand times.

Oh yeah. Heâ(TM)s a Mac user.

I think my little anecdote makes that point pretty clear -- for example, the helpdesk didn't have an answer, so I found one.

I think rather than his daughter, it is more a matter of contention for Yuna49.

Nice assumption. Macs are great, but depending on how much his daughter enjoys the laptop she's got, she may not want to switch.

I know the last time I did, it was a pretty horrible experience. Seriously, half the keybindings I've gotten used to in KDE -- and really, they were actually useful, productive things -- simply do not exist in OS X, and cannot exist without Apple's blessing.

A while back Slashdot pointed us to this blog, in which the blogger pointed out how having Linux and Mac ports attracted a lot of attention and even boosted the sales of their Windows versions.

This sounds pretty much exactly like what Wolfire games are doing with their new game, Overgrowth.

They started selling (cheap!) preorders ages ago, before they had anything to give out, and have since been releasing more and more content as it is developed, as well as engaging with the community on game features, content and such. Even better, those who have preordered can play with the weekly builds they release, which really helps people believe that the project is actually going somewhere.

DISCLAIMER: I'm not in any way related to Wolfire, other than that I've preordered Overgrowth and am a fan of their previous game, Lugaru.

Do you really believe, in this economic climate, they're going to waste their efforts to port the application for 0.05% of their installed base? Never going to happen.

Better to be a big fish in a little pond than a little fish in a big pond. Works for games.

Unfortunately this will be buried in the mass of posts, but I'll go anyway.

If a game developer releases his game for Mac and Linux as well, maybe that's 10% market share but it's not the same market share! It's really disappointing to see this fact so often overlooked. Because not all users are the same. Mac and Linux users are DYING to play games. Meaning that a lower market share could still have higher game adoption.

For instance, take MMOs. There are no decent MMOs running Linux natively. As a former Ultima Online player now reconverted into a Free Software enthusiast, I would love a good MMO to play. But I will not use Windows.

The market for MMOs is *saturated*. If you publish yet-another-MMO, whether it's for a niche market of players (hardcore MMOs such as DarkFall of Mortal Online which I would love to play) or another WoW theme-park-MMO clone, you still have to convince Windows players to buy your game and pay the monthly fees. The Linux desktop usage may be lower, there is NO competition for MMOs. Meaning all suckers for MMOs like me would play if the game is any good.

In fact this applies to most games because the market is saturated. It is better summed up by the Lugaru game developers.

IMO, game developers are only missing opportunities. Once they release for Linux and Mac, desktop usage will raise and more people will favor their games over their Windows-only competitors.

Last argument is that "Linux users only want free". This is wrong. Windows users are a lot more about cracking and pirating. If Linux users see something of value, they will no doubt buy it to encourage companies to continue. Most Free Software enthusiasts have no problem with proprietary games because it can be considered a piece of art rather than a piece of software. At least art resources (graphics, music) need not be free, even RMS says so :). And we *are* desperate for good native games.

So (to game developers), stop depending on DirectX! Use abstraction layers between DirectX and OpenGL. UnrealEngine 3 works with both, and considering how advanced it is, I don't want to hear shit about how OpenGL is not as good. It will only get worse if game developers let it die. And release NATIVE support for Ubuntu and Fedora. The community will make sure it works on other distributions.

You can see this already with PC gaming. Digital distributors like Steam have pretty much demolished the brick and mortar stores. My local GameStop barely has a PC game section anymore and it's not because the PC market is shrinking. In fact, it's growing.

Brick and mortar stores are dying and they know it -- for PC games anyway. It's like they are not even trying anymore. I am an independent video game developer, and I tried my best to let GameStop et al sell my company's game, but they do not even return calls. We have not even gotten an email back yet.

Meanwhile, our upcoming title is going to be sold in virtually every single online store -- some of them responded within a day of being contacted. Here's our list so far.

Brick and mortar stores are still clinging on for consoles releases. Retail stores pretty much are the only place to go when you want to buy the latest AAA titles (except Amazon, which is like digital distribution with very high latency).

Since I haven't seen it mentioned yet, and it seems to fit the topic:
(though I haven't RTFA, where do you think we are...?) Overgrowth
I've been following the blog for a while, because of the developer videos they used to do, and they seem to be a very open development team. The articles they do almost daily are detailed and informative, especially to those like me that have an interest in game development, and I'm gonna stop now because I've realised I'm gushing :P

This game developer claims that making the game available on less-popular platforms increased his sales by over 122%, perhaps significantly over. This was due to getting a lot of exposure for his game on Mac and Linux sites, when the same game probably would have gotten a footnote on Windows' gaming sites.

Which won't happen because first person shooters and real time strategy only work on PCs.

I won't deny that the Mac gaming market is in shambles now but things get better every year as:

(a) sales of Apple machines come back around
(b) devs realize that even though there's less Macs around, OS X ports sell a disproportionately larger amount
(c) cross-platform coding gets easier, and hardware support for OpenGL gets better

This all applies to linux as well.

http://blog.wolfire.com/2008/12/why-you-should-support-mac-os-x-and-linux/

I added a mystery button at the bottom left of http://www.wolfire.com/overgrowth using some concept art from the video game. It has actually gotten quite a bit of good feedback. :)

I also added one at a startup I used to work at, but unfortunately it was removed.

See Lugaru for an excellent example of what you're talking about. In Lugaru, as you take hits, your model starts looking more beat-up, animations change, and if you're close to death (or just got a nasty knock on the head) your vision blurs.

was really sceptical of the idea of being a were-rabbit as an action game but I am hooked already :) http://wolfire.com/lugaru.html

Yes, this is very possible. Moreso the bigger the game gets.

I play Nexus TK, which is a 2D MMO. There are some things that it's got to be easier for them to get to look good in 2D, of course -- it's easy to just sketch a character and be done with it.

Trouble is, the characters can do a lot. There are 16 different emotes, for instance -- 5 of which actually require the character's body to move as well as their face, and 2 of those which look different depending on which direction the character is facing (of 4 possible directions). And then there's the emote players do when they're casting spells, which also looks different from each of those four directions. Players can also attack in those four directions, and the attack animation is either a swinging motion (club, sword, or punch) or a stabbing motion (staff).

The game is isometric-ish, so you can't dupe stuff for the 4 directions -- for one thing, facing down is facing towards the camera, and up is away from the camera -- and most things look different from the back than they do from the front.

So, that's 5 emotes + 1 sort-of emote (casting spells) + 2 different attacks that I know of, + walking + riding a horse + standing still. That's 10 different animations -- for each direction, so 40 animations of 3 frames each, as well as 4 frames just standing still (or sitting on a horse) -- plus probably 2 more for when someone's holding a weapon or a shield. That means if they want to introduce a new outfit, say, they need to draw roughly 130 frames of animation.

Per item of clothing.

Now, a 3D game with skeletal animation (or morph targets) might take longer to get those animations initially, but you could just create a model for the clothing and attach it to the character. So, if you can create such a model faster than you can create 130 frames of animation, 3D will eventually be cheaper than 2D.

Same with everything else, by the way. Weapons have a drop graphic (what it looks like on the ground), as graphic for being held in each of those 4 directions, a swing animation in each of the 4 directions, and possibly a walking animation.

Technically, you can do skeletal animation for 2D, but only if you want your game to look like Ragdoll Kung-Fu.

Now, I'm not a game developer, but I can definitely say that there are cases where at least doing 3D artwork is cheaper now. However, what's often missed is that games don't have to be "next gen" to be good. Recently, I've been playing a lot of lugaru -- definitely worth the $20. The graphics and artwork is actually very old-looking -- will be much better in Lugaru 2, apparently -- but they focus on detail where it counts. Throw a knife at someone, and you'll have to retrieve it if you want to throw more knives. If it doesn't kill them, it'll be sticking out of their chest -- they can then grab it and use it against you, dripping blood all over the place...

In many ways, it actually looks much better than most "modern" or "next-gen" fighting games -- and they're going to make a sequel!

My twin brother made the independent game Lugaru. I am developing Lugaru 2 with him.

a) "Should you design for Macs? Probably. How about Linux? Probably not."

How about designing for computers and then trivially porting it to Mac, Windows, and Linux. Lugaru gets about 65% Mac, 30% Windows, and 5% Linux. If Wolfire followed this guys advice then instead of talking to Ryan Gordon and getting a Linux port in a matter of days, we'd be out 5% of our sales and Linux users would be screwed out of another game. This also goes to show you that for an independent developer, Windows is not necessarily the best platform. The tiny, tight-knit community of Mac users is much easier to break into than pissing into the wind that is the Windows game market.

b) "the all-important topic of Search Engine Optimization"

Search engine optimization is not for game developers. Unless you're running one of those giant portals with like 200 mini java games, you shouldn't even think about SEO. A strong, well designed website is critical (yeah, Wolfire isn't the best example of that right now - we're trying to find a web designer) but realistically, you will get 98% of your hits from game sites linking to you, magazines mentioning you, forum word of mouth, etc. No one seriously goes into google and types "3d ninja ragdoll rabbit game downloadable game linux shareware" which is what you would have to type to pull up a review of Lugaru. People find their games through download sites, not search engines.

c) blogging, "motivational pyramid", power of sequels, cross-selling items, etc.

This makes me ill. Part of the charm of indy games is that they are not made to squeeze every last penny out of a game. The good ones are made more for fun by the developer as a hobby. More often than not, if you treat it as a soulless business you will fail, but if you stick to your indy roots, you will succeed. Your blog should not be a place where you try to plug all of your games and entice people to purchase everything, they should be a community where you keep your fans in the loop. My brother and I both are approaching 1000 posts on our forums and business is never even mentioned.

There already is an indie martial art game that does this. Check out Lugaru at http://www.wolfire.com/lugaru.html, and take a peek on the developer's blog (http://www.wolfire.com/lugaru.html) for some amazing screen captures from the upcoming Lugaru 2.

There already is an indie martial art game that does this. Check out Lugaru at http://www.wolfire.com/lugaru.html, and take a peek on the developer's blog (http://www.wolfire.com/lugaru.html) for some amazing screen captures from the upcoming Lugaru 2.

You'd think he would check with them since this has happened before.