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id On Linux: Bad News
Reality Master 101 writes: "Saw this on Voodoo Extreme: id Software's Todd Hollenshead made some very interesting posts on Quake 3 World about Quake 3 on Linux. Calling the sales "disappointing" and saying the support was a "nightmare" due to the "multiple versions and everchanging kernels", he said there will not be a retail version of Q3 Team Arena. One thing I found especially interesting was that he said "retailers don't want it". Not good news for the Linux shrink-wrap software movement."
Excellent point. All game development on the PC should cease and we should all be buying games for the consoles (and ONLY for the consoles). The N64, PS2, and Dreamcast are optimally designed for just such a purpose, therefore we should use nothing else. Anything else is a waste of hardware ($2000 for a gaming machine when you can get your work done on a $600 PC and your gaming done on a $200 console? Are we crazy?).
I used to actually believe this line of thought back when I sold computers retail (a disheartening experience to say the least). Then there was the one argument that changed it all for me: All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. Without games on our PCs, many of us would get disinterested in computers altogether, and there would be little pushing the demand for faster systems anymore. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? I'm not sure, but I'm not going to quit wishing for a Linux port of everything possible.
"Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana." --Groucho Marx
Let's review:
- id releases Windows version, which you can get at Best Buy for $30 or so, depending on the retail rat race
- Loki, with its relatively minuscule distributor clout, releases the Linux tin a month later, which you (still) can't find for less than $50
- Linux executables hit the web at about the same time
Tell me again why Todd is surprised the Linux version didn't sell well?If Loki's profit was supposed to come from sales of the Linux tin, they got screwed. At least with UT, they got cash up front. That's why none of Loki's subsequent titles allow you to swap executables with the Windows version.
The problem with Loki is that they target a very price-sensitive market, but charge full retail for a port of an old game. Let's say the game is good, so it's worth, like $40. I submit that Loki's porting effort adds about $10 to the retail value. That is, a box with the Windows and Linux version should retail for $50. But to make it worse, the Windows version is already in the bargain bin by the time the Linux version hits the shelves (Q3A excepted).
Not good news for the Linux shrink-wrap software movement.
That's a load. This is great news for the Linux shrink-wrap software movement. The problem is that people in the community see this as "Oh, now, people aren't going to support Linux." What they should be seeing is that groups like id are giving very good feedback on why Linux isn't viable. The plethora of distros and kernel versions might give the people in charge of those distros the idea that maybe they should get together and standardize some of the basic parts of a Linux install, like the kernel or system configuration files or UI frontends. Obviously, Linux users will always have the choice and will maintain difference systems, but the people changing those things (and thus potentially causing headaches for support reps and developers) are not the people contacting id for tech support.
It's only a setback if you refuse to address it. Otherwise it's constructive criticism. id wants to market games to Linux users. They just want a more profitable experience doing it and they're letting the community know how to help them.
No! Targeting one distribution annoys all the other users more than it pleases the Red Hat users. Quake 3's problems had more to do with video drivers and X configuration than anything else. It would make more sense to sell the game only for one video card, but that era has come and gone, thankfully.
Retail is a rat race, but you can't live without it. People like to fondle pretty boxes in the store. How we do love retail, let me count the ways:
- mind share (quick, when did you last visit idsoftware.com, except to get a patch for a game you already own?)
- impulse buys (after working thirty days straight, I have a weekend; hey, look at the pretty box)
- return policy (at MicroCenter and some of the mall stores)
- sales (I've never found a game online cheaper than a Best Buy sale price)
- no shipping
- did I mention the pretty boxes?
One problem with retail Linux products is customer confusion. I bought Heroes III for Linux from the return bin at MicroCenter. When I checked out, the cashier said he had returned that very copy because he didn't realize it was for Linux. An employee! That's an easy problem to solve: put the Windows version in there, too. While you're at it, put in the Mac and Be version too.We are going to continue to support linux in future products, but unfortunately it doesn't look like a strong business case can be made for it. The mac version outsold the linux version by quite a bit, and even that didn't hit 5% of the windows sales. Mac versions are still valid business cases, because the support is way easier than on either windows or linux platforms, and the sales numbers amount to something noticeable.
There is no way that a linux box will hit the shelf at the same time and have the same price as a windows box, assuming the publisher is making a maximum effort for the windows box. If this is truly a gating factor, linux boxed games just won't succeed.
Loki wants to get away from making games "convertable" between platforms, to force linux players to buy the linux boxes. I have issues with this. Not making executable binaries available online sucks. I hate binary patches, and requiring either patches from different versions, or the installation of all previous patches. Just releasing a new executable is so much easier.
Our options from here are to move towards a hybrid CD and pay Loki for official support (which makes linux support look like an expense, rather than a benefit), make a hybrid CD but leave the linux version in an "unsupported" directory, or just make unsupported linux executables available online like we used to.
It is going to be quite some time before DOOM ships, so we can't say anything definitive at this point.
I will probably do the initial development work for DOOM on linux, but I'm not interested in tracking every change that goes on in the linux world. The initial work will probably be with the Nvidia driver, which already has all the features I need, then I will work with the Open Source mesa drivers to bring them up to par.
John Carmack
Well, the problem, mainly, is that there are no sales. Who's to blame for this? Loki? ID? No. Linux users. If we don't start paying for games, even the bad ones, we won't see any more come out, much less the good ones. Blizzard has said that they won't release anything for Linux until they can reasonably expect to see $1 million in sales. So the only way to fix this problem is to go out and actually buy the games. Go to Loki's homepage and order some games. Even the bad ones. Unless they start seeing some dollars here, they're going to abandon the platform entirely.
GameReady Level 1, or whatever it winds up actually being called, will be a standard, non-moving target. It doesn't matter much what the standard is: for example, I don't care if the 3D part is OpenGL, or some other API that can wrap around OpenGL. The standard will include everything needed to run cool games: a 3D part, a sound part, a 3D sound part, etc.
This is important because you want people to be able to look at the requirements for Linux Quake4 and say "Hey! My computer is GameReady 1!" You don't want to have a long list of 10 different libraries that are required to run the game.
DirectX was valuable because it helped games run more efficiently, but it was also valuable because it provides a unified standard the game companies can write to. We need something similar.
It's also important to get a number in there, so that someday when cool new stuff is invented, it can be standardized as GameReady Level 2.
I have nothing against Red Hat, but I hope never to see games saying "RedHat Compatible". I'd rather see a more open standard.
P.S. When I say "the front of the box", I also mean "on the download page" or anywhere else you get software. I by no means intend that this apply only to boxed retail sales.
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
Home Depot announced that it would stop selling nails designed to be hit with bricks. Surveys indicated that most customers preferred hitting them with hammers, despite the fact that bricks were cheaper and that the process for making bricks was well documented and open.
Many people in the brick community expressed dissapointment. One of their leading spokesman took a break from mixing red clay and was quoted as saying that "bricks still have a promising future as nail pounding devices. We just have to educate users about how it isn't so bad if you have good nails with wide heads, and properly bake your bricks. This doesn't change the fact that bricks are a great building material either, but we think they have the potential for so much more".
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
I know a lot of dual-booters who bought the windows version the week it came out. They didn't want to wait. You really can't blame ID for releasing for their biggest revenue-generating platform first. That's just common sense business at work.
On to Linux, I think part of the problem is that it is having a massive identity crisis. You don't see the OpenBSD community up in arms about the lack of games there. That's because OpenBSD has established its purpose as a server OS. It does one thing very well, and the rest is not important. Sure, flexibility is nice, but do you really WANT the same basic kernel running both your wristwatch and your render farm? It looks to me like the folks at Be had the right idea. Unfortunately, their market space happens to be the same as that of consumer Windows versions, and those users tend to be the ones who don't want to rock the boat.
I suppose that the distros could solve this to a certain extent, but everyone here keeps getting their panties in a knot about the whole "Red Hat isn't an OS" thing and the "GNU/Linux" thing.
One more point for the "Don't buy it because it's not Free" folks: everything has its limits, even Free Software. One of the joys of entertainment is that someone else is doing the work. I'm happy with a binary if it means that the guy on the other end isn't using an aimbot.
WARNING: there is a trojan on your
Every OS has problems getting software onto it at first, so any panic is rather premature. Windows has a huge stranglehold at the moment, but as people move and as Linux improves, the apps will come. The corporate market is the one to aim at, as that's how DOS/Windows got acceptance, using the same thing at home as at work. Give it time. It took Microsoft 16 years to create a decent framework for games and Linux isn't even 10 years old yet. I doubt, though, that it will take more than a year to get this sorted. The Linux movement has gained serious momentum in the last 18 months - expect even more excellent things for the next 18.