Loki Goes Postal

xwred1 writes: "Loki has announced a new port today, up to now known as "Secret Project Q": They are going Postal! Press release is here, and the game product page/overview is here. Seems to be a healthy sign of life from Loki, they are obviously still getting good things done despite the chapter 11."

Comments

this is neither healthy nor a sign of life

[ebbv]

as much as i love loki and all they've done, this is not a good sign. i'd love to see loki become as successful as any of the really big game houses. porting old, mediocre (at best) games is not how it's going to happen. even i have a limit to the number of games i'll buy that i have no intention of playing just to support the company.

loki should be porting diablo 2, planescape torment, total annihilation, warcraft 3, etc. big, mainstream games that lots of people want to play. the question is, why aren't they? that's almost certainly due to the original authors not being interested in a linux version.

as much as i hate to admit it, i think linux's chances as a game platform have gone down the drain. the linux hype has gotten considerably less prevelant, and i'm willing to bet there are fewer people running it as their main home OS than in recent memory and that number is only going down.

there have not been any major improvements in this area which would draw people to it recently.. ease of installation hit the point where anyone able to install windows could do it a while ago. however, once the system is up and running, it's not so easy to get new things (like Mesa) set up. this has not improved.

and as i said, it's been a while since a big game was ported to linux.

all in all i don't see any light at the end of this tunnell. it pains me to say so because i've been using linux as my main desktop OS for years and years and always was really optimistic about it.
...dave

Re:this is neither healthy nor a sign of life

[vecna_99]

i couldn't disagree more. i don't want diablo ii ported to linux because i've already played it on my mac, and discovered that it more or less sucks. same with TA. haven't played planescape torment, so i can't comment on that.

it's pure folly for the linux game market to try to compete head-to-head with the PC game market; there's no reason why your average gamer would buy the same big mainstream game for linux when he can buy it for windows.

here are the priorities that loki should adopt:

1) port games that are mod-friendly and have a thriving mod community! we already have Q3 and UT. how about Bungie's Myth or Myth II? what about Half-Life?
loki should have a decent shot at getting companies to license ports of these games, mostly because they're all older games and are no longer a major revenue source for the owners.

2) port GOOD games that fail in the PC market due to insufficient promotion. it must be very frustrating for the owner of a game see the game sell poorly because everybody's buying this year's Tribes 2 instead. these games will be good opportunities for Loki to take advantage of.
(Postal, incidentally, falls into this category. for such a simple game, it's loads of fun. i played the demo for more hours than i've played two or three other games combined.)

as long as the linux gaming experience is just a clone of the PC gaming experience, it'll never flourish. while it's important to have good linux ports of popular network-only games, so linux gamers can attend LAN parties, the world of linux gaming should be a new lease on life for high-quality games that weren't pushed hard enough by their publishers.

-vecna_99