Posted by
michael
on from the chopping-off-heads dept.
nicku writes: "According to this email to retailers that was leaked, LokiGames is closing on January 31. I'm sad to see them go, I own 3 of their excellent ports..."
No more N64 controller...anyways, ya, sucks that Loki isn't doing well, but honestly, the Linux game market isn't nearly as profittable as the Windows one. Maybe it's because a lot of Linux users have a Win partition and rather than wait for 'Awesome Game X' to get ported, they buy the Win version...
-Henry
-- "Useless organic meatbag" -HK-47
Entertainment and limited leisure time.
by
Bigger+R
·
· Score: 3, Informative
The point of games is entertainment. We've all got limited leisure time. You have to WORK to get a linux box tuned for games. Even then the return on your investment has a smaller pay-off than the windows-environment hassles, because there are fewer choices.
I have a couple of boxen, both W2K and *nix. I really wanted to make it happen, but I just found that I enjoyed playing more than configuring.
I'm just sorry the chickens and eggs did get sorted out(if the "leak" is indeed real).
-- Beta only seems to work for Google. Such a shame.
opensourcing everything
by
antistuff
·
· Score: 5, Informative
It looks like a lot of people are saying that loki should make everything opensource. Rather than respond to each thread, ill just post the general response here. They cant. They dont actualy make games, they port them, and the orriginal maker still has the copyright for it. Loki isnt allowed to just release the source to it. Rather than release the source, I hope they sell all their games for like $10 or somthing in a going out of buissness thing. I only bought three of thier games and there are a couple more I would like.
Good idea, bad business
by
Ryan+Amos
·
· Score: 1, Informative
Loki did a great service for the Linux community.
I'm surprised they survived as long as they did.
As far as I know, they didn't really sell anything, they just ported the executables of Windows games to Linux. Without selling anything, you bleed cash. The ironic thing is, games are probably the ONLY thing you can really sell on Linux. Most everything (web servers, office software, etc) has a Free alternative, but games are unique. The sad thing is, they just released the executables, so people bought the windows game and downloaded the binary and libraries and just copied the maps/textures.
The question is now, with Loki gone, will the commercial Linux game market disappear? id was gung-ho about it with Q3, but after abyssmal Linux boxed sales, decided it wasn't such a smart idea. Most other game companies don't have plans to port things to Linux, and Loki was usually the company that did all the work. Now that they're gone, do Linux game addicts have to break down and install Windows?
Or will the Linux gaming community shift its focus towards emulation, with projects such as Lindows and WINE? These projects are becoming quite mature, and can already run complex games like Half-Life. It's an interesting situation, and I'll be watching how it unfolds over the next few months.
Sad to see them go
by
Evanrude
·
· Score: 3, Informative
I try and purchase any Linux games I see on store shelves. I was surprised to see Railroad Tycoon II in my local Best Buy a few weeks ago.
I thought that *maybe* Linux gaming was starting to become more main stream. Truly a sad day for Linux gaming
--
~.Evanrude
Playing vs. Configuring - DOS Days?
by
Sean+Clifford
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Remember the DOS days when you had to hack up your autoexec.bat file to get enough free memory to run cool games, configure your sound card, and otherwise hack at your box to make stuff work? Yeah, playing can be more fun than configuring but if I didn't want to configure, I'd buy a console instead of a PC.
Loki is _not_ dead because they entered a market that couldn't support them. Scott has mentioned several times that he had no intention of showing a profit for a few more years, at least. Loki's intention was to become the defacto standard for porting games to linux, and to capitalize on that ability in a year or two more down the road, when Linux sales _really_ started to generate revenue. At that point in time, they would have developed all the tools necessary to port games to Linux (like an installer, SDL, and so on), and have shown that they have the skill to do it quickly and professionally when they were handed the ball.
The problem for Loki came when all the venture capital dried up. It shouldn't for them, their plan was always sound, and based on profit in a year or two more. Their problems started when the market crashed, and with how quickly all the VC dried up.
Some very short sighted people pulled their money out of Loki, and they... well, they suck;) Don't invest in a five year plan, and then pull out 1/2 way through just because the market crashes.
Loki, a victim of circumstances, and a lack of investment fortitude. The sad part is that if Loki could have lasted until the summer, I'm sure that VC would have returned.:/
SiN didn't work...
by
Wee
·
· Score: 3, Informative
...with NVidia cards. Well, at least not with my Geforce2. The game simply would not work for a great majority of linux gamers. Word of that got out (too late for me, but others must have heard about about the video issues). Combine that with the fact that it was something like 3 years old when the port was completed and you have a darn good reason why the game didn't sell. I don't think some abnormality endemic to Linux gamers was the cause.
Even if you were simultaneously porting an upcoming Win32 title, you'd still face the "why can't I get a binary free?" issue. Loki had that in spades with Tribes2, but it sold pretty well. (Most people wanted to binary for servers anyway -- id ruined people on that count, IMO.)
I wouldn't use SiN's sales figures as anything but an anecdotal tale.
-B
--
Ash and Hickory, straight-grained and true, make excellent bludgeons, dandy for the cudgeling of vegetarians.
Re:SiN didn't work...
by
puetzk
·
· Score: 4, Informative
excuse me? I have beautiful accelerated 2d AND 3d on my Radeon 7500, using the opensource drivers included in XFree 4.2.
The opensource ATI drivers are IN XFree86! they do very much exist, and they rock it up (about 90 FPS in quake3 at 1024x768, the 'pretties' all on:-). Nothing groundbreaking, but at $99 OEM not shabby. The card even does dualhead (and I'm using that, so it's not wasted).
Plus, I have decent 2d performance, unlike my roomate GeForce3, which could get pasted to the wall by my old mach64 in 2d, much less anything current. The GeForce mad-fast in 3d, I admit; but that's all you get, and it is plenty unstable too:-(
Matrox has weak 3d cards (albiet spectacular 2d), but quit lying about the radeon support. It is right there, in the standard XFree86 and kernel codebases, without needing any extra parts. It could hardly get any simpler:-)
-- The Matrix is going down for reboot now! Stopping reality: OK. The system is halted.
they announched Chapter 11 a few months ago. That was pretty clear that the end was near, but not certain. Now they are saying the doors close at the end of the month.
Re:huh? I already got free.
by
AHumbleOpinion
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Do those compaines pay you to port those games, or do they just give you the source and then give you a chunck of the revenue when you are done? You're not doing for fun are you?
Two classic deals, not Linux specific, Mac/Console too:
(1) When a developer/publisher has no interest in targeting a particular secondary platform themselves what often happens is that some other company pays to license the game for that platform.
(2) When a developer/publisher has a mild interest in targeting a particular secondary platform themselves what often happens is that they hire some other company to do a port for them. Hiring usually involves a flat fee and/or royalties. If the game is expected to sell well the royalty component may be small or non-existent. If the project is riskier then the royalty component offered is often larger.
In case (1) the porting company takes all the risk. Case (2) sounds safer but the profits in that flat fee disappear pretty quickly if the project runs longer than expected. Royalties usually are seen only in dreams, not the real world.
Re:I'm not really surprised
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 1, Informative
Has anyone at Hyperion actually looked at their linux releases? I tried desperately to like Shogun M.A.D., which looked to be an arcade-ized Heavy Gear. In some dark corner of the Hyperion website, there was a demo, that claimed (iirc) to be a proof of concept test. It looked like crap, but moved along fairly well. It moved right up to your first enemy encounter, where the enemies AI would crash, leaving them motionless, and you without a mission objective.
After the retail release, I never saw any release of an updated demo, leading me to wonder if the engine has improved at all. Their website showed no intention of supporting or promoting their product. If Shogun were 1/10 as fun or complete as Tux:AQFH, I would have bought it. Shogun looked like a strawman project, with such a halfass effort, they can say "see, linux doesn't work, let's get back to Amiga!".
Being a happy owner of all of Loki's bearable titles, and Rune, I am saddened to see them go.
Re:How this impacts *my* company
by
Polyzinha
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Please, please don't steer them toward Pine or Mutt. If pine had been my first linux experience,
I would have run away screaming. I mean, even techmail was more fun to use than pine. Meanwhile, Eudora (and presumably outlook, kmail, and evolution) will let you sort messages and
even view more than one email at a time. It's really hard to give that up once you're
used to it.
Seriously, you shouldn't be pushing free solutions that are less useful than the windows
or mac equivalents or of course people will conclude that free software is inferior, and
they may never try it again. Concentrate on the linux applications that actually do what they do better than the non-free competition. They're out there.
Re:This is what happens....
by
SirGeek
·
· Score: 3, Informative
Nationwide ?
I NEVER was able to find any Loki Games (which I would have purchased on Principle)..
I mean , Yes.. I can download ISO Images for FreeBSD but I STILL buy the 4 disk set each revision just to help support the project.
You pay them a "big chunk of money", for the right to pay all of the
porting expenses, so that you can pay them some huge percentage of the
unit profit margin when you're done with the port?
Sounds like the size of the Linux market and the alleged expectations
of Linux users aren't the only problem with the business model.
It's not just Linux. This is how licensing a port works in the real world. Companies that license Playstation ports do the same thing. Just about EVERY Mac port is made this way. Basically unless the original publisher decides ON THEIR OWN to create a port of the game (and then either does an in-house port or subcontracts), then you have to pay them for the right to port the game and to sell that port. They won't let you do it for free, and they won't let you do it without up-front payment (otherwise non-serious people could just secure the rights for free and then sit on them).
This REALLY IS how it works, and companies like Loki, Macplay, and any other company that specializes in porting games all do it this way. What you are buying is the rights to the game. They don't think the port is worth their time, but you do. They won't give you the rights for free though because not only do the aforementioned non-serious people create a problem, but it also costs them money to pay the lawyers who read and okay the license agreement. If they can't make a certain amount of money from your license then it's not even worth their time to license it to you.
James Sellman - Hyperion Entertainment - http://www.hyperion-entertainment.com/
Here's another suggestion then- how about something like a Bleemcast!
equivalent then; charge less for your port, but require the data files
off the 'original' version. I know that Bleem! is dead though, so this
obviously doesn't work _that_ well.
You're missing something here -- we don't make a cent on sales of the original. Our cost in terms of pay to our coders to do the port, and the cost per copy of royalties, and the up-front advance payments all stay the same. If we have to pay $5-$10 a copy (royalties vary depending on the agreement) we can't very well sell your Bleemcast-equivalent for cheap and expect to make anything. Bleem! is a totally different scenario. They didn't have to pay a cent in licensing fees/royalties. They just wrote an emulator. Not only that, but the bulk of the work was done after the emulator was written, it just needed tweaking to run a different game. The cost and effort involved per-title is minimal in comparison to what we do. We have to pay to port each game (although if we do multiple Quake engine or multiple Lithtech engine games the ports are a little easier). We have to pay our coders to port it. We have to pay our royalties/up-front license costs. We have to pay these things that Bleem! did not.
James Sellman - Hyperion Entertainment - http://www.hyperion-entertainment.com/
Would it be possible to include the Windows and Linux binaries in the
box set then, making the data files available to both, but in one
package? That way, no distribution channnels would need to change, and
Linux users could buy games in their local games store.
Certainly it's POSSIBLE, it's just that the major publishers don't consider Linux to be worth their time -- period. They won't do it.
Unless you're suggesting that we do the port and somehow magically make it appear on all the Windows version discs. You don't understand, we buy a license for the Linux version. We don't make any money off the sales of the Windows version. Even if we somehow did the port before they were done with the Windows version (how can we port something that isn't done?) and convinced them to put our binary on the disc, we would not make a cent because THEY are selling the Windows version, not us. And if you're about to suggest that they would pay us royalties for the privilige of including our port on their Windows version disc, think again! If they really thought it was worth their money and time to include a Linux version on their Windows install discs, we wouldn't have to license it from them!
For some reason people can't seem to fathom that the people who do the ports have to PAY for the rights, because the original publishers JUST DON'T CARE about Linux. *THEY REALLY DON'T GIVE A DAMN*. They are not about to take the risk of investing in something that they don't care about, so we take the risk by making the investment ourselves (by buying the license and funding the port). If the port sells well, we make money from sales (and they make money from royalties, maybe in the process convincing them that Linux is worthwhile). It's as simple as that.
It really frustrates me that time and time again people keep suggesting the same "solutions" which just aren't possible. The only way to get free downloadable Linux binaries, Linux binaries included with Windows version, or even inexpensive binary-only packages that you combine with the Windows version, is if THE ORIGINAL PUBLISHER is the one doing it. Loki, Hyperion, etc. can't. We can only buy the rights and then sell our own version.
James Sellman - Hyperion Entertainment - http://www.hyperion-entertainment.com/
Slashdot Mirror
No more N64 controller...anyways, ya, sucks that Loki isn't doing well, but honestly, the Linux game market isn't nearly as profittable as the Windows one. Maybe it's because a lot of Linux users have a Win partition and rather than wait for 'Awesome Game X' to get ported, they buy the Win version...
-Henry
"Useless organic meatbag" -HK-47
The point of games is entertainment. We've all got limited leisure time. You have to WORK to get a linux box tuned for games. Even then the return on your investment has a smaller pay-off than the windows-environment hassles, because there are fewer choices.
I have a couple of boxen, both W2K and *nix. I really wanted to make it happen, but I just found that I enjoyed playing more than configuring.
I'm just sorry the chickens and eggs did get sorted out(if the "leak" is indeed real).
Beta only seems to work for Google. Such a shame.
It looks like a lot of people are saying that loki should make everything opensource. Rather than respond to each thread, ill just post the general response here. They cant. They dont actualy make games, they port them, and the orriginal maker still has the copyright for it. Loki isnt allowed to just release the source to it. Rather than release the source, I hope they sell all their games for like $10 or somthing in a going out of buissness thing. I only bought three of thier games and there are a couple more I would like.
Mess Stuff Up
Loki did a great service for the Linux community.
I'm surprised they survived as long as they did.
As far as I know, they didn't really sell anything, they just ported the executables of Windows games to Linux. Without selling anything, you bleed cash. The ironic thing is, games are probably the ONLY thing you can really sell on Linux. Most everything (web servers, office software, etc) has a Free alternative, but games are unique. The sad thing is, they just released the executables, so people bought the windows game and downloaded the binary and libraries and just copied the maps/textures.
The question is now, with Loki gone, will the commercial Linux game market disappear? id was gung-ho about it with Q3, but after abyssmal Linux boxed sales, decided it wasn't such a smart idea. Most other game companies don't have plans to port things to Linux, and Loki was usually the company that did all the work. Now that they're gone, do Linux game addicts have to break down and install Windows?
Or will the Linux gaming community shift its focus towards emulation, with projects such as Lindows and WINE? These projects are becoming quite mature, and can already run complex games like Half-Life. It's an interesting situation, and I'll be watching how it unfolds over the next few months.
I try and purchase any Linux games I see on store shelves. I was surprised to see Railroad Tycoon II in my local Best Buy a few weeks ago.
I thought that *maybe* Linux gaming was starting to become more main stream. Truly a sad day for Linux gaming
~.Evanrude
Remember the DOS days when you had to hack up your autoexec.bat file to get enough free memory to run cool games, configure your sound card, and otherwise hack at your box to make stuff work? Yeah, playing can be more fun than configuring but if I didn't want to configure, I'd buy a console instead of a PC.
Loki is _not_ dead because they entered a market that couldn't support them. Scott has mentioned several times that he had no intention of showing a profit for a few more years, at least. Loki's intention was to become the defacto standard for porting games to linux, and to capitalize on that ability in a year or two more down the road, when Linux sales _really_ started to generate revenue. At that point in time, they would have developed all the tools necessary to port games to Linux (like an installer, SDL, and so on), and have shown that they have the skill to do it quickly and professionally when they were handed the ball.
... well, they suck ;) Don't invest in a five year plan, and then pull out 1/2 way through just because the market crashes.
:/
The problem for Loki came when all the venture capital dried up. It shouldn't for them, their plan was always sound, and based on profit in a year or two more. Their problems started when the market crashed, and with how quickly all the VC dried up.
Some very short sighted people pulled their money out of Loki, and they
Loki, a victim of circumstances, and a lack of investment fortitude. The sad part is that if Loki could have lasted until the summer, I'm sure that VC would have returned.
Even if you were simultaneously porting an upcoming Win32 title, you'd still face the "why can't I get a binary free?" issue. Loki had that in spades with Tribes2, but it sold pretty well. (Most people wanted to binary for servers anyway -- id ruined people on that count, IMO.)
I wouldn't use SiN's sales figures as anything but an anecdotal tale.
-B
Ash and Hickory, straight-grained and true, make excellent bludgeons, dandy for the cudgeling of vegetarians.
they announched Chapter 11 a few months ago. That was pretty clear that the end was near, but not certain. Now they are saying the doors close at the end of the month.
Do those compaines pay you to port those games, or do they just give you the source and then give you a chunck of the revenue when you are done? You're not doing for fun are you?
Two classic deals, not Linux specific, Mac/Console too:
(1) When a developer/publisher has no interest in targeting a particular secondary platform themselves what often happens is that some other company pays to license the game for that platform.
(2) When a developer/publisher has a mild interest in targeting a particular secondary platform themselves what often happens is that they hire some other company to do a port for them. Hiring usually involves a flat fee and/or royalties. If the game is expected to sell well the royalty component may be small or non-existent. If the project is riskier then the royalty component offered is often larger.
In case (1) the porting company takes all the risk. Case (2) sounds safer but the profits in that flat fee disappear pretty quickly if the project runs longer than expected. Royalties usually are seen only in dreams, not the real world.
Has anyone at Hyperion actually looked at their linux releases? I tried desperately to like Shogun M.A.D., which looked to be an arcade-ized Heavy Gear. In some dark corner of the Hyperion website, there was a demo, that claimed (iirc) to be a proof of concept test. It looked like crap, but moved along fairly well. It moved right up to your first enemy encounter, where the enemies AI would crash, leaving them motionless, and you without a mission objective.
After the retail release, I never saw any release of an updated demo, leading me to wonder if the engine has improved at all. Their website showed no intention of supporting or promoting their product. If Shogun were 1/10 as fun or complete as Tux:AQFH, I would have bought it. Shogun looked like a strawman project, with such a halfass effort, they can say "see, linux doesn't work, let's get back to Amiga!".
Being a happy owner of all of Loki's bearable titles, and Rune, I am saddened to see them go.
I would have run away screaming. I mean, even techmail was more fun to use than pine. Meanwhile, Eudora (and presumably outlook, kmail, and evolution) will let you sort messages and
even view more than one email at a time. It's really hard to give that up once you're
used to it.
Seriously, you shouldn't be pushing free solutions that are less useful than the windows
or mac equivalents or of course people will conclude that free software is inferior, and
they may never try it again. Concentrate on the linux applications that actually do what they do better than the non-free competition. They're out there.
Nationwide ? I NEVER was able to find any Loki Games (which I would have purchased on Principle).. I mean , Yes.. I can download ISO Images for FreeBSD but I STILL buy the 4 disk set each revision just to help support the project.
UPS Sucks
Sounds like the size of the Linux market and the alleged expectations of Linux users aren't the only problem with the business model.
It's not just Linux. This is how licensing a port works in the real world. Companies that license Playstation ports do the same thing. Just about EVERY Mac port is made this way. Basically unless the original publisher decides ON THEIR OWN to create a port of the game (and then either does an in-house port or subcontracts), then you have to pay them for the right to port the game and to sell that port. They won't let you do it for free, and they won't let you do it without up-front payment (otherwise non-serious people could just secure the rights for free and then sit on them).
This REALLY IS how it works, and companies like Loki, Macplay, and any other company that specializes in porting games all do it this way. What you are buying is the rights to the game. They don't think the port is worth their time, but you do. They won't give you the rights for free though because not only do the aforementioned non-serious people create a problem, but it also costs them money to pay the lawyers who read and okay the license agreement. If they can't make a certain amount of money from your license then it's not even worth their time to license it to you.
James Sellman - Hyperion Entertainment - http://www.hyperion-entertainment.com/
equivalent then; charge less for your port, but require the data files
off the 'original' version. I know that Bleem! is dead though, so this
obviously doesn't work _that_ well.
You're missing something here -- we don't make a cent on sales of the original. Our cost in terms of pay to our coders to do the port, and the cost per copy of royalties, and the up-front advance payments all stay the same. If we have to pay $5-$10 a copy (royalties vary depending on the agreement) we can't very well sell your Bleemcast-equivalent for cheap and expect to make anything. Bleem! is a totally different scenario. They didn't have to pay a cent in licensing fees/royalties. They just wrote an emulator. Not only that, but the bulk of the work was done after the emulator was written, it just needed tweaking to run a different game. The cost and effort involved per-title is minimal in comparison to what we do. We have to pay to port each game (although if we do multiple Quake engine or multiple Lithtech engine games the ports are a little easier). We have to pay our coders to port it. We have to pay our royalties/up-front license costs. We have to pay these things that Bleem! did not.
James Sellman - Hyperion Entertainment - http://www.hyperion-entertainment.com/
Certainly it's POSSIBLE, it's just that the major publishers don't consider Linux to be worth their time -- period. They won't do it.
Unless you're suggesting that we do the port and somehow magically make it appear on all the Windows version discs. You don't understand, we buy a license for the Linux version. We don't make any money off the sales of the Windows version. Even if we somehow did the port before they were done with the Windows version (how can we port something that isn't done?) and convinced them to put our binary on the disc, we would not make a cent because THEY are selling the Windows version, not us. And if you're about to suggest that they would pay us royalties for the privilige of including our port on their Windows version disc, think again! If they really thought it was worth their money and time to include a Linux version on their Windows install discs, we wouldn't have to license it from them!
For some reason people can't seem to fathom that the people who do the ports have to PAY for the rights, because the original publishers JUST DON'T CARE about Linux. *THEY REALLY DON'T GIVE A DAMN*. They are not about to take the risk of investing in something that they don't care about, so we take the risk by making the investment ourselves (by buying the license and funding the port). If the port sells well, we make money from sales (and they make money from royalties, maybe in the process convincing them that Linux is worthwhile). It's as simple as that.
It really frustrates me that time and time again people keep suggesting the same "solutions" which just aren't possible. The only way to get free downloadable Linux binaries, Linux binaries included with Windows version, or even inexpensive binary-only packages that you combine with the Windows version, is if THE ORIGINAL PUBLISHER is the one doing it. Loki, Hyperion, etc. can't. We can only buy the rights and then sell our own version.
James Sellman - Hyperion Entertainment - http://www.hyperion-entertainment.com/