Scott Draeker Interview About Loki's Demise

An Anonymous Coward writes: "News forge is running an interview With lokigames president Scott Draeker. Looks like the leaked email wasn't a hoax after all. A very sad day for Linux. AOL? Redhat? IBM? someone please help these guys."

Comments

So long Loki, and thanks for Heroes III

[Kiwi]

I would like to say that, of all of the games that Loki ported to Linux,
the one that was good enough for me to use a Windows computer to play
before Loki's port was Heroes of Might and Magic III. As it turns out,
the games in the Heroes series were the only games that I ever considered
good enough to use Windows to play. Loki's port of Heroes III meant that
I can now get all of my gaming needs met without having to dual boot;
significant when my computer only has a 3 gig hard disk.

This game wastes hours of my time on my Linux laptop, and hours of my
friend's time when we play hotseat together. The game still has hours of
my time to waste, since I have not yet finished the campaigns; and, even
after finishing the campaigns, there are the single senerio maps and, of
course, the third party maps over at astral wizards.

I only have a small number of dissapointments with the Linux version of
Heroes III. One is that Loki never finished the map editor; one still
needs to use Windows to make a decent Heroes III map. The other is that
the expansion packs were never (and never will be, now) ported to Linux;
while Loki wanted to do it, New World Computing would not give them the
source code to make it possible. And, finally, I am dissapointed that
Loki will not be around when Heroes 4 gets released; Heroes III without
the expansion packs is all the Linux community gets of the excellent
Heroes series.

I am not a hard core gamer; but I am an open source developer who
appreciates having some good games on Linux to blow off steam after
dealing with a frustrating programming problem. Loki has made enough
games to meet this need. I hope I do not offend anyone by saying that
people who feel that Linux does not have enough games need to find other
things to do with their time than play video games.

Now, to the people at Loki, I wish them the utmost of luck.

And, who knows, maybe one of the other Linux game publishers will port
Heroes IV to Linux.

- Sam

Re:AOL, IBM, RH

[ImaLamer]

Why would they need to recompile the kernel?

If they do, I think the blame could go onto the distro providers. Hardware support starts there. If the drivers exist, they should be on that CD.

I'd like to see mandrake get into it. They make some stuff 'easy' already.

Thats why they buy consoles.
And windows, and macs...

There seems to be a huge PC game market, I don't think you got the memo. Not all PC games are click and play, many aren't. Linux or no linux.

We need a game distro, I elect mandrake.

Possible new business for these guys...

[wrinkledshirt]

I'm assuming these guys are experts in porting, right? If they could just take some of their experience and translate it into enterprise software porting instead of games porting (read, go from an expensive proprietary system to a free one), they could probably earn their weight in gold. Even if the software itself is different, I'm sure a lot of the problem-solving experience and testing ability and intuition and insight would probably come in handy...

Re:AOL, IBM, RH

[PhotoGuy]

The sad thing is, that with bootable linux CD's, they *could* do just this, just like a console. There's no reason games couldn't be designed with a known, working kernel, bootable on a CD. The main issue I could think of offhand is hardware compatability; a "Linux game box specification" (list of supported graphics cards, sound cards, etc., would address that).

Just a thought...

-me

Re:I have a hard time being upset about this...

[TheMeld]

Mostly, when I hear news like this, I want to tell people 'right tool for the right job'. Right now, the right tool for gaming is Windows. I wish it weren't so, but I also wish that the cheapest place to buy quality hand-tools wasn't Sears Roebuck.

While I'm a strong proponent of the right tool right job mentality, I'm also well aware of the chicken and egg problem. If nobody tries to push linux into being a gaming platform, it will never become one.

And lets face it, while hackers might be good at developing fun games, they're usually not good at developing ones with a lot of artwork. Text based games aren't groundbreakers any more and graphic artists don't often want to work for free, from what I've seen. Yes, they could be like lots of us open source give it away programmers, but it is everyone's right to ask for compensation for their work.

So, the upshot of this, as I see it, is that if you want linux to become a gaming platform, you need commercial entities that are pushing it. Like any new technology and market, it will be small and unpopular for a while. Once it gains critical mass, things won't be so tight. Until then, we need companies like Loki that combine money with an overall good faith effort to develop the market and technology.

While I don't really give a damn about videogames, I know that the more games you can play on linux, the more people will use linux, and all users of linux benefit, at least indirectly, from an increased user base.

And as far as things like Wine go, yes, they're neat, and are a useful interim solution, but Wine will always be slower than running the software natively in Windows by the very nature of how it works and what it is. You don't tend to run servers and other intensive processes in emulation, why should you run games, which will often chew up all the resources they can to run as well as possible?

How much did they sell?

[zrafnid]

Does anyone know what kind of revenues Loki made? I'm curious as to how possible it is for a company to do linux ports of Windows games in the first place. Was this doomed to failure? Was there a lack of sufficient marketing? I've purchased a few Loki games from a local retailer and have reviewed one (Railroad Tycoon II). I found all of the games to be well done, functional, and extremely playable on my hardware (PIII 500, 512MB RAM).

As an avid gamer (I boot Windows ONLY to play games) I was very happy to see Loki port Windows based games to Linux. And contrary to a bunch of the posts so far, I thought that it was a) simple to get the games running and b) pretty decent in performance. Yeah, sure, Windows generally played the same game better on the same computer (although generally not by much), but then you had to cope with all that Window's garbage, like reboots and mysterious hangs and ... sheesh. At least if there was a problem with the game under Linux, I just had to restart the game, not the computer!

Anyhow, does anyone have the answers to my questions?

Best of luck to all who worked at Loki! You did a great job!

Who will host the CVS repository?

[WillSeattle]

from the article:
NewsForge: What happens to your public CVS repository and the projects it hosts?

Draeker: We'd like to find someone to continue hosting it.

Any volunteers?

-

Green Bay Packers

[stonedown]

It sounds like it's a little late, but why not follow the model of the Green Bay Packers?

http://www.packers.com/history/stockhistory.html

Issue voting, non-divident-paying shares, with no chance of stock appreciation. I would be willing to pay $100 for a share. The motive for us is the same as it was for the Packers - to save a cherished institution; buy Loki enough time to make their business model work.

It would be important to prevent any single entity from gaining control, just as it was important for the Packers, by limiting how many shares any individual or organization can possess.

I know, ideally we should have bought the games in the first place, but Mandrake only recently was able to autodetect NVidia cards and install 3D support automatically. I think manually setting up NVidia cards was the big stopper for a lot of people.

Re:What about IP concerns?

[Lumpy]

The loki installer is the absolute best installer available for linux, and will thrust linux apps into the "one click install" realm for the newbies and appliance users. This has been sorely and desperately needed for years and years for linux. Imagine being able to download and click on abiword.run and it installs the program, makes the modifications to the xfree86-4 to fix the fonts problem, and download and install (or just install) the added extra required libs.

Or make KDE one click installable, or upgradeable.

Thanks Loki for giving. I do know that I will be buying up what I can, as I do have 2 youngster linux newbies that would love mindrover simcity, etc..

Cheer up, Loki

[Our Man In Redmond]

In addition to everything else you did, you made a four-year-old happy. My granddaughter discovered your port of Heroes of Might and Magic III on my computer and promptly learned how to move the characters around. She now begs to play "the horsie game" when she comes over on weekends.

Of course she has no concept of the strategy or even of the point of the game, but she likes creating armies full of sprites, water elementals and unicorns.

You could always do worse than pleasing a child.

Re:Why?

[DA_MAN_DA_MYTH]

Just like their was no desire for gamers to switch from DOS? Don't fear the penguins, and don't fear change, embrace it.

<SoapBox>
Think about what is going on. Desktop users aren't exactly ready to leave they're windows partition solely on the fact that their games are built for DirectX, thus not being supported on Linux, (or Mac (-- I don't know to much about this), or whatever without a level of porting)

What Loki tried to do, as well as what TuxGames and a few other companies, is trying to say "Hey! there is a market for Linux gaming". Maybe game developers will listen, maybe they won't. Maybe SDL will become easy to use, maybe it won't. Can't blame the guys at Loki for having a vision though, and trying to create a market.

I personally do not want to install a Windows partition to play games. So if Transgaming can bring it to me through WineX so be it. However nothing runs better than a pure port, and that is why I hope more companies like Loki pop up in the new future.

</SoapBox>

Bound to Happen...

[ablair]

Considering that Loki filed for bakrupcy in the summer, and 90% of companies that do aren't in existence just 1 year later, this is no surprise.

In hindsight and now knowing what the Linux gaming market is like, this was inevitable. The fact that most Linux users either dual-boot with Windows or have another x86 machine with Windows was the critical factor. As most of us Linuxheads are in the technically-savvy section of the computing market, and those users tend to be aware of new products & software faster and early adopters, why would they want to wait months for a game to come out for Liunx if they could play it today on their Windows partition? Even if our hearts were in the right place and we tried not to play a game until we bought the Linux version, obviously our desires exceeded our willpower otherwise Loki would still be with us.

This is unfortunately not good news for the rest of the Linux gaming industry (or what's left of it). The circumstances that made Loki die still exist, and I'm sure other Linux gaming companies are feeling them too. But our own use of x86 hardware - as much freedom and value as it has given us - is the very reason Linux gaming is faltering. Mac-porting companies are doing well, and even Amiga companies get good responses to their ports, all because they have captive audiences. It's the price we pay for inexpensive and abundant hardware.

Re:Why?

[borzwazie]

You know, here's a thought:

Look how many Xboxes Halo has sold. Look how many PS2's MGS2 has sold.

I think we're all missing the point here: we want linux games...let's make a game that people install Linux to play.

Re: The focus should still be on mass adoption.

[MyAss]

I have some problems with your arguments. First, you exagerate the problems with getting X to work. If you buy decently supported card and use a recent distro. X setup usually works out of the box and is a piece of cake. (And windows usually has to download drivers too.

Also linux does have a directInput equivalent, SDL. And while SDL doesn't yet support force feed back (which is kinda pointless IMO) it does everything else DirectInput does, while being much nicer to use. (at least that is what my friend told me who rewrote his directX based game to a SDL based game)

Your right Linux can be a pain in the ass, if you don't have the right equipment, and if you don't know what you are doing. However, the same can be said about windows. I know plenty of people who have stability problems playing windows games.

Dude, have fun coding on Win32. Personally as a recreational programmer I find linux alot more fun. Everything is there for the examining and comes with free compilers for most languages. And the OS doesn't hide stuff from you and treat you like a dummy.

Re:Wrong market

[PlaysWithMatches]

To a degree, I have to agree with you. Aside from Tribes 2, I honestly could have lived without most of the games Loki ported. Did I enjoy them? Yes. Were they essential to my existence (again, with the exception of Tribes 2)? Nope.

Ironically, I have all this beefed-up hardware and what do I do with it? I play NetHack, SNES games, MacOS System 6/7 games, and low-frills (but high-quality) games like PySol and Uplink. Hell, I've played LBreakout 2.0 more than I ever played some of the Loki ports I bought. :)

For me, Loki's two biggest faults were: 1) Too slow to get games ported (a year for Deus-Ex, wtf) and 2) Most of the games weren't to-die-for. Sure, I love Railroad Tycoon 2, HOMM3, and Kohan. But Loki couldn't bring me, for example, Half-Life and Diablo II. They can't bring me older games, and they can't bring me games that the developers simply refuse to allow to be ported. I and others have had to turn to TransGaming's WineX for this, albeit grudgingly because of the license issues.

The only way Linux could "dominate" the game world would probably be if somebody started creating to-die-for games that were only available for it (or available for everything but Windows... say, Linux, BSD, and MacOS X :). And ideally, such games would be open source to make us penguiny fellows happy. Taking 6-18 months to port games that are merely great (with a couple of exceptions) and not excellent (Star Craft anyone?) is, as we see now, not the best business model in the world. Don't get me wrong, I love the Loki games I bought. But they didn't quench my thirst for certain gotta-have titles out there. Until Linux has its own gotta-haves, our best hope is something along the lines of Wine or Lindows (dunno about the latter, never really looked into it, but who knows...).

Just my 2 cents. Back to slaying ASCII characters I go. :)