A Loki Timeline

Al "Alkini" Koskelin writes: "Matt Matthews, with the help of the LinuxGames staff and some ex-employees of Loki, has put together a Loki timeline. The timeline is an attempt to document every major event in Loki's past, starting with the announcement of SDL and the Launch of the Loki Website through today, when Loki is officially ceasing operations." They're also looking for more information to make the timeline more complete.

Comments

Good bye Loki

[chrysalis]

And thanks a lot for your amazing work. I hope you'll be back in some years, when people will have understood that Linux != free beer.

If only

[nesneros]

If only every company that tanked (no offense to the good folks at Loki, I loved your work and am sorry to see you go) kept a record of what went on during the birth, life, and death of the company. What a resource for budding entrepreneurs that would be- especially if the timeline was cross-refernced with earnings, stock price, etc.

I'm sure much of this information can be found out there via old shareholder's reports, etc, but compiling and centralizing it is a great idea.

Re:You know...

[FortKnox]

Would there actually be any intrest for a volunteer group of programmers to port games? I.E. A group of people doing what Loki was doing but in non-profit status?

I am picturing this: A group of coders being allowed by companies to port their code over to Linux. Companies takes a X% cut, programmers get paid so they can keep doing this, extra gets donated to FSF etc.

Does this sound insane?

Yes.
First paragraph has the words 'volunteer' and 'non-profit'. Second has talk about companies taking cuts of profits and paying programmers.

In two paragraphs, you've successfully said the exact opposite thing.

However, your idea does have merit. If you can get a group of volunteers to sign NDAs and port games, then let the publishers either sell it, or release it to the Linux community.

I don't know what game company that would have the gaul to do it, but maybe they'll let you port older games (a linux port of System Shock 2, for example, wouldn't be a bad thing!).

I'd even volunteer my programming services for such a project.

Market research would have solved a lot.

[SlashChick]

It seems to me that Loki had the same business model as a lot of dot-coms, namely "Hey! Look! We can do this!", rather than "Hey! Look! We can do this and make a lot of money doing it."

I notice a lot of entries in the timeline that state, "Loki released xxx for LinuxPPC." Did Loki do any market research determining that LinuxPPC was a large market that could support them? I doubt it. Look, if Linux is 0.24% of the desktop market share (and it was probably less in 1998-1999), how much of that is LinuxPPC? 0.1% of 0.24%? How many of that handful of people are willing to buy games for $50 each?

Did Loki do any cost/benefit analysis? Probably not, because it was 1999 and hey, there were certainly dumber ideas than porting games. But the fact remains that Loki's business model wasn't sound, and that they could have possibly prevented bankruptcy had they done some simple market research (even a poll asking people which games they would most like to see on Linux.) The fact that they didn't do that says to me that they were more interested in proving they could do something than they were interested in making money by doing something. That's not a strategy with which to start a company, and Loki just found that out the hard way.

Loki was a good shot, but...

[BTWR]

...but they alienated their retailers.

I was involved with a videogame website (handeye.com - don't worry, not a plug... the company's gone...) in spring 1999 that was launching a major advertising campaign centering around the release of Loki's Linux port of Civilization: CTP. What this "timeline" fails to mention is the CONSTANT, REPEATED, and UNEXPLAINED delays for Civ:CTP's shipment. We lost a lot of customers because of pre-orders and repeated emails by us that we had to delay shipment because of "distributor's delays."

Loki was a fine experiment, but Linux games wasn't the problem. Some blame has to be left with management. It can't be good when a company's first release is delayed half a dozen times...

Piracy issues

[Anonymous Coward]

I think that it can be safe to say that we have a clssic case of Linux Uses shooting themselves in the foot. Why else would he be moved to say:

1. Don't pirate software. Yes, there is truth to James Sellman's statement . Lots of Linux users want everything for free, and lots of Linux users are filthy pirates when they can't just get software for free. GNU and Linux were never excuses to leech everything. That was never Stallman's point. I should also say, "Don't pirate ANY software, Linux or Windows, or whatever." Realize that every dime you take from Microsoft through piracy is NOTHING in comparison to the hurt that you put on Loki when you burned an ISO.

[...]

3. Don't buy Windows games. I hear how people can't justify paying full price for an "old game" that Loki ported while they can't stop themselves from running out and buying Quake3 the second it is released at full price for Windows. Dear lord, people. I know that I'm part of this insane industry, but they ARE just games. You can wait for them, and more importantly, you can do without if you really really have to. You need to tell the companies writing the software that you want that you don't want it unless it runs on Linux. The ultimate way to voice your opinion is to vote with your wallet. The sad truth is that this means sacrifice. You aren't going to get Warcraft 3 on Linux, which means that you should never BUY Warcraft 3, even though it will no doubt be a great game.

It is good to note that he does say "Stop whining. Loki is going away, and contrary to the image I've painted, it's really not entirely you're fault as a Linux user. There's no denying that Loki made some bad mistakes, and ultimately, Loki might be responsible for her own death."

But I can't help but think on how some folks helped push them over the edge in a twist on the tradgedy of the commons scenario. Everyone can have some free software only so long as no one gets greedy about taking advantadge of the good will of others, especially when the goodwill is provided by people whose side you are on. sort of. kinda. maybe.

Bad business model

[Fefe]

It's always easy to say "told you so" after the fact,
but in this case it's true. I haven't bought a single Linux game. If I buy a Windows game, and it sucks, I can sell it. Also, I have the choice from which local dealership to buy it, so the price will be lower due to the competition.

I as a user expect vendors to make the Linux binaries available as a free download, just like they make patches and bonus map packs available for free download. I will always prefer games which I know have a Linux version.

So, Loki's business model of trying to sell Linux ports was flawed. Most gamers will want the Windows version, if only because using it eliminates a whole class of problems: interoperability problems with the Windows version your friends are using.

I have no regrets that Scott tried

[Kiwi]

It is very easy to sit on the sidelines, point at Scott Draker, and say "Look, this guy was an idiot. How could he have thought that he could make money porting games to Linux?" or any of a number of possible insults.

It is far easier to critcize what someone else is doing than to do it better oneself. I know that I could not have accomplished what Scott accomplished: the existence on Linux of games which I thought I would always have to boot in to Windows to play.

Scott Draker and Loki entertainment have made my life just a little bit better. I have only one computer right now; an older (circa 1999) ThinkPad which only runs Linux (the hard disk is too small to fit more than one OS), which I use for open-source development.

A good friend of mine and myself both enjoy playing Heroes of Might & Magic III together. Because of Scott Draker putting his neck on the line and making Loki games a reality, we are able to play this game together wherever I can put down my laptop (The game has a "hotseat" mode which allows multiple people to play the game on the same computer).

For this alone, I am glad that Scott had the courage to make a dream a reality.

I am saddened that it had to end so soon. I hope that, when the economy picks up again, we can make the dream a reality again.

There is one thing which I am certain of: Linux will survive these hard times that we are in right now. Its open source nature means that it can survive in a time which has killed BeOS. I will continue my own open-source development; it is only proprietary software that suffers in these tough times.

- Sam