Michael Simms of LGP and TuxGames

jvmatthe writes "The scene for native Linux games has been sleeping for months now, given the demise of Loki. Now LinuxGames has posted a very interesting interview with Michael Simms, who leads both TuxGames and Linux Game Publishing (LGP), which details his views on where Linux gaming has been, where it stands now (including comments on WineX), and where it may be going in the short and long term."

Comments

Interesting that he still needs to say this:

[SweenyTod]

Secondly, I would like to say to those that feel that sending flames to the publishers and developers of games will help to get us a port, it wont! Stop doing it, it just harms the reputation of Linux users. If you want to help, buy the games that are out there, show the companies that DO make Linux games that it is worth it, which will make sure that the next game they make is ALSO available for Linux. If you MUST contact the companies that do not make Linux ports, please do so professionally. Send a polite email asking them to port the game, let them know that LGP will port it for them if they have not got the skills to do it. Let them know that you would pay good money for it if it is available for your platform. But do it POLITELY AND RATIONALLY. And only do it once. Continued bombardment of a polite email is as bad as a flame. Remember when you contact a company, you are presenting them with the face of Linux gaming, so show them our best face.

We as a community of users are still not being good advocates. It's more than advocacy - it's basic manners and the ability to communicate.

If you flame or abuse somebody, you give them the excuse they might be looking for to ignore you.

Re:Interesting that he still needs to say this:

[yatest5]

Interesting that he still needs to say this

Hmmm, interesting, but hardly surprising. The highly vocal minority of Linux Zealots gives the mass decent Linux community a bad name.

Re:Interesting that he still needs to say this:

[blancolioni]

Has it ever occured to you that anyone who is truly loyal to GNU/linux will go to What Ever Means Necessary to get developers to migrate to our platform?

Which is fine, but the Means you're referring to don't work, and in fact have a nett negative effect. Passion is great, but flaming the people that you want something from is just stupid.

Mac OSX

[CountBrass]

Rather than splitting the *nix games development effort, back the only *nix that's getting any real support today and write for the Mac OSX. If the effort is split (and let's face it, it isn't - as of today it's all behind OSX - anyone seen WC3 for Linux ). Drop the dead donkey.

what linux gaming needs...

[xirtam_work]

is a killer app, a game which isn't available on another platform, which takes advantage of the special properties which open source and linux operating systems can offer... like really long uptimes... like keeping the game on in the background all the time in a minimal mode, so that it acts likes a server using p2p for playing (like doom3) when you're not playing it.

a massively multiplayer elite-a-like? a massively mutliplayer first person perspective action/RPG based in a bladerunner type city?

expandable using user programable add-on modules?

Oh, and release it under a license which doesn't allow for ports to non open-source operating systems :-)

Re:what linux gaming needs...

[Twisted Mind]

.. or even better a game console. With that not only the OS is optimized for games, the hardware is too. A game console is cheap, the only difference is that you have to actually *buy* your games instead of copying them.

Re:There is no Linux games "market".

[13Echo]

That is not "insightful". It is totally false. Many Linux users *pay* for their distributions. Many *pay* for commercial software.

GPL advocates aren't any different than Windows users, when it comes to playing games. Most of them are willing to pay for commercial software, as long as it is of high quality. As a matter of fact, I'm willing to bet that there is a whole lot more illegitimate gaming on the Windows side. I've known LOTS of Windows users that refuse to pay for any of their software.

For the record, I've paid for the following on my Linux box in the last few months:

Slackware 8.1
Lycoris
Mandrake
Return to Castle Wolfenstein
Q3A
OpenSound.com sound drivers
Two Opera licenses

And I'm getting ready to buy a bunch of games from Tux Games. Neverwinter Nights is on my list. Perhaps if there was more software available, then Linux users would be buying more. The point is that there isn't as much right now, and most of what is available is GPL. We use, and advocate good GPL software because often, it is better than the commericial alternatives. But right now, the commercial games still have it. There aren't many GPL games that can match the amount of money and manpower that go into these big, commercial projects. Good, advanced GPL games are showing up, but not at the rate of commercial games.

Did it ever occur to you that some people love GNU/Linux, not because it is free, but because it is the best, most powerful x86 alternative to Windows? Maybe that doesn't make sense to you. How much have you paid for software lately?

There will be a market for Linux games. It just needs to be given a chance. Hardware drivers are very stable in Linux, and things like SDL make it really easy to write cross platform games. Linux's OpenGL implementation also seems faster than on Windows. It is growing as an OS, and getting more users. You don't really think that they all want to miss out on these games, do you?

Re:There is no Linux games "market".

[Alranor]

There isn't much of one at the moment, granted, because most of the people who use linux are part of this hardened free-software crowd, but if Linux on the desktop becomes more widespread among your average computer user (fingers crossed), then there will be lots of people who would pay for quality games if they were produced for Linux.

There's a fairly strong argument that producing a decent library of games that run on Linux would help increase it's use on the desktop.

Re:Yeh, but...

[SpaceJunkie]

Hmm... I really should have reserved judgement for this guy - I thoroughly agree with this. (HAvent I been told never to be too quick to judge before...). The MAC has been aimed at by mainstream games companies lots in the past, and you buy games like Quake 3 and HL for it no problems.

Yes Mac OS X runs a nix environment, but it also has Mac specific graphics and sound high level APIs which have been around a while and have been developed parallel to Dx. Efforts need to be focused on X86 linux boxes, both in terms of code and image so that companies will be willing to attempt to port games to it and feel justly renumerated. My own company produce for the PS2 console, and we port our game to almost every language, and every country - but we gave up on china- the translation is too expensive, and about 4 guys will buy it and everyone else will buy their pirate versions. Not that I agree that it is quite as bad as that but thats the company line....

So :

1) Develop and maintain API's which allow reasonably high level access to most gaming hardware - from Graphics(3d accelerated + all features like per-vertex-shading etc) to Sound(including Dolby Pro - screw DTS as they require massive licensing fees), to Networking and controllers/joysticks.

2) Buy these games, try them, tell us what they are like - use word of mouth as its the best form of advertising.

3) Dont pirate these games - By pirating them you will only ensure there wont be many more.

4) Use constructive criticism, bug reports for both APIs and games.

5) If you really want free games - Get involved - write games yourself. Far too many of the games that are free lack imagination and good artwork and appear to be little more than tech-demos. Artists, coders and designers are needed to fuel this.

If you want this thing to happen- you are all gonna have to work for it....

A better way to get a game ported to Linux

[RupW]

You say:

"We're a Linux development company and we'd like to partner with you to port your product X to Linux.

"We're willing to pay you up-front for your developers' time to get us up to speed with your codebase and we'll take Y% of profit on sales of the Linux product.

"In other words, we're taking all the risk and you can't lose."

If they're not likely to make money from it so they can't afford to do it.

Re:Gaming on an essentially business platform?

[mrgrey]

Most Linux users are there for stability, because they believe in it, etc. Thus the Linux gaming market will be mainly for people who are not hardcore gamers - just programmers, geeks, etc who are looking for the occasional game.

Most of the hardcore PC gamers that I know are fed up with Windows and are seeking other alternatives, or an escape if you will. They also tend to be somewhat anarchist towards large overdominant corporations like Microsoft. With the money that they spend (cough cough, some of them anyways) on games exceeding hundreds of dollars in itself, the last thing that they want to spend money on is an OS. Thus linux is the perfect platform for them.

Give the poeple a door and they will walk through it.

Re:I feel like I'm running OS/2 again

[SpaceJunkie]

So lets spend less time writing windows emulators and more time writing killer apps. Its really that simple. Leave the nasty broken APIs, buggy dll's etc well alone and concentrate on making linux powerful in its own right. I dont emulate office- I run OpenOffice(in fact I use it on a windows box too). I dont run WINE. The only layer of windows I emulate at all is the SMB protocol(SAMBA) so I can do file and print sharing.