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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."
"Oh, and release it under a license which doesn't allow for ports to non open-source operating systems :-)
1. Write brilliant game.
2. Exclude vast majority of potential buyers.
3. Profit!!
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?