25 Best Linux Games

bobz writes "The Linux Game Tome has announced the winners of the Happypenguin Awards. Games, toys and libraries in 25 different categories were nominated and voted upon by the Linux gaming community. Take a look at the best Linux gaming has to offer." Alas, no SimCity 4, and no Sims Online.

Comments

Old

[dissonant7]

...almost all these games are over a year old. If I want to play games, I'll use Windows. If I want to get work done, I'll run Linux. It just doesn't make since to use a screwdriver to pound in a nail.

Re:Old

[kvn299]

Just because a game is old doesn't make it bad. In my opinion, a game that can withstand the test of time (such a SimCity or Civ) is worth a hundred new games, in my opinion.

Re: Old

[Black Parrot]

> ...almost all these games are over a year old.

Are you bragging or complaining?

IMO that's the strength of OSS games: they can evolve continuously rather than being discarded after a year due to marketing demands. Within a decade the best-of-breed in every gaming category will be an OSS game.

Re: Old

[Anonymous Coward]

IMO that's the strength of OSS games: they can evolve continuously rather than being discarded after a year due to marketing demands. Within a decade the best-of-breed in every gaming category will be an OSS game.

What color is the sky in your world? OSS games are a fun novelty but they're never going to be better than games put out by a dedicated group of commercial programmers. Even if you did manage to assemble the right talent of artists, musicians, programmers, testers, managers, etc. you'd at most hope to put out a one-hit wonder. So far I haven't seen any open source games (arcade, RPG, action, etc.) that are any good at all compared to the cheapest oldest games I can find in the bargain bin in the store.

Re: Old

[fitten]

Cling to your dogma. Variety is the spice of life, as they say. With your logic, PacMan and Mrs. PacMan should still be the top games in the arcades and MYST should still be the hottest game on the PC. The fact is that some games do enjoy long life (StarCraft, etc.) but people do like to play new games.

One of the reasons that games do well on the PC is that evne though the game will be pirated, there will still be enough sales to warrant the initial investment and recoup your costs of paying the programmers.

The problem is that games don't fit into the enterprise software model (which is one of the few ways to make money in the Linux/OSS world). You have to have money to start the development on one and you won't make any money on support/training for it. In addition, few people are likely to even want to pay for the initial copy of it. In addition, even without piracy, the market segment for Linux/OSS is not that big. This leaves you in the area of doing it for FreeBeer(tm) style development. How many game developers are going to code a game for free? Some, sure. How many who code games for a big game house will have the free time (unless supported by the game house) of developing/porting for Linux/OSS? Maybe a few.

Game lifespan is too short (among other things) to fit the enterprise model. Until you can make money developing games on Linux/OSS so you can pay people to code them, I'll predict that the rate of new games emergence will be slow.

Re:Old

[StarTux]

"The fact is, new games only come out for Windows."

The fact is you are wrong, *most* top titles do come out for Windows as that is where the monopoly is. Uplink, as I mentioned in another thread came out for both Windows and Linux as did Terminus. Others have only been a week or two behind, excluding Bioware's NWN, which we're still waiting on for the client.

"Personally I'm like most people, my windows box (and PS2) is for games and my Linux box is my file server, shell box for programming, and all around general purpose workhorse."

Like most people who don't think about their actions...

"The Windows box is just a desktop for browsing IE only sites and a game machine. "

Then get Winex and Crossover Office at least, you can use IE within wine and don't have to worry about the Windows.

Support Linux or Mac and help bring diversity back to the computing platform, its much better for the computing ecosystem. But then you'd rather sit there and talk about right tools for the right job, how on Earth did the tools come about? Oh people worked for it...Remember when Linux was seen as a toy even on the server? How times have changed.

StarTux

Re:Old

[Malc]

Seeing as I have a full time job, family, active social life and train five times a week in preparation for a marathon at some point, I no longer feel the need to have every new game as soon as they come out. That's a fools game, and an expensive one at that. I guess I've seen enough games since the early eighties that I don't find them innovative enough anymore, and become cynical of all the hype around new games as I've been disappointed too many times. I just get a few games a year (and yes, I own a XBox and play it frequently) now. Most of the games that are hyped and people get all excitied about really aren't that good. Look at Splinter Cell: very over-hyped, but I completed it in a week (a sleep deprived one ;)) and haven't touched it since. Sure, it was compulsive for that week, but now I view it as a waste of money as it has no longevity. I doubt reviewers of these games play any of them long enough to truly appreciate their real value. There's no point getting caught up in the silly hype and wasting your money on every new fad until convinced of compelling reasons to join in.

Re:Old

[Junks Jerzey]

The fact is, new games only come out for Windows.

These days it's more like "most of the new games come out for consoles." Even if you despise consoles, you have no where else to go if you want to play Mario Sunshine, Splinter Cell, Vice City, Final Fantasy X, Metal Gear Solid 2, Ratchet & Clank, Halo, Ico, and so on.

To some extent all of the high-end 3D troubles on PCs (both Windows AND Linux) are to blame: constant driver and bios upgrades, difficulty in determining what card can be used to play what game, card compatibility issues, etc.

Linux games vs. shareware stuff for Win

[October_30th]

Why should we expect Linux games to be any better than the millions of shareware games made for Windows? I mean, I've never found freely available Windows game that would be fun.

Re:Linux games vs. shareware stuff for Win

[LoudMusic]

Why should we expect Linux games to be any better than the millions of shareware games made for Windows?

Because not all Linux games are free ...

Unreal Tournament, Railroad Tycoon 2, the various Sims, QUAKE! - these games aren't free or even shareware. I wouldn't expect them to be better, but at least comparable to their Windows counterparts.

Why is it that when people think of Linux, or any other OpenSource project, they immediately think "free"? These terms aren't interchangeable. And not all the software that goes with them is going to be OpenSource or free either.

Grow some balls, pay for your software.

Linux needs games

[TTMuskrat]

IMO, Linux needs games in order to "make it" in the mass market. It already has the good O/S, it has the word processing software, it has GUIs if you want them - the only thing it doesn't have is a good games library.

Once you get developers either making games specifically for Linux or devs porting other O/S games to Linux, then Linux will be ready to take down the MS behemoth. After all, once it has games, you wouldn't need a different O/S for anything and you could then use your Windows discs as really cool frisbees :)

Re:Linux needs games

[Zelet]

OS X IS Unix based. It has a gui (a great one) it has games and it has MS Office yet it still can't beat MS. Why do you think Linux ever will? Linux doesn't have a unified GUI. Unix can't even get anti-aliasing out of the box for browsers or much else. Linux isn't on the desktop because it still doesn't beat windows in day to day usage. Not for non-geeks. Karma to hell, OS X is better than any OS out there and it still isn't winning against MS.

Gaming on linux

[Kirby-meister]

Linux could get more support, if only developers saw other developers do well on the system. And the only way that'll happen is if someone gives Linux support. Kind of a catch-22 there.

Re:Gaming on linux

[Zathrus]

And the only way that'll happen is if someone gives Linux support

You mean, kinda like how id Software does? Or maybe Epic (Unreal, Unreal Tournament)?

The reality is that there are some companies supporting Linux - id Software is probably the best as far as it goes - but it's not making money. For id it's not a huge deal, since they've specifically chosen a portable development structure, but for most companies it's a huge ordeal to not use DirectX, or to port from DirectX to anything else. And sales (and usage) figures aren't indicating that it's worth the money to do so.

Re:Spectrum emu. - one of the best games for Linux

[October_30th]

Spectrum emulation is one of the best gaming environments I've seen on Linux

Don't dismiss C64 emulation either. I still love playing M.U.L.E. and Archon.

Two words

[roystgnr]

I wish another game would come along with the impact that Doom had. It was just SOOOO amazing and nothing has come close since.

Deus Ex

You will be waiting a long time.

[RatBastard]

I wish another game would come along with the impact that Doom had.

I'm afraid that you will be waiting a long time. It's not even the gaming industry's fault on this one. Games like DOOM (or whatever your first quality game of any genre is) are like your first love: you never quite recapture the feeling of that very first (insert first sexual encounter here).

DOOM did a good enough job at faking 3D that when we got real 3D it wasn't that big of a deal. And now that we have 3D, what's left? Better graphics. And one day, maybe, passable AI.

The closest I've gotten to recapturing the feelings I had when playing DOOM have been with Half-Life and Halo. But neither of these games made me stare into my monitor at an odd angle trying to see around the corner, and they only made me jump out of my chair about three times each.