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LGP brings back Loki, Kind Of
michaelsimms writes "Linux Game Publishing has announced a publishing deal with Epic Interactive to publish Northland for Linux. What's this about Loki, you ask? Well, Northland is a game featuring the Norse god Loki, and a group of heroes battling to save the world in the time of Odin and the gods of Nordic myth."
Just admit that linux users are too small of a percentage to viably sell any commercial games popular on other platforms.
Since it has been established that the title does not refer to the recently-deceased Linux game porting company, where is it exactly that this Loki has been brought back from? Age of Mythology?
Don't bend over backwards next time trying to conjure a clever title. You either got it or ya don't.
The bootable game CD concept is interesting because of the very high Geek Coolness factor.
Apart from that , however, i don't see it as a viable solution because no LiveCD could ever work flawlessly (3D acceleration and all) on EVERY computer.
Plus, games today often span ultiple CDs and are decompressed on the hard-drive. Even if we could fit the game on a CD with on-the-fly decompression, it would probably be very slow in reading data. Not to mention that when storing data was needed (eg save games), it would prove problematic.
Coolness grade A+ Feasibility: F
Slashdot Sig. version 0.1alpha. Use at your own risk.
This is what everyone was talking about a year ago: Bootable Linux game CD's.
Ugh, that's got to be the worst idea ever. What's one of the biggest things that most people hate about Windows, and that *nix users love to crow about? The fact that you have to REBOOT Windows all the time....
Don't encourage the game manufacturers to come up with some silly mini-OS (linux-based or not) just to play their games - that's a horrendous concept. *ponders* although it definitely would make SOME groups happy, since anyone that wanted to steal/copy their game would probably have to back-engineer their little OS just to get at the game itself...
Worrying works!! 99% of all the stuff I worry about never happens
1. Games developers would not choose to create games for the PC anyway, given the choice. They prefer the less pirate-able, higher revenue console platforms but cannot afford to ignore the huge "Windows PC" market but don't financially have to give a damn about we "minority" Linux users.
2. So much money is spent on commercial games development these days that any title has to guarantee high sales before it's released. This means that most titles follow popular formulas - like football/soccer games in Europe that are always big sellers - meaning that the games market is bland and unoriginal with little exception (IMHO despite being an avid games player myself). It follows that with no interest in original games in the first place, they can continue to follow their previous strategies of developing only for certain platforms.
3. Because games development costs are so high, APIs like DirectX greatly simplify the development process and allow games companies to cut costs quite considerably since they no longer need to worry about driver-level concerns of sound and video cards, joysticks, etc. They therefore prefer to develop DirectX games (and therefore Windows-only games) for the PC.
4. Games that are ported to Linux fall into one of two categories:
a. Those that use OpenGL APIs, which exist on Windows, Linux and possibly other OSes meaning that multi-platform development is possible from the outset - as was the case with Quake 1/2/3, Unreal Tournament and the games that use their grapics engines, or:
b. Originally DirectX-based games that companies like Loki ported for Linux (Heroes of Might & Magic III, Alpha Centauri, Civilisation Call To Power, etc). My guess is that Loki managed to license the games for a low enough cost to believe they could get enough Linux user sales to justify the time and expense of porting to Linux although this was, unfortunately, not the case in the end.
The upshot of all of this leaves a "chicken and egg" situation - games developers won't create for Linux until there are enough Linux users (who are also willing to pay for games) and many people won't use Linux without games being available.
All I can say is that the games market is dull anyway at the moment and I've personally had more fun going into my back-catalogue of older games and playing some of those recently - with free tools like DosBox and Wine, you have a chance of playing some of those within Linux and a lot of the others have been ported to Linux natively due to Open Sourcing of various older good games like Duke Nukem, Doom, Quake, etc. Not forgetting the emulators to play Amiga, NES & SNES, etc. games in Linux.
I'm looking forward to Doom 3 and Half-Life 2 (with hopefiully native Linux support) and the only other game I'd like to see Open Sourced for Linux is Total Annihilation.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
Sorry for the upset, but no it isn't legal.
Remember that the consumers are not the only people who "lost" in the dissapperance of Loki. Loki's investors were also harmed, and although they will have better luck getting water from a stone, they feel that even a dollar from Loki's residual property should be made, it should go to them. The footed the bill for Loki's downfall, and they should reap any (even a miserable) profit.
Morally it is less decided, but legally you are still depriving Loki's investors of money they lay claim to. But these guys won't want to loose another dollar in ressurecting Loki, they are holding out for a (phantom) company to realize what they have is valueable (and buy it off of them for millions).
The main reason this hasn't happened yet is probably because what they have isn't nearly worth what they want. In other words, they're dreaming.
It's a combination of things...
Some of it is using Microsoft API's.
Some of it is using things like Bink, which didn't have a version for Linux until recently and it will cost you another $2k or so to provide a Linux version for sale or download (Both of which was the reason there were no in-game cutscenes for NWN...).
Some of it is that they have to provide testing and, at minimum, deal with support calls even if they explicitly state that it is unsupported.
Some of it is that there is a perception that writing to Windows is cross-platform enough since it's "portable" to the X-Box. (Which is flatly wrong...)
Some of it is that there's the perception that writing to just Windows is easier and that writing cross-platform code is more difficult because it requires careful dilligent work to make the game work on all platforms (using the argument that there's different capabilities on each of the same and you have to code for each... Again, all of which, is pretty much wrong...)
With all the obvious and percieved expenses, most of the publishing houses don't really see any profit in producing Linux versions of anything. In the case of Id, Bioware, S2 Games, and Epic (not to be confused with Epic Interactive of the main subject...), they are studios going out on a limb and taking extra risks because they believe in Linux or they think that it's got some potential.
We can't fix the real expenses and risks- the studios and publishers will have to weigh those risks against potential profits and decide if they're going to do the version, let someone like LGP handle it for them, or not do one at all.
I'm endeavoring to talk to the percieved expenses and risks that are opposite to the way things really are. I'm scheduled to be giving a 30-minute talk this month at GDC on the subject.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
And the reason that you go uncontested most of the time with your ridiculous assertions these days is that people are tired of refuting you over and over again. So please, enough with the 'I'm not a troll' schtick. Anyone with an ounce of common sense can see that you are.