More Bioware For Linux?

GNious writes "Bioware has a thread about porting the upcoming game Dragon Age to Apple Mac OS X and/or Linux. Debate include such topics as porting houses, physics engines and the value of the market, with an enormous amount of requests for such games as Neverwinter Nights 2. With the potential for selling upwards of 1000 copies (counting individual requests) of a game at possibly $50 each, is the decision to exclude a platform and the associated revenue the correct one, or are the petitioners the ones that have gotten it wrong to think that their ca 1-5% marketshare matters?" I think the unfortunante reality is that in today's gaming market, you find that fewer people are willing to take a chance on the sales for these smaller markets -- too hard to predict revenue, and too hard to (some would say) to do the porting.

Comments

Not enough follow through.

[suso]

The problem with counting requests like that is that there is not a lot of follow through. I'd say that half or less of those people requesting will actually purchase the game. I myself bought a copy of Neverwinter Nights 1 as well as UT2004, Quake 3, Doom 3, Sim City 3000 and a few other games that work under Linux. Provided that I would have enough time(have a daughter now) I will buy a copy of NWN2 if they make a Linux client. But from what I've seen and heard from many people in the past, a lot of gamers talk talk talk and don't buy. Its easy to say "Me too", but most can't or don't pony up. Then again, there are probably a lot of people who don't say anything, but end up buying a copy to use for Linux. They need a better metric for counting the number of used Linux clients.

Re:Not enough follow through.

[diersing]

One issue might be that, in general, techies run Linux. Gamers, because they see what platforms are being serviced, don't run Linux as it would cramp their gaming lifestyles. I know everytime I try to make my house Linux-only, my gaming itch flares up and I bang my head against Wine for a while before breaking down and re-installing Windows. I don't recall ever seing a game for Linux is CompUSA/Best Buy/Frye's as long as I can remember.

Re:Not enough follow through.

[Fred_A]

What do you mean few games ?
Come on there's Pong, Solitaire (all 30 of them no less), Break Out, uh, Super Break Out, Asteroids, Space Invaders, *Super* space invaders, xBill, Tetris... that game with the sliding penguins, that other game where you can have the sound or the graphics but never both... Oh, and xpilot of course, and ADVENT, and um... Anyway there's lots of great games. There's so many I can't even remember all of them.

I even got Myth II for Linux in a real shop a few years ago (only Linux game I ever saw offline).

Re:Not enough follow through.

[Atzanteol]

This isn't meant to be a troll, but you'd be better off buying a pile of dog shit.

And yet you were successful at it being one anyway!

do the math

[Anonymous Coward]

The potential to sell upwards of a thousand copies at 50 bucks a piece. Man, they could make, like, 50,000 dollars on that! I can't see why they wouldn't invest hundreds of thousands or possibly millions for a return like that!

Re:do the math

[LiquidCoooled]

If your development process involved coding generically (OpenGL is a good base) then porting is just a matter of recompiling.
Sure you wouldn't want to specifically port a project when 50k is on the line, but if it takes half a day to sort out dependencies and linking then your 50k is looking better and better.

Re:do the math

[muridae]

Portable code is nice, but how much portability do you trade to get the game optimized? Look at the complaints about 'Brand New Game' and see how many people whine that the minimum spec will barely run it. When a game has to run at top speed on several different platforms, you might have a portable base code and then tune from there. Or you can write tuned code and try to port it if there is enough of a market. Guess which option the publishers are going to want you to take?

Re:do the math

[HappySqurriel]

It's actually more complicated than that being that many/most PC games use DirectX to handle sound, input and (possibly) networking ...

If you plan ahead and use OpenGL and OpenAL it shouldn't be too costly to port a game (probably only a month or so of work for a couple of developers) but until there are much better open source libraries (beyond OpenGL and OpenAL) you will require more than a recompile to get your game to work on Linux.

Re:do the math

[GooberToo]

Portability is not a trade off with optimization. If it is, you screwed up in your design, big time. In fact, writing portable code often means means higher quality code with fewer bugs. Fewer bugs means more time to optimize the over all code base. This means a better product over all.

If you're wondering why portable code means a better product, it's simple. Generally speaking, portable code means you're using multiple compilers. Multiple compilers will identify potential bugs and general code problems much more quickly.

Additionally, code which is designed to be portable up front also tends to be designed much better. This is because you have to have a strong low level API on which the rest of your code can sit. Violations of the design by coders is quickly identified once you start to compile on the other platforms as suddenly, it doesn't compile. You can then wrap knuckles as needed. The end is a product which is maintainable, readable, optimal, and well designed. Everyone wins.

If any of these design houses had the slightest bit of a clue, they would already have a portable, low-level API in place which is common to all of their games. This directly translates into faster time to market, fewer bugs, higher quality product, shorter testing cycles, smaller support costs, etc... And as a bonus, they obtain two additional markets (Linux and Mac) for little extra cost; assuming they do something reasonable like OpenGL at the start. Not to mention, this opens the door for the console market as then can continue to add new platform support to their low level API. The only one that becomes problematic is the Xbox because, AFAIK, no OpenGL support.

Let's face it, things like windowing, sound, input, networking, storage, and memory management is generally where the porting issues exist. If you go with OpenGL and a common, reusable library, suddenly the cost becomes moot as it is spread across n-games, as it gets reused. It's not like you have to write n-platforms when the gate opens. Heck, add to the library as you add platforms. Once a platform is in place, the next go-round is a freebe. I have no idea why coding houses are so dumb, but the math is easy to rationalize ad it just makes good business sense. Who doesn't want reduced support costs? Who doesn't want high quality games and happy, loyal customers? Who doesn't want two to three additional markets with greatly reduced effort and shorter time to market?

Let's face it...good client/server games want Linux servers. Supporting networking, storage, and memory is half of the library. Let's face it...this really is a no-brainer but it shows how clueless most coding houses truely are.

Re:do the math

[orkysoft]

Guess why the Xbos (360) doesn't support OpenGL: Microsoft wants developers to use DirectX instead, so they can't easily port to other platforms.

Re:do the math

[Lodragandraoidh]

Looking at this from 30,000 feet it occurs to me that the FOSS world has not applied the winning combinations used in other FOSS projects to gaming. Here is what I think we need to restart linux gaming's heart:

1. A selection of FOSS high performance game engines (for small games that need high triangle counts, an engine for high performance and lower triangle counts, and an engine for maximum network performance - very low triangle counts or other tricks to maximize FPS and network throughput) - designed to work on multiple platforms (linux, windows, et al). If these game engines are the best of breed, they will be used by the game development community.

2. A DirectX to SDL translator to lower the cost of entry into the Linux market for the 99% of development shops that develop for Windows - and have a huge investment there.

These two things would do much toward bringing popular Windows games to Linux.

porting

[unluckier]

porting? why not just *trying* to make it platform independent from the start?

Re:porting

[arth1]

porting? why not just *trying* to make it platform independent from the start?

And how, pray, do you do things like sound platform-independently? Synchronised with the picture, even?

Re:porting

[MatrixCubed]

My own game engine (http://odyssey-project.com/) uses the following technologies:
Graphics: OpenGL
Sound: OpenAL
Physics: custom
Input: SDL
Network: ENet

The source compiles out-of-the-box on Windows and Linux.

Re:porting

[Chris_Jefferson]

Every time a discussion about this comes up, people say "Oh, just use OpenGL, SDL, etc., and it will be portable".

Game programmers aren't stupid. The vast majority will use the library that means:
a) The game is written quickly.
b) The game runs well on the largest range of computers.

I am not a games programmer, but I go to the pub with a lot of them. Using OpenGL over directx means writing a fairly substansal part of your game twice, once using nvidia extensions and once using ATI extensions. For things other than graphics, then you end up with two choices:

a) The library you are using is a wrapper over directx, so you are getting extra bugs / slowdown without significant gain or
b) The library is distinct and usually has bugs with all kinds of very cheap cards many people have (in particular sound).

Unless you can be sure changing libraries isn't going to break your game on less than 2% of windows machines, then making it platform independant is going to reduce the size of your overall market.

Re:porting

[EnglishTim]

Why not code cross-platform from the start?

Because it costs a lot more to do that than you might think. At a conservative estimate I'd guess that targeting Linux would take at the very least 10% more time. If the development budget for the whole game is $5,000,000, then you'd need to expect that you could make back at least half a million dollars from Linux purchases just to make it break even, let alone worthwhile.

Need to popularize Linux as an OS

[elrous0]

I think the unfortunante reality is that in today's gaming market, you find that fewer people are willing to take a chance on the sales for these smaller markets

That's how the market works. The fewer people willing to buy something, the less they'll be willing to invest in porting it. If you really want to help get these games ported, work to increase Linux's market share. The more people that use it, the more ports you'll see. That's just the way it is.

-Eric

1000 thats it?

[grapeape]

If the potential is only 1000 copies at 50 bucks, why would any company bother? 50,000 will pay one low level programmer with no testers, no marketing, not even budget for changing the system requirements graphics on the box. Porting to Linux is nice, and for the companies that do it god bless them, but to expect it is a bit outside reality. Like most Linux projects it has to be a labor of love since it has no room for being a labor of profit.

The only way I really see any growth in the Linux games market is either an exponential growth in Linux users or companies adopting an open source partnership to allow games to be ported by volunteers.

Re:Replace Linux with any other system

[HappySqurriel]

In the long run I imagine that this will not be an issue ...

In 10 years computers will be (about) 100 times as powerful as they are today and it will be too expensive to create games which really push these systems to their limits. When that happens I expect most game engines will move to be programmed in Java (or another interpreted language) in order to improve the portability between Handhelds, Consoles and the PC; once a game is developed in Java (or another interpreted language) it should be reasonably easy to port it to Linux/Mac.

It's called the "I'll take two" syndrome.

[AltGrendel]

And that's exactly how it works. You survey the market, users say "Sure, in fact I'd buy two if it were available today", you sweat over hot electrons to develop this widget and when you get it to market and no one responds.

At All.

We've all seen this happen at least one time.

Re:It's called the "I'll take two" syndrome.

[bettlebrox]

There are some claims that Loki were doing well selling Linux games, but went out of business because of poor management decision: Google search

Why Port

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

I think the unfortunante reality is that in today's gaming market, you find that fewer people are willing to take a chance on the sales for these smaller markets -- too hard to predict revenue, and too hard to (some would say) to do the porting.

The really smart gaming houses that know their titles will be successful (look at Id and Blizzard) also know that coding their titles to be portable is the way to go, even if they don't want to target other platforms. It encourages good coding practices and makes a better program. Most of them rely heavily on OpenGL and do plan to port their games at least to the mac as part of their original strategy. If your game is almost finished and you're just now considering portability and other platforms, you screwed up. You might as well wait till it is out and see how popular it is before going after other platforms.

Some might say the Mac or Linux markets are insignificant, but the truth is a lot of companies make good money from the Mac market. Lets not forget to include consoles as well when considering portability. I've seen some companies cite the practices of MS owned gaming houses as reason not to make games portable, but that is pretty laughable when you consider it. Also, I've seen some people point to horribly botched porting projects as reason to avoid it. Instances where a Linux port came out a year and a half after the Windows version, was buggy, was a game that required a community, and where the port was more expensive than the Windows version and was more buggy than using the Windows version in WINE. That too is pretty sad.

Coding for portability and aiming at Windows, the mac, and one or more consoles can seriously increase the revenue from a game, but it has to be part of the original game plan and you have to code with that in mind. Porting after the fact can make money, and if you have a very successful title outsourcing the port can make some pretty safe money, but not nearly as much of it. I don't see a reason for any big publisher (not owned by MS) to not target multiple platforms from the outset. Anyone want to bet the MMORPG that topples WoW's supremacy is another simultaneous cross-platfomr release?

For the last time, YES.

[Anonymous Coward]

A game cannot be 'ported' to Linux; it has to have native support from teh beginning. Otherwise, you know what happens?

Loki happens.

"Hi, I'm looking for ShinyGame."

"Oh, here you are. That'll be $9.99."

"No, wait, I want the Linux version."

"Oh, I'm sorry. There you go. That'll be $49.95."

Any serious gamer already has a Windows partition/second drive/second box for gaming. Thus, the Loki concept is bitchslapped by logic: $49.95, for a possibly mediocre port, with untold problems*? Or $9.95, for the same version everyone else is using - with no weird problems?

(* Google. Loki's ports weren't always all they were cracked up to be.)

The choice is obvious for all but the foam-spewing zealot. Despite the best efforts of zealot OS loonies to tell us otherwise, the majority of Linux users aren't zealots, and are thus going to save themselves $40.

So, now we have a weird situation. Games like Quake 3 sold like mad. Hard to tell what OS they're being run on though, eh? Meanwhile, the idea of porting games.. "Hey, remember that one company? They did that, didn't they? Went bankrupt, didn't they?"

The fact of the matter is, yes, it is stupid to consider the Linux market. There is no Linux market - 1000 signatures on a petition isn't a market, it's a bunch of nuts who don't know the cost of developing software for multiple platforms. Unfortunately, that won't change anytime soon. When a game is released for both Linux and Windows, companies don't know what percentage is actually being run on Linux. And the porting idea has been dead for years, thanks in part to Loki. (Naturally, they aren't entirely at fault; after all, they were only porting the games of other companies - I'm sure their hands were tied in pricing.)

I dont understand

[T-Ranger]

What the now so-hard-we-wont-even-try technical stumbling block is these days. You have Wine - I'm sure if you throw money at Transgaming you can get a more friendly (well, for them) license. And you have Mono. Ditto for Novell.

So, what is the major technology that you can't fairly easily replace with some pseudo-OSS libraries?

And: hahaha. NWN2 banner add while posting this.

Re:Only 1000 copies !?

[Ritchie70]

And on what are you basing your 10,000 - 100,000 figure? The fact that you bought a game?

The "Linux Game Market" for any given game is the set of people who are all of the following:

1. Run Linux as a desktop
2. Are interested in games
3. Are willing to put non-free software on their free Linux system
4. Have some $ to spend on a game
5. Think pirating software is wrong.
6. Think YOUR game is worth spending $ on.

How many people is that really?

The Linux market may be the same size as the Mac market, but the vast majority of Macs are desktop machines owned by individuals. I would bet that the vast majority of Linux systems are not - many of them probably don't even have a GUI running or a monitor or mouse attached.

It's not just a one-time cost...

[Zondar]

Most games these days have patches on a somewhat regular basis. Each additional platform you launch the game on requires that you include that platform in your ongoing development costs.

It's not as simple as "just recompile it for Linux, duh". Every time I see someone scream for some MMORPG to release 'the Linux client we know you have', they always forget to include the recurring dev cycle costs.

If the cost to make it + the cost to maintain it > the additional revenue it brings in... then it doesn't get made.

Re:cost of porting

[LocoMan]

That's the thing. NWN is a very popular game, and they've gotten up to 1000 requests (according to the summary).... so that means they would make up to $50,000, assuming everyone that expressed interest actually buys it when it comes out and doesn't wait until it goes down in price, torrents it, or just says "but I already have this in windows, I'll buy this other new game instead". If that covers the amount of work needed to make the port (even if it's just recompiling), testing, reproduction of a separate version, change in the packaging (to reflect that it's the linux version), sales and post-sale support (now every patch has to be tested twice, for example), I'd think it would just cover it barely.

Even then, I'd bet companies that are interested in porting their games have their sights set on consoles that are a much bigger market than on alternate OSs, specially in a market as competitive as games where the window to make money off a product is so small, and even one big failure can be enough to doom an entire company. I guess the only big chance to really get gaming companies to notice alternate OSs regularly is to actually get more people using them... which leaves us in the perpetual catch 22, since gamers aren't really willing to use linux only unless there are more games for it.

Re:cost of porting

[LaughingCoder]

You completely ignore the biggest costs of adding platforms -- testing and support. That is, of course, assuming the code is already multi-platform capable (and others on this thread have talked at length about the issues involved in that non-trivial exercise). Remember that support includes both end-user support as well as maintenance. This means developing (or at least configuring) and managing a patch distribution infrastructure for each platform. Plus there are the difficulties of handling platform-specific bug fixes -- do you update the shared source code thereby incurring at least some regression testing on every platform, or do you branch for each platform? Neither is pleasant and both have associated costs that grow exponentially with the number of platforms supported. It simply makes no sense to port a product from a platform with >90% marketshare, to attempt to get the remaining 10%. Those costs can and should be applied to simply getting more of the 90% chunk.

Re:Replace Linux with any other system

[HappySqurriel]

In most cases your interpreted code (from C# or Java) will run between 50%-75% of the speed of hand optimized Assembly or C/C++ code. The real problems (currently) with interpreted languages is they do not provide a standard interface for graphics cards (which prevents taking advantage of the GPU to produce your graphics) and garbage collection is awful at handling memory management; if there was a standard Graphics inteface in Java which allowed you to program in OpenGL, and Java allowed for "hints" to tell it when to free memory you could (probably) produce a game that looked like Half-Life 2 on a pretty average PC.

Now, games have been known to push hardware but at one point in time an office suite was also know for pushing the limits of hardware. If you look at what it costs to produce a XBox 360/PS3/PC game currently, developers can not afford to continue to push the hardware; consider that since the NES there has been a standard 4 times increase in development cost for each generation, games went from costing $5 Million (on average) on the XBox/PS2/Gamecube to $20 Million on the PS3/XBox 360/PC, how many games can cost $80 Million and still turn a profit?

Excuse me...

[Svartalf]

Given that I know QUITE a bit on the subject (Heh... I port games over to Linux and right now I'm off that for a little bit doing driver development consulting for one of the two aforementioned players in 3D...), I think I should comment.

Most of the extensions aren't ATI or NVidia specific that are usable. To be sure, they offer those, but most of the
extensions are ARB or EXT extensions- they're intended to be used by either player and are typically provided by
the same. The reality is that OpenGL 2.1 and DX9/10 are intrinsically identical except for programming style.

Besides, you should abstract out your engine components if you've any aspirations to target the next gen consoles-
DX10's NOT on PS3 or Wii, but OpenGL ES 2.0 IS and it's a clean, easy to use subset that ports back to MacOS and Linux.

1000 games is a joke

[Ffakr]

I can see 1000 games as a target for Linux releases. Linux geeks are often (but certainly not always) gamers but people don't install linux to play games. If you want optimised video drivers and if you just want the damn game to 'just work' you keep a Windows machine or Windows Partition. Not to mention the lag in patches.. it's no fun bringing your linux rig to lan party only to find out that you can't join the game because the V. 1.1 patch is not available for you yet.

The 1000 number for OS X is a joke though. Seriously, Any decent game should sell more than 1000 copies on the Mac. There are far too many Macs in use in homes for a GOOD game to not sell reasonably well. The Mac has issues.. it's rare to see them with really good video systems. The recent Intel machines have solid offerings but they aren't fantastic ( Elder Scrolls would play like crap on a stock iMac with underclocked X1600 video). I have, however, played Battlefield 2 at native rez with decent settings on a 1st gen Intel 17" iMac and it ran great. It beat the hell out of my Athlon X2 3800 w/ AGP Nvidia 6600GT. The current iMacs are much nicer too.

The bigger problem, as I see it, is that the gaming industry is in a lull. I don't see any really compelling titles. I love WW2 era FPShooters but the Genre has been played out to death. The Battlefield series has been solid but every new version is just a new veneer on the same game. To me and my friends, EQ and WWC MassivelyMulitPlayer games are played out. The frustration of dumping time into them has long since outweighted the enjoyment (I never did try World of WarCraft.. I got burned out before that).
Really, I walk through the gaming isle at Frys and nothing excites me and I've been looking to have another lan party. There's literally dozens of FPS War games but none stand out and I'm not going to try them all so I can tell people to buy one just for a night at my house.

The other problem is crappy coding though this is more minor issue. If the developer houses wrote tighter code, there'd be a larger range of medoicre machines that could run that code. Remember when the big guns were Doom3 vs. HalfLife2.. HalfLife2, to me, looked every bit as good overall and it ran MUCH better on less than cutting edge hardware. Doom3 was the killer benchmark for a while and the lighting system does look nice but the HL2 engine looks great and I really enjoyed the game (more so than the 'turn the corner and shoot' story line of Doom3). IMHO, HL2 is a superior game because the sum of the whole package is superior [visuals, story, environment, gameplay..]. The impressive thing is, Valve pulled this off without forcing everyone to run out and drop $500 on upgrades. If Valve, for instance, started supporting OS X, I'm sure they'd be able to run on a pretty large Mac installed base. Everything over the Mini should run HL2 fantastically. [other noteable crap-tastic games I'd never buy for a Mac.. BF Vietnam.. which crippled my Radeon9800Pro back in 2003, EQ (HORRIBLE CODING) and even EQ2 which seemed un-reasonably slow on decent PC hardware)

If we had good, compelling games.. I'd guarantee that a port of a GOOD game to OS X would sell a hell of a lot more than 1000 copies with annual sales of Millions of computers and poor enterprise market penetration (most macs go home or at least into EDU markets).

Re:linux

[pembo13]

All Google tools that run on Linux come as binary. Skype comes as a binary. Flash comes as binary.

Follow through

[metamatic]

I would have purchased Neverwinter Nights, but they didn't finish porting it. They only ported the game, they didn't bother with the tools. Then they tried to charge more for the partial port on Mac OS X than for the entire game on Windows. So I didn't buy.

The way I see it, it's Bioware who have a problem with following through.

Re:Tell that to LGP...

[Svartalf]

Actually, you do. There's a reason WHY they call it DLL Hell- which still exists on Windows. The only
OS I know of that doesn't have issues of this nature is MacOS X and above because of the rigid rules they
apply to everything including their runtimes they ship.

The only real reason why you have any problems with Linux deliverables has little to do with the base ABI-
which anyone with the right resources can target properly (All it takes is linkage against libraries of the
version you want to base off of or use something like apbuild from the Autopackage project for that.). It's
the C++ ABI that keeps shifting- and you CAN statically link against it if you don't wish to have issues
with it. It's actually smaller than the main one and it's tolerable to statically link it and nothing else.

Re:World of...something

[oc255]

imho ... Blizzard is the massive exception to the rule. They write amazing code, they run an amazing operation. Of course, they also stay behind the tech curve (smart). Blizzard, Google (for how long I wonder), Apple (much lesser extent), ID did well with the Doom RPG but I don't know where they are heading ... it's odd, they need new IP or something.

Back on topic, they are a massive exception to the rule. WoW is a AAA title can run OpenGL (mac/windows) and DX (windows), has very few bugs in constant change and has a subscriber base of 6+ million. I'd say there only one title that does that and one company that could pull it off. Not to mention the infrastructure, the tools, the customer service, the community, the vision of not punishing the player (ignore the official forums) all while not selling out too much. They use bittorrent (good and bad), use XML in the UI, use linux clustering (shards) for hosting, have a public API for community UI extensibility and even don't auto-renew your trial subscription behind your back (refer-a-friend).

Sure, they use OracleDB and they exploit MMOs addictive qualities. So they might do some evil now and again. Angel of Heaven who has to sell crack to buy harp polish? Derailed here.

Re:The main problem are graphics drivers

[the_greywolf]

Not true. NVIDIA's driver supports OpenGL 2.1 with full support for every feature of the GLSL - provided you've got the hardware for it. The latest version even adds a new GLX extension that the X server can use for hardware-accelerated compositing. ATi's driver, while it still mostly sucks, is at a similar level of advancement. OpenGL 2.0 support (last I heard) with GLSL support matching the Windows driver.

The only drivers that would have problems running games like NWN2 (should it ever be ported) are things like Intel's GMA and crappy hardware like SiS chipsets and so forth.

Then again, if that's all you've got, I've got to wonder why you're trying to make a fancy 2D graphics chip do 3D. Then again, you'd have an ATi or NVIDIA card anyway... Right?