Vista To Be An Indie Games Killer?

Via GigaGamez (which has a breakdown of the problem), a GameDaily article about the unfriendliness of Vista towards Indie games. The problem is this: Vista has a setting which allows parents to restrict user profiles from accessing ESRB games 'above' a certain rating. IE: Timmy can't play F.E.A.R., or any other 'M' rated game. The problem is that getting ESRB rated is expensive: '$2000-3000 for the privilege', according to GigaGamez. Shoestring budget Indie games just may not have the money for that kind of expenditure. From the GameDaily article: "'It's unfortunately a mercenary way of doing things,' [GFW Group Manager Chris Donahue] explains, 'but, even though we're Microsoft, we do have limited resources. And we do look at the sales charts to determine where our help will have the most impact. Certainly we want Blizzard's 'World Of Warcraft' [currently the most popular massive multiplayer online game] to work flawlessly on day one of Vista because 8 million tech support calls would be a very bad thing. The casual developers don't sell quite as many.'"

Comments

OK, Here's A Solution: Release As A Linux LiveCD

[OmniGeek]

Indie game designers, here's an idea: Write that hot new game for Linux and release it as a bootable LiveCD using the Linux distro of your choice. Runs on allkinda hardware (even that crufty old pre-Vista stuff still choking the basements and game rooms of the world), avoids the performance penalty of running Vista (Hoo-boy! More system resources for the game to use!), and allows you to know EXACTLY what the operating system is and what video drivers and other critical system resources are running, so you can concentrate on the game. No worries about "Did MS break our game with the last patch?" or the like. OS compatibility gets very simple. Hardware compatibility is simplified, too: games normally only need CPU, video, network, some disk, and keyboard/mouse/game controller.

True, there are complications to this strategy, notably in terms of network setups, video settings, custom or updated drivers, savegames, and other persistent data that users will want to have on hand, but these are all resolvable in relatively simple ways. Build a Windows "setup" utility that sets up a directory on the user's existing disk partitions for use by the LiveCD, and/or provide a USB flash drive for persistent data storage. The USB key can even be used as a physical license key, as some of them have built-in crypto.

This obviously isn't THE solution for game designers who don't want to kowtow to Microsoft, but it IS a WORKABLE and PRACTICAL solution, and it does have advantages that make it attractive.