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Pushing Linux Adoption Through Gaming
An article on CNet questions the viability of using games as part of a strategy to increase Linux adoption. It points out a blog post by Andrew Min which suggests:
"... Linux companies also need to start paying attention to the open source gaming community. Why? It's lacking. However, gamers can get excited about free games. They just have to be up to par with commercial games. The problem is, commercial companies pay hundreds of employees to build a game for several years, while many competing gaming projects only last several years before the developer moves on. It's time for open source developers to start getting paid for their jobs. Who better to pay them than the companies that benefit most?"
Wouldn't the people who benefit the most be gamers themselves?
I Browse at +4 Flamebait
Open Source Sysadmin
Paying the OS Game Developers sounds like a good idea but most companies just wont pay for frivolity. In these uncertain economic times, I just can't see any but a Game company putting any money towards game creation. Especially if they don't receive a direct source of revenue from their investment. All of that said, I would certainly like to see it happen. If not that, how about some way for people to pay for features added to games that are already in development so that a game will be made better. If that sounds silly, then just a way to donate a few bucks would be good. I'm not talking paypal either, I don't trust the company as they have too much control over my money and I have none.
Require Open Source Artists. Art assets are very important to games and most programmer art just doesn't cut it.
That's the real challenge, because while many coders will happily knock up a game engine for their own amusement, handling stuff like artistic direction to get a consistent "look" and generating inane brick textures is not something that many people do for "amusement". Of course, that could change if people got passionate about it, but it's much easier to focus as an artist when working on something like a Source Engine mod, where a lot of the inane brick textures already exist and you can concentrate on building cool character models (etc).
Let me see if I've got this straight: PC gaming was a huge market during the 90's and first half of the 2000's. In the past few years, the PC market has been on the decline, propped up only by the massive MMORPG sales. Now in 2009, a year by which there are three incredible consoles on the market that easily make 80%+ of PC gaming irrelevant, we hear a call to action for more Linux games?
Um, sure. I'll get right on that.
Do they? There was a time when that was certainly true. A lot of the remaining PC gamers I've seen purchase overpriced Alienware hardware and refer to it as their "rig". No offense to the remaining serious gamers who build their own PCs, but the incredible market power that used to be behind PC Gaming simply isn't there anymore. Look elsewhere for your coup de grace.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Linux would be great for gaming, since the OS itself uses so little memory, it means there's a good chance that games are going to run faster than on Windows (XP) with explorer.exe taking up a large chunk of memory.
Why don't we take the same approach as they do to distro's of linux, a group of smart-minded people gather together, make a product, release it to the community, and then it starts from there. Modding, including ideas, etc. I'm sure there are many enthusiastic programmers and graphics designers out there eager to get into a project like this, but they have no idea where to put their name.
There is pretty much zero evidence that if recent games were available for linux it would speed adoption, even though for me personally the thing that let me switch was getting wow to run under wine (along with an unexplainable crappy ping in vista).
What has actually been observed to increase adoption (citation needed) is fancy crap like wobbly windows and spinning cube desktops.
Maybe collectively the companies could make a "content light" face booking, im-ing spinning flashing version of linux and attempt to lock up the teen market, i think you might find that would be of more interest to more people than the marginally smaller "hardcore pc gaming" crowd.
Personally i don't really care.
This is a joke. I am joking. Joke joke joke.
The only way I see this working is to somehow use the openness of a Linux console as an advantage. It's like having a gaming PC, without the disadvantages of a PC (viruses/maintenance), and with all the advantages of a console (couch/controller/TV vs monitor/keyboard/mouse).
But even as a hypothetical, I can't really come up with a good example. Maybe an extensive modding community? Maybe an easy way to do this with a laptop?
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
I am 35. I got my first computer a Commodore64 around 1984. 1986 I first started connecting to BBS's and then to run my own BBS. I _was_ a hard-core gamer.
Now I play flash-games, or classics in a Dosbox window. Sorry but Linux gaming missed it's mark by being 15 years too late to the table. Don't get me wrong, I still occasionally play Enemy Territory, Padman, and other 'popular' games, but the kids today don't care. Not like we used to care. I am likely to hear BOOM-HEADSHOT! yelled across the LAN party these days as we would yell "I'M IN!!!" when 'searching' for a virgin ftp server to use as dump sites back in the day.
"The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." ~Plato (427-347 BC)
I'm all for getting games away from Windows, because I remember DOS, I remember games running fine on DOS because the OS wasn't trying to do all kinds of crap under them, and I remember just about every version ever Windows breaking games that ran just fine either on DOS or older, lighter-weigh versions of Windows.
And really, this is a big reason PC gaming sucks compared to the consoles. Consoles don't have to worry about whether they need to be doing all kinds of other crap at the same time; PC's running Windows do (and this is more true with each version). Same goes for Mac, and frankly, same goes for any mainstream distro of Linux.
So one big thing that needs to be overcome is how to optimize Linux so it's actually better for gaming than Windows or Mac. Do you strip it down and get rid of stuff games don't need, come out with a gaming-specific distro? Or do you work on making the internals as fast as possible in ways that matter to games? Or something else entirely?
Get Linux to the point where things run better on it than on Windows or Mac, on equivalent hardware (since it is equivalent nowadays), and you might attract more game development.
The issue of artists someone pointed out is the other big issue. You need to motivate the artists. And - especially if you want them to work for free - you need to give them something really compelling. That means something OSS that's better than what they have now. Something that beats DirectX, beats OpenGL, or whatever. I don't know whether adding OpenCL support like Apple is doing will help - that seems more aimed at offloading processing tasks to the GPU, not offloading graphics tasks to spare CPU cores.
But in both cases, I think Linux is going to have to be a clear "best choice" before game developers will flock to it. Make it outperform other OSes in game execution as well as graphics and multimedia, and make compelling tools or toolkits for developing games and the graphics and multimedia they need, and they will come.
I honestly don't see it happening, though. :(
Village idiot in some extremely smart villages.
There's nothing wrong with making money off of apps, especially games. I for one am happy to pay for games and have them open-sourced after 3 to 5 years like all the good companies have been doing. Games aren't like other apps where you can charge for support or there is a need for interoperability and backward-compatibility. Yes, game publishers should compile Linux (and BSD) versions of their games. No, it doesn't really matter if they are initally released as open-source or not!
The big reason windows wins for gaming isnt that everyone HAS windows. It's that the developers find programming for windows is EASY!
I've heard that the difference between an Xbox game and a PC game, using DirectX in visual studio, is a checkbox at compile time.
Think about that.
Balmer was right.
I wont quote it in full, but that particular speach went something like this: "Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers!"
DirectX encompasses every aspect of gaming from input to output. OpenGL does graphics only.
The day someone comes out with a competing cross platform, fast API that is supported in all major coding suites and is easy to develop for, will be the day that linux/mac gaming starts for real.
What is DirectX anyhow? It's basically a shim that sits between the OS and the game. It redirects, modifies and offers a range of input and output functionality that would take years to write directly into the game.
It's a masterpiece that has saved rediculous amounts of time and effort for developers.
THIS is where it has to start.
When the difference between compiling for windows, mac, linux, whatever is a checkbox in the compiler, the game will change. Until then, it will remain a niche market.
http://www.nexuiz.com
http://www.tremulous.net
http://www.warsow.net
This is too pathetic for words.
Walmart.com will gladly sell you a HP Pavilion Slimline
Quad Core AMD CPU, 4 GB RAM, 64 Bit Vista Premium, NVIDIA DX 10 graphics, a 640 GB HDD, an HDTV tuner and the combo Blu-Ray drive and DVD Burner for $1K.
Monitor extra.
The truth of it is that Walmart has never been able to sell OEM Linux at a significant discount.
Though every now and again the big W will unload a few carloads of junk it picked up on the cheap on the ever-so-naive and hopeful Linux Geek.
Linux distributions need to start sponsoring companies like the old Loki Software. Companies like Canonical, Red Hat, and Novell would do well to sponsor some of that work.
The port is what you get when you are the PS3. The original big-budget production is for the Wii and the XBox 360. The port simply keeps you in the game. It is not the winning hand.
The commercial Linux distros are shamelessly enterprise oriented. There is no intelligible reason for Novell or Red Hat to go into the high risk, high stakes, game business.
I've played around with it a bit, and it's clear that it's a Civilization II clone; not decided as to how *good* a Civilization II clone it is, though.
Granted, I'm inclined towards oldschool PC games [Civilization II, Stacraft, etc.] as opposed to the new stuff [GTA, HL, etc]
And yes, one game does not a gaming platform make.
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
the companies that make money on linux couldnt care less about desktop adoption.
Make the game itself free but sell it as a service and also incentivize them to buy ancillary products to go along with your game. People love games that aren't worth playing without subscriptions and add-ons.
Most flash games run just fine in linux including Runescape which is very popular among the younger set, the number of sophisticated web browser games is growing everyday, and with 20% of users on firefox now, programmers will write games that will run on linux browsers.
http://www.nvidia.com/page/drivers.html
http://ati.amd.com/support/driver.HTML
http://support.intel.com/support/graphics/sb/CS-028594.htm
(^Ewww)
This is a start
-- Cheers!
It would really help if the graphics driver developers would start creating drivers that at least allow smooth 2d scrolling without tearing (I have not a single machine that can do it under Linux).
If you do a search of source forge for open game development kits you will be spoiled for choice.
There are plenty of gamers who are pretty smart, and ready to make content using modeling and content creation tools, (www.racer.nl - huge libraries of fan-made performance cars and stuff imported from other games). Gamers are highly conditioned to not paying money for games... and ready to bit torrent anything they want at the drop of a hat. So I think all the ingredients for a OSS gaming revolution is there. What we need is a few killer projects to get things going. The few OSS games now aren't very good - they pale in comparison to some excellent indie games out there.
After logging in slashdot still does not take you back to the page you were on. It's been that way for 20 years.
I'll go out on a limb, put on my clairvoyant glasses, and describe the scene today in the past tense:
As the decade grew to a close, it must have been clear to Microsoft, the first and most enduring oligarch of the digital age, that it would soon secede leadership to a band of toolsmiths loosely organized under a cloak of Linux, a disdain for the oligarch's controlling and sometimes capricious ways, and a nascent humanist infomatic ideology . The war had been fought on many battle lines: from servers, routers, cell phones and other specialized hardware, to virtualized environments and even the desktop. On every front, Linux had pushed the oligarch back and was gaining ground. It was only a question of degree: the trend was already clear.
This was unlike any threat the oligarch had faced in its existence: this was guerilla warfare. An almost faceless enemy, a militia that was said to be capable of subsisting on just pizza and soda. And because of an almost monastic devotion to contributing the fruits of their labor to what they called the free bazaar, they enjoyed both the support of the citizenry and an emerging business nobility that had grown sour of the oligarch's onerous taxes.
And while the writing must have clearly been on the wall inside the Redmond offices, the pundits of the time, still bickered over so-called Linux adoption rates, ignoring the fact that the in the end the oligarch had lost most battles it had chosen to fight and was incapable of defending its steadily shrinking territory.
I'm playing Alpha Centauri, Railroad Tycoon II, and Star Craft (WINE) on my Linux box now. I'm not a WoW fan, but I understand it also works under WINE, although I don't know how well.
Unless a game runs either native Linux (preferred) or in WINE, I'm not going to buy it, and I do mean BUY it, since I don't run pirate software, except to escape DRM, and, even then, I buy a copy, if I'm going to use it.
Lack of Linux support means no game sale to me, rather than I will run M$-Windows to play a game.
I used to keep a Win2K machine to play games, but it's very rarely booted these days.
The games that would work best as open-source are already free, and America's Army comes to mind. As for commercial titles, all games get pirated anyway, so what do the developers have to lose?
I think this might be a good start.
I think the one thing that would speed up adoption drastically would either be a Photoshop port, or getting Gimp up to a level where professionals can use it on the same level that they use Photoshop. Also, if we're going the Gimp route, then we need some real artists to start posting some super awesome art that just blows people away and convinces then that, yes, Gimp can do that!
And while that would be a major kick in the pants, nothing will boost Linux adoption like an ad campaign. A real one. With, you know, mainstream ads? Television?
"Hi, I'm Linux. You should install me over Windows because..."
Now, if we're going the game route, then it would not be sufficient to simply port a game to Linux. There would have to be an exclusive game, an experience that you can't get anywhere else, otherwise users would simply play said game on their existing platform of choice. Anyone got the millions to fork out for a game + marketing campaign needed to accomplish this?
because it's ghey.
FLAME ON! :D
"However, gamers can get excited about free games. They just have to be up to par with commercial games"
In other news, drivers can get excited about free cars too.
The GP Metaarticle is wrong.
1) Frequently, the best and most successfull games our at least their proofs-of-concept don't come from the industry anymore, but from the modding community. In fact, the modding community is such a powerfull force in gaming you *must* play ball with it, if you want to be taken for granted. However, the modders, being passionate freebee providers themselves, have considerably different ethics on some issues. In ways they are even more pragmatic than the OSS vs. FOSS crowd. And they have to be, as they have a completely different goal, which is: Building good games. Duh. Right now, Valve and the Source engine are pulling over quite a few of the modders, for the simple reason that they have one of the best engines.
2) The best people built games primarly because it's their passion, not because they are paid. However, these people want to build games, and not have to dick around with XFree86 crap with problems which, believe it or not, that sorry excuse of an operating system called Windows solved something like 2 decades ago.
3) As with #2, game builders want to build games. They want a working production pipeline. As long as that is virtually non-exsitant on OSS, they won't use OSS. Plain and simple. Cudos to the Blender team for hacking away at this problem one step at a time. However, modders use free versions of Softimage or Maya or UT Editor to build their stuff, and they quite frankly care squat wether it's FOSS or not, as long as it gets the job done.
And last but not least: Good software takes time. From an non-expert end-user standpoint, Linux is barely stopping to suck with Ubuntu 8.10 - and only if you don't want plug-and-play your printer or want to play games that don't run on Wine without a hitch. AFAIAC, Gnome & Nautilus has just stopped sucking a few months ago (I like(d) KDE/KUbuntu much better before) and one-stop zero-fuss printing as in Mac OS X will probably take another year or two until the vendors finally catch on. The very same goes with games.
And lets face it and be realistic: The first thing you want out of the way is your grafics layer, and that has been sucking long enough with XFree86 (Yeah, I know, neat networking, whatever, XFree fanboy, screw you, that's a total non-issue nowadays). Since that appears to be out of the way and desktops are rapidly maturing left, right and center all over the OSS community it is now moving to productivity apps. And AFAICT only now are Evolution and KMail slowly closing in on closed source apps in the field. (Allthough I could be wrong, the KMail crew could still be flat out lying about their ability to provide viable working mail encryption, as they have done for many years).
Once that is all aside and the more complex apps required for multimedia are nearing their true 1.0 release in the OSS community and we finally get a FOSS 3D game engine and a 3D production pipeline that doesn't suck by todays standards, we will see games pop up left right and center as the modding community joins the FOSS fray. And we all will be blown away by the quality they bring to the table. The gaming industry will be hit just as hard as other software fields and will have to adapt with pay-for-content or simular strategies.
Bottom line: ... (I can't believe I just said that.)
If you want to know how the future of FOSS gaming looks like, check out the modding community. And yes, it's a 120% Windows world right now. And, yes, believe it or not, for its very own very good reasons too.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Simple solution, get Linus to pass a law (or change the kernel license!) that there can only be one Linux distribution. Maybe we'll let them keep Gnome (only if they get rid of Gtk) and KDE (shoot whoever thought KDE4 should be released). Then all the developers from the other distros could work on writing games. Simple!
If gaming happens at all, it'll happen because of one of two commercial situations:
1) someone wants to push either a Linux-based games console and wants it to "just work" initially with only minor changes to Windows versions (i.e. through wine or a derivative) - the only people with the muscle and motiviation to try might be Valve with their big catalogue for Steam, but it would be a brave backer to want to take on MS and Sony.
or 2) some kind of "live start" feature could be added to Windows CD releases of games - i.e. that Windows became such a pain in the backside for the publisher, and maybe some enterprising developer decided that their customers could boot their game faster from the bare metal upwards. Just put in the CD and play, no installation needed, fast start, presumably hijack a little bit of space on the host's hard drive for settings etc.
I tried a bit of this myself at LUGRadio Live this (oops, last) year when we got 16 discless PCs in a square to boot a Team Fortress client with all the graphics settings correct from a central server using Linux and wine. The boot wasn't very well optimised and Steam takes bloody ages to start up (it was about 4mins per client) but I suspect it could be got down to about 30s with a few days of effort (and removing/hacking Steam out of the way :) ). But a "live start" feature is definitely possible today if a developer was motivated.
Matthew @ Bytemark Hosting
I have seen alot of emphasis on Free To Play MMOs lately. With this coming quickly to the forefront of game play, why not make a Linux client and get adoption that way?
WoW is one of the most popular apps for Wine. Why? Apparently because a lot of WoW users are worried that if they piss someone off their Windows b0x0r will get h@xx0r3d. This won't happen in Wine.
http://rocknerd.co.uk
+6 insightful.
http://rocknerd.co.uk
I imagine the future of gaming to be in two technologies. Virtual Machines, and Live CDs. You put your game on a live CD with an environment that is tailored just for the game, turning your PC into a game console of sorts, Or if you are not worried about shaving off every last CPU cycle, fire the CD up in a VM.
Browse at -1 to keep an eye out for abuses.
What about Transgaming [http://www.transgaming.com]? They have been trying to port PC games to Linux for several years now. Don't know if this significantly helped the adoption of Linux though.
A good first step might be to get a large Creative Commons texture repository that all games can share from.
I see one major problem with all Creative Commons licenses. Ordinarily, they require all downstream users of a given work to credit the work's author ("attribution"). But at any time, the author can change the requirement from crediting the author to not crediting the author. From the Creative Commons Attribution license:
This requirement for removal of attribution is incompatible with all GNU licenses, including the GPL that covers the game code and the GFDL that covers the game's manual. All this is despite that Creative Commons recommends GNU licenses for software and provides Commons Deed summaries for them, like this one for GPL v2 or later.
As soon as you get quality games like WoW, LotRO, EVE, Portal, C&C etc running natively under linux, you'll get people using linux as their primary platform and wow, wider adoption of the platform. There is no chicken-egg situation. It's the developers that need to take the first step.
Why can't we let people believe whatever they like? It's not like a little religion has ever hurt anyone.
Now in 2009, a year by which there are three incredible consoles on the market that easily make 80%+ of PC gaming irrelevant, we hear a call to action for more Linux games?
How is it possible for anyone to release a free game for any of the "three incredible consoles"? All three consoles verify digital signatures to reject software developed by parties without an existing business relationship with the console maker, which is incompatible with free software licenses that include something similar to the "Installation Information" requirement of GPLv3. The console makers also have some fairly strict standards for who is allowed to develop on the console. In fact, Nintendo explicitly states on warioworld.com that all authorized developers must be established businesses, preferably with a previous commercial title on another platform, with office space separate from any residence.
The PS3 runs Linux well. It has decent hardware for gaming purposes already built in.
Really? I thought the Other OS Installer used a hypervisor such that the only access to the RSX is a dumb frame buffer. Has Sony released a new version of the hypervisor that allows at least 2D acceleration?
Add drivers that are well supported for major hardware. (right now, most sound cards are supported, network cards, most video cards, though not in 3D, etc.)
Lack of 3D support in live CD drivers for new video card models is still the big problem. If you are limited to 2D, then it's just as easy to write a game in JavaScript, Java, C#, or Flex. These languages can compile to a binary that runs inside a web browser, and the user doesn't even have to reboot.
Add WINE as a development platform for porting over Windows/Xbox games
Xbox games in particular would need 3D, Xbox 360 games even more.
Games could incorporate their own O/S in their Live CD, so you simply wouldn't have to worry about software updates, etc.
Unless you're trying to add a 3D driver for a video card whose driver isn't on the disc.
And, since each game comes with its own "O/S" on the game CD, if a newer release of the Live CD were out but your game wasn't supported on it, you'd just boot off the Live CD that's still compatible.
Most PCs in Office Depot have one optical drive. Your suggestion would need two: one for the operating system and one for the game.
Really, everything wrong with gaming on linux can be found here. Read the comments. To sum it up, according to the guy who created Braid, Linux is seriously lacking in modern development tools.
Similes are like metaphors
Walmart.com will gladly sell you a HP Pavilion Slimline
Yeah, for $1,000. I could buy all three major video game consoles for that amount of money. I saw another HP Pavilion Slimline PC in Office Depot that costs no more than a PLAYSTATION 3 or an Xbox 360 Elite. But here's the kicker, from the "Specifications" on the page you linked:
No composite video output. My aunt's CRT SDTV has composite video and analog audio inputs (yellow, white, and red RCA jacks), and the PC you recommend has a VGA output (DE15) and a 3.5mm stereo audio jack. Adapters for the latter are easy to find, but the only way to turn VGA video into composite is a scan converter. All three consoles come with a built-in scan converter, and some discrete video cards have one built-in, but none of the desktop PCs in Office Depot have it. And the only scan converter on Walmart.com has 1 star out of 5.
Monitor extra.
Most people already have an SDTV monitor in the living room that's large enough for four people holding gamepads to sit around. Consoles have the advantage over low-end slim PCs in that consoles work with SDTV monitors.
You want companies to spend millions of dollars developing open source games to compete with closed source games, knowing that they will be giving these games away with no way to recoup their R&D expenditures(except for those ever popular Linux service and support contracts, of course!)? Sounds like a winner to me, lol. Let me know how it goes.
Power does not corrupt - power attracts the corrupt.
I don't think it's quite got it, though.
Proverbially, the path to wide adoption starts with a killer app and proceeds through early adopters. However a killer app in this situation is a bit of a catch 22. The kind of massive games that take hundreds of man years of art work and coding take investment, and investment is attracted by installed base. I suppose we can use Linux as a counterexample to this idea, but I think Linux is a special case for several reasons. First the basic kernel was not a huge engineering task. Second, the stuff that went around it was already largely done. Third, Linux is a platform and there are a lot of companies interested in not being beholden to a single monopolist for their livelihood.
There are lots of games on Linux, and the best ones aren't very complex, they're just fun to play. And that's the catch 22. A simple game is readily cloned to Windows. Think about Tetris in its many manifestations. It's a fun game, but simple enough to be given as a student programming assignment. On the other hand, really complex games take investment for very little guarantee that you'll get a winner.
I think, however, there is a paradigm, which is the Wii. Wii Sports isn't a terribly complicated game; if it were a killer app then it could readily be cloned on other platforms. However, with Wii sports and the Wii, you had an affordably priced killer bundle.
So, what I'm thinking of is a netbook, with good battery life and fast boot time. The idea is that you'd be to take it out at more or less any time and within thirty seconds to a minute be playing a simple but addictive game. Where the article goes wrong is this: success won't come from exploiting the early adopters willingness to try something different, although that is part of the formula. Success will come from pricing the package affordably enough for an impulse purchase, without making any part of the system seem cheesy. The Wii is well and innovatively designed without necessarily being cutting edge technologically. Buyers get something new and well made at a pretty much no-brainer price for the amount of pleasure they anticipate getting from it.
We're pretty close, I think, to being able to put together that killer package. The EeePC is now sellign in its 512MB version for as little as $219. That's getting into handheld console territory. For a bit more than a hundred more, you can get a netbook with a GB of RAM and a 1024 x 600 display. This tells me the technology is there for the killer package, especially if the battery issues can be resolved. All that's needed is an app that is addictive, from which a $300 machine can get you your fix in under a minute.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
After Nethack, what more do you need?
Games will creep onto Linux, regardless of their license. It could happen faster but there needs to be more systems set up to pull in the money easily for new titles, and also the Linux packaging mess really needs to be finally sorted out.
Steam is one good start for Linux but there definitely needs to be more. Microsoft still has nearly complete control over Linux in average PC space any way, with basically none of the big stores carrying Linux products except the super rare online-only Walmart PC, or the Best Buy Ubuntu box. Without the ability for consumers to choose Linux and save money, this won't happen for a while.
Promote true freedom - support standards and interoperability.
I think there's no question that gamers would flock to Linux if A) it were easy to install, use, and maintain, and B) Windows games could be made to run in it. Fortunately, both of these conditions are pretty well fulfilled right now with Ubuntu and Wine, and this will only be getting better. I can run most of the Windows games I want to under Ubuntu/Wine with just a little work (generally no more than is required to pirate a game--a process thousands of gamers appear to have mastered), and the ones I can't run well presently generally become playable over time as the codeheads come up with solutions and Wine itself is improved (which it is currently being, by leaps and bounds). In return for a little extra work on the gaming front, I get a stable, secure, and free OS, tons of free software comparable in quality to what I used to pay hundreds of dollars for, and freedom from the whole virtual monopoly that is the Microsoft world. (What software isn't available natively can almost always be made to run under Wine, just like the games can.) As for customer support, I get quicker, more helpful answers from the Ubuntu boards than I ever got from a major software company. Honestly, I read some of the comments here and wonder what planet these people are living on. I'm doing the Linux gaming thing RIGHT NOW and there's exactly zero chance, barring some unforeseen calamity, that I'll ever be going back to Windows. I give it a couple of years before the scales fall from the eyes of the masses and they begin to follow in droves. If the company behind Ubuntu wasn't a private concern, I would have already poured every penny I own into their stock.
Art + other assets would seem also to be a good way to still make money from an open-source project. If the engine is out, anyone can modify it, and technically anyone could copy it too, but you can't just rip off the entire game and redistribute/resell it as the art is still copyrighted.
That means that end-users get a game that they can tweak, fix up, and continue to expand/use if the parent company has abandoned it, but those that made it can still - in theory - also sell the game itself and made money off it.
Excessive amounts of money are not a requirement to a good game, nor are they a guarantee of success. The same applies to many other entertainment industries as well.
Seems to me that the big barrier is graphics+soundcards and drivers.
As mentioned, memory isn't a big deal these days, but in the linux world being able to pop a disc in and play would be rather beneficial, and as nice as Ubuntu and others' hardware detection is, and driver-support has advanced, it's not quite there yet... ESPECIALLY on newer hardware.
Having to configure Xorg, a soundcard driver, or having other issues such as with my recent laptop where (at the time I bought it) ACPI was messed up and would force a shutdown due to poor CPU-temperature detection... it's not really going to fly.
Absolutely right. No limb involved
It seems to me that gaming has pushed off from the shores of PC's sometime ago, and moved towards consoles. While in many cases I find it rather irritating, it's something I've come to accept.
There are a few things that PC's still have over consoles though:
a1) A mouse equivilent. I have the XB360 version of "Kane's Wrath" (c&c3, ep2) and PC version of "Tiberium wars" (c&c3 ep1) and the former is a horror to play
b1) Resolution. While high-def 1028p TV's are becoming cheaper, they're still not common enough for consoles to push them as the primary output device, meaning that graphics/menus have to fit in a lower-def environment that doesn't necessarily work as well as a PC.
c1) Text Input: Keyboards can be really handy at times, although in many cases you can get addons that give similar functionality
d1) Shared screens: Becoming less of an issue now that consoles have more networking abilities, but it's still more common to see two PCs/laptops/etc than two consoles+TV's in the same house.
e1) Other than hacked-systems, can one develop for an Xbox/Wii/PS3 free? What's the cost of the API's, and what about the royalties (if any) on publishing for someone else's console?
But where consoles really shine is:
a2) Common hardware: You already know what's in it, what the limitations are (with some variance for peripherals such as TV or control add-ons).
b2) Cost: It's cheaper to get a gaming-centric console than a gaming PC... although again if you count in the cost of a high-def TV it starts to even up (but it's nicer to watch movies on the TV than vise-versa)
c3) Configuration: Along with (a), everything pretty much ready-to-go or configured by the manufacturer. NO driver issues.
So there are some advantages in either camp. Games like the MMO's and RTS are still a lot nicer on PC (and personally I prefer my FPS with a mouse too, but others seem to do well with a gamepad). Now, assuming that people are going to be buying PC's anyhow, (a2) and (c2) are the big hurdles for PC games that are hard to surmount. For the platforms, it seems like (e1) is going to the big issue for any homebrew or third-party games that don't want to go through the big-names.
One way for Linux to enter the gaming arena is to build a gaming platform, much like a console, with specific and unified hardware and software for development.
A hardware/software distribution, or a distribution compatible with only a specific hardware. This would be a good way to start.
If we want linux adoption...
It's not lack of creativity or ignorance of journalists. Neither is it conservatism of windows users (though many are stuck and don't dare dream of a better world). Diversity in /srv /opt /var is not the problem either, look at the amount of diversity in standards other technologies (ie mobile phones), competition comes with this small drawback. It's hardly an issue to compile two or three packages.
The problem with linux are its current users. When Dell announced Ubuntu on their laptops I heard many shout it would be "less then â50 cheaper!" an outrage! "I might as well buy windows..."
Customers who insist on not paying are bad customers. That is truly linux biggest problem.
Money means marketing, more pro-developers, more designers, more of everything.
Linux users all look at 'big companies who should adopt it' or AMD/Nvidia to write drivers so others can write games for them... free games ofcourse.
If only to cover marketing every linux fanboy would pay â15 a year to their favorite distromaker linux-loaded pc's would be in stores everywhere.
I will use this as an opportunity for self promotion. I have a published book about the topic of FOSS games (it was also my masters thesis). You can purchase the book at http://www.amazon.com/Can-Open-Source-Games-Compete/dp/3639100603/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1230920840&sr=8-1 or read it for free at http://etda.libraries.psu.edu/theses/approved/WorldWideFiles/ETD-3146/Thesis_Final.pdf
He who plays games, loses.
That were the good old redhat days. Now they come with plenty of games pre-installed. Hate it that way.
I'd spend my own mod points, but I've posted under this article.
I don't really have the time now, but there needs to be a good open source OS that gamers can use to aviod the M$ tax. I've heard that Sabayon Linux ( http://www.sabayonlinux.org/ ) may be this (someday), but this is really the way to start to erode M$ on the desktop. Gamers can hold a LOT of sway over the market because ppl generally see them as "power users" who can advise on hardware/software.
I also hear from many people (including myself) that games are the only reason to run Windoze any more. Freedom is at hand!
What a useless pack-a'-stoats the lamers are. And just when workingmans *nix had driven Debiolian and Slackmolian coderz to buugerbuuger.land ICE-CAVES. It took a decade! Linux is now just about ready to do a mans-work every day. But, now lamrs arise ... like stinky living_dead without the transit coin stuck up their lifeless buttz. Gawdsakes keep them lamers on WinBlow$ where their IQs match system UpTime in seconds. 51 ... 52 ... 53 ...
One that could output 1080p natively. That could also act as a media portal. That had a minimal X install, OpenGL and SDL. With the option of installing Ubuntu or other common desktop Linux. That used either Deb or RPM package management. That had sane defaults for installation locations That had drivers for 3D OpenGL, wireless, wired, bluetooth, usb, and every other component. That made getting games that work under Wine to work under it. Maybe a unique wine "profile" for each game?
If there was something like this that became popular enough, you might see more Linux adoption for games. Something like the Pandora Handheld - if it ever really gets up off the ground - but for the living room. Something that actually ends up with exclusive games. Maybe fore arcade cabinets as well.
The reason that developers/publishers don't port to Linux isn't technical, it's financial. If publishers thought they could make a profit on Linux then they'd probably go for it, they are interested in making money after all. The problem is more about Linux's small desktop market share than the ease of porting.
If you look at the libsdl project page then you will see plenty of games. If you look elsewhere you see old games being ported to Linux. The problem is this whole attitude of wanting stuff for free. Games, especially good ones, cost lots of money to make and expecting them for free is like asking Mercedes to give you a free car. Until people can accept that paying for stuff you like helps make more of the stuff you like, then you will only see a trickle of new stuff. I hate to say it, but this is the way things are.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
MMO is the area oss can fill, because users expect to pay a subscription. A canpany/project can make a profit and pay for art and software dev.
PS
I really want a good future based MMO FPS with a RTS commard element.
BTW before we think of games we should think of the features users get with a games console, like adding friends, IM integration, ability to see what games your friends are playing. gamer points.
These features helped the 360 beat the PS3
Lack of game is not the real problem, the real problem is the lack of advertising for fine games that already exist for Linux. People just copy paste the same list, with Wesnoth, and Unreal Tournament, over and over, and completly ignore, for instance, Spring ( http://spring.clan-sy.com/wiki/Games/ ).
But no free game has the money to run mass advertising on TV, newspapers, subway billboard, and to pay "journalist" to write praise, so it's not like it's going to change.
What a retarded idea.
I, for one, welcome our new gaming overlords.
Another problem for Linux gaming is lack of proper support for the whole game cycle development.
All the console manufacturers and Microsoft for the Windows side, are present in all major game development conferences.
They also arrange their own conferences and help all major studios to explore their hardware as much as possible.
There are also tons of tools that provide information about all code paths on the game engine and underlying OS and how it affects the game/graphics performance.
Finally the "just use OpenGL" reason is not a good one. Not all cards provide a proper driver support for OpenGL, and besides contrary to the popular belief there isn't a single console that uses OpenGL, so the engine coders have nonetheless to program against proprietary APIs anyway.
For those of you that will shout, that the PS3 supports OpenGL-ES, that is true, but OpenGL-ES is not 100% like desktop OpenGL, and actually many PS3 games use another API, more low level.
I would also like to see the situation on the Linux side improved, but I think it will never happen. Even myself, a long time die hard Linux user, am now only using XP on my laptop, mostly due to my gaming needs.