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Battlefield Director: Linux Only Needs One 'Killer' Game To Explode
dryriver writes with an except from Polygon's interview with DICE creative directory Lars Gustavsson, who says it would only take one "killer" game for Linux to break into mainstream gaming (something some would argue it already has): "We strongly want to get into Linux for a reason," Gustavsson said. "It took Halo for the first Xbox to kick off and go crazy — usually, it takes one killer app or game and then people are more than willing [to adopt it] — it is not hard to get your hands on Linux, for example, it only takes one game that motivates you to go there." "I think, even then, customers are getting more and more convenient, so you really need to convince them how can they marry it into their daily lives and make an integral part of their lives," he explained, sharing that the studio has used Linux servers because it was a "superior operating system to do so." Valve's recently announced Steam OS and Steam Machines are healthy for the console market, Gustavsson said when asked for his opinion on Valve's recent announcements."
Finally, The Year Of The Linux Desktop has come!
Overall, he is right. I bought gaming systems for a single game. For instance, I bought the Wii just to play FireEmblem. I was already interested but it is only on FE's release that I bought it. Once I had it, I played other things as well. But a single exclusive game I was interested in convinced me to buy.
I think that the same thing could happen for Linux. But I am no sure it will ever happen. Will there ever be a Linux exclusive game? If you were a game developper, would you commit to realse your fancy need AAA game ONLY on Linux and not on Windows? That seems like a stupid move unless the company receives a ridiculous amount of money cash for the exclusivity.
I don't think that compatibility with Linux will be sufficient to see an "explosion", it is an exclusivity one need. And being linux exclusive look a lot like betting on a three legged horse.
It needs one killer game that you can't get elsewhere. Do you think Halo would have done what it did for the XBox if it was also available for the PS2?
And since I don't see many game companies jumping the Windows ship to start making AAA Linux exclusives, this guy's "insight" is irrelevant.
Put your games in it.
Give people f2p models or shareware models.
Let them purchase through web/ingame codes to unlock the full games.
Linux people will download the F2p versions by just tossing your repository in their package/software management apps a long with their other favorite repos.
Or even better roll out a distro with your game thats a clone of Fedora or Debian + the above with your own binary repo.
His example makes no sense.
Given the overwhelming power of developing on Linux compared to Windows or Macs (Linux is so far ahead of both it's not even a contest) once developers move to the new platform, they'll never go back.
It took 20 years, but Linux won. Face it. It's just better technology.
Digital Illusions CE is not to be confused with DICE Holdings, two completely different companies.
Really though, Digital Illusions is an EA subsidiary. Poor Lars indeed.
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
I think Wii Sports qualifies. Certainly many bought a WII for that game alone
About the only thing I can see is Steam OS becoming a hardware target for "white box" makers. Microsoft is back to an x86 console, so how will they keep game devs on the console and not just Windows? At some point they will lock up and cripple Windows... Again... To push everybody to console.
Enter SteamOS based on Linux. If they make it play nice with Ubuntu or Mint Linux they could grab the "power gamer" market and those people can just use Linux for their "homework". Even then Steam is already looking to be a target for APPS on windows and Mac so that might fix the missing multimedia stuff people bellyache about.
Yes. When asked to pay what they think a game is worth, Linux users consistently pay significantly more than users of other platforms.
What we need is some serious effort into platform integration between desktop, tablet and cellphone. Apple offers, Microsoft wants to offer it. Why don't we have it with Linux/Android?
I guess you missed that whole Ubuntu Phone thing, huh?
Even without that, Linux plays very nicely with Android phones. You can set up all sorts of integration between them. Yes, there's Ubuntu phone, and KDE Plasma is also designed for small screens, but personally, I don't really want the same interface on both. I want to be able to choose the interface I want on each environment and still have them communicate without limitations.
Who gives a crap about it -- It is Linux Mr. whatever you are, please understand the distinction between a thing that runs on Mainframes and clusters and your Christmas toy.
Good thing you left out the comma... Since Linux runs on Mainframes and clusters, and on your Christmas phone and tablet.
It needs a killer game that can't be open source so that it can't be ported to other platforms. Of course if it's not open source, Linux users won't touch it.
One or two Good Game can certainly make a difference
One decent game would get me into Linux; I dual boot Win7 and Mint, but only visit Mint, I don't really
use it as there's nothing "special" I use it for.
Doom took me from the Amiga and to the PC, as did Quake II (made for my video card (3DFX drivers)) graphics were incredible.
Installed Win3.1, the easy networking and abundance of programs shelved the Amiga.
I have Portal 2 I can play from Mint but have played it on the PC already, and it's not as good as the first.
Guess the cake was my carrot and an out right lie.
The Games I've found for Mint are Civilization types, build this then you can build that; but those can
impede your progress or even stop you if not taken care of.
I tried Red hat in the 1990's bought the book and CD. The Red hat disk partition tool was so confusing
I quit at the very start. If the instructions had just said "or you can just use FDISK" things would be much different now.
I'm a new linux user that used Unix commands to get around on old shell accounts. So have a leg up;
but still trying to get know to the command line while Linux is swaying folks to the GUI.
Then there's the flavor of Linux I started with Ubuntu as it was very popular at the time, the Live CD
didn't work so stopped there. Another serious approach was Mint as Ubuntu was sending search
query's to third parties - and where I'm at now. Just that I have no reason to use Mint, at the moment
I play Battle Field 3 all the time - a very enjoyable game for me for close to two years now.
Safely setting up customer's computers for dual boot is fairly easy: just set up the installer so that nuking your Windows installation isn't even an option. If the only way to install Linux on your computer so that you can play this game is with dual boot, most people would be less reluctant to give it a try, especially if booting into Windows is the default, and you only get Linux if you specifically ask for it at boot time.
Good, inexpensive web hosting
I'm typing this from a Ubuntu computer delivered to me just 2 days ago from http://system76.com.
Is it fair to blame Ubuntu for all the issues that come with building a computer from scratch?
But with that said, I agree the current Linux distros aren't ready for the average computer user. It's not Linux that's the problem. It's the fact that distros just don't put in ( or have for that matter ) the resources necessary to "polish" the OS.
We know Linux can do this because we use Android phones, and they work just fine for most users.
And personally I believe until distros put philosophy aside and concentrate on bringing in enough resources to fund continued development, Linux will remain inadequate for the average home computer user.
And before i start on the reasoning - I'm talking about Linux gaming "exploding". I agree that it will get more games, but it is likely to be a secondary platform for a long, long time.
The reason, is that the one "killer" game needs to be a platform exclusive. And to be something to encourage people to switch, it will need to be AAA. To be AAA means big art, music and programming effects budgets.
And NO ONE is going to be spending that sort of money on a Linux exclusive game before the market exists.
It's possible that it could have happened a few years back, as a self-booting DVD or similar, but I think the boat has been missed - optical media is dead/dying and to get online to stream it that way you need an OS installed.
So no, given the above I don't think the Linux gaming market will "explode". You'll likely see it grow slowly as people install SteamOS rather than windows if/when the AAA games start getting ported to it. The steam box will help that, as previously there's been no reason for people to not just run games on the copy of windows that came with their PC. If valve push the steam box hard enough, people will be buying hardware which never had windows on it, saving a windows license and there will be an actual reason to run Linux for gaming on it.
I'm really keen to see it happen though, the only reason I'm running a copy of Windows at home at all now is for games. My laptop is a Mac, my NAS is FreeNAS. My desktop i just recently built (i5-4430, GT760) just runs win8 as a steam bootloader, effectively.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
It's fairly mild so you should be OK soon.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
There was a time when I also thought that Linux was going to storm the market, including the desktop. That was when I read Eric Raymond's paper, "The Cathedral and the Bazaar." One of the major themes was, "so many people are working on open source, that commercial software would not be able to compete." It seemed reasonable to me, and I wrote an article with a friend in 1998 that made it onto Linux Today, and into a crappy book by Wiley called, "Linux at Work." Eric Raymond was wrong. The problem with Desktop Linux, is Linux. I've been involved with Linux since the beginning (though not anymore if at all possible). Much of my career has been working on and with Linux servers and Desktops. I've heard over and over that, "this will be the year of desktop Linux," and it never has been. Open source development has a critical flaw, no one forces anyone to do the final grunt work on various components of the desktop that are necessary to put the final grunt work polish. Linux, and open source do not have the millions spent by Apple and Microsoft on user testing. No paying developers to stay in their chairs and finish that grunt work that no one wants to do to put the final polish on software/operating systems. Ms and Apple thoroughly QA test their products, which is a whole boatload of grunt work that people will only fully complete when they are paid to specifically do that. No, this is not the year of Desktop Linux. Linux is good at many things, but it is nowhere close to the commercial operating systems in ease of use, documentation and direct support if necessary. If you like spending Saturdays attempting to get some obscure error figured so you can attempt to get a crappy half-assed driver for Linux working, then it's for you. If you just want to do things, and play hundreds of great games, choose a well supported and developed commercial operating system. "
I would consider Unreal Tournament 2004 a "killer" game for its time, but maybe the problem was it was available for other platforms.
Linux is all over the place. I know plenty of people who use it daily. I lived on Linux for years. Hell, I even ported the Opera Web Browser to the platform.
What it boils down to is simple, OS wars are dead. There's more than just Microsoft now. I personally prefer Windows 8 because it's faster than anything I've ever used before and it has less obvious bugs than the other platforms. Other people like Mac, others Linux, others Chrome (which is more of a Java platform than a Linux platform).
I think it's about time to consider that 99% of game development has moved into a new era of platform independent game engines. Using Unreal Engine, Unigine Game Engine, Unity3D and others you write the game once and tweak the controls for a dozen different platforms from phones to XBox/PS to Linux. Companies who code their own game engines and want to reinvent the wheel can do so if they want, but honestly, it's not so interesting. These days, if a game system developer really wants their platform to take off, they can make agreements with the platform system company and pay for the port or do it themselves.
Take a look at Microsoft. No one wanted to port to the Metro platform and Microsoft basically made it happen by working with the game engine companies. Now all the game vendors need to do is simply generate a new executable and tweak the controls.
If Valve wants support for SteamOS, the answer is simple, port the game engines. But I have no interest in games locked into a platform. I stopped buying consoles because I don't need a special machine for games anymore. Windows, Mac, Linux, iPhone, etc... are all powerful enough to play the best of them. Game consoles were only interesting when porting to a platform meant an endless amount of problems with hardware incompatibility. We don't do it anymore. These days, the game engines do the work for us. Content developers can produce awesome games without worrying about AMD vs. Pentium or nVidia vs. Intel vs. AMD. Hell, they don't even have to think much about Mac vs. Windows vs. Linux. They can develop games and simply deploy them.
SteamOS seems interesting, but I want one device for everything. I use a Surface Pro at the moment. Surface Pro 2 later this month. It's a laptop, a tablet, a video player, an ebook reader and a game system. Would I like better graphics? Yep... but Pro 2 has better graphics. And the graphics on the Surface Pro 2 are good enough that it's now more about game content than graphics quality. I carry an XBox controller in my backpack so I can play Sonic Racing or Lara Croft on airplanes.
It'll be pretty cool though if Valve makes it so I can buy a game and play it on SteamBox or my Surface without buying a second copy.
The problem is of course any game that becomes popular on Linux will be ported to other platforms like Xbox,PS3 and Windows. So that immediately kills that idea.