Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Battlefield Director: Linux Only Needs One 'Killer' Game To Explode

Posted by timothy on from the seems-optimistic dept.

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."

32 of 410 comments (clear)

  1. YOLD! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Finally, The Year Of The Linux Desktop has come!

    1. Re:YOLD! by craigminah · · Score: 4, Funny

      Yeah, hopefully it will run on my shiney new G5 PowerBook which also is finally here.

    2. Re:YOLD! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      Don't worry, you will be able to boot to a text-mode console and fiddle endlessly with X server dependency hell trying to get a graphical environment going.

      Ah, I see your problem. You must be running a Linux distro from 10 years ago. I know your uptime is probably the stuff of legends right now, but maybe you ought to think about upgrading to a modern Linux distro if you want to play games.

    3. Re:YOLD! by Nerdfest · · Score: 5, Insightful

      ignoring your FUD about Google and Valve, there are good reasons why it's important for Linux to be viable as a desktop environment. The main reason is that the other two main contenders seem to be moving towards a more 'controlled' sort of environment where they get a cut of all software sold and can allow or disallow whatever they want. Apple seems to be moving OSX towards the iOS model, with some iCloud features only available to software sold through their OSX app store. Microsoft, now that they are no longer being monitored closely for anti-competitive behaviour has had the way paved by iOS, and is implementing the same model with 'Metro'. You'll start to see the 'classic' interface an installation model lose support in future versions. That 30% cut looks pretty good to them.

      Valve can see what's happening and wants to get ahead of the pack. They want to deploy on an open platform.

      I want to be able to install any software I want without having to have it 'approved' by someone, and I'd like to have the option having my software and applications be open source so I can be more sure that various governments are not privy to my personal business. Of course, maybe that's just me. If you don't mind only having computing platforms that are basically walled-garden consoles, you need not worry. I'm sure they will also be available.

    4. Re: YOLD! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      All thanks to Tux Racer!!!

    5. Re:YOLD! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      "They want to deploy on an open platform" should be "They want to deploy their own platform." Whether it will be "open" or not is very much in question.

    6. Re:YOLD! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Minor point: Valve doesn't want to deploy on an open platform, they just vehemently do *not* want to compete with Microsoft's "marketplace", or cede 30% to them. They want to control the store, just like Apple, Google and Microsoft.

    7. Re:YOLD! by amiga3D · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It's not FUD if it's true, it's simply FACT. Do you dispute that this is what's happening? It's not like Microsoft is trying to hide what they're doing.

    8. Re:YOLD! by muridae · · Score: 4, Informative

      Before the game needs patched? If the game is making calls to OpenGL, then the game doesn't care how the window manager/desktop or the X11/X.org/Wayland/etc handle those calls as long as the version of OpenGL is supported. The only issue will come down to how kernel updates are managed. Too many people punch their package manager for every update, then whine when the bleeding edge kernel isn't supported by the closed-source binary driver for their bleeding-edge graphics card. This is either a problem in the distribution (pushing kernel updates without full support) or the user (updating the kernel without the right binaries available) depending on how you want to look at it. Or to save space, they update a library with a rapidly changing API to the newest version every time a release comes along, and then file bug reports everywhere. If the library isn't stable, then the game devs should force dependency on a certain release, or static link it. And if the user wants to uninstall the library when the game says 'hey, I depend on that' and the package manager allows it? That's back to a distro problem. So it seems like the real problems are average users using bleeding-edge distributions, or stupidly uninstalling things they shouldn't. Hey, I wonder what would happen if I went and uninstalled all those DX patches in SysWOW folders, think everything will still run right afterwards?

      Frankly, stabilizing a set of "these files will be available to all games if the OS level is at least at patch version X.Y.Z" seems to be what SteamOS is aiming at. Which would let users do exactly what you say the average users want to be able to do.

    9. Re:YOLD! by interkin3tic · · Score: 5, Informative

      Google's store is not exclusive on android, you can install apps outside the store or via amazon without google having any say over it. You uncheck an option in settings. So I'd argue that "control just like google" is actually a pretty loose standard compared to how apple does it on the ipad or iphone.

      I'd bet good money against steam limiting where you could install aps from on steam OS. In the beta for the steamboxes, they explictly say you can do whatever you want with the free computers they're handing out. On PCs, obviously, steam has become dominant without following the apple model of being the only store allowed on hardware, so I can't imagine why they'd need to resort to it now.

    10. Re:YOLD! by ArbitraryName · · Score: 5, Funny

      Sigh. There was never a G5 Powerbook, they stopped at G4. That was the joke.

    11. Re:YOLD! by smash · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Android is not linux. Android is a platform that runs ON TOP OF linux.

      --
      I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
    12. Re:YOLD! by ReeceTarbert · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The main reason is that the other two main contenders seem to be moving towards a more 'controlled' sort of environment where they get a cut of all software sold and can allow or disallow whatever they want.

      How is that any different from Valve's business model?

      That 30% cut looks pretty good to them.

      You mean that Valve let games in the store just because they're a bunch of nice guys?

      Valve can see what's happening and wants to get ahead of the pack.

      Call me jaded but, as I see it, this is just Valve's pushing for more control and a bigger slice of the pie -- just like any other company. The fact that they say Linux (but mostly SteamOS, really) might make us feel all warm inside, but it doesn't change that.

      Oh, and let's not forget for a moment that STEAM is, in fact, a subscription service. Try to not to accept the next change to their ToS and see how many of those games you'll be to play.

      RT.

    13. Re:YOLD! by gerddie · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Any games developed for it, will only work for about 3 months without needing constant patches against newer OS's bubblegum and bailing wire package management.

      Wrong, I can still play Civilization, Call to Power(1999), Neverwinternights (2003), Doom 3 (2005) and other IDtech4 games, And yet It Moves(2009) on my current Gentoo/Linux installation. All these games haven't seem patches in ages.

      If "Linux" wants to become a competitor to the PS4/Xbone, then throw all that GUI shit away and just have a thing bare-metal layer OS. NO GUI-wowzits. If someone wants to install a GUI later so they can also use their Steambox as a Multimedia PC, Office typing thingamigiggery, let them. But just please keep quit trying to be a desktop AND a game OS.

      Guess what, "Linux" is exactly like this. Just install the latest GNU/Debian and you will have to explicitly select the GUI option. Besides, I don't really see why a GUI should be a problem. Most games open a window, often fullscreen, and then do all the drawing themselves, the only thing the GUI is doing is, drawing the windows frame if the game window is not fullscreen.

      As it is, If I need Windows development, I use Windows, if I need Mac OS X, I have a Mac Mini to do iOS development. If I could just make a Universal Binary that also worked on Linux I'd sure as hell enable that. Just Linux itself never works.

      Funny, I do all my primary development on Linux, and if I want to do cross-platform, the odd one out is usually MS Windows. Just getting all required libraries installed on Windows is a nightmare, because the only non-cygwin way to get a stable combination of libraries is to compile them all be yourself ensuring that you always use the same compiler flags.

      Nobody in their right goddamn mind would use Linux as a Desktop, let alone a game PC except for people who enjoy "hacking" things to make them work.

      No. I had two flatmates, one studying geology, the other working at a lawyers office, both preferred Ubuntu Linux, and they were certainly not "Hackers", they simply enjoyed an OS that worked on their Laptops without having to worry about the latest antivirus and with very simple means to get a lot of software for free with only a few clicks.

      Joe-average-user just wants to put the Disc in the drive or click a menu and run the game, not fiddle with drivers, dependencies and GUI bullshit.

      And Joe-average user can just do that: I bought two of the Humble Bundles and for all the games I actually cared to install I downloaded a bit TGZ, or SH file, unpacked it and the game just run. Doing the same thing with a CD/DVD should be no different. Even when I bought Civilization (call to power) in 1999 it worked by just popping a CD into the drive and installing on Linux.

    14. Re: YOLD! by MysteriousPreacher · · Score: 4, Funny

      In former Soviet Union, grits Beowulf your pants cluster. Ah, forget it...

      --
      -- Using the preview button since 2005
  2. Overall right but unlikely to happen by godrik · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Overall right but unlikely to happen by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      >Will there ever be a Linux exclusive game?

      The best candidate on the horizon is Half-Life 3 running on Valve's upcoming SteamOS linux distro. Would Steam take that chance to push it's own gaming platform?

    2. Re:Overall right but unlikely to happen by houstonbofh · · Score: 5, Insightful

      It does not have to be exclusive... Just exclusive today. For example, a Valve Steam Box title. That means Linux... And have the Windows and MAC versions lag just a bit for marketing reasons. (Seeing as how both Windows and MAC users can dual boot Linux, not really much of an issue...)

    3. Re:Overall right but unlikely to happen by houstonbofh · · Score: 4, Interesting

      >Will there ever be a Linux exclusive game?

      The best candidate on the horizon is Half-Life 3 running on Valve's upcoming SteamOS linux distro. Would Steam take that chance to push it's own gaming platform?

      Just delaying the Windows and MAC ports will do it. After all, they can also dual boot Linux, and this promotes the Steam Box as well.

    4. Re:Overall right but unlikely to happen by godrik · · Score: 5, Insightful

      That could work. But you need to give people incentive in release an exclusive version. Red Hat or Canonical could have the fund necessary to generate such an exclusive games. Or maybe one such effort could be crowdfunded. But nobody is going to develop a $10 million game and release it only on Linux without a significant incentive.

    5. Re:Overall right but unlikely to happen by Electricity+Likes+Me · · Score: 5, Interesting

      The benefit of SteamOS is, strictly speaking they should be able to ship it as a bootable DVD/Blu-Ray that loads the OS and game, or runs straight off a USB key.

    6. Re:Overall right but unlikely to happen by VortexCortex · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Same site, bought some new hardware for a ...ahem... GNU/Linux Gaming Rig. Everything worked out of the box on Debian Testing. However, being that I develop software and occasionally make games, I'm not scared of this weird "Internet" documentation thing. So, I did a bit of research before buying my hardware that I was going to assemble...

      I-- I'm sorry. I just don't understand WTF you're saying. Who assembles hardware and doesn't research whether it will meet their use case? That's not a "uber" geek thing, if you're building PCs from components, it's a no-brainer.

      I've had more problems installing Windows7 on hardware that came with Windows 8 on it, due to moronic driver issues than on GNU/Linux -- In fact, I used a live CD to get on the web to get the Ethernet drivers, put them on the windows partition then reboot and get it working. Are you saying the MOBO being dead would have been any different on windows? Or, what? Because it seems installing OSs is your gripe, and if you actually do that a lot, you'll find that the it's FAR more accessible in many cases to install Ubuntu than Windows. My grandmother can do it: Boot the CD, click "Install" move a slider to allocate space for dual boot (if it's already got windows), and it's basically next, next, next, install... just like any other software on windows really. Granny CAN NOT make a dual boot with Windows...

      So, yeah. Lots of Developers Love GNU/Linux, and it's just as difficult to install the Java runtime as it is to install Ubuntu. Most of the crap issues I've seen with games on Linux have with it is that they're wine wrappers or macromedia wrappers or some noob mistake where it wasn't compiled against the generic shared library. However, most of the time they seem to work for me -- I've got more Linux games installed than I have time to play thanks to HiB and other indie devs.

      It only takes someone like me to say, "Meh, maybe I'll make the windows port work later if there's interest, but I made it on Linux, so that's what it runs on." and have a game be as popular. If folks will install JRE for Minecraft, they could dual boot Ubuntu. Hell, I've seen folks on Windows applying crazy patches and compiling drivers themselves to get some game to work -- Gamers will jump through some damn hoops, just look at DRM! So, I don't really think it's too far of a stretch outside the realm of possibility; It would be kind of rarer to say a few years ago, but have you seen the indie scene? It's exploding.

      So, yeah, most folks developing on Linux start off with cross platform in mind, I know I do but that's because OSs should be irrelevant. For one of my from-scratch engines the Windows branch lags far behind the Linux branch and just because I'd rather add new features than port and debug some input or sound system issue in Windows. I mean, my 76 year old retired air-force mechanic neighbor who is nearly computer illiterate has been on Debian for 3 years now. Your "GNU/Linux is for nerds" FUD is just, well, moronic. If it were installed by default folks wouldn't have a hard time using it any more than Apple products or a Windows upgrade -- Less in fact if they were used to XP and you give them something other than Unity. If they're facing swapping out OSs (hint WinXP dies in 177 days) then GNU/Linux is actually probably an easier and better choice (since it can consume less resources than new flavors of Windows, also it's free).

      Arch is a good attempt to save GNU/Linux, but it's too little, too late, IMO. I hope I'm wrong...

      Interesting. So, what if you consider them all as GNU/Linux OSs instead of nit picking cons of each one? I mean, the "App Store" (software repository) model is pretty new to most Windows users who dealt with that cluster fsck of downloading crap from the web and a myriad of different installers and updaters... So, Hosting my game on my own site with a .deb and .rpm and .tar.gz isn't

    7. Re:Overall right but unlikely to happen by smash · · Score: 5, Insightful

      For all those people who still have optical drives, and are willing to deal with the spectacularly shitty read performance every time they want to play the game...

      --
      I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
    8. Re:Overall right but unlikely to happen by NickFortune · · Score: 4, Insightful

      First, he means GNU/Linux, not Linux.

      No, I don't believe he does. The name "Linux" is overloaded and is used to refer both to the Linux Kernel and to the desktop operating system built around that kernel.

      You well may feel that the GNU userland tools are more important than the Linux Kernel and that therefore the GNU project should have first billing. As such it is your right to prefix the OS name with "GNU/" if you feel that helps anything. But that doesn't make the more widespread usage wrong, and neither you nor Richard Stallman get to tell us what we call the OS.

      This has been a public information announcement. Thank you for your attention.

      --
      Don't let THEM immanentize the Eschaton!
  3. Clarification: by asmkm22 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Clarification: by Anubis+IV · · Score: 5, Insightful

      What about the company with the most invested in this? Valve has made some AAA games over the years that most gamers have played, and if they announced Half-Life 3 as an exclusive for Steam OS, you can bet that Steam OS would suddenly see an uptick in users. Not to mention if they followed that up with Portal 3, Left 4 Dead 3, Team Fortress 3, etc. x3.

      Hell, they could really confuse everyone by launching Dota 3 while they're at it.

  4. Steam OS on multiple hardware? by Mabhatter · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

  5. Re:Are linux users willing to pay money? by ArbitraryName · · Score: 5, Informative

    Yes. When asked to pay what they think a game is worth, Linux users consistently pay significantly more than users of other platforms.

  6. Re:Linux needs a killer game? by houstonbofh · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

  7. You can buy a computer with Ubuntu preinstalled by kervin · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:You can buy a computer with Ubuntu preinstalled by rtb61 · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Android is a Linux distribution, there are already hundreds even thousands of game titles building up. All it is down too now is how the Android layer and other Linux distributions come together. Chances are for simplicity, they will simply load the Android layer to play games and for other major applications like office suites load them direct.

      New games are neither here nor there the problem lies with a decades long game library and porting them across and it is looking like the Android layer will be the bridge to that porting of existing games to Linux.

      Linux is making huge inroads into the windows market via Android.

      --
      Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
  8. that'll sting for a while by Hognoxious · · Score: 4, Funny

    My eyes were dialated

    It's fairly mild so you should be OK soon.

    --
    Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."