Sierra Studios asking about Linux

eh writes "Sierra Studios, makers and distributors of such fine games as Kings Quest and more recently Half-Life, has a poll up on their main page asking where they should steer their attention. One of the options happens to be "Linux Games", which is sitting so very lonely at 11%. " I remember the sheer hours Rob whilled away at Leisure Suit Larry. Of course, I only got Outpost, which the first time around stunk.

Comments

Recovering from slashdotted polls

[Alan Cox]

Its very very easy for a vendor to recover a poll from slashdot aberrations. The nice visible spike makes it easy to drop results for a given time period, and also to drop results via referrer tracking.

Don't forget there is also a work in progress free player for the old Sierra games too.

another sierra game i'd like to see go linux

[sho-gun]

I for one would like to see Sierra steer thier
aquisition Papyrus to release thier Nascar Racing
series to linux. Doubtful though, as Papyrus's
latest (Grand Prix Legends) and future releases
(Nascar 2000) seem to be deeply embedded in
DirectX 6.

If they could do this, it would remove my reasons
for booting to windows at all.

I could dream, cant I? :)

Resetting the Poll

[miracle69]

I've watched the poll since early this morning. It appears that the poll has been reset at least twice. The first reset came when Linux had nearly 75% of the vote - and 2500 votes were cast away. Next, Linux and Mac were neck in neck, with Mac having the slight lead, in over 4000 votes - at which point after, it was reset. It's 2:30 Central (US) and the poll shows almost 2300 votes, with a Linux percentage of 63%.

I wonder if someone is resetting the data because they don't like the results, or if their poll data is saved to another file and then reset so visitors feel that their vote carries more weight.

ah

[aphr0]

So many turn into activists when doing so is simple.

Whatchoo Talkin' Bout, Willis?

[Ryandav]

What part of the logic chain am I missing?

1. PHB wishes to know if there is some intrest in a particular branch of development.

2. Poll is established and 6000 people vote for linux.

3. PHB says, "Hmm, that's interesting. Tell me more, lets get some numbers and ask a consulting firm or two..."

No company or business is going to base developer decisions on an online poll, whether they get 6 votes total or 100,000 for linux. They are gauging (sp?) an intrest level. So what if slashdot sends a very large number of linux zealots over? They are still each and every one a potential customer, and a company likes to find a new market with lots of customers.

If some mac evangelista site links the poll, they would have every chance to flood the poll too, and that might be listened to as well.

There is also a final possibility, one I know from personal experience: Maybe the PHB's Number One is a big time reader of slashdot and is trying to steer his boss into learning something about linux. In a seemingly innocuous poll they get a LARGE amount of linux intrest. Mission Accomplished.

Just how important is this poll to Sierra anyway?

[rnt]

Come on, I've been reading comments from people worrying about skewed polls, businesses being misinformed, and so on...

I think we worry too much about it.

Someone else already commented that the results of such polls most probably will be used to see if there are markets to be researched.

Just looking at the pollresults they will be likely to realise they've gotten themselves into the middle of a Mac vs. Linux voting war.

Internet poll results are *always* biased!
First of all there still are people that do not have access to Internet.
Besides that, only people that know about the poll get to vote in it. There must be dozens of polls on subjects I think I have something to say about, but I just don't have the time (or interest) to visit all the sites that may carry those polls. Occasionaly I stumble on a poll (most of the time thanks to sites like slashdot...) and vote as my conscience tells me to ;-)

The fact Sierra seemed to have reset the scores is probably an indication about the importance of the poll. They have learned that they should investigate both Mac and Linux markets.

Maybe not.

[ciphersnow]

The demographics of linux users is largely males from 18-35. This same niche buys the most computer games. Indeed, the businesses using linux in the closet as a server won't be buying games, but that really isn't the largest demographic (it's a growing one, of course.)

I talked with some guys from Loki at the linux expo and fired by the success of their Civ CTP port, they have begun work on MythII and Railroad Tycoon for linux. Look, if the code is written it can be ported to linux, especially if it uses openGL or something besides DriectX (like Half-Life.) It's not going to be a huge ante to "...BET ON LINUX." Even if it works out, it won't be as expensive as creating and marketing a single flop game. (And remember how games were all for dos, then for windows? That's recent history, don't forget. Platforms change.)

Windows isn't a bad gaming platform with DirectX, but eventually people are going to realize that it's silly to support a seperate OS just for games. I have windows95, but I have no plans to upgrade it just to play games. When games begin to require 98 or NT or 2000, I will not be able to play them. I do all my work on Linux and Solaris and it's insane to buy a gaming OS for $200. I'd rather spend $150 on a console system.

Civ

[Anonymous Coward]

How many people bought Civilization now it came out for linux? i am wondering if as many people bought it as they claimed they would. any one have any mnumbers?

Re:Slashdot and Internet Polls don't mix :-)

[Xafloc]

Good Im not alone. While the "Slashdot Effect" allows us all to feel part of "Powerful Group", we quite possibly could be shooting ourselves in the foot.

I do disagree with you on your statement "Internet polls are of no statistical value". I am working with a company that does radio research for several Radio Stations, online. The polls that are taken, are taken by listeners of the radio station, with there own login/password. This type of "Internet Poll", can be powerful, and yet still be statistically acurate.

But I would agree with you if it were "Open For Public Internet Polls are of no statistical value".

Re:Newsflash:

[Snowfox]

Excuse me, but I didn't see Hemos tell anyone to go vote. He merely said that it's there. The feeling seems to be strong, and doubtless for the same reason many/most of those voting will rush out and buy the first few Linux games to show support.

Newsflash:

[Anonymous Coward]

Newsflash: Slashdot effect moves from sinking websites to sinking gaming companies by swaying their online marketing studies.

THis will backfire.

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is linux only owns around 6 to 7% of the total pc market sales of os's and most of those copies are just sitting under someones desk. They are used as an evaluation tool or someone takes a course in unix in college and needs it but I bet over half of the linux buyers switch back to windows because only windows does ms vb and ms vc or ms office. Its a very sad world in the pc market today. My other point is even if 100% of all those buyers of linux actually ran it, how many of them would buy games. Most college students and server administrators dont buy games or dont have the time. I am a student and hobbyist but I quite games over a year ago so I can work. I might play half-life this summer if it is ever ported to linux but were are all very tiny in the pc market thanks to monopolies. My last point and most important one is that the current poll at 75% is not accurate thanks to the /. effect. If 100% off all 6 to 7% of linux users who actual use it and on top of that have time for games and on top of that dont use corporate servers so they can play games buy all these linux games, then it would be a flop. Think about how much it would cost to switch a directx 6 game to linux. The whole gaqme would have to be rewritten. Only Id software had the balls to go agaisnt the microsoft game marketing department which actually punishes game companies for not developing with directx. Its true. Go to www.maximumpc.com and there is a guy named Alex st. john who was a former ms employee. He even admitted playing hardball with Carmack for opengl and he would actually follow them to game showes and make up fud like "glquake=glide quake. Opengl couldn't handle games,,,,". He also mentioned directx was designed from the ground up to thorw apple out of the game and multimedia market by making directx as proprietary and hard to port as possible. It would cost millions and years of rewriting code in opengl for it to be ported to linux for what..? only 300,000 users or around 2% of the market. It doesnt make any econimic sense and ms has them right where they want them. They would lose money left and right. I bet about 1 or 2% should be more acurate for there poll since 85% of all windows users do not want to leave. If sierra ported all there games to linux, they would lose so much money that all the other game companies would use serria as an example on why they shouldn't write for linux. CIV had only minimal if any directx code but half-life has hell of alot more. There is a huge, huge difference.

Before you guys start hopping mad and flame me and send my score down I have this to say. I do not intend to sound like a troll and I am not a troll. I am just trying to protect the overall success of linux becuase a story like "..BIG GAME COMPANY LOSES BET WITH LINUX" would be distarous. Remember that microsoft has a team of ten people looking for news like this to help spread fud around. We should all be emailing the doj and talking about directx with Ralph Naders pro comp or voluntering for messa or opengl for unix instead of hyping polls that dont give a accurate view on the overall market.

I wish ms would just shrivel up and die so we can have linux, be, os/2 and mac osx instead of this windows everwhere trash.

Slashdot and Internet Polls don't mix :-)

[Phil Hands]

By the time I've typed this, it'll be over 70%, probably over 90% in an hour, so they'll probably discount the results, the way ``Hank'' got mostly discarded as a joke for the personality of the year vote.

The question is, does this sort of thing frighten the pointy haired types at the companies that get hit by the slashdot effect ?

If the PHB says ``set up a poll'' and the results come back so radically screwed that there is clearly no statistical value in them (rather than being bogus, but looking all right, which would be the case sans slashdot :-) does this not just have a tendency to make the PHB frightened of this bunch of marauding Techies, who screwed up his plan of making more golf time (by delegating his decisions to Internet polls).

Perhaps Hemos should send an appology for screwing thier poll up, pointing out that Internet polls are of no statistical value, whatever the result.

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