Is all works of the US Federal Government are, by law, public domain. This isn't to say that something can't be done with regards to mug shots (and they are generally not federal anyhow) but just FYI with relation to copyright and ownership. You'll see a lot of pictures on Wikipedia that note they were taken by a government employee in the course of their job, which makes them public domain.
Public defenders are a good choice. I know that there's this Hollywood cliche that public defenders were C students that are worthless and don't know what they are doing but that isn't usually the case. Many of them are quite passionate about what they do, and good at it. Also they have a lot of trial experience, which is something that private attorneys often don't. Knowing the law and being good at trial are different things and public defenders get a lot of trial time. Plus they have experience with criminal law, since that's what they do. They don't spend time messing with estate planning or shit like they, they defend criminal cases.
So depending on the charge, the area you are in, etc, etc a public defender can actually be good, maybe even the best, option. They may have a better handle on the law and be better at trial than a private lawyer.
At least not easily. Unlike a parliamentary system, there's no dissolution option. The vote happens once every 2 years for 1/3rd of the house. There is no clause to speed that up. Some individual states could execute a recall or other sort of ousting on their representatives but it depends on the state law and would require the voters to organize it.
So part of congress can get fired in 2014, and very well may, but not before then, at least not easily. The executive can't dissolve congress.
But the budget isn't the time to fight things. The way to get a law changed isn't to say "Let's stop paying for the law!" but rather to change the law. The ACA can be repealed, just as it was introduced. That is the right way. However there isn't the votes for that.
What's worse is that there IS the votes to pass the budget in a straight up and down vote but the leadership won't let it happen. That's why people are, rightly, calling "taking hostage". The unmodified budget could and should pass a vote, but they won't let it go to vote because they are mad. A minority trying to force things on a majority.
I also can 100% support the president in saying "No we won't make concessions," because it is in the same vein as "Never negotiate with terrorists." If they can get away with whatever they want just by threatening a shutdown, then that'll happen every single time.They continue to force more and more radical agendas saying "Do this or we shut things down!" No, no negotiation when you play hostage with the budget. Do it right or fuck off.
Is make politicians take it. When a stupid test like that gets introduced and politicians think it is great and schools should just have to make students magically pass, then they have to put their shit on the line: They must take and pass the test, without reviewing it. Should they fail it they must agree that their high school diploma, and any advanced degrees that followed because of it, are forfeit. If they refuse, they have to STFU.
See if any of them are willing. My bet? Not a one.
I mean if the test really is a good general knowledge test, the kind of thing any high school student should be able to pass, well then clearly a successful adult should have no issue! Of course the problem is they aren't they are overly difficult, do not test subject material and often as not become intelligence tests more or less.
It will be some time, but onboard graphics have gone from a joke to usable for games in a short time and are moving forward. As we keep making things more powerful, it becomes more possible. Intel thinks they will be able to scale to 5nm around 2020, with transistor density like that, it might just happen.
1) As fast as you get on Windows. 2) Support all the latest OpenGL features. 3) Have a full implementation of the latest OpenGL spec. 4) Are solid and stable.
Then the binary nVidia drivers are it. Nothing else comes close. Well for games, particularly new games, this matters. They are making use of the high end features modern GPUs have, they need high speed rendering, etc.
If another company wants to step up their Linux game then great, but right now it is go nV or go home. Their binary drivers are just head and shoulders above the rest. That may not matter for typical desktop use when the card is doing little else other than some desktop composition and maybe accelerated video playback but it matters a lot if you are trying to make a game render using the latest OpenGL 4.3/4.4 features and have it extremely fast and stable.
For one thing, it is annoying to have to separate the OS and whatever apps you want to launch fast on to a tiny drive from everything else. So it is of use to people that need cheap space, but wish to have convenience.
However another use is for people like me: Who have SSDs, but can't afford them for all their storage. I have a 512GB SSD for my boot and program drive, and another 256GB SSD for my samples. However I then have 2x2TB HDDs for storing data, particularly bounced audio tracks. I can't afford that in SSDs, just too much money.However the SSHDs, those I can, and probably will, afford. That wold give me SSD like performance for most things I do, no worries about a burst of multi-track writes overloading the media, but have cost effective storage to packrat large amounts of data.
I also could see them being useful in NAS units perhaps. Another level of caching to help accelerate random reads, while keeping disk cost down.
They aren't the be-all, end-all, but I see plenty of use.
Go start your revolution. Do whatever you think that entails.
Or, if you aren't willing to do that, because revolutions are messy and often as not end up worse than what you had, kindly shut the fuck up.
I will not be joining you because while I feel the US has not been moving in a positive direction as of late, I feel that the solution to fixing it involves using the democratic process, not violent revolution, since I understand how nasty those are and also have a perspective on how good the US has it overall.
I get really tired of whiny, usually anonymous, basement dwellers playing toughguy on the net, decrying the US and saying we need to "revolt" or "rise up" or some BS. You aren't going to do that and you know it. So you are just being a douchebag, whining and complaining, suggesting that others should do the dirty work.
So put up or shut up. If revolution is really what you think is needed, get on that then. Though you might want to research a little as to what often happens to revolutionaries, and to countries after. If you don't, then STFU about it. Less whine, more action.
In fact, you will probably find that if you and other like you spent less time whining and more time working to affect actual change in the country within the system we have, things might start getting better.
One time, I bought a used studio power amplifier from Canada. Apparently customs X-ray'd it and was curious as to what this large, somewhat spikey, metal thing was. So they opened it up, had a look, decided it was what the manifest claimed, carefully repacked it, and sealed it with green US customs tape to let me know they'd searched it.
It is legal, and normal. If you ship internationally you package can be subject to search. That is part of what customs is all about.
While some congressmen need their salary, most don't. You generally have to be fairly monied to make it that far in politics, meaning that the pay isn't a big deal. Also the lack of pay is something of a hollow threat as in all cases I know of, they authorized pay for employees retroactively after the shutdown.
That aside, if they were furloughed, they'd be prohibited from working meaning prohibited from resolving the situation.
A more effective solution would be to force them to work. Something like in the event of a shutdown they are required to stay in Washington and be in session 12 hours a day, 7 days a week until it is resolved. I think that would be more likely to work.
However, it is all academic since congress would be the ones who'd have to make that law (barring an amendment) so it won't happen.
Dynamic drivers, as are normally used in headphones and speakers, still have problems in that regard. We can build amps, DACs, and so on that are essentially better than our hearing. Their frequency response, noise level, and THD are so low that they are completely inaudible, you can swap them out in a blind test and nobody can tell.
Then you hit the playback device and that all goes to hell.
You are hard pressed to find something that is both economical and has a flat FR and low distortion. Ideally you want it flat to less than 1dB and THD under 1% at all volume levels, and even less could be useful (we don't have real good data on when things stop being audible, just that at those levels it is audible in almost all cases).
So, better technology could allow for better specs in this area. That is what we'd be after. To try and get drivers that are affordable, and are accurate to beyond the limits of hearing. We'd like to have an audio system that truly had no sound of its own, that reproduced whatever it was given perfectly, as far as our ears can tell.
You might note that all the games you listed were released later in the year. This is normal. The top flight titles come near Christmas since they sell better. October and November and December are the big release times. Checking my little OS clock, we don't seem to be in October yet.
There's also the additional issue of the new console releases, which devs will hold games for since that is a big money thing in more ways than one.
It'll be part of it, but not THE future. There is still plenty of room for publishers. There is a demand, a large one, for big, well produced, titles. People like the stuff you can get from a game that has a $20-50 million budget (or even more), that you just don't see from crowd funding. Publishers are very useful for funding titles that have a widespread appeal. They can risk a bunch of money because the chance on return is good since the games have a broad enough appeal.
Crowd funding is more for titles that there's a sizable group that is interested in, but not a really huge one. You can get a smaller amount of funding and build a more specialized title, to give particular fans what they want.
That is largely what we've seen in terms of KS successes. Developers have gotten a couple million dollars, which is enough to do a game (see Shadowrun Returns) but not with all the polish of a AAA title.
While you may have the benchmark you like the best that you think is wonderful, probably because it shows your favoured product in a good light, big numbers aren't what most people care about. They care about wall time of execution, or FPS, or the like of what they run. Well that varies person to person, but it is actual applications they care about.
That's the reason I have an Intel CPU. For the programs I use, it does better. I don't really care why. You can argue that it is lack of optimization, hating AMD, Intel nefariousness, whatever. Doesn't matter, what matters is it works faster for me. That is what I care about.
On high end games, the CPU gets hit hard. AI, physics, etc, all need a lot of power. Battlefield 3 will hit pretty hard on a quad core CPU, while hitting hard on a high end GPU at the same time.
While there have been a number of recent KS titles with Linux support pledged, they have by and large not been things suitable for the Steambox since they do not support controllers. PA would be a good example. That is going to be a mouse and keyboard affair.
The other thing is they are a good example of what I'm talking about. Have a look at Shadowrun Returns. It is the first of the bigger name KS games to launch. It pledged Win, Mac, and Linux support. So what can you have now? Windows and Mac. They are trying to get a Linux beta out the door, 3 months later. The reason? They are having trouble making the Linux version work. This isn't because they didn't plan on it, it was a pledge from the initial KS. This isn't because their engine doesn't support Linux, they use Unity. Despite all that, they are having issues making it stable.
Relating back to middleware and all that, this is a big issue for Linux. OpenGL doesn't just work. It just works if you have a modern nVidia card and the binary drivers. Otherwise, it works with caveats. So if you want a game that uses it, you have to consider what functions works on what drivers and what you are going to support. This isn't to mention other issues, just the biggest.
I really think you have a skewed view of how easy it is to do a proper port, to do debugging and QA, and to support it. It is certainly not an insurmountable task, it is done all the time, but it is also not inexpensive. If the returns aren't there, companies aren't going to do it.
One of the reasons Apple has been so successful with their consumer electronics devices is they've made them fashionable to own. They didn't make the first MP3 player, and certainly not the first portable music player, but they made it cool. It was fashionable to be seen with an iPod, complete with white earbuds hanging out in front of your shirt (headphone companies had never had a demand for white earbuds before but suddenly they did). Their products were good at what they did too, but the thing that truly drove them to be the thing was they were fashionable. People want to have an iPod, not an MP3 player.
Now that's great... Until it stops working. Fashion is a very fickle market. What is fashionable today is passe tomorrow, often with no warning. Your brand and look isn't fashionable anymore and you have to move products based on other things.
So if Apple falls out of fashion, that'll be a hit to their market in a big way. Particularly since they go for premium pricing. The consumer electronics market is notoriously price sensitive. You see that all over. However fashion is not, and in fact can even be the opposite. Well if Apple's products stop being the cool thing to own and just become a thing to own, their pricing could be problematic.
None of this means Apple is "doomed" they can adapt for sure, but this idea that their business model can and will continue forever is a bit silly.
Thing is, most devs don't want to code for Linux. When you are talking modern games with modern 3D graphics, and the demands those bring on the hardware, porting to Linux is not trivial. Even without that it still takes time and effort (and thus money) but particularly when you talk a game that wants to use modern features of the 3D card.
Given that, and the fact that so far games sales on Linux are pretty low, most developers will give the port a miss. Just not worth the money in their assessment.
For that to change, something needs to change that makes a Linux port more worthwhile. Well, if the Steambox were popular, it could do that. Say 100 million of them got sold (which would be good sales for a console, though not the best ever). That would be all kinds of worth porting to, that's a big market you can reach. However say only 10,000 get sold. Then it isn't worth it, that is not a significant increase over the number of Linux computers out there with Steam, so no real potential for sales increase.
You have to remember with game development for anything but an independent developer, and even then sometimes, it all comes down to money and resources. If you spend money doing something, it needs to be worth it because that is money you can't spend elsewhere. Now you can say "Well just increase the budget!" but of course there's a limit to how much you can do that and still, that money could be spent on other things. You have to choose how you spend your development funds, they are not unlimited.
A port to another platform, which Linux is, needs to have a reasonable chance to make back the money it costs and then some. If not, the money would be better spent elsewhere.
In case you haven't noticed, Valve has gotten a bit lazy with their software development. They can afford to, Steam makes them tens of millions of dollars PER EMPLOYEE just by being a middle man. So they don't need to worry about anything else, they make shit tons of money from it. They've always operated on "Valve time", hence the term, but it has only increased with the success of Steam and thus the removal of any financial constraints.
However, that means if you think they've been secretly working hard on 4 big titles, which would need an increase in the size of their development teams to make happen, you are deluding yourself. Trying to develop and drop 4 big titles at the same time would be a hell of a feat.
You might notice how it actually works, with other consoles: They sign on other developers to do a set of launch titles for them, while doing maybe one or two themselves (because that's all they've time for). Also they announce those things and hype them up because you need people saving their dollars for your hardware and your games.
Valve seems to be playing at consoles. They want to release some little Linux powered thing and hope their Linux library, which is largely made up of games that don't do controller, will sell it. That is not likely to fly for the console market.
And that, sadly, is what their Linux collection on Steam lacks. They've got a couple gems in there, a few more decent indy games, and then a bunch of "meh". Also a number of those don't work well, or even at all, with controller so aren't really good Steambox stuff.
Unless they are keeping things a secret, they don't have any real good launch titles. They don't have anything they can really draw people in with. That can then have the danger of creating a feedback cycle: Few people buy it, because there isn't much to play on it. Since few people own it, developers don't want to invest resources to develop for it, and so on.
We'll see what happens but just tossing the Linux Steam collection at it really isn't likely to work very well. I mean if you have a look at the catalogue at the top sellers you have things like Kerbal Space Program which is cool, but unfinished (still in Alpha) and does not have controller support near as I know, and Left 4 Dead 2 which does support controller, but is quite an old title, not to mention one that was already sold on the Xbox 360 (and PC of course). You start scrolling the list of Linux new releases and it is mostly very small indy games, old titles, and DLC for a couple of larger strategy games (that don't do controller).
That isn't much of a catalogue to give people a reason to buy. Remember those big games are big for a reason. You may not like them, but many people do. GTA5 did a couple billion in sales its first weekend. You can laugh at the people that bought it, say they should have appreciated indy games instead, etc, etc but none of that changes the financial reality of what people want.
I'm fairly pragmatic about it. Like I'm not butthurt about the two failures. As I said, you have to go in knowing that it could fail. Also, if one or more of the games isn't fun, that's a risk too, but it is a risk with released games too. I've bought commercial games that have sucked royally (I'm looking at your Brink).
You have to understand the reason that I kick started these games in the first place is that their ideas appeal to me. All of them were concepts I liked, and types of games I liked. So I'm not surprised that I ended up playing them quite a bit. They also turned out quite good. The three games, in case you're wondering, Faster Than Light, Shadow Run Returns, and expansion for the Defense Grid.
You have to remember that kick starter hasn't just seen small indie games, it has also seen some larger studios. Plus some of those indie games, like FT L, have been quite good.
I don't know, I don't have hour logs on all of them since they aren't all on Steam. For the one on Steam, 25 hours, probably somewhere in the 60-100 range for all of them (one of the ones off Steam I've played a lot).
No matter what, the money you put towards a project needs to be like any other unsecured investment: Money you can afford to lose. On Kickstarter you are investing for creative, rather than financial, return but the rules are the same. Obviously you want to vet what you invest in first, and if it seems like they don't know what they are doing, have a poor business plan, are scam artists, etc don't invest. However even if it is an established company, good rep, etc, etc you still need to be prepared to lose the money with no return.
I love Kickstarter, I've backed 10 videogames on it so far, but it is something I'm realistic about. Currently of those 3 have delivered as promised, 5 look like they are on track for release as promised, 1 is floundering badly and will likely fail, and 1 appears to have failed (the dev hasn't announced it, but there's been nothing from him in a long time and the game is in a very early alpha state). I'm ok with that. I only spent money I could afford to lose and I didn't expect all the products would work out, particularly since it was some smaller devs in some cases.
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Is all works of the US Federal Government are, by law, public domain. This isn't to say that something can't be done with regards to mug shots (and they are generally not federal anyhow) but just FYI with relation to copyright and ownership. You'll see a lot of pictures on Wikipedia that note they were taken by a government employee in the course of their job, which makes them public domain.
Public defenders are a good choice. I know that there's this Hollywood cliche that public defenders were C students that are worthless and don't know what they are doing but that isn't usually the case. Many of them are quite passionate about what they do, and good at it. Also they have a lot of trial experience, which is something that private attorneys often don't. Knowing the law and being good at trial are different things and public defenders get a lot of trial time. Plus they have experience with criminal law, since that's what they do. They don't spend time messing with estate planning or shit like they, they defend criminal cases.
So depending on the charge, the area you are in, etc, etc a public defender can actually be good, maybe even the best, option. They may have a better handle on the law and be better at trial than a private lawyer.
At least not easily. Unlike a parliamentary system, there's no dissolution option. The vote happens once every 2 years for 1/3rd of the house. There is no clause to speed that up. Some individual states could execute a recall or other sort of ousting on their representatives but it depends on the state law and would require the voters to organize it.
So part of congress can get fired in 2014, and very well may, but not before then, at least not easily. The executive can't dissolve congress.
But the budget isn't the time to fight things. The way to get a law changed isn't to say "Let's stop paying for the law!" but rather to change the law. The ACA can be repealed, just as it was introduced. That is the right way. However there isn't the votes for that.
What's worse is that there IS the votes to pass the budget in a straight up and down vote but the leadership won't let it happen. That's why people are, rightly, calling "taking hostage". The unmodified budget could and should pass a vote, but they won't let it go to vote because they are mad. A minority trying to force things on a majority.
I also can 100% support the president in saying "No we won't make concessions," because it is in the same vein as "Never negotiate with terrorists." If they can get away with whatever they want just by threatening a shutdown, then that'll happen every single time.They continue to force more and more radical agendas saying "Do this or we shut things down!" No, no negotiation when you play hostage with the budget. Do it right or fuck off.
Is make politicians take it. When a stupid test like that gets introduced and politicians think it is great and schools should just have to make students magically pass, then they have to put their shit on the line: They must take and pass the test, without reviewing it. Should they fail it they must agree that their high school diploma, and any advanced degrees that followed because of it, are forfeit. If they refuse, they have to STFU.
See if any of them are willing. My bet? Not a one.
I mean if the test really is a good general knowledge test, the kind of thing any high school student should be able to pass, well then clearly a successful adult should have no issue! Of course the problem is they aren't they are overly difficult, do not test subject material and often as not become intelligence tests more or less.
It will be some time, but onboard graphics have gone from a joke to usable for games in a short time and are moving forward. As we keep making things more powerful, it becomes more possible. Intel thinks they will be able to scale to 5nm around 2020, with transistor density like that, it might just happen.
We'll see.
If you want Linux 3D graphics that are:
1) As fast as you get on Windows.
2) Support all the latest OpenGL features.
3) Have a full implementation of the latest OpenGL spec.
4) Are solid and stable.
Then the binary nVidia drivers are it. Nothing else comes close. Well for games, particularly new games, this matters. They are making use of the high end features modern GPUs have, they need high speed rendering, etc.
If another company wants to step up their Linux game then great, but right now it is go nV or go home. Their binary drivers are just head and shoulders above the rest. That may not matter for typical desktop use when the card is doing little else other than some desktop composition and maybe accelerated video playback but it matters a lot if you are trying to make a game render using the latest OpenGL 4.3/4.4 features and have it extremely fast and stable.
For one thing, it is annoying to have to separate the OS and whatever apps you want to launch fast on to a tiny drive from everything else. So it is of use to people that need cheap space, but wish to have convenience.
However another use is for people like me: Who have SSDs, but can't afford them for all their storage. I have a 512GB SSD for my boot and program drive, and another 256GB SSD for my samples. However I then have 2x2TB HDDs for storing data, particularly bounced audio tracks. I can't afford that in SSDs, just too much money.However the SSHDs, those I can, and probably will, afford. That wold give me SSD like performance for most things I do, no worries about a burst of multi-track writes overloading the media, but have cost effective storage to packrat large amounts of data.
I also could see them being useful in NAS units perhaps. Another level of caching to help accelerate random reads, while keeping disk cost down.
They aren't the be-all, end-all, but I see plenty of use.
Go start your revolution. Do whatever you think that entails.
Or, if you aren't willing to do that, because revolutions are messy and often as not end up worse than what you had, kindly shut the fuck up.
I will not be joining you because while I feel the US has not been moving in a positive direction as of late, I feel that the solution to fixing it involves using the democratic process, not violent revolution, since I understand how nasty those are and also have a perspective on how good the US has it overall.
I get really tired of whiny, usually anonymous, basement dwellers playing toughguy on the net, decrying the US and saying we need to "revolt" or "rise up" or some BS. You aren't going to do that and you know it. So you are just being a douchebag, whining and complaining, suggesting that others should do the dirty work.
So put up or shut up. If revolution is really what you think is needed, get on that then. Though you might want to research a little as to what often happens to revolutionaries, and to countries after. If you don't, then STFU about it. Less whine, more action.
In fact, you will probably find that if you and other like you spent less time whining and more time working to affect actual change in the country within the system we have, things might start getting better.
One time, I bought a used studio power amplifier from Canada. Apparently customs X-ray'd it and was curious as to what this large, somewhat spikey, metal thing was. So they opened it up, had a look, decided it was what the manifest claimed, carefully repacked it, and sealed it with green US customs tape to let me know they'd searched it.
It is legal, and normal. If you ship internationally you package can be subject to search. That is part of what customs is all about.
While some congressmen need their salary, most don't. You generally have to be fairly monied to make it that far in politics, meaning that the pay isn't a big deal. Also the lack of pay is something of a hollow threat as in all cases I know of, they authorized pay for employees retroactively after the shutdown.
That aside, if they were furloughed, they'd be prohibited from working meaning prohibited from resolving the situation.
A more effective solution would be to force them to work. Something like in the event of a shutdown they are required to stay in Washington and be in session 12 hours a day, 7 days a week until it is resolved. I think that would be more likely to work.
However, it is all academic since congress would be the ones who'd have to make that law (barring an amendment) so it won't happen.
Dynamic drivers, as are normally used in headphones and speakers, still have problems in that regard. We can build amps, DACs, and so on that are essentially better than our hearing. Their frequency response, noise level, and THD are so low that they are completely inaudible, you can swap them out in a blind test and nobody can tell.
Then you hit the playback device and that all goes to hell.
You are hard pressed to find something that is both economical and has a flat FR and low distortion. Ideally you want it flat to less than 1dB and THD under 1% at all volume levels, and even less could be useful (we don't have real good data on when things stop being audible, just that at those levels it is audible in almost all cases).
So, better technology could allow for better specs in this area. That is what we'd be after. To try and get drivers that are affordable, and are accurate to beyond the limits of hearing. We'd like to have an audio system that truly had no sound of its own, that reproduced whatever it was given perfectly, as far as our ears can tell.
You might note that all the games you listed were released later in the year. This is normal. The top flight titles come near Christmas since they sell better. October and November and December are the big release times. Checking my little OS clock, we don't seem to be in October yet.
There's also the additional issue of the new console releases, which devs will hold games for since that is a big money thing in more ways than one.
I haven't seen this year as being bad.
It'll be part of it, but not THE future. There is still plenty of room for publishers. There is a demand, a large one, for big, well produced, titles. People like the stuff you can get from a game that has a $20-50 million budget (or even more), that you just don't see from crowd funding. Publishers are very useful for funding titles that have a widespread appeal. They can risk a bunch of money because the chance on return is good since the games have a broad enough appeal.
Crowd funding is more for titles that there's a sizable group that is interested in, but not a really huge one. You can get a smaller amount of funding and build a more specialized title, to give particular fans what they want.
That is largely what we've seen in terms of KS successes. Developers have gotten a couple million dollars, which is enough to do a game (see Shadowrun Returns) but not with all the polish of a AAA title.
So both are likely to continue.
While you may have the benchmark you like the best that you think is wonderful, probably because it shows your favoured product in a good light, big numbers aren't what most people care about. They care about wall time of execution, or FPS, or the like of what they run. Well that varies person to person, but it is actual applications they care about.
That's the reason I have an Intel CPU. For the programs I use, it does better. I don't really care why. You can argue that it is lack of optimization, hating AMD, Intel nefariousness, whatever. Doesn't matter, what matters is it works faster for me. That is what I care about.
On high end games, the CPU gets hit hard. AI, physics, etc, all need a lot of power. Battlefield 3 will hit pretty hard on a quad core CPU, while hitting hard on a high end GPU at the same time.
While there have been a number of recent KS titles with Linux support pledged, they have by and large not been things suitable for the Steambox since they do not support controllers. PA would be a good example. That is going to be a mouse and keyboard affair.
The other thing is they are a good example of what I'm talking about. Have a look at Shadowrun Returns. It is the first of the bigger name KS games to launch. It pledged Win, Mac, and Linux support. So what can you have now? Windows and Mac. They are trying to get a Linux beta out the door, 3 months later. The reason? They are having trouble making the Linux version work. This isn't because they didn't plan on it, it was a pledge from the initial KS. This isn't because their engine doesn't support Linux, they use Unity. Despite all that, they are having issues making it stable.
Relating back to middleware and all that, this is a big issue for Linux. OpenGL doesn't just work. It just works if you have a modern nVidia card and the binary drivers. Otherwise, it works with caveats. So if you want a game that uses it, you have to consider what functions works on what drivers and what you are going to support. This isn't to mention other issues, just the biggest.
I really think you have a skewed view of how easy it is to do a proper port, to do debugging and QA, and to support it. It is certainly not an insurmountable task, it is done all the time, but it is also not inexpensive. If the returns aren't there, companies aren't going to do it.
One of the reasons Apple has been so successful with their consumer electronics devices is they've made them fashionable to own. They didn't make the first MP3 player, and certainly not the first portable music player, but they made it cool. It was fashionable to be seen with an iPod, complete with white earbuds hanging out in front of your shirt (headphone companies had never had a demand for white earbuds before but suddenly they did). Their products were good at what they did too, but the thing that truly drove them to be the thing was they were fashionable. People want to have an iPod, not an MP3 player.
Now that's great... Until it stops working. Fashion is a very fickle market. What is fashionable today is passe tomorrow, often with no warning. Your brand and look isn't fashionable anymore and you have to move products based on other things.
So if Apple falls out of fashion, that'll be a hit to their market in a big way. Particularly since they go for premium pricing. The consumer electronics market is notoriously price sensitive. You see that all over. However fashion is not, and in fact can even be the opposite. Well if Apple's products stop being the cool thing to own and just become a thing to own, their pricing could be problematic.
None of this means Apple is "doomed" they can adapt for sure, but this idea that their business model can and will continue forever is a bit silly.
Thing is, most devs don't want to code for Linux. When you are talking modern games with modern 3D graphics, and the demands those bring on the hardware, porting to Linux is not trivial. Even without that it still takes time and effort (and thus money) but particularly when you talk a game that wants to use modern features of the 3D card.
Given that, and the fact that so far games sales on Linux are pretty low, most developers will give the port a miss. Just not worth the money in their assessment.
For that to change, something needs to change that makes a Linux port more worthwhile. Well, if the Steambox were popular, it could do that. Say 100 million of them got sold (which would be good sales for a console, though not the best ever). That would be all kinds of worth porting to, that's a big market you can reach. However say only 10,000 get sold. Then it isn't worth it, that is not a significant increase over the number of Linux computers out there with Steam, so no real potential for sales increase.
You have to remember with game development for anything but an independent developer, and even then sometimes, it all comes down to money and resources. If you spend money doing something, it needs to be worth it because that is money you can't spend elsewhere. Now you can say "Well just increase the budget!" but of course there's a limit to how much you can do that and still, that money could be spent on other things. You have to choose how you spend your development funds, they are not unlimited.
A port to another platform, which Linux is, needs to have a reasonable chance to make back the money it costs and then some. If not, the money would be better spent elsewhere.
In case you haven't noticed, Valve has gotten a bit lazy with their software development. They can afford to, Steam makes them tens of millions of dollars PER EMPLOYEE just by being a middle man. So they don't need to worry about anything else, they make shit tons of money from it. They've always operated on "Valve time", hence the term, but it has only increased with the success of Steam and thus the removal of any financial constraints.
However, that means if you think they've been secretly working hard on 4 big titles, which would need an increase in the size of their development teams to make happen, you are deluding yourself. Trying to develop and drop 4 big titles at the same time would be a hell of a feat.
You might notice how it actually works, with other consoles: They sign on other developers to do a set of launch titles for them, while doing maybe one or two themselves (because that's all they've time for). Also they announce those things and hype them up because you need people saving their dollars for your hardware and your games.
Valve seems to be playing at consoles. They want to release some little Linux powered thing and hope their Linux library, which is largely made up of games that don't do controller, will sell it. That is not likely to fly for the console market.
And that, sadly, is what their Linux collection on Steam lacks. They've got a couple gems in there, a few more decent indy games, and then a bunch of "meh". Also a number of those don't work well, or even at all, with controller so aren't really good Steambox stuff.
Unless they are keeping things a secret, they don't have any real good launch titles. They don't have anything they can really draw people in with. That can then have the danger of creating a feedback cycle: Few people buy it, because there isn't much to play on it. Since few people own it, developers don't want to invest resources to develop for it, and so on.
We'll see what happens but just tossing the Linux Steam collection at it really isn't likely to work very well. I mean if you have a look at the catalogue at the top sellers you have things like Kerbal Space Program which is cool, but unfinished (still in Alpha) and does not have controller support near as I know, and Left 4 Dead 2 which does support controller, but is quite an old title, not to mention one that was already sold on the Xbox 360 (and PC of course). You start scrolling the list of Linux new releases and it is mostly very small indy games, old titles, and DLC for a couple of larger strategy games (that don't do controller).
That isn't much of a catalogue to give people a reason to buy. Remember those big games are big for a reason. You may not like them, but many people do. GTA5 did a couple billion in sales its first weekend. You can laugh at the people that bought it, say they should have appreciated indy games instead, etc, etc but none of that changes the financial reality of what people want.
I'm fairly pragmatic about it. Like I'm not butthurt about the two failures. As I said, you have to go in knowing that it could fail. Also, if one or more of the games isn't fun, that's a risk too, but it is a risk with released games too. I've bought commercial games that have sucked royally (I'm looking at your Brink).
You have to understand the reason that I kick started these games in the first place is that their ideas appeal to me. All of them were concepts I liked, and types of games I liked. So I'm not surprised that I ended up playing them quite a bit. They also turned out quite good. The three games, in case you're wondering, Faster Than Light, Shadow Run Returns, and expansion for the Defense Grid.
You have to remember that kick starter hasn't just seen small indie games, it has also seen some larger studios. Plus some of those indie games, like FT L, have been quite good.
I don't know, I don't have hour logs on all of them since they aren't all on Steam. For the one on Steam, 25 hours, probably somewhere in the 60-100 range for all of them (one of the ones off Steam I've played a lot).
No matter what, the money you put towards a project needs to be like any other unsecured investment: Money you can afford to lose. On Kickstarter you are investing for creative, rather than financial, return but the rules are the same. Obviously you want to vet what you invest in first, and if it seems like they don't know what they are doing, have a poor business plan, are scam artists, etc don't invest. However even if it is an established company, good rep, etc, etc you still need to be prepared to lose the money with no return.
I love Kickstarter, I've backed 10 videogames on it so far, but it is something I'm realistic about. Currently of those 3 have delivered as promised, 5 look like they are on track for release as promised, 1 is floundering badly and will likely fail, and 1 appears to have failed (the dev hasn't announced it, but there's been nothing from him in a long time and the game is in a very early alpha state). I'm ok with that. I only spent money I could afford to lose and I didn't expect all the products would work out, particularly since it was some smaller devs in some cases.