Nowadays most kids are introduced to computers at quite a young age and understand that their future careers and lives are going to involve using them substantially. For many of them, computer games are an important part of their learning computer skills and can lead to an interest in finding out more about computers, operating systems, software and so on.
If we look at overclocking sites, reviews of advanced cooling systems, information on tweaking etc, it is noticeable that the major reason why the usually young people who engage in such practices do so is because it enables them to run their games better and/or faster.
What does this mean for Microsoft, Apple and GNU/Linux operating systems?
You don’t need to be Albert Einstein to work out that an operating system that supports games is going to be much more attractive and familiar to youngsters who have used it to run their games than one which does not support games as well and hence is less well known to them. Having young computer users being used to your OS means you have an important advantage in a competitive marketplace over other OS’s. This advantage is going to persist for a number of years and affect what those kids believe is the “normal” or “proper” way that a computer and OS should function or operate.
This affect is magnified by the fact that what gets many kids interested in being hardcore geeks is gaming, and it is precisely these kids who as adults have a dis-proportionate (in some senses anyway) influence on what happens in the whole IT industry.
An example is the amount of attention that Nvidia and ATI pay to how fast and attractively (antialiasing, anisotropic filtering etc) their graphics card perform in games in general and especially in the blockbuster titles such as Doom 3, Half Life 2 etc. The opinions of gamers matters greatly to such companies, not only because of the gamers own buying decisions but because they review a whole range of computer and software products in magazines, web sites, newspapers and so on.
The opinions and attitudes of gamers can have a substantial influence on the rest of the computing public and they are often the people that family and friends turn to for advice in regards to what PC they should buy, from what company, what software they should install and so on.
Many of them take up careers in IT support areas in firms and are involved in the purchasing decisions that companies make when it is time to upgrade or need to implement an IT proposal.
It is little wonder that MS has paid so much attention to ensuring that Direct X is at the cutting edge of gaming graphics technology so that game developers use it in the creation of their latest masterpiece. This has had the very neat effect of making those games run well on Windows and ensuring they don’t run at all on their competitor’s OS’s. It is much harder for a game developer to shift a game created using Direct X over to the Apple or GNU/Linux OS’s than it is if the game is OpenGL based.
This is one reason why id Software have always produced Linux versions of their games alongside the Windows version as they use OpenGL. Unfortunately, they are very much the exception and are likely to remain so unless those associated with competing OS’s take action to redress the situation.
Until they do so, Microsoft will continue to have a major competitive advantage over Apple and GNU/Linux.
What can be done about this, in the interests of free market competition, if for no other reason?
One solution is the Wine / Wine X (sorry, Cedega) approach which is aimed at trying to get Direct X games to run using the Apple and GNU/Linux OS’s. (Transgaming port Direct X games to Apple machines as well as Linux) Whilst this is a useful approach which will suit some people, there are other possibilities which bear mentioning.
The first, looking at the issue from a GNU/Linux perspective, is to develop a distro specifically designed for playing games.
It would need to have 3D acceleration activated by default for all the modern graphics cards in the way that Libranet, for example, offers the user the option of turning on 3D acceleration if it detects an Nvidia card during the install process. This would also need to apply to ATI cards, even though that companies support for Linux drivers is not as developed as that of Nvidia. Support for temperature sensing devices and fan speed readings would need to be built in and comprehensive so that overclockers can keep track of what is happening to their hardware. Better multiplayer online gaming support and detailed and clear instructions on how to set up and change firewall settings would help gamers to lower their ping rates and minimize lag, connect to other gamers and so on.
There are a whole host of things that can be done to make the GNU/Linux OS more acceptable and usable for gamers. Instead of gamers dual booting between GNU/Linux (used for their general computing activities) and Windows (used for their gaming habit) they could dual boot between their normal Linux distro and the gaming distro. Of course, the changes made in the gaming distro could be used in any other distro to improve it’s suitability for gaming, if that was thought necessary.
And indeed a recent Gentoo based distro named Jollix has made a start at creating a games/multimedia based distro which looks promising.
Another suggestion is to try and persuade a major game developer(s) to make the Linux version of their OpenGL game open source.This would mean that the open source programmers who are interested could use the code to create new and hopefully better games, to create mods for the original game and learn how to build GNU/Linux applications and software that would make GNU/Linux distros more familiar and usable for youngsters and older gamers.
This would grow the market for all open source software and make it more likely that game developers who currently only produce Direct X games also produce a version for the open source world. There is also the advantage that it would encourage young gamers who are interested in modding and programming to get involved in the open source scene, either as employees or creators of open source companies, and to contribute to open source software.
A related third option is for a number of GNU/Linux programmers to work together a la the Debian project and create a high level, up to date open source game engine which modders and game developers could use to create games with. An open source company could hire experienced game developers to help build such an engine and then sell the engine and games in the same way that Redhat, Suse etc market their products.
In summary, improving GNU/Linux as a gaming platform could have many positive benefits for all who work in and contribute to the community. Many of the same reasons apply to Apple of course.
About the author:
Ian McKenzie is an old gamer whose brain and reflexes are more attuned to Freecell than most of the modern games which excite so much attention.
If you would like to see your thoughts or experiences with technology published, please consider writing an article for OSNews.
i guess a big whoop de do is how i feel
i liken it to…
kids are being introduced younger and younger to illegal drugs and as we well know, they are going to be a large part of any adults life, whether it be through use/abuse or in their political feelings, etc. this leads to kids growing interest in chemistry and biology…
fill in the rest of the article from here.
first off, directx isnt the greatest thing in gaming since sliced bread. its just relatively easy to use, from a power perspective openGL is about equivilent to directx. people like carmack simply dont want to use a platform dependant environment, a game done in directx is windows only, one done with opengl is much more portable.
as for gamers becomming techies, i find one doesnt really relate to the other. if anything, i think a link could be drawn to gamers becomming script kiddies, even thats tenious but imho, more feasable. as for gamers driving the IT industry, that is an extremely simplistic view. gamers drive the graphics card industry, thats for sure, but not too much other then that.
and last but not least, windows doesnt have all the computer games because of superior technology. in fact, i find games like unreal run significantly smoother in linux then in windows (i have no benchmarks to back this up, and it very well be colored by my own bias, but i think it would be safe to say that they are equal at the very least) the problem with linux as a game platform is that the gamer market under linux is very immature still. on a relative scale, 3d gaming is quite new under linux. we are seeing linux versions of games come slowly, and only from companies that know they will get a return on their investment. its really iffy still, where as on windows you can release a niche game and expect it to do well (if its good) simply because of the larger market size.
linux is already a top notch development environment. it is working towards being a top notch productivity environment. once that is accomplished, you will be seeing alot more stuff like games.
The article has a very good and important point about gaming, but the author was clueless as too the way to resolve the gaming discrepency. Nothing he suggested would make much difference.
Whats needed is a complete gaming API like DirectX. OpenGL is a great alternative to Direct3D, but what about the other
“Direct”s? Until someone takes OpenGL, SDL, OpenAL, and/or various other libraries and APIs and puts them together into a complete and easy to use package like DirectX is for Windows, nothing will ever change.
DirectX must be beaten at its own game. Devs must *prefer* to build on Linux, not just recieve market pressure to.
Games are always designed to run for x86 (excluding playstation2 and gamecube). Actually, everything seems to be. We’re stuck on one OS, one architecture, one type of RAM, and basically one way to build a computer.
I’m gonna say big time gamers are a minority though, Lots of gamers see themselves as fueling Intel to design better chips. Hah, is that why IBM develops Power5? Wake up; gamers fund the graphics card industry (and only a part of it, the other part is coming from professionals who need decent instant rendering, Nvidia’s Quadro line).
It’s not a lack of Linux support for games. Because trust me that’s there. It’s a lack of game distributors willingness to fund porting games. Go whine at companies like Atari and Activision.
A game dist would be cool though.
While OpenGL and DirectX both support robust 2D/3D API’s they are most definitely are not equivalent. OpenGL is a visualization API where as DirectX is a full gaming API supporting graphics, sound, networking, input, etc ….
>A game dist would be cool though.
with what? nvidia driver installed, ut2k4 demo, and doom1? imho, not worth the effort.
— “Games are always designed to run for x86…”
Actually, you overstate that problem quite a bit. Games are always writen in portable languages these days. Fact is, recompiling for the PowerPC is FAR easier and more automatic then switching to OpenGL and other Mac libraries from DirectX.
apologies, what i meant to say is direct3d, not directx.
Wasn’t that was Gentoo’s UT2004 Live CD’s were?
kindest regards,
Moritz “neofeed” Angermann
I dunno about gamers being the future programmers and IT people. Lots of gamers will know all the specs for graphics cards and overclocking garbage but still don’t know the first thing about programming.
“I dunno about gamers being the future programmers and IT people. Lots of gamers will know all the specs for graphics cards and overclocking garbage but still don’t know the first thing about programming.”
True enough. I don’t think it is the future programmers, but rather the future Sysadmins. Most programmers know nothing about hardware, or even administering a system, just like most sysadmins know very little about programming.
I know of a lot of comp-sci students who dropped out because they couldn’t, pardoon the pun, hack it. They had dreams of being a computer game programmer and imagined how cool it would be make games for EA. Then along came data structures, algorithms, linear algebra, and *gasp* programming! Not sure what they were expecting…
Most game players I know are experts at installing/reinstalling Windows and device drivers. Other than that, they don’t gain much else from game playing.
Interesting article nevertheless.
I dunno about gamers being the future programmers and IT people. Lots of gamers will know all the specs for graphics cards and overclocking garbage but still don’t know the first thing about programming.
You might be surprised to find, then, that game development houses are beginning to hire gamers more often than your typical CS graduate (CS not as in CounterStrike). The reason is simple: some gamers get interested in the code behind the game and develop mods. These people, if they make a good mod, become more valuable to a game developer than any CS grad, simply because they are familiar with the code that they will actually be working on, and have already proven their abilities.
Beyond that, gamers get interested in more than just overclocking and the specs of the latest graphics cards. They get into the details of the BIOS settings, the services running on the OS, the various settings whether in setup files, the registry, or wherever else they may be stored, and so on. All of these things are very important if not to all programmers, to the IT field in general, and to some areas of software development.
In short, the more comfortable someone is with a computer, the more likely they are to become programmers. Games are simply a way to become comfortable with computers.
In my case, I started playing computer games before I could read (and learned to read in part with the help of a computer… and no, I didn’t learn to read at a late age), and I am a programmer. I learned touch typing at a fairly late age by playing Quake, Q2, and HL/TFC with a WASD key configuration heavily scripted by hand.
One of the few people I know equally as knowledgeable in the many things it can take to get games working on Windows PCs is working in IT. Finally, many of the people I played games with in clan matches worked in various parts of the computer industry, anywhere from game developers and level designers to driver developers to IT and tech support workers.
Of course, all of this anecdotal evidence isn’t useful in the wide world, but I doubt you’ll find many developers that aren’t implicitly comfortable with computers (excepting those that were forced into programming for one reason or another), and games help bring this comfort for many people, especially today.
expensive. Games will look it TV and some Games will be like Actionmovies that one can play. Story will be very important (not like in Doom3 etc.
I doubt that any community-driven project will competive to these 100+ million dollar productions.
Just wait ..
this is hogwash.
good point, games do help younger kids “get into” computers. but everything falls apart from there.
the article is written as if there is currently a choice for gamers. there isn’t, if you want to play cutting edge PC games, you use MS Windows, period (or you dual-boot, but this doesn’t get games running on Linux though).
second, its a chicken-egg situation: you have more games coming out for Windows because thats where the gamers are, you have gamers using Windows because thats where the games are.
a so-called “alternative” to DirectX on Linux isn’t going to attract more games to Linux. SDL + OpenGL is here already and is quite easy to use, some might argue easier than DirectX; but you know what? doesn’t matter, because of the chicken-egg situation above.
WineX is a good initiative, and i’ve used it in the past, but its never going to really enable the newest games on Linux: they are still catching up to the current DirectX, and worse, they will always be playing catch-up as new versions of DirectX are released.
finally, there is very little market for commercial games on Linux: remember when id Software released Quake 3: Arena in a shrink-wrapped box for Linux? Carmack later stated that they won’t be doing that again, since almost no one bought it.
thanks for reading my pessimism.
Games are a great gateway into computer nerdness of any flavor. If someone would produce a killer open source game that ran best on Linux, teenagers all over the world locked up in their parent’s basement would take the time to learn Linux to play it.
I’d agree that gamers tend to end up as sysadmins… at least from my limited circle of nerd friends.
When I’m in a job interview, I always tell the story about how games got me interested in computers. My buddy got Falcon 3.0 and made a copy of the floppy disks for me. This was back in 1991 or so and I had a hell of a time getting it to work on my dad’s crappy 32MHz Packard Bell 386. There was no Internet to use for help and DOS 5.0 didn’t have that wonderful “memmaker” command, so I had to bust out that 3 inch thick DOS book to try and create a boot disk to give me enough EMS RAM to run the damn game. I didn’t have anyone to ask for help so I just had to figure it out.
By the time I got it to work, I found myself more interested in tweaking with the computer than playing the stupid game…
I never had a whole lot of interest in Computer Science, so I got my Business/MIS degree instead. Now I wanna be a CISSP security expert kinda nerd when I finish growing up. But that’s just me.
There are a lot of great games for Linux.
General games:
* FreeCiv: It’s come a long way since when I first looked at it, and it is already to the point where it is fun to play. It’s kind of hard to get a game started though, I have no idea why they don’t make it easier to play a single-player game.
* Scorched3d: Remember the old classic DOS game “Scorched Earth”? Now imagine that in 3d, and you’ve got Scorched3d. Tossing out Baby Nukes and Death’s Heads and MIRVS and LeapFrogs takes on a whole new dimension when you can watch your missles fly and see the impact craters in 3d-rendered glory.
* Tux Racer: I could never figure out this game when I first tried it, but it was actually pretty simple once I read the manual. I just wish they had more events that shipped with the game, once I got the hang of it I blew through it in a few minutes.
* Chromium: This isn’t really my style of game, because I suck at them rather harshly. I don’t know how to describe it, but it’s like those arcade games where enemy ships keep coming from the top and your task is to shoot them before they get past you. I put it in “fish in a barrel” mode and I can’t even beat the second level. But it seems like a good game if you like that sort of thing.
* Frozen-bubble: simple but highly addictive, you just try to shoot and line up three bubbles of the same colour to pop them. It sounds lame but is pretty fun. Kind of easy though.
* GLTron: Tron implemented in GL. Very self-explanatory, but very fun to play multiplayer (the computer AI is ridiculously easy even on hard settings).
Gnome Games:
* Stones: you run around collecting jewels and try to avoid the boulders falling on you. Simple but fun.
* Tetravex: if it’s not already self-explanatory, you line up tiles with four numbers on them so they can fit in a 3×3 (or whatever) grid. The 5×5 and 6×6 grids can be pretty challenging (read: I can’t do it).
* AisleRiot Solitaire: several dozen versions of solitaire, including the usual freecell and klondike. My favourite is Poker, where you draw cards into a 5×5 grid trying to make poker hands up, across, and diagonally.
* Ataxx: much like othello, but with a few twists. Hard to explain it here, but it is very challenging and different enough from othello to spice things up a bit. Hard to beat the computer when set to the hardest level.
* BlackJack: normal blackjack game, with the lovely addition of being able to turn on a probability calculator for the various options available to you (hit, stand, double, split, whatever). Good way to learn what you should do in each situation.
* Tali: like the board game Yahtzee — sort of like a dice version of poker, but not really. Challenging and fun.
I’m sure KDE has some great games too, I’ve just listed the ones that I am familliar with. If you get tired of all those games, buy a fricking ps2 already. 😛
People who try to create Open Source games from scratch are usually doomed to failure because they underestimate the time required. I’m working on an Open Source driving simulator ( http://motorsport-sim.org ) that makes use of OGRE3D for graphics, ODE for physics, SDL for input, etc. As soon as these technologies are integrated into a seamless package I think open source gaming will take off. </shamelessplug>
“Most game players I know are experts at installing/reinstalling Windows and device drivers. Other than that, they don’t gain much else from game playing.”
I disagree I had the same experience that Eric had with the same Packard Bell POS trying to get my favorite games to run on a 386SX with less than a Meg of memory back in the early 90’s. One thing led to another and now i am a decent Unix SA.I skipped the Degree mainly because on the job training is way more valuable and this industry changes to fast.
The author makes some good points however until Linux becomes just Linux and not fifty different distros game devolpers will have a hard time deciding which distro they should develop for? Not to mention Linux is very much a work in progress and changes by the minute. I personally don’t see linux bcoming the gamers operating system of choice an time soon. Despite what Linux fans think it is still a more or less a hobby OS and will remain that way for some time.
A related third option is for a number of GNU/Linux programmers to work together a la the Debian project and create a high level, up to date open source game engine which modders and game developers could use to create games with.
There are some Open Source grafic engines for GNU/Linux out there that sit on OpenGL for GNU/Linux and Windows. A nice physics engine on the other hand seems to be missing for Linux.
In fact, there are quite a few free (as in beer) engines are available for Windows (sound, graphics, physics, etc.). No need to start coding in Linux, even if you don’t want DirectX.
And there are lots of people out there with an idea for a game, and sometimes they even seem to be able to code. However, working together on one game seldomly happens. Often, people favour their own idea.
And artists are missing. And tools for artists are missing, too (Blender’s UI seems to seperate artists into lovers and haters, very much like GIMP’s UI does.)
Thus I don’t think the above idea will work because it won’t solve the main problem.
You’re kidding, right? I’ve played many of the games that you mentioned, and everyone I have played has a much better alternative that you can get on Linux. Yea, they might be fun to dink around on here and there, but they are still no match for what you can get at your retail store. You may be paying for that game, but sometimes you gotta pay for quality software, and this definately applies to gaming.
The physics engine ODE http://ode.org does work with Linux and OSX. All of the libraries we’re using are cross platform so it’s trivial to make it run on any platform (though we haven’t tried OSX yet).
America’s Army also has a Linux version available for free.
I think that gaming might have been a good way to get into computers back in the day, as some of you have said, but that theory just falls apart today. Most of the people that play games, do simply that. Play games. Just go to a local Internet cafe or a college dorm. The vast majority of those playing games are not geeks/nerds and are not interested in the underlying stuff like the OS or programming at all.
In fact, the best gamer I know doesn’t know a damn thing about computers, but knows a lot about games. Out of my group of friends, those that game know nothing about computers. I think it its simply a sign that computers and games have become easy enough to use that you don’t have to be a geek to run them. Also, I am an counter-example to the rule… I hate games and rarely play them, but I love computer science, in particular AI (yes, I know there is a lot of AI in games…).
I have absolutely no problem finding the five to seven high end games a year to play on my iMac. DOOM 3 is coming out soon. To say you can’t find games for Macs or Linux is lame. Not as many? So what. As many as I have time to play.
that’s why everyone is running Amigas, Ataris and Commodores these days, obviously.
cheers,
dalibor topic
JC, recently stated the Quake III source will soon be released to the public. This is OpenGL code that runs on Linux. It maybe old now, but if some in the OSS comunity would tweak it like Valve did with the another quake engine for HL1. It could be used for some Linux games that offer more than the Gnome Games. Make gaming on linux more popular, by making some free games. There is enough talent in the MOD community just tempt them to soppurt linux, it should be easier than commercial companies.
There are still a few hurdles though. OpenGL is pretty much THE 3D standard for Linux. What´s needed is a standard soundlib for gaming (with 2D audio support, really a plane is two dimensional, for 3D audio you would need high and low places speakers as well). programming straight to ALSA or OSS is not going to invite ppl to program games for Linux. And neither is multiple standards.
It´s great that *n?x offers you a choice of window managers text editors and what not, but for a game to be succesful on the platform it must run on most if not all systems that meet the hardware requirements. And I for one, and I don´t think I´m alone, am not waiting for every game to install a sound library as well.
Lots is not enough, sorry, for example I play IL2 a combat flight simulator, is-it available on Mac or Linux?
No.
Is-there an equivalent game with comparable graphics on Mac or Linux?
No, again.
And in many game categories, this is the case..
Personnaly I do two things with my computer: playing games and using Internet (web, mail).
At some times, I had Windows and Linux, then I removed Linux because:
– it is annoying maintaining two different OS: two different configuration to do, two OS to patch, fix, etc..
– Windows becames reliable: XP is “reliable enough” for me.
– Mozilla on Windows allowed me to avoid using these POS that are Outlook Express and IE.
And I don’t expect that the vicious circle “not enough user” –> no games –> “not enough user” to be broken soon on Linux or Mac..
Why should it be? I haven’t seen any convincing reason..
I agree this article and those who complain about Linux not having games would be better served complaining to the big game companies for not porting over games. Games have been ported over Linux with with good success in the past but the fact remains that most game companies see windows as there bread and butter platform because of it’s sheer size in market share. Linux is more then ready to deal with the gaming industry and allow it to flourish but the gaming industry is currently to addicted to Windows to care about Linux.
>> I know of a lot of comp-sci students who dropped out because they couldn’t, pardoon the pun, hack it. They had dreams of being a computer game programmer and imagined how cool it would be make games for EA. Then along came data structures, algorithms, linear algebra, and *gasp* programming! Not sure what they were expecting… <<
Agreed – that about sums it up nicely
I agree with you there. But how much of an effect will complaining to the big game companies actually have considering the still relatively small percentage of linux users? I really don’t think the game companies will seriously consider it until they see a definite profit in it. The demise of Loki games and the poor sales of the few linux clients that have been released doesn’t really inspire much confidence in linux to the game makers. I am not an expert, but the only way I see linux clients hitting the store shelves and companies not losing cash over it is by going the Epic route where they included a linux installer with the UT2004 package. How can we effectively push and convince the game manufacturers to release linux ports when all they may see are poor sales and loss of profit?
This affect is magnified by the fact
It should read effect. Please correct.
From my personal experience, the most important thing to improve gaming on Linux would be a native Shockwave plugin. Maybe even a flash plugin without timing problems and instablility.
My brothers and sister (4,6, and 10 years old) often abuse my computer for playing web games. The flash ones work, java works, and when they hit a shockwave game and notice it doesn’t work, i’m pragmatic enough to tell them it’s the fault of the web site they’re visiting and of the company whic doesn’t supply plugins for their format. They tend to try the next game or shoot up the GIMP then.
“Whats needed is a complete gaming API like DirectX. OpenGL is a great alternative to Direct3D, but what about the other
“Direct”s? Until someone takes OpenGL, SDL, OpenAL, and/or various other libraries and APIs and puts them together into a complete and easy to use package like DirectX is for Windows, nothing will ever change. ”
SDL is a very different beast to OpenGL and OpenAL, and is much nearer DirectX. You can output OpenGL from SDL, and it also handles mouse/keyboard, sound etc in an easy and cross platform way. I’ve been playing with it recently in my amateurish way and have been very impressed.
Does anyone know if what DirectX does that SDL doesn’t?
Yeah. I dunno if it’s just my computer, but the Linux flash plugin really sucks. The audio is always out of sync with the video.
With respect to games though, yeah linux doesn’t have a lot of good games.. Luckily for me, I think games are mainly a waste of my time so it doesn’t matter. Good luck to the rest of you hardcore gamers
That was a freaking, terrible list of “games”
Tux Racer? Are you kidding me?
Anyway, while I don’t agree with the article on some topics, the issue makes sense to me.
For me, games fuel IT
They have made me learn about hardware, how the OS works, and to pursue other things. They make me upgrade, they keep me on Windows, they made me interested in computers enough to teach myself HTML, PHP, MySQL, Take 2 C++ classes in High school + 1 Java class, and eventually to go into Electrical and Computer Engineering.
While your average gamer won’t become a guru automatically, it is definetly the most compelling computer use period for any kid. I can’t wait to make some hobby games / mods when I have more spare time.
Getting a console is a shitty cop-out
Saying “There is enough!!!” or “Linux has Quake 3” or “Mac is getting Doom 3” is not enough. Its great they are getting them, but where is Pirates!, where are the level editors and mod tools?
I would switch to a Mac in a heartbeat if I could do the same amount of stuff for games that I can a PC.
and to the author of the article.
Open Source Quake 3 is not going to spawn an open source game renaissance – Quake didn’t, Quake 2 didn’t, and there has yet to ever be a compelling open source game. I mean something original. FreeCiv and other clones are *neat* ideas, but they are nothing compelling or original. Open source games will either never or take a *VERY* long time to become a compelling alternative to anything retail.
DirectX was one of Microsoft’s smartest moves yet.
Two big problems in your statement.
A.) Loki failed because the owner commited fraud against his employees and the company. He was taken to court for not paying anyone including his creditors for over a year.
B.) Quake 3, UT Series, Tribes 2, NWN series ( Never WinterNights ), RTCW ( Return to Castle Wolfenstein ) all did well when it came to Linux sales. The problem that faces Linux gaming retialers is the lack of quality and quantity of games.
Gaming companies like I said are to addicted to MS as a whole. ID, Epic and the Bioware guys are all to aware at how loyal Linux gamiong fans can be when their GOOD games are ported over to Linux. The problem is one of a mindset that windows is the only viable gaming platform. As we speak Linux is currently passing up Apple when it comes to desktop market share but for some reason Apple get’s more games then Linux. Even though IMHO Apple users are less inclined to be gamers then Linux users IMHO who’s machines are x86 based.
Until you break that mindset in the gaming industry the road to having large amounts of gaming software being ported to Linux will be a long and hard one. Linux the OS is more then ready to deal with the game industry but like I said the gaming industry just is not willing or ready to deal with Linux because of their addiction to Microsoft.
One way to try to bring in all gaming companies ( Foriegn and Domestic ) is to invite them to all the Linux expos and conferences. Then set up a large discussion soley for them to share their insights on why they are not porting to Linux and what it will take to get them to port. Then you have those few companies that are porting to Linux discuss why they ported their games and how they succeded in luring in Linux gamers and what the benifits of the platform are as well. Overall we need to break the mindset of these companies and show them that Linux users and developers are receptive to gaming and game software.
What Linux and Mac need is a free reimplementation of DirectX.
Also another good gaming based LIVECD based off gentoo is GBLD (game based linux distrobution) http://www.gbld.net
The physics engine ODE http://ode.org does work with Linux and OSX. All of the libraries we’re using are cross platform so it’s trivial to make it run on any platform (though we haven’t tried OSX yet).
I don’t wanted to say that ODE isn’t cool, just that the number of OpenSource pyhsics engines is small compared to graphic engines.
However, if the “we” means, you’re one of the developers, please try to make a little bit more “public relations” in forums like this one: http://irrlicht.sourceforge.net/phpBB2/index.php
Otherwise Tokamak or Newton will take the “brainshare” for win game dev’s.
Mac gets more games because there are more Mac gamers, and Mac software is easier to sell.
I have yet to see any #’s on Linux game sales, but I don’t expect them to even approach Mac.
http://www.nethack.org/ http://supertux.sf.net/
http://www.jumpbump.mine.nu/
xrick
http://www.xbill.org/
http://www.mtp-target.org/
the games i love
I haven’t read every post now, I’m too tired and lazy right now.
I know a few gamers, and 90% of them don’t know nothing about OS, software or anything else that doesn’t have to do with games. All they know is games. So, they know which cpu and videocard they should have, but a few know really what the difference between Slackware and Qnx are. Who am I kidding. Does any gamer know what Qnx is?
I’ve been surrounded by gamers, so I don’t have much left over for them. Try talking about Gnu/Linux, Qnx, macOS, cryptography, web design, etc etc etc. All they care about is games.
Don’t get me wrong, I like a good game now and then, but only on my ps2. ^_^
you have to admit that the failure of Loki makes it really hard for linux gaming to take off in the future. Mac on the other hand has quite a few companies porting games. Linux needs to have companies porting games but even more important it needs original games-linux itself needs to have features Windows doesn’t as a gaming platform to get people to switch.
What? I’m not so sure I would be daring to say the stories in new games will be more complex. Well, the good old games was based around the story. Take, Baldurs Gate, for example. That was a story unlike any other. Most games now are packed with only hack’n’slash.
Then again, there are a few games actually when I think about it that has a ok story. Hopefully people will demand that. It’s not all that fun killing 100 monsters in 1 minute.
i will say that if it wasn’t for computer games (doom 1 in particular), i never would have attempted to learn more about computers in general. it all started with learning how to pkzip doom over 6 floppies and now, i’m a full-fledged computer technician complete with A+ and N+ certification. wOw! it’s amazing how something that started as a hobby grew to consume my entire way of life. thanx id!
I think you are one of the few that doesn’t stick to only gaming.
Then again, my experience is from my friends, who are Norwegians. ^_^
Yeah, like I said, I am no linux gaming expert. I didn’t realize that games besides Quake, UT series, and NWN really did that well as far as linux sales were concerned. I certainly hope things get better for linux, especially gaming on it. But I struggle to understand what you mean when you say the windows mindset must be broken in order for linux gaming progress. I don’t feel that it is an addiction to Microsoft that is keeping these gaming companies from creating linux ports. I get the feeling that it is fear of poor sales. In a very large part because the vast majority of serious gamers are windows users, and when strolling the Circuit City or Best Buy aisles, you will see more windows games flying off the shelves as usual, quite simply because many more windows gamers exist than linux gamers. Sure, linux games will sell, but how many linux users are out there? A few games will be purchased from store shelves by linux users but that will leave many more just sitting there waiting to be touched. I guess that is the reason ID’s no longer considering a boxed linux client for Doom 3. I guess inviting the game companies to linux expos and talking about it in an effort to convince them would help, but I just don’t think any change will occur until they see profitability. Substantially more linux users is what I think will turn the tide. As far as apple’s desktop market share opposite linux, I guess maybe the reason is that Apple has been on the home desktop in greater numbers for so long? I dunno. I honestly think it is because there is one Mac OS, and one Windows OS (and their versions), as opposed to literally hundreds of linux distros. I don’t know how difficult it is to program for linux gaming, or what effect the many distros have on the gaming scene, but that is the parallel I see when comparing Windows and Mac gaming as opposed to linux gaming. But that’s just my humble uneducated gamer opinion. I would definitely participate in the effort to improve the state of linux gaming. If only I knew how to assuredly make a difference.
Unfortunately, Linux games selling does not exist. You have to purchase a Windows version and then get a diff executable. It was incredibly hard for Sega Dreamcast to get shelf space in stores, and it was amazing with tons of great games.
To get in stores, games have to sell in the 50k + range at *least* I’m sure. Maybe with online distribution there might be more Linux ports, or hopefully just “PC” gaming will have executables for Linux on them, but I don’t expect to see Linux retail for years and years.
Simple Linux games, like Jump’n’Bump and Pingus, are actually quite fun. Still, it WOULD be nice to have games like Myst and its sequels in Linux. And Monkey Island.
Yeah, you’re right. I have never seen a linux boxed client on store shelves. The closest thing I have seen to it is the installer in the UT2004 release, and that is not officially supported by Atari. Yeah, I hope it get’s better, but by the looks of it, it doesn’t look like linux retail’s gonna happen for a long time to come.
I know a *lot* of people in tech support that started out playing games only. It starts with games, and broadens to a limited knowledge of networking/OS and hardware (video cards and CPU/memory mainly). Then you start reading sites such as arstechnica, anandtech, and OSNews..
Soon afterwards you are repartioning, trying out Linux, BSD, and BeOS. I owe most of my career to games (thanks id Software in particular!)
When it all comes down to it, many people owe thanks to gamers for being early adopters (showing market indication), and driving down prices for many hardware markets such as wireless equipment, CPU, memory, and video cards. Without gamers, developers wouldn’t develop games, and without games I’d bet money that you wouldn’t have the nice computer that you are typing on today.
That’s because most companies that have ported to Linux have gone the route of saving money by having both Windows and Linux versions on the same cd’s just like other games which have both Mac and Windows versions on the same cd’s like Starcraft for example. Putting on a tux label besides the windows label on the box would not hurt though. Every UT2k3 game sold had a linux installer in it but it did not have a label on the box to let people know that they it could be played on Linux. Part of the problem like I mention is letting people know about linux ports especially if they come in the same cd and box. This is of course totally up to the game companies to deal with IMHO.
I didn’t read all comments so this might have been brought up by somebody else so…
Video gamers are quickly becoming ‘the thing’ for PCs. You don’t need a PhD to figure that out. Just look at the titles – almost every blockbuster movie has a video game (many times a console version & a pc version). Games are earning money, no doubt about it. So ask youselves, why would you develop a game for Linux platform? To earn mooney? Come on, you wouldn’t even pay off the porting expencess – assuming you would want to port it, because only an idiot (or a non commercial game developer) would make a game for non-Windows platform. And i can back up this with John Carmack’s statement which he discussed at GDC – i don’t have the exact quote – but he said making (actually porting) a game to Linux will in future (and you can see that right now) only be a developer’s good will. He even said that people think Microsoft’s products (in this case DirectX) is crap just because this was the case before. But as he noted Microsoft is very good at putting (rushing) bad products out and then making them extremely good after they’ve learned their mistake. This is especially true for DirectX. I can’t even remember a game using DirectX untill DX7 came along. Even Microsoft’s own people said it was crap. But look at it now. You can literally count the games released in the last 2 years programmed for OpenGL on one hand. All I remember right now is Call of Duty, Enemy Territory, Serious Sam: TSE,.. There’s probably some little more but you get my point. There’s basicly only one big game developer using OpenGl today. That’s id software. And if anyone read his keynote at this year’s GDC I wouldn’t be surprised if his next _new_ engine will be programmed in DX (note: I’m talking about his new engine which will power some of their game in about 4-5 years, not the next game they’re working on right not which still uses the Doom 3 engine).
I’m trying to point out that developers don’t have much (if any) profit developing for Linux. As JC said, it’s theire own good will if they decide to. And ofcourse if you’re making a MP game it must contain Linux server binaries because, well most (game) servers run Linux which _could_ change in a few years, starting with Windows 2003 Server. Just look at where DX has come – from an API which even Microsoft’s own developers didn’t like, to an API where video card companies have to pay MS to claim their card as DirectX “9” compatible and a preffered option for more then 90% of game developers. Today OpenGl 2.0 was released which hardly makes any difference to this situation. It’s still more important to claim your card/game as DirectX “9” compatible as i.e. OpenGL 2.0 compatible. If you take away all the 3D modelling/animation software such as Maya, Max and Lightwave, there is hardly anything to make use of OpenGL on desktop video cards (not those developed especially for these kind of purposses – i.e. Quadro from nvidia, FireGL from ATI,…). And then of course there is John Carmack. One of the very few people who can literally make video card vendors have a very bad day. In my huble opinion he is (together with Tim Sweeney) pushing the (real-time) 3D graphics to the edge and codes exlusively for OpenGL and supports other platforms than Windows (Mac & Unix based).
I see a lot of articles here about Linux being ready for desktop (let us put that pathetic article about Windows not ready for desktop away for a moment). The one thing I didn’t see many people mentioning are what actually (partly) makes a desktop OS – video games. Reality: who the hell cares for 3D performance under Linux? While it seems like nVidia cares a little, just take a look at ATI’s drivers. There is absolutely nothing that would convince a gamer to crossover to Linux apart from the price – but if he can afford 10 games per year, he can easily buy Windows or just download both games and OS from p2p networks. The video games market on Linux is so smal that nobody even mentiones it. IMHO I think Lnux will probably never reach even slightly the games market than Windows has. The reason for that is ofcourse DirectX – too established, too late. And if you look at what Microsoft plans for their next DirectX release – things sure don’t look hapy for Linux.
Anyway, the point of this post is that people should stop wondering why there are no games for Linux and immprove on what Linux still has. It _might_ be good solution for office PCs and that shouldn’t be thought as a ground for not improving. Be happy with what you have, don’t try to get to greedy thinking Linux can be as good of a platform for games as Windows and start improving things that Linux still has chances at.
I forgot to mention this in my previous post.
I won’t argue here about why gamers are considered coders, but I can say just a few facts of how many gamers actually got in the buisness. I can’t remember the name but the programmer that made Threewave for Quakeworld was then hires by id software and now works for Ion Software (DeusEx), programmer for Urban Terror (Q3 mod) got hired by Raven Software and he now works on Quake 4, the maker of Counter Strike (popular Half Life mod) now works and chief executive on Half Life’s 2 CS: Source, a gamer once thought Q2 bots were stupid so he made himself some custom bots and later got hired by id software were he worked on Q3 AI and not Doom 3’s AI… those were all gamers when they started out and as someone said, eventually you start to explore the game’s possibilities and if you come up with a great idea soon some company will notice you and give you a job.
Another thing worth mentioning here is the nVidia’s ‘Make Something Unreal’ contest which offered a Unreal Engine 2 license & 1.000.000 $ cash for someone who makes the best mod out of UT2003. I’m not sure here, but i think TTM, a mod made by competitive players which changed some game features to make it more ‘competitive’ in other words not so newbie friendly won.
Ouch, man. You really think it looks that bad for linux?
Part of the solution is educating gamers. Another aspect is building multi-platform game engines and installers that work on both windows and linux. Actually there already is a open GPL’d game installer for Linux which is the one Loki made and which works very well ( used in QUAKE 3, RTCW, Tribes 2, etc… ), especially when downloading updates. As far as installing games on various Linux distros goes. It’s not a big deal because you can install a game in your home directory and still have it be able to access the needed programs and system resources for your distro of choice. That is not a issue with Linux at all. Like I said it’s more of a Windows-centric mindset. The same mindset that creates windows only hardware like Win-Modems.
Also simply sticking a tux label on the box to show that yes you can play this on Linux if you move off windows helps a lot in cases where you have both windows and linux versions on the same disk. The sales are there but many times they are masked because for example in UT2k3 they had both versions on the same cd’s but did not tell anyone and made it harder to track this way. A lot of the technical problems of creating a game for two platforms come more from deciding on a installer then on the game creation side. Especially if you are using or allow for the use of OpenGL as a graphics foundation for your game engine. I can’t say the same for DirectX exclusive titles though.
thats like saying that digital photography is what drives the IT market because i like taking pictures on my digital camera. please.
there are also many comparable technologies to directx that are cross platform. stuff like opengl, openal, sdl to name a few. play unreal 2k4 on windows. then play it on linux. you will find linux is significantly smoother. but of course, its for office pcs, not games.
the technology is there, what isnt there is the market.
@Matt:
“there are also many comparable technologies to directx that are cross platform. stuff like opengl, openal, sdl to name a few. play unreal 2k4 on windows. then play it on linux. you will find linux is significantly smoother. but of course, its for office pcs, not games.”
When OpenGL dictates the future of real-time 3D graphics then you will see something happening. You have to beg for card vendors to put in an extension that you want to use which is already availible in DirectX for a year or so. I belive Tim Sweeney asked for something like that for Unreal 2 and was denied so he switched to Dx is primary (I can not be too sure about exactly happned as i read it quite some time ago, but it was something along those lines).
Yes I did played UT2k4 but thanks to the great ATI drivers for Linux I had an esxperience of my life, while it ran flawleslly in Windows with DirectX (the game uses both APIs but it’s native is DirectX).
The technology is always there. What are the reasons for a gamer to switch to Linux? Put the price of the OS aside as most of these kids run ware versions of both OS and the games? I mentioned Linux for office because it has a serious reason why companies could switch to Linux. Cheap OS, fairly good support for office hardware and OpenOffice with a nice “price” against Microsoft Office.
@Anonymous:
“Another aspect is building multi-platform game engines and installers that work on both windows and linux.
Also simply sticking a tux label on the box to show that yes you can play this on Linux if you move off windows helps a lot in cases where you have both windows and linux versions on the same disk. The sales are there but many times they are masked because for example in UT2k3 they had both versions on the same cd’s but did not tell anyone and made it harder to track this way.”
As i mentioned before no one does this because it’s not worth it. There’s only one serious company giving something to Linux users (id soft.) and they already stopped making Linux versions of their games (you can only download the Linux binaries, but they come several weeks after the initial release). The sales are _not_ there. You don’t have to belive me, Carmack said quite a lot about Linux & games at his GDC speech. Worth checking out, because he explicitly said that developers won’t do a Linux version because it’s not worth it. And this is coming from a man basicly leading the game industry, i guess he has a point.
“You might be surprised to find, then, that game development houses are beginning to hire gamers more often than your typical CS graduate (CS not as in CounterStrike). The reason is simple: some gamers get interested in the code behind the game and develop mods. These people, if they make a good mod, become more valuable to a game developer than any CS grad, simply because they are familiar with the code that they will actually be working on, and have already proven their abilities.”
I’ve met a few gamers who are taking CS courses because they want to make games. Most of them struggle more with their CS courses than their calculus. Writing good code is important, and you need experience writing usable code to do it.
Most gamers aren’t modders. You’re talking about a class of gamer who enjoys writing their own stuff more than playing everyone elses, likely better, stuff.
And when I said it’s written for x86, I’m well aware that it’s written to be portable. However most pc games are written with athlon or P4 in mind. Hence you see a lot of them taking advantage of 3Dnow when possible. It is easier to port based on architecture than library support. However, you don’t see companies releasing ultra sparc, alpha, and Itanium builds of their games. Why? It’s not even worth the investment of porting it. You see stores with huge shelves of stuff for x86, and maybe another small shelf for PPC builds.
Why does MS, Apple, IBM, etc give away or sell heavily discounted equipment and software to universities and students year after year? To get the students hooked in anticipation of pay backs later in life. People grow attachments. Just think about how most of us will defend and talk favorably about whatever crummy stuff we grew up with. It’s the same with games. Later in life the gamer will say “I played games on Linux when I was young and it worked great”. Whether it did or not. But maybe that person becomes the purchasing agent of computer equipment for a major cooperation.
Off topic – our hostess has given an interview
http://www.rippleweb.org/archives/2004/08/interview_with.html
Until Linux owns the PC hardware platform it will not get games written exclusively for it. The Mac gets more games because it has its own hardware platform. If MacOS was on x86, chances are it would be dual booted, just like most Linux installations are, and would not get as many ports.
Linux will NEVER beat Microsoft on the home PC because of its games support. Microsoft will not give an inch and will connive in every way to thwart its wide-scale adoption, even if Linux games tech was in some way superior, which it isn’t.
MS now has its XNA initiative which leverages its PC tools and APIs for its next gen console. So your console games can be easily ported to windows. The console gaming marketshare is sure to grow, and along with that the windows gaming marketshare. Now, how are you going to fight MS’s marketing muscle along with its leveraging of different technologies, in the form of consoles, PDAs and PCs? You aren’t!!!!
Now, if you want to port Linux to a console, so that kiddies can do their homework on it, without requiring the purchase of a PC and using windows, then that’s another story. But everything except homebrew games are gonna run through Linux. Linux simply can’t enter the home as long as its an add on for geeks or a curiosity anyway. Until hardware comes standard with Linux, and CANNOT be exchanged for Windows, Linux has no chance in gaming at all. Your one advantage to getting Linux on a console is that MS would get sued for its monopolist practices if they tried to put windows on their console. Nextgen consoles will surpass all but the highend PCs for many years and do not require an OS. Linux itself will never win at games, but it doesn’t mean the hardware that it runs on won’t. This is an ENTRY POINT to the home. Run Linux for work, but do something else for games.
The sad truth is that today most games are kind of unimaginative. You have tons of 1st person shooters and C&C-like tactical games, but they usually only advance in terms of 3d graphics and sound. I don’t find games becoming more realistic very important – it’s kind of boring, actually.
I you look in today’s game companies, you can see, there is a big run for the big money. So they wont do the software for a platform that is free… In the Linux world everybody thinks, and beleives, that everything free. So if they create a game in a year, the company paid the programmers, artists, modelers, do you really think that they will give the code to the open source community ? Funny.
Linux is not for gaming, and I think it needs 5-6 years from now, to have a chance to get in the gaming business.
No the only person who thinks everything should be free is you ! Sorry but keep your assumptions to yourself. Like my dad once said while staring at a Pamela Anderson picture “Opinions are like assholes. Everyone has one but only a few are worth looking at !.”
Gamers no nothing about computers! That’s a generalization which shouldn’t be made. I agree with a lot of people when they say a lot of gamers no nothing about computers. That’s true but there is always the exception.
I started out back in the old days with “ye olde” C64, punching in LOAD & RUN commands, tweaking the tape head of the tape machine so I could get those games to run. Later came the Amiga 500 which was an easy game machine. Punch in that disc and let’s game.
It wasn’t until I got my first PC, an 80486 SX with 4 MB RAM (I didn’t no the difference between SX and DX at the time), that I began to learn to fiddle with different boot sequences in order to get those 622 KB of base memory needed to play this particular game.
Now I hold a Bachelor degree in CS going on a masters degree. This is because that games got me started on computers. However, in these days where we point ‘n click on everything the days of tweaking config files are over.
Sure, most hardcore gamer know their way around the device manager in Windows. The “softcore” gamer however still no nothing about computers. I got friends who keep calling me whenever they have “done absolutely nothing” to their boxes and still it does not work. Guess who have to go fix it. Fortunately for me they have learned not to call so often.
Games does matter. Games are big business. I wouldn’t be typing this on a 2.8 GHz P4 with a R9800 graphics card in it if it wasn’t for games.
When gamers only want to play games and doesn’t care about the inner workings of those games, they are nothing more than gamers. If the gamers however cares about the internals of the 3D engine etc. and begins to develop games of their own. Then we have a potential winner. I am much better at algorithms and data structures than I am at designing game engines. But I am still fascinated by games and play games when I want to.
that list of games reminds me of that Apple parody video:
http://spherule.com/media/video/switch_parody/switch_dg.mov
“Simple Linux games, like Jump’n’Bump and Pingus, are actually quite fun. Still, it WOULD be nice to have games like Myst and its sequels in Linux. And Monkey Island. ”
I have thought the same thing. I think the case is that there are a great many programmers writing game engines, but not that many artists creating *content*. Games like Myst and Monkey Island are almost entirely content (ie, music, sound effects and artwork), but the game engines are fairly simple.
The nearest I have seen is ‘the guild’.
http://theguild.linuxgames.com/
Until more artistic and creative focussed people start using Linux and contributing to projects we will remain with a thousand 3d engines, but no captivating games.
I am talking about native Linux games here, not ports.
isnt sony going to use opengl ? this will be great since many games on ps3 can be easily ported to win/linux/mac/unix
Gamers don’t kill people,
Guns do.
Agreed.
The gaming industry has lost all innovation in order to counter illegal copying… (ie its better to steal a good concept than taking the risk of creating something new).
And besides, all the great games have already been made anyway. The 7th Guest (and it’s sequel, The 11th Hour), Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, Myst, Keen, Dune 2 and Command & Conquer etc. All those new games are all still basically the same as their predecessors; Doom III for instance, looks of course a million times better, but it’s essentially still exactly the same as Wolfenstein/Doom I.
Why not do away with the OS altogether like the Amiga used to do. I remember some of the better games were booted straight from floppy.
What is needed is for someone to develop a cross platform game OS and develop on that and boot straight from CD/DVD.
LOL!!! Dude, that was hilarious! I have never seen that before. How long has that been out? And I wonder how many Mac loyalists are actually aware of it.
man, what in the world are you talking about? linux runs on anything, not just x86. the only reason you see x86 linux more then anything else, is cause intel based hardware is pretty much as cheap as you can get. when it comes to propriatary archetechtures, microsoft has nothing to do with x86, at least not in the way that mac, amiga, or be had their own platforms.
Hassy: Sure, most hardcore gamer know their way around the device manager in Windows. The “softcore” gamer however still no nothing about computers. I got friends who keep calling me whenever they have “done absolutely nothing” to their boxes and still it does not work. Guess who have to go fix it. Fortunately for me they have learned not to call so often.
ROFL 🙂 Yep… That accurately describes alot of the gamers I know. (BTW… I’m a gamer who has always had a very strong interest in learning things.)
Basicly… Some gamers are only interested in games or are mostly interested in games. It’s funny, because for most of the gamers I know, their big accomplishment during their free time in almost any given week is usually say… “I finished Doom 3 in 2 days!!!” Meanwhile… My big accomplishment during my free time in almost any given week will be that I started and finished some little program or I studied (via books or tinkering with equations on my own or what have you) some theoretical concept for computer science, or whatever…
Obviously… How good a gamer is at doing various kinds of computer tasks are dependent on the gamer.
From an API perspective, DirectX and OpenGL are quite similar. It shouldn’t be very hard to port from one to the other (yes, it has been done before).
I find it hilarious when the author mentions commercial game developers making their games open sourced for any platform, and expecting to have it happen more than once. Why? Unlike something like MS Office, a game really has limited value, even if people like it, short of game addicts that become addicted to the particular game: the technology and tastes of the general public change fast enough that it is no longer relevant in a relatively short time, and that means that the money needs to be made in that short time in order to pay for the development costs and the other costs involved.
Games are developed on very aggressive schedules, and the testing is potentially incredibly time-consuming, and for certain types of games, the media content (what makes the game look/sound nice) takes a huge amount of time to create/develop, and may involve various royalties/salaries paid to many people. When you combine the fact that games (by my explanation in the previous paragraph) are rather risky from a financial standpoint, and not all games will ever break even, the number of games that will be profitable for even the same company in the best of markets is not nearly enough to make it something anyone will be willing to give away for free when there’s such large amounts of resources invested.
The closest thing to a compromise you may get is the thought of releasing the source at a later date (presuming there’s no encumbrance on intellectual property in the game that involves royalties) into the OSS community. How long after a game has been released for commercial sale would that work? Well, perhaps after the game is no longer earning its keep from sales. But wait, isn’t this a logical problem? If people know that a game will become OSS at a later date, what’s to stop them from deciding to wait until that date, and completely Osbourning their sales in the first place? Perhaps a company can tell customers, “we may release it into the wilds at a later date” for all their wares. How much good will will this create if they don’t decide to do it for a popular game?
And let’s not forget the issue of piracy: there’s a huge amount of piracy with games (as there is with a lot of other software) and the numbers of the games sold at the start needs to be enough to make it profitable to absorb those losses. If something will/might later become open sourced, there is the easy rationalization, “It will become open sourced later, so what’s the harm of copying it now?” which might dampen the possibility of sales to some of the more honest customers (I admit, this is conjecture). So, at best, open sourcing is limited to games with little development costs/support costs/intellectual property ties.
If you write games to earn money, it is very unlikely you can afford to open source them until they are commercially unviable, and even once that’s happened, what’s the profit motive for going to the effort to make the source available? That costs money as well! While it might create good will with those in the OSS community, it’s not likely going to create good will with the stockholders/investors. Thus, I conjecture that the only “commercial” games that will be completely open sourced are those where their aims are not immediate financial gains with that game: it would be a loss-leader, much like many stores employ to bring in customers to buy other things.
Something that doesn;t seem to have been mentioned (maybe i missed it) is modding. Lots of 1st-person shooters have the ability to put new skins on stuff, and The Sims is massively popular because of its customisability. OK, once you have a few simple tools, these things are easy to do … if you are a bit techie… and most of us would not consider altering a .bmp to be “programming”. But it is the first step. Next is a web-site to host new skins … clans for FPSs, maybe one day hosting your own server … There is LOTS of potential for people to progress into Techies (not just “Programmers”) from gaming. Not all will … just like not all drivers become mechanics. But there are many people who started by hanging fluffy dice on their mirrors, and now build custom ‘rods. Some of the clan-sites and Sim-Skin pages out there are pretty technical, well written and could lead their authors into a career in PCs.
0.02c
“True enough. I don’t think it is the future programmers, but rather the future Sysadmins.”
Sorry, but it really depends on the game type as well. One interested in realistic strategy games or puzzle games with hard twists could become a good military officer, strategic politician (leader, architect) in a later stage. One interested in a FPS game could be interested in for example coding a mod for the game (programming), running their own slightly modified server (sysadmin) or creating art for a level (designer). Granted those are also simple, general examples but i certainly wouldn’t say something as simple as “gamers will become future sysadmins”. That just doesn’t make sense.
“Most of the people that play games, do simply that. Play games. Just go to a local Internet cafe or a college dorm. The vast majority of those playing games are not geeks/nerds and are not interested in the underlying stuff like the OS or programming at all.”
I agree. Sure, there are great examples like people who wrote mods and designers who made awesome levels and who, as a result, got a decent job because of that. But what % are we talking about? I tell you, that many (many, many) gamers are simply only interested in gaming for example as a hobby besides going out and going to school. They’ll still go out when they’re 25, and still play games when they’re 25, but when they’re 35 they’re having their own job already which doesn’t by definition involve computers as main task at all! If that would be false, a lot (and i really mean, a lot) people wouldn’t work as policemen, firemen, etc AND play games in their free time. All (young?) gamers would become geeks / nerds. Well sorry, but that just ain’t realistic (but i don’t have numbers).
“Not all will … just like not all drivers become mechanics.”
Exactly
—
“Games are always designed to run for x86 (excluding playstation2 and gamecube).”
N64 and PS2 were MIPS (different versions though). Dreamcast is SH4. XBox2 will most likely be PPC. We do not know what efforts it costs, costed to get these games working on these architectures.
Also, because when you port your software over to other architectures you find bugs in the software which were previously unnoticed and because internal ports of software to other architectures are not uncommon, i think it is less a problem than it actually is from a practical point of view.
—
“we are seeing linux versions of games come slowly, and only from companies that know they will get a return on their investment. its really iffy still, where as on windows you can release a niche game and expect it to do well (if its good) simply because of the larger market size.”
Not only from companies. Loki was a company who ported software over and sold it, but right now we also have individuals who port software over. For example, they sign a NDA, get the (relevant) source, and then port the thing over to Linux and/or MacOSX. Who ported AA and Duke3d to Linux (and OSX)? It wasn’t a company, it were the fine people from Icculus.org. The clients are just free without cost [sometimes even open source], but you need to have the official Windows CD which contains the artwork.
For those interested in the subject, Ryan Gordon from Icculus.org has held a few speeches in the USA in this very summer on the subject we’re discussing:
# Desktop Developers’ Conference, July 19th-20th. Gavriel State from Transgaming and I will be giving a talk on the state of Linux gaming.
# Ottawa Linux Symposium, July 21st-23rd. I’m not speaking here, but it’s in the same building as the Desktop Developers’ Conference.
# LinuxWorld Expo, August 2nd-5th. Come see me speak at session S47 about The Linux Game Industry.
See > http://icculus.org/news/news.php?id=2102