[Nottingham] Games on Linux

[Michael Simms]

On Thu, 2005-11-03 at 16:23 +0000, Matthew Walster wrote:
> For example, a game (the only game apart from Flight Sim) I play called 
> WWIIOnLine doesn't work in Cedega, wine, whatever. It has clients for Mac and 
> Windows. There is no Linux client. I doubt there will be one, because every 
> user who runs Linux also runs Windows (well, almost) so there is no reason 
> for a client apart from keeping a select slice of customers happier. 

This is a problem we have found. Mac users cant just dual-boot windows
so they are forced to buy whatever games come out for the mac. For
Linux, so many people dual-boot that only a small percentage who would
buy a linux game havent already bought said game for Windows. And while
I am an advocate of Linux, I find it hard to find a convincing reason
for someone to buy the same game twice when they can already play it on
the same machine.

The only people who are really going to be buying Linux games are the
ones that do not dual-boot. Id even imagine that 80% of LUG members, who
by definition will be the most keen linux users, dual boot windows.

> Things will change though. If they can release something for PS2, Xbox, PC, 
> Mac, it can't be THAT hard to find decent Linux developers with skills on 
> other platforms that would do the conversion for them?

Thats not where the story ends though. They then need support people,
they need to market it (what happens when someone wants the windows
version and buys the linux version). Most companies just arent willing
to take that jump. We have even had a situation where my company offered
to provide free technical support for a game, just to try and get the
company to release the finished product that runs fine on Linux, and
they canned it, threw the project down the toilet, even though the game
was finished and they had a support contract all ready to go.

Thats the kind of mentality in the games industry towards linux.
-- 
Michael Simms - CEO, Tux Games
http://www.tuxgames.com