The State of Linux Gaming: IMHO, People is missing the point here [LWN.net]

The State of Linux Gaming: IMHO, People is missing the point here

Posted Sep 25, 2004 10:18 UTC (Sat) by koide (guest, #22687)
Parent article: The State of Linux Gaming

Yes, there are fun games, but most of the ones created for Linux are _AGES_ behind current game technology. Until games like Half-Life (to mention an OLD game) run without having to do something like this, we (well, at least I) cannot say Linux is _good_ for gaming, not because Linux can't run bleeding-edge games, but because bleeding-edge games aren't developed for Linux.

The main problem is threefold: big publishers aren't interested in pushing Linux support, IIRC, the only one (Loki) went out of business some years ago; DirectX won over OpenGL on Windows, so most games aren't easily portable; developing games like SOF, HL, DE from scratch is not an easy task and involves many disciplines (music, art, storylines, computing, etc.) thus I see very hard that a good team of game development for Linux gets together to write games without serious funding. It's very expensive, years of full time work for groups of 20 or 30 people. The development of a good quality high performance 3D engine is feasible with an open source development process (there are some in existence), nonetheless, art (including graphics, literature, music, level design, etc.) I don't see as easily distributable or modularizable.

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The State of Linux Gaming: IMHO, People is missing the point here

Posted Sep 25, 2004 19:30 UTC (Sat) by RobSeace (subscriber, #4435) [Link]

> ... bleeding-edge games aren't developed for Linux.

Oh no? I guess the Unreal Tournaments and Quakes and soon to be Doom3
weren't all considered "bleeding-edge" in their days, then?? Fascinating...

No, not ALL of the newest, kick-ass games have Linux versions... But, it's
not fair to say NONE of them do, either... id and Epic are both developers
of some of the most "bleeding-edge" games around, and both have released
Linux versions for all of their games for quite some time, now...

Oh, and in your mention of games that are supposedly hard to port to Linux,
at least ONE of them already has a Linux version: namely Soldier of Fortune...
(Unless you meant something else by "SOF"...) I have no idea what "DE" is,
so I can't comment... But, yes, you're right about Half Life, at least...
But, just because one particular developer is too lazy/apathetic/whatever
to port their game to Linux, does not make it so for all developers (as
proven by the counterpoints of id, Epic, and the several other commercial
game developers who have released Linux versions of their games)... Maybe
you're just not aware of all of the commercial games currently available
for Linux? Take a look at TuxGames.com for just a look at the ones they
sell, which add up to about 50... Of course, that's peanuts compared to
those available for Windoze, you're right... But, it's not NONE, either...
And, I'd say it's a pretty good sampling of at least SOME of the very best
ones available... People keep harping on about Loki's death, as if it were
the death of all commercial games on Linux, but that's really just plain
wrong...

The State of Linux Gaming: IMHO, People is missing the point here

Posted Sep 25, 2004 20:37 UTC (Sat) by koide (guest, #22687) [Link]

> weren't all considered "bleeding-edge" in their days

That's my point, exactly: 'in their days'.

I'm not saying (or I didn't mean that, at least) that great games for Linux don't exist and that's the proof Linux can run great games. OTOH, many of the games I want to play just don't exist for Linux, as you say, there's a small good sample of the very best. Why is it small? Refer to my previous post :-)

The State of Linux Gaming: IMHO, People is missing the point here

Posted Sep 25, 2004 21:37 UTC (Sat) by RobSeace (subscriber, #4435) [Link]

> That's my point, exactly: 'in their days'.

I was just pointing out the historic trend that Linux HAS indeed gotten
"bleeding-edge" titles in the past, and sort of making the point that this
trend is still continuing to this day... (Doom3 is about as bleeding-edge
as you can get in a game, at the moment, and a native Linux client is
supposedly very close to release... Personally, I've already played it
on Linux, under WINE, so even without native clients, we still need not be
left out of the "bleeding-edge"... ;-))

But, yes, your basic point is true: there are far fewer available games
under Linux, and they're often not released until long after they've been
available on Windoze... I'm not sure anything will ever change that
situation, unless Linux manages to gain as much market-share as Windoze
has... MacOS has always had much the same situation, as well... Any
platform without a majority market-share is going to have the same
situation, as well... It's just the nature of business: the companies are
going to target the biggest market of likely buyers... And, for PC games,
that's obviously Windoze, at the moment... But, thankfully, there will
always be at least a few companies willing to put in the effort to port
their game to less popular systems, in order to get a few more customers...
(Or, in some cases, just because they can, and it's cool... ;-)) And, as
I was trying to point out, the companies that think like this are often the
makers of some of the coolest, most "bleeding-edge" games created, in the
first place (eg: id and Epic, being the two classic examples)...