Linux Game Company Opens Doors

[Posted November 6, 2007 by ris]

From:		Ethan Glasser-Camp <ethan-AT-sixthfloorlabs.com>
To:		pr-AT-lwn.net
Subject:		Press Release: Linux Game Company Opens Doors
Date:		Tue, 06 Nov 2007 02:13:15 -0500
Message-ID:		<4730140B.4050300@sixthfloorlabs.com>

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Linux Game Company Opens Doors

3 November 2007, New York - Sixth Floor Labs LLC, a Linux game
development company, has launched their business today. Founded by
Ethan Glasser-Camp and Carl Li, the company aims to improve Linux's
desktop feasibility through the creation of high-quality games. Games
are "sold" to the Internet community through the "ransom model" -- for
one large payment, the product is released under the GPL and freed
forever.

Sixth Floor Labs is offering up the next installment of their new
game, Project: Alexandria. Project: Alexandria is a top-down shooter
with an inertia-based physics model, like Asteroids. The first set of
levels is already available on their website.

The next set of levels, called "the healbeam campaign", consists of 8
levels and supporting assets -- music, sound effects, dialog, and art
-- that have been developed over 8 months. The one-time "ransom fee"
is $40,000, collected through the microPledges website. The company
estimates a month's work is all that is left to finish the campaign.

The Sixth Floor Labs is operating on the assumption that the open
source/free software community has a difficult time producing
high-quality games with the same facility that they have produced
other software of all times. The ransom model allows the community to
subsidize the production of games to offset the apparent difficulty
that exists today.

The ransom model offered by Sixth Floor Labs follows in the footsteps
of the Blender Foundation campaign, which raised 100,000 EUR in seven
weeks, and the Free Ryzom campaign, which raised pledges for 170,000
EUR in twenty-five days.

The collection progress can be seen at
http://micropledge.com/projects/project-alexandria-healbeam .


Abouth Sixth Floor Labs LLC:

Sixth Floor Labs is a New York-based company which has been operating
in "stealth startup mode" for a little over a year. It is the
brainchild of a Linux zealot that wants to give a push to the "world
domination" plot. You can visit their website at
http://www.sixthfloorlabs.com/ .

###

Ethan Glasser-Camp
Executive Sous-Chef and Public Relations Officer
ethan@sixthfloorlabs.com

Linux Game Company Opens Doors

Posted Nov 6, 2007 23:53 UTC (Tue) by macson_g (guest, #12717) [Link] (1 responses)

Yes, this seems embarassing. Especially compared to games like Ur-Quan
Masters(http://sc2.sourceforge.net). And I dont think this business model i viable. 40k$ is
fairly large amount of money for a "ransom" for such a game, and still to few to develop
decent one.

Linux Game Company Opens Doors

Posted Nov 7, 2007 10:54 UTC (Wed) by Cato (guest, #7643) [Link]

I agree - any specially funded game development like this must deliver a game that looks far
more professional and up to date.  It's fine if it's a smaller, simpler game than the enormous
new games for PS3 and Windows, but the visuals and gameplay must be up to scratch.  

There are a lot of open source games with far better visuals, some of them being high quality
3D rather than 1980s style 2D like this.

This is a joke, right ?

Posted Nov 7, 2007 0:46 UTC (Wed) by sim0nx (guest, #23065) [Link] (2 responses)

Having seen the screenshots, I really really hope this is just a big 
joke !
40k$ for that ?

One must be insane for supporting that.
There are a lot of high quality opensource games out there, a lot better 
than the proposed 40k$-project.
Why would anybody pay for that ?

This really is an insult on anybody working hard on a free game or free 
project in general.

...IMHO only of course.

This is a joke, right ?

Posted Nov 7, 2007 18:16 UTC (Wed) by smitty_one_each (subscriber, #28989) [Link] (1 responses)

>One must be insane for supporting that.

How so?  If there is truly an interest in growing the gaming market, why wouldn't a few
hardware companies, wealthy free software fanatics, etc. pony up a couple thousand apiece to
support it?

Could be seen as a cost of doing business by some.

This is a joke, right ?

Posted Nov 7, 2007 18:40 UTC (Wed) by sim0nx (guest, #23065) [Link]

I didn't mean that the idea is insane. I actually think it's a great 
idea, and could really work.

But what I think would be crazy, is for somebody to give money for that 
product they are proposing.
As I said in my previous comment, there are so many great games out 
there, which are totally free, and of much higher quality than that c**p.
So if you want to support FOSS games, donate to those projects who 
*really* deserve it !

Their product is ridiculous, and demanding 40k$ for that and saying that 
that is even way below what it's worth, is IMHO taking the people they 
are proposing it to for idiots.

The free ryzom pledge was a great idea, and it might actually be 
re-launched soon.
But that is totally different from this.

Linux Game Company Opens Doors

Posted Nov 7, 2007 1:13 UTC (Wed) by elanthis (guest, #6227) [Link] (3 responses)

I'm going to agree with everyone else so far.  This game's ransom should be, at tops, maybe
$1000.  $40,000 is insane for this project.  I've seen people crap out more involved and
visually appealing games in a semester long "Making Games 101" at community college.  :/

I mean, if this game were complete (and not just, as the project page implies, only a partial
collection of the game's chapters), I could see paying $5 for this.  And even that's a hard
bargain considering that you can get some of the unbelievably awesome NWN modules for barely
more than that (and NWN as a whole costing only $20 with expansions these days).  So at $5,
you'd need 8,000 people to want to play 8 measely chapters of this game for this pledge to
ever work.  Given the apparent quality of the game and the abundant competition from already
Free games, I can't see this working.

I'm a bit disappointed, too.  After reading the summary, I thought we might have had an
actually good game development house on our hands.  Looks like instead we have the development
(and economic) skills of a pair of 13-year-olds, which we already have quite a few of in the
free games community.  Oh well.

Linux Game Company Opens Doors

Posted Nov 7, 2007 4:10 UTC (Wed) by alan (subscriber, #4018) [Link] (2 responses)

You're comparing the $20 per-copy cost of NWN to the total amount of $40k for this game
project?  The free software community is awfully large, if 40k individual people looked at
this game and decided to donate $1 and never played anything other than the demo levels, then
this project would be successful.  There are people that will donate simply because of what
this project is trying to accomplish.

I agree with the idea that this "ransom" model is worth exploring.  It may prove useful for
other kinds of software, not just games.

As for this particular project, if the game sucks, people may still peruse the code and look
for ways to improve it.  Thats the idea anyway.

Linux Game Company Opens Doors

Posted Nov 7, 2007 5:55 UTC (Wed) by elanthis (guest, #6227) [Link]

"You're comparing the $20 per-copy cost of NWN to the total amount of $40k for this game
project?"

Sure, and why not? I'm not talking about development costs or initial sales figures. Right
now, today, you can get ancient technology in a very long game with a toolkit and still
vibrant user community (NWN) for $20 a copy, or you can donate a few bucks to get pre-historic
technology in a short and incomplete game and get source that probably isn't all that
interesting or novel.

"I agree with the idea that this "ransom" model is worth exploring."

For this, I agree very much. I was very excited when I read that was how they were
approaching this game. I just dont't think that this particular work is worth a third of what
they're asking.

I'd be far more interesting in ransoming a more modern engine with a toolkit and/or reusable
game art and audio assets (which is what we Free Software coders tend to need more of - we
have plenty of code, but little data to use with that code, and starting a new project when
you have no models, textures, or other assets to use for even testing is a huge show stopper
for many).

"As for this particular project, if the game sucks, people may still peruse the code and look
for ways to improve it. Thats the idea anyway."

There are a billion Free games with similar premises. Physics-based space shooters are
nothing new. If you want code to hack on, why put out money for it?

I'm all for supporting the community with my dollars, and I have and will again donate to
projects that I feel are a benefit, but this just isn't one of them. That the press release
even compares this game's usefulness to the community with Blender or Ryzom is kind of silly.

Linux Game Company Opens Doors

Posted Nov 8, 2007 12:55 UTC (Thu) by zotz (guest, #26117) [Link]

"I agree with the idea that this "ransom" model is worth exploring.  It may prove useful for
other kinds of software, not just games."

Oh, I think it couldwork for a lot more than just games or even just software.

I can see it working for movies, music, photographs, whatever.

all the best,

drew

http://dangernovel.blogspot.com/
   Danger - A Safe Bahamian Novel
   CC BY-SA 2.5

Linux Game Company Opens Doors

Posted Nov 7, 2007 8:12 UTC (Wed) by DG (subscriber, #16978) [Link] (1 responses)

http://grubbygames.com/ seem to produce some excellent looking games that are cross platform.

Linux Game Company Opens Doors

Posted Nov 7, 2007 18:34 UTC (Wed) by josh (subscriber, #17465) [Link]

http://grubbygames.com/ seem to produce some excellent looking games that are cross platform.

...none of which include FOSS code and game data.

Linux Game Company Opens Doors

Posted Nov 7, 2007 9:17 UTC (Wed) by tajyrink (subscriber, #2750) [Link] (3 responses)

I'd rather support projects like http://www.flightgear.org/ which are actually doing something
very credible... and it'd actually look like Flight Gear would benefit from someone who could
organize the web pages and communication somewhat, from the look of the pages.

Freeciv 2.1.0 is also out, http://freeciv.wikia.com/. And indeed on the shoot-em-up genre
there are a few rather good-looking free/open games available.

Sites like http://www.linuxgames.com/ cover both free and non-free high-quality games, though
indeed there's still so much more that could be achieved in the area of free software games. I
hope some people will figure out how to make success stories there.

Linux Game Company Opens Doors

Posted Nov 7, 2007 12:59 UTC (Wed) by mbottrell (guest, #43008) [Link]

Hmm.... nice idea, bad game.

It's a great way to grab some headlines and get your name known. Really though, if you are going to make Linux games... look at something that looks like it's 2007 not 1987.

AlienArena 2007 leaves it for dead... and it's free.

Really, if you want people to pay for your games... (I have no objection.. I've bought all the iD games for Linux..) make sure that they are at least better than the freeware stuff around.

Try a new game... one that at least people are going to want to play. Block graphics doesn't cut it anymore.. .and hasn't for over a decade.

Linux Game Company Opens Doors

Posted Nov 7, 2007 14:16 UTC (Wed) by dwheeler (guest, #1216) [Link] (1 responses)

Another very interesting game engine is Delta3D; that even gets U.S. funding. (Which I think is a great idea; the U.S. government should do more of this kind of thing.)

I think ransoming software is a very good idea. But the hostage has to be worth the money :-).

Linux Game Company Opens Doors

Posted Nov 7, 2007 16:52 UTC (Wed) by AJWM (guest, #15888) [Link]

Wow, looks like some pretty impressive stuff is being done with Delta3D.  Too bad some of it
doesn't appear readily available to civilians.  (Granted, most of it's designed as training
aids rather than pure games, although no doubt there are plenty of us that would get a kick of
out of playing with the training versions.)

FlightGear (which somebody else mentioned above) is another package which has also been
incorporated into a number of other projects (either as the flight dynamics or the
visualization portion).

Those are great examples of what can be accomplished building on good engines with open
source, where you're not necessarily limited to whatever interface (if any) a proprietary
engine might offer.

The trouble is, games age quickly

Posted Nov 7, 2007 13:50 UTC (Wed) by epa (subscriber, #39769) [Link]

If some company develops a graphics application or a web browser or a new compiler then there
is a good chance people will still be using the code or code descended from it in ten years'
time.  Paying a ransom may be good value for money if you take a long-term view.

But a video game is played for a year or two and then looks dated and boring.  Graphics and
levels written for one game can't be reused for another, and even the game engine will tend to
go out of date quickly as hardware capabilities improve.

So I'm not sure that ransoming software to release a GPLd version is an appropriate business
model for games.

Linux Game Company Opens Doors

Posted Nov 7, 2007 18:26 UTC (Wed) by jzbiciak (guest, #5246) [Link]

I'm curious what the $ / man-hour ratio is that they're targeting. $40k doesn't seem like it'd buy a lot of manpower -- maybe on the order of 6 to 9 man-months from recent college grads if they're US based, assuming there's no other overhead (e.g. everyone works from home on their own computers). I guess it matters if they're trying to actually run a company or just make money off a hobby. If you're just trying to make extra $ off of a hobby, perhaps you can get more manpower.

Even my own "ancient technology" game Space Patrol probably has a good man-year's worth of effort into it across myself and David Harley. And that's just a puny 32K game.

Linux Game Company Opens Doors

Posted Nov 7, 2007 23:32 UTC (Wed) by flewellyn (subscriber, #5047) [Link]

Ooch, this is painful to look at. The business idea is not a terrible one, but...if you're going to develop a game and then use this "ransom" model to release it under GPL, it had better be on a par with the best openly-developed free software games out there. By this I mean the ones that started out as free software, not the ones that started proprietary and were later released. I have nothing against those games, mind you, but by definition, they're not examples of what the free software gaming community is capable of creating.

For my money, the best example of this is the space combat and trading game VegaStrike, with its amazing 3D graphics, wonderfully composed music, huge, well-developed setting and backstory, multitude of different ships and weapons to use, thousands of star systems to visit, not to mention an extensible engine that can be used to build your own space-sim game. THAT is the bar to beat.

Linux Game Company Opens Doors

Posted Nov 8, 2007 2:56 UTC (Thu) by dmaxwell (guest, #14010) [Link]

Parallel Realities' older games are of at LEAST this quality but these guys stand out for
polishing their gameplay until it shines.

The genre is different (side to side shooter) but the anime guy help balloons reminded me of
this game:

http://www.parallelrealities.co.uk/starfighter.php

Their other projects are very much worth checking out.  They're currently working on a third
person adventure shooter that looks to be 3 or 4 months away from being done.   It's playable
now but they'll stick to it until is baked golden brown and delicious.

I'd rather donate to them then pay these guys.

You have got to be kidding me!!!!

Posted Nov 8, 2007 15:29 UTC (Thu) by drdrewr (guest, #48937) [Link] (2 responses)

All I can say is:

hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I can't believe what I just saw.  And money was mentioned in the article too.  I hate the
thought of dashing someone's dreams, but, someone needs to wake up quick.  Hopefully, they
haven't already invested too much of themselves in this project.  You can still play all kinds
of freeware games on Linux like doom, duke-nukem, hexen, ... that are most certainly more
engrossing than this -- game -- would appear to be.  On top of that, you can play a decent
amount of commercial games too.

Let's face it.  We all have windows.  If we absolutely "must" play a specific game that can't
be play on Linux (i.e. native or cedega/winex/wine, ...), then we can always dual-boot.

For what it is worth, my criticism only reflects what I see as of now.  Maybe in some distant
future (if this thing stays alive), I'll look back and state "wow.  this has come such a long
way".  Right now, however, I won't hold my breath waiting for that moment.

You have got to be kidding me!!!!

Posted Nov 11, 2007 23:27 UTC (Sun) by mikachu (guest, #5333) [Link] (1 responses)

"Let's face it.  We all have windows."

No, we don't.

You have got to be kidding me!!!!

Posted Nov 12, 2007 0:00 UTC (Mon) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

Seconded.

(Well, I have a copy of Windows 2.03 around somewhere. I don't think 
that's much use these days.)

Linux Game Company Opens Doors

Posted Nov 8, 2007 18:18 UTC (Thu) by oak (guest, #2786) [Link]

Hm.  Maybe the ransom idea would work for creating professional quality 
graphics & sound files and levels for some of the better, already existing 
Open Source programs?  For example Emilia pinball could use some nice 
levels:
  http://www.happypenguin.org/show?Emilia%20Pinball

Gamefest tournaments

Posted Nov 9, 2007 1:59 UTC (Fri) by hozelda (guest, #19341) [Link]

And dont forget:

http://www.freedomware-gamefest.com/

and wear the shield if you have a site and want to show support.

Tournament is still being planned but has been advanced a lot. There are prizes. There are
many participants (at least based on shown interest). There are practice games. The show is
being built from the ground up from input on the forums. Etc. Etc.