Indie game developer Wolfire Games gives 5 solid reasons why games developers should support Mac OS X and Linux. [via TUAW]
“Obviously supporting Mac OS X and Linux means you tap into another platform and expand your potential market base. That much is clear. But surely adding an extra 5% is negligible, right? Wrong. Not all five percents are created equal.” For their game Lugaru, they go on to claim “supporting Mac OS X and Linux directly increased sales by around 122%.”
I can support Linux, free and Open Source. But I never support Mac. Apple is not so different from Microsoft, IMHO. Even worst…
Yes you can, the APIs are nearly the same.
But seriously
, if you are making a live as an independent game or application developer, you need food on the table. It doesn’t automatically land there when RMS swings a magic wand. If the developer can’t support him/herself, there will be no game at all. Adding Mac OS X support can be a good manner to add more users.
Besides that, many independent gaming companies are often handling way more ethical (by my standards) by not promoting DRM, caring about their customers, and supporting more platforms than the platform that is basically a monopoly.
Edited 2008-12-31 09:29 UTC
Actually the APIs are very different. If you don’t use a portable game engine you will have to write thousands of lines of platform specific code.
OpenGL ? GLUT ?
The rest is barely file system tweaks, input handling and sound playback, and there are other libraries (OpenAL ?) for that.
Not mentionning SDL, which is a bit slow on some platforms at least.
Or you can wrap your own crossplatform engine with a bit of design. The BZFlag was one of the cleanest I recall porting:
http://bzflag.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/bzflag/trunk/bzflag/src/pl…
C++ helped.
Edited 2008-12-31 12:39 UTC
I’ve always maintained that such attitudes are why Loki failed.
Point 3 in the article mentions very vocal minorities on Slashdot who “popularized” Lugaru since it had a Linux build. Funnily enough, it did not provide any figures as to the number of Linux clients they sold. How many of those in the vocal minority were screaming for the game to be Free and Open Sourced? How much of that publicity translated into actual sales?
That’s been my experience with Linux evangelists. 9 out of 10 are rabid FOSS supporters.
Most GNU/Linux successful company all use the same lines , so you have no real point or anything intelligent to say.
Loki Failed due first to bad management , lack of real fundings ( one of the lawsuit had one manager asking to have 100 000 on is credit card be repaid from loki plus is unpaid salary of many months ) and overpaid business system and employee , also to lawsuits from former manager and disgruntled employee.
The sales of games where pretyy decent , but when you spend 15 time what you earn , you never survive very long , also the looming bankrupty sign over a company head block expansion and sales drastically , people tend to shy away from almost bankrupt company be it distributor or end-user’s client.
If you had actually read the article it’s explained clearly that they sold more GNU/Linux copy then windows but less then Apple Mac OS X.
Real experience say that people like you have no experience at all except in bashing and making lies about GNU/Linux. Why would GNU/Linux evangelist want to talk or associate with you at all ?
http://www.linuxtoday.com/news_story.php3?ltsn=2001-08-17-014-20-NW…
Have you tried to run your payed for Loki Entertainment Software game on todays Linux distributions?
It most probably wouldn’t work.
Meanwhile the Windows version probably would run, on Linux!, using Wine. The Windows versions would surely run on Windows.
Maybe we should be glad that so few bought native Linux games from Loki.
And about sales, ask id software.
Tried ? No , I got them running when I feel like playing with them. Why would I bother running them on newer Distribution ?
I don’t use Mac OS game on Mac OS X and I don’t use Dos , window 3.1 , windows 85 , windows 98 , window 2000 on Vista. Just like I don’t try running nintendo games on nintendo 64 or on nintendo WII.
I also still have tons of perfectly good distribution that worked perfectly with those games.
Loki Games where also proprietary and I don’t waste my time on trying to make old proprietary games work on newer distribution when I can just search for the best distribution of that time and install that.
Some do using windows emulator on newer systems , but the vast majority don’t run natively or at all.
You almost never hear actual game buyers complain about Loki , you hear people who like you think million of game sold is small and who point at Loki as a failure for all GNU/Linux gaming.
The funny thing is you have more competition and more failures on windows. Where as GNU/Linux games usually break even or go on making a nice profit , as the cost of development is far lower then creating a new game entirely.
id never had trouble with GNU/Linux games or there sales numbers.
The real trouble this day is that they concentrate on making game and there distrinution partner EA is pushing for console games and EA is in financial trouble itself this days closing many development sites and game development. They never really liked GNU/Linux as game platform either.
http://digg.com/linux_unix/id_Software_NOT_abandoning_Linux_Rage_li…
Try 2008 games :
http://whdb.com/2008/top-25-linux-games-for-2008/
http://web2linux.blogspot.com/2008/03/top-30-linux-games-of-2008.ht…
http://live.linux-gamers.net/
My Loki games run just fine on Ubuntu 8.10. I never expected that they wouldn’t. I’m in the middle of a run-thru of Rune right now. Makes a nice break from programming.
Where did you get the idea that they wouldn’t work?
Edited 2009-01-01 09:16 UTC
Totally wrong. Loki failed because they jumped the gun in getting into the Linux game market; when, in fact, there were no customers actually buying Linux games.
Sorry Tomcat , but in 2009 , I pass on replying to your lies that have no basis on reality.
You just replied, moron. Too bad there’s no way to resolve to raise your IQ. Stupidity is permanent.
As for Loki, refer to this 1998 article (http://pc.ign.com/articles/066/066046p1.html): “Loki calls Linux “the only viable threat to Microsoft’s hold on the market”, and the company believes that by bringing PC games to Linux it will broaden the appeal of the platform.””
We all know how well that worked out. Linux is, by all practical standards, no closer to building desktop market share and countering “Microsoft’s hold on the market”.
Doubt it? Here’s another 2006 article (http://www.linux.com/feature/59180) titled “Commercial gaming: Can it thrive on Linux?” The fact that they even had to ask the question in 2006 should inform the answer. The state of Linux gaming is deplorable; mostly, lousy titles that were available — technologically speaking — on Windows TEN YEARS AGO.
Why? Because the sub-1% market share of desktop Linux means there’s no money in Linux game development. And making games requires financial investment in areas other than coding (e.g. art, storyboarding, writing, sound design, etc). No customers, no games.
Complain about my response, mod it down, whatever. I don’t care. Reality is reality. Put some ice on that, and walk it off …
Edited 2009-01-04 01:33 UTC
Sorry Tomcat , but as I said in 2009 , I pass on replying to your lies that have no basis on reality.
Ok, FreeBSD can emulate Linux, but what about others ?
Surely they might not be profitable, but never releasing things for them won’t help them gain any share ever…
(no I don’t play at all, I code :p)
They can always implement a GNU/Linux emulator based on the BSD code at first. Implement there own store and track there sales channel and identify them properly.
They also need to get deep funding from VC like Apple got for Ifund for iPhone and iPod :
http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/08/03/06/apple_helps_launch_10…
But they first need to get a base of 10 – 15 million paying user’s.
Except that system calls of most UNIX variants are fairly similar, so a huge chunk of the “emulation” in the BSDs is a small system call translation wrapper. This doesn’t really help you for systems with less of a UNIX heritage.
Anyway, is there even a serious game market outside Windows, OS X, and GNU/Linux on non-dedicated machines?