Steam for Linux is in open beta
Linked by boldingd on Tue 29th Jan 2013 23:12 UTC
Games It seems to have so far escaped OSNews' notice (if the top few hits for a site-search for 'Steam' is any indication) that Steam for Linux is now in Open Beta; you can get the Linux steam client from steampowered.com. So far, they appear to only be making an Ubuntu .deb available, and the client will require closed-source GPU drivers in order to work.
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RE[3]: Comment by Wafflez
by lucas_maximus on Wed 30th Jan 2013 08:03 UTC in reply to "RE[2]: Comment by Wafflez"
lucas_maximus
Member since:
2009-08-18

The problem is with games is that while there are large amounts of people involved, the collaborative model doesn't really work with something that is at it very core creative and more like art than something technical.

The games the are open source, while some of them are very good are usually knock-offs of popular 90s games (Nexuiz/Xonotic - Q3/UT) being a good examples.


Indie games are quite popular these days because they were given an audience through things like the humble bundle, steam and whatever they call Xbox Live Arcade.

Edited 2013-01-30 08:07 UTC

Reply Parent Score: 2

RE[4]: Comment by Wafflez
by Soulbender on Thu 31st Jan 2013 02:07 in reply to "RE[3]: Comment by Wafflez"
Soulbender Member since:
2005-08-18

The games the are open source, while some of them are very good are usually knock-offs of popular 90s games (Nexuiz/Xonotic - Q3/UT) being a good examples


Sad but true. I'm constantly disappointing by the number of FPS clones the OSS community manage to create. Sometime it seems that like every new OSS game is yet another stale FPS clone.
It's doubly sad because the there's no inherent reason why the open source model (and perhaps combined with creative commons) shouldn't work for creating new and innovative games.

Reply Parent Score: 3

RE[5]: Comment by Wafflez
by WereCatf on Thu 31st Jan 2013 03:39 in reply to "RE[4]: Comment by Wafflez"
WereCatf Member since:
2006-02-15

It's doubly sad because the there's no inherent reason why the open source model (and perhaps combined with creative commons) shouldn't work for creating new and innovative games.


I'd say there kind of is in practice: creating a compelling story, designing the interaction mechanics between the player and the game-world in a meaningful way, real interface design, doing all the graphical and audio assets -- ie. all very much artistic assets -- pay quite well in the real world. In addition, creating such assets tend to be really, really time-consuming, much more so than cranking out code, and therefore such just may not be deemed worth the peoples' efforts and time.

It's not the amount of coders available that is the problem, it's the lack of everyone else. Even a project leader with a well-defined, uncompromising vision could give these F/OSS - games some much-needed direction, but as it stands, these projects are mostly collections of random, shallow ideas thrown together.

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