Hello, all, Some of you may have, at one point or another, bemoaned the unfair state of commercial games for those of us who prefer not to us proprietary operating system. Some of you may even have that dirty little secret Hasefroch partition you dust off every once in a while in order to play those commercial games that don't work acceptably under wine (and yes, I speak from experience).
I've heard personally, a few times, the inability to play top-tier games on Linux cited as the main reason someone wouldn't switch. A buddy of mine, Matthew, is determined to change this woeful lack of Linux support by the gaming industry. He runs <http://www.linuxgamingworld.com>, which is a project/site dedicated to drumming up interest in commercial games for Linux, both from Linux users who are traditionally averse to paying for software, and from game companies who traditionally ignore Linux as a market for their products. You may have heard him getting interviewed recently on The Linux Link Tech Show and The Linux Action Show. Apart from the advocacy work they do, they have a pretty complete catalog of the titles that ARE available to those of the penguin persuasion on their site. Anyhow, he asked me to put the word out here that they've teamed up with My Game Company (it's not mine, that's just their name) to give away some Linux game goodness by lottery to anyone who's interested enough to sign up on the linuxgamingworld.com site and who leave a comment on the following post: <http://www.linuxgamingworld.com/?q=node/219> The game they're giving away is pretty neat game, "Dirk Dashing: Secret Agent", a family-friendly kids-oriented game (but then, that doesn't mean it's not fun for kids-at-heart) that I heard reviewed on Linux and Games Entertainment Weekly (yes, LaGER) and downloaded the demo version myself. It's a pretty fun side-scroller reminiscent in style to the old Ninja Gaiden series (except with all non-lethal weapons ;-) ). So if you're interested, go for it. The games question is one of the most controversial in the FLOSS world, because it's the main area that those of us with a deep aversion to proprietary software will sometimes break down and compromise our ideals for the quality games that the open source model has yet to deliver. I'm not talking about software quality here, an area open source naturally excels at, I'm talking about content: story, graphics, music, general coherence, the whole package. In order to deliver the seamless excellence of a top-tier game, you need writers, graphic artists, musicians, actors, etc. and you need them to work in a sustained and coordinated manner which means paying them. So far a workable business model to support this hasn't materialized, though we can hope that someday it will. In the meantime, the only way we'll get "top-tier" games on Linux is to convince the industry that we're worth considering as a worthwhile market while they're deciding what platforms to support with their next game. That's only going to happen if the companies currently marketing games to Linux make enough of a profit to keep doing so. I hope this finds you all having a great evening! Simón _______________________________________________ Fwlug mailing list [email protected] http://fortwaynelug.org/mailman/listinfo/fwlug_fortwaynelug.org
