On Wed, May 13, 2009 at 6:32 AM, Ryan Swart <[email protected]> wrote:
> One question though, which team is covering the development of software > that enables Ubuntu (or Linux as a whole) to be considered as a viable > gaming platform? Not software that enables the development of games, but > software that promotes games and the communities around them.. > There are countless groups outside Ubuntu doing this. For example (far from an exhastive list): There's an XMPP gaming group for working on XEPs for using XMPP in games, from personal eventing (player sets a special IM status as playing a specific game to advertise it to their friends) to inter-game "buddy lists" and chat from within games to friends who are not currently playing, to allowing players to play and host servers behind a NAT using ICE-UDP. There's the Copyleft Games Group that's explicitally for game-related projects (games, game engines, game design tools, etc), including helping copyleft games develop sustainable business models and commercial distribution. Note that commercial does not equal proprietary, even Ubuntu is available in a "shiny box" with manual for $19.95 at Best Buy even though the enclosed software is free to use, modify, and redistribute. A project I maintain, PySoy, is a cross-platform 3d game engine specifically for promoting copyleft game development. To my knowledge this is the only project of it's kind - Ogre, Crystal Space, etc are primarily used for proprietary game development and much of their development is driven for the needs of their users (proprietary game developers). PySoy is designed to integrate with Ubuntu and leveraging Ubuntu as a gaming platform, including the engine being based on Gnome libraries (gdk, glib, gobject, cairo, pango, etc) to reduce memory overhead and faster boot time for games since these libraries are already loaded on a standard Ubuntu desktop. We have a subteam of developers (including myself) working on stronger integration with the Ubuntu desktop, including integrating with the new cloud computing platform being developed by the Ubuntu community, but even this does not constitute PySoy itself being appropriate as an Ubuntu team. There's the freedesktop games groups which hosts various discussions on these topics and compiles non-distro-specific information on a wiki. There's various discussions here about standardizing on XMPP as "our" version of XBox Live and Sony's social gaming aspects (buddy list integration, displaying what game a friend is playing, etc). We lack a *large quantity* of *quality games* (no linux game rivals any > other "platform selling" game. ) > We are in agreement on all points you stated, we only disagree in this being an appropriate venue for solving those problems. Though, I'd like to encourage you to move your focus from getting existing "Large game companies" to starting new companies which leverage copyleft development as part of the business model. The industry will follow once the model has proven viable, many high quality proprietary games have been designed by a handful of guys working in a small office. Discussion along these lines belong around CGG and similar groups which can provide direct advice and support on starting a business. On Wed, May 13, 2009 at 7:01 AM, Luke Benstead <[email protected]> wrote: > I believe that the way to draw people to developing for Ubuntu is to > set up a website (like launchpad) which is designed for people to > create dev teams, share resources (models, sounds, textures etc.) Building a "resource sharing" site is a common suggestion. However, regardless to the quality, clipart does not make for quality games. Games have their own artistic styles. Unless you're going to make a game where game characters from different games battle it out (ala Super Smash Brothers) a site which shares resources like this is unlikely to be useful for commercial-quality games. Even Super Smash Brothers remodels characters from other games to fit it's own artistic style and technical requirements for their engine. Yes - copyleft games thus far lack the sort of polish that artistic talent could provide. This needs to be solved by attracting skilled modelers and sound guys to a project, the easiest way to do so is build a business model around the game which allows them to get financially compensated for their work. This is not an problem for an Ubuntu team to solve. We're a marketing subteam, not a hosting or development team, certainly not a business incubator or startup advisory group. There are other groups (as above) for tackling those other issues.
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