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View Full Version : is it worth porting games to Linux? Hemisphere responds



ronnielsen1
June 30th, 2010, 11:24 AM
A little over a month ago we released the Linux port of Osmos, promising statistics on our sales and downloads. We wanted to find out - from a financial perspective, for our studio - “is it worth porting games to Linux?”
The short, simple answer… is “yes.”


http://www.hemispheregames.com/2010/06/23/linux-the-numbers/

http://www.hemispheregames.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/distros-300x292.jpg

nrs
June 30th, 2010, 12:46 PM
That piechart is irrelevant. :P It just shows the breakdown of Linux packaging instead of Linux sales.

http://www.hemispheregames.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/download_percentages.jpg
There we go.

ronnielsen1
June 30th, 2010, 01:15 PM
Just thought it was interesting to see such a high percentage of debs over rpms

RiceMonster
June 30th, 2010, 01:19 PM
Just thought it was interesting to see such a high percentage of debs over rpms

But it was irrelevant to the point you wanted to get across.

"Porting games to Linux has a definite advantage. Here's a chart that shows deb is more popular them rpm." Huh?

ZarathustraDK
June 30th, 2010, 02:05 PM
That piechart is irrelevant. :P It just shows the breakdown of Linux packaging instead of Linux sales.

http://www.hemispheregames.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/download_percentages.jpg
There we go.

I hate to be the one to point it out so late, but it seems Hemisphere operates with 128% pies ^^

Simian Man
June 30th, 2010, 02:08 PM
I hate to be the one to point it out so late, but it seems Hemisphere operates with 128% pies ^^


You may notice that the percentages add up to more than 100; this is because customers can download on multiple platforms.


_

ronnielsen1
June 30th, 2010, 02:34 PM
But it was irrelevant to the point you wanted to get across.

I stand corrected. I should have chosen the other pie chart

](*,)

ZarathustraDK
June 30th, 2010, 03:17 PM
Ah didn't see that multi-platform part, makes sense now :)

sdowney717
June 30th, 2010, 03:31 PM
that game works well for me on Linux.
they have a demo you can try out.

Windows is not needed if developers would port all their software.

forrestcupp
June 30th, 2010, 03:54 PM
This whole thread is irrelevant to the gaming industry. Just look at the game in question. It's an unknown game that a bunch of Windows users aren't going to buy anyway. Any time Linux users see some little game that is ported, they jump all over it, whether it's worth the $10 or not. Since it didn't have a large volume of Windows customers anyway, the Linux numbers look huge.

Now take a Windows game that sells in the millions of copies and port it to Linux and the numbers won't look so big.

The moral of the story: porting to Linux can be good for small-time game devs, but that definitely doesn't prove it would be worth it for the big dogs.

aeiah
June 30th, 2010, 03:57 PM
there's less competition on linux. if the big studios supported linux, the little guys perhaps wouldn't see it as financially viable. i guess we'll find out of steam ever gets rolled out on linux.

the deb thing isnt too suprising. we're talking home desktops here. if it was a commercial server application we may find a different spread.

rajeev1204
June 30th, 2010, 03:59 PM
this whole thread is irrelevant to the gaming industry. Just look at the game in question. It's an unknown game that a bunch of windows users aren't going to buy anyway. Any time linux users see some little game that is ported, they jump all over it, whether it's worth the $10 or not. Since it didn't have a large volume of windows customers anyway, the linux numbers look huge.

Now take a windows game that sells in the millions of copies and port it to linux and the numbers won't look so big.

The moral of the story: Porting to linux can be good for small-time game devs, but that definitely doesn't prove it would be worth it for the big dogs.

+ 10

If that game is their idea of what games in 2010 should be like , then i dont need any linux ports.

But i guess its all about taste.

sudoer541
June 30th, 2010, 04:04 PM
I hate to be the one to point it out so late, but it seems Hemisphere operates with 128% pies ^^


Pie chart fail?

whiskeylover
June 30th, 2010, 04:15 PM
Pie chart fail?


http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=9529742&postcount=6

betrunkenaffe
June 30th, 2010, 04:44 PM
+ 10

If that game is their idea of what games in 2010 should be like , then i dont need any linux ports.

But i guess its all about taste.

I guess it is all about taste, I bought the game on Steam before I knew about a Linux port (in fact, this was the first I heard of it being on Linux). It's a very fun game and was a very worthwhile buy. I run by the standard of if I get 1$/hour of playtime, was a good buy. I think I ended up with around 10 hours of playtime (but only paid like 2-3$ for it).

I very much dislike this attitude of "it didn't cost 20 million to make, it isn't very good". I feel sorry for those with it because of all the quality games they are preventing themselves from ever trying.

Whether it is because of lack of competition or because the big boxes don't port to Linux, the simple fact still remains, there is a demand and whenever supply becomes available, profit is to be made. Ignoring this fact is detrimental to the companies themselves and as time goes on, there will be a shift towards more ports. Given 1% OS market share and 1/3 the sales of Windows platforms, gaming is clearly something that the Linux users do (either through Windows, consoles or even just foss based).

phrostbyte
June 30th, 2010, 04:48 PM
I guess it is all about taste, I bought the game on Steam before I knew about a Linux port (in fact, this was the first I heard of it being on Linux). It's a very fun game and was a very worthwhile buy. I run by the standard of if I get 1$/hour of playtime, was a good buy. I think I ended up with around 10 hours of playtime (but only paid like 2-3$ for it).

I very much dislike this attitude of "it didn't cost 20 million to make, it isn't very good". I feel sorry for those with it because of all the quality games they are preventing themselves from ever trying.

Whether it is because of lack of competition or because the big boxes don't port to Linux, the simple fact still remains, there is a demand and whenever supply becomes available, profit is to be made. Ignoring this fact is detrimental to the companies themselves and as time goes on, there will be a shift towards more ports. Given 1% OS market share and 1/3 the sales of Windows platforms, gaming is clearly something that the Linux users do (either through Windows, consoles or even just foss based).

I want my exploding ninja chickens to be 5,000,000 poly 8xAA, thank you very much. :p

nrs
June 30th, 2010, 04:52 PM
+ 10

If that game is their idea of what games in 2010 should be like , then i dont need any linux ports.

But i guess its all about taste.
Because if it doesn't look like Crysis it doesn't look good! :rolleyes:
http://vimeo.com/5892502 is that seriously considered ugly & dated? simple yes, but ugly?

JDShu
June 30th, 2010, 05:03 PM
Osmos is a very well polished game. I played the demo and have been considering buying it.

antenna
June 30th, 2010, 05:13 PM
Because if it doesn't look like Crysis it doesn't look good! :rolleyes:
http://vimeo.com/5892502 is that seriously considered ugly & dated? simple yes, but ugly?


Agreed. It's a nice looking and well polished game that is better than some of the large publisher games I have played lately.

BigSilly
June 30th, 2010, 07:33 PM
Surprised at some of the negative attitudes here. I for one am a big fan of the indie games scene, and all the happier for the fact that it's cost effective to get these games on Linux. Modern gaming these days leaves me feeling very jaded. I grew up on 8 and 16 bit gaming, and to me a great deal of indie games are much closer the natural successors to that era than a lot of the tripe that turns up on the shelves at HMV.

Long live indie gaming, and long may it reign on Linux. :p

j.bell730
June 30th, 2010, 07:46 PM
Good to see more indie devs getting into game making, and many succeeding, as well.

forrestcupp
June 30th, 2010, 09:00 PM
Surprised at some of the negative attitudes here.

I guess my post was what kicked off the "negative attitudes" and that wasn't even my point.

My point was just that this case is not standard for the gaming industry. The percentage of Linux customers is going to be high when there already aren't many Windows customers. But if you have a game with over a million Windows customers, the Linux percentage is going to be very, very low, and it's not worth the cost of porting in those cases.

I'm not trashing indie games or saying anything about how fun this particular game is. I'm merely saying that this case is not anywhere close to an accurate forecast of the profitability of the overall porting of games to Linux. This case is extremely biased toward Linux users.

rajeev1204
July 1st, 2010, 07:23 AM
Well, my post was 2 things, i seconded forrestcup's comment about the pies being skewed ,and 2nd i am one of those gamers who play the big windows games.

So that second point is my opinion, and iam keeping it .Forrestcup need not feel sorry for it.

Anyway, i didnt like the video of that game posted on the site and i have seen so many bad space games , i dislike any new ones i see.

If its good and you like it, please do go ahead and buy it .I like the million dollar fancy ones with shiny graphics and zero gameplay.

Btw, for those who like indie games , do try machinarium.

rajeev1204
July 1st, 2010, 07:28 AM
Because if it doesn't look like Crysis it doesn't look good! :rolleyes:
http://vimeo.com/5892502 is that seriously considered ugly & dated? simple yes, but ugly?


I said its all about taste .Its that very video which makes me dislike the game. Maybe the video doesnt make it clear enough to me what the hell the game is about .


I like the fancy ones with shiny graphics and zero gameplay .I have an expensive video card so this game isnt worth its time .I dont own crysis btw but that video looks dated to me.

I like machinarium a lot though. Have you people tried it ? http://machinarium.net/

forrestcupp
July 1st, 2010, 03:15 PM
I said its all about taste .Its that very video which makes me dislike the game. Maybe the video doesnt make it clear enough to me what the hell the game is about .


I like the fancy ones with shiny graphics and zero gameplay .I have an expensive video card so this game isnt worth its time .I dont own crysis btw but that video looks dated to me.

I like machinarium a lot though. Have you people tried it ? http://machinarium.net/

I like flashy games, too; that just wasn't my initial point.

Good find on machinarium. I played a little of the demo, and that's pretty cool.

ZarathustraDK
July 1st, 2010, 03:53 PM
It's not really a space-game per se, more like a physics-game. Yeah some of is spacey, stuff like orbits, trajectories and inertia. Other stuff is more like mikrobiology with spheres representing cells, bacteria and the likes.

My guess is "Osmos" is a portmanteau of Cosmos and Osmosis (or did someone beat me to it?).

betrunkenaffe
July 1st, 2010, 05:08 PM
Yeah, no space to it at all...

Machinarium is good, enjoyed that one greatly. I think the last big budget game I bought (for computer) was Bioshock, I realized then that I would never get 60 hours out of them. Most of the big cost games I find have at best okay gameplay and while they are pretty looking, nothing else to really warrant their cost. Which is why I agreed, it's all about taste.

sudoer541
July 1st, 2010, 06:14 PM
http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=9529742&postcount=6


Makes sense, thanks!!!!!!!!!:D

rajeev1204
July 2nd, 2010, 01:25 PM
Yeah, no space to it at all...

Machinarium is good, enjoyed that one greatly. I think the last big budget game I bought (for computer) was Bioshock, I realized then that I would never get 60 hours out of them. Most of the big cost games I find have at best okay gameplay and while they are pretty looking, nothing else to really warrant their cost. Which is why I agreed, it's all about taste.


Right now iam playing bad company 2 and thoroughly enjoying it, but i will have to say they dont make games like quake or unreal anymore .

A pathetic 7 maps is all they give you and no SDK while unreal if iam not wrong has like 500 user made maps.

I hope to make my own q4 map soon .Just set up a q4 server, has been my long time dream . :)

Anyways, its all off-topic . :) But like every user here on the forums, i too dream of a day when all games either big or small have a linux client.

sdowney717
July 2nd, 2010, 02:13 PM
The moral of the story: porting to Linux can be good for small-time game devs, but that definitely doesn't prove it would be worth it for the big dogs.
__________________

ok true.
So one way to help solve this would be for US govt to pass a law mandating open source Linux OS for government uses. Then the govt workers would demand better linux games on their work PC's.

forrestcupp
July 2nd, 2010, 02:26 PM
ok true.
So one way to help solve this would be for US govt to pass a law mandating open source Linux OS for government uses. Then the govt workers would demand better linux games on their work PC's.

Lol. So true. :)

donkyhotay
July 2nd, 2010, 02:44 PM
ok true.
So one way to help solve this would be for US govt to pass a law mandating open source Linux OS for government uses. Then the govt workers would demand better linux games on their work PC's.

Not happening, other governments of course will hopefully migrate but with MS based here the USA government won't migrate unless every other country already has and even then I suspect they won't. I can just see this end up being like the metric system, we're the last major country that hasn't converted yet and there is very little reason why we haven't at least *started* to convert everything to the metric system. (my car gets 20 furlongs to the hogshead and thats the way I like it!)

JaspSoft
July 2nd, 2010, 03:02 PM
Any time Linux users see some little game that is ported, they jump all over it, whether it's worth the $10 or not.

I'm guilty of that.

I bought Jets 'n' Guns some time ago. Great game, but like every piece of software I have ever paid money for, it is now in the bin.

betrunkenaffe
July 2nd, 2010, 03:24 PM
Not happening, other governments of course will hopefully migrate but with MS based here the USA government won't migrate unless every other country already has and even then I suspect they won't. I can just see this end up being like the metric system, we're the last major country that hasn't converted yet and there is very little reason why we haven't at least *started* to convert everything to the metric system. (my car gets 20 furlongs to the hogshead and thats the way I like it!)

From my understanding, US labs all use metric system so the most important location for the switch has been done. The non-scientific community could use donkey legs for distance and whales for weights and wouldn't matter.