Imagine if Blizzard designed a desktop

[triptoe]

I have been a fan of blizzard games since i was a fan of PC games... The game DIablo was the first to really catpure my imagination.. and ever after I have not felt the same about games. In a way it spoiled my experience for many games.. because it set the bar so high for what i liked and enjoyed in a game... and i could never even touch consoles after that.

I love the interfaces blizzard designs.. starting with the original diablo.. and of course world of warcraft 3... and WoW is pretty good too. Imagine what a kick *** desktop blizzard could design on top of linux with some good 3d acceleration. What do ya think?

[curuxz]

I think blizzard are possibly the least likely out of anyone in the world to design ANYTHING for linux lol!

Don't get me wrong, love the games, but they are known to HATE linux :(:(:(


it would look cool tho :) look at the starcraft2 site for instance!

[shad0w_walker]

No offense but i would hate to see games developers creating interfaces for my whole desktop. Game interfaces are designed for very narrow, specific functions and tend not to have that much in common with a normal desktop, so they may seem fantastic in the game but that is because they were built around everything that game can do and nothing more.

[Anthem]

Blizzard "hates" Linux? That's probably a tiny bit strong.

They generally don't release on Linux because they don't see it as commercially viable.

There's a difference.

[Polygon]

how do they hate linux? they were rumored to even had made a WoW linux client but didnt release it because there isnt enough of a commercial interest for them to support it

But im sure they are too busy making sure that Starcraft 2 doesn't suck to design a desktop :D

[a12ctic]

How does a company that makes sure that their games all run smoothly in wine/cedega "hate linux"? They even worked directly with Transgaming...

There is one reason, and one reason only why Blizz will not make linux ports (until it is bigger at least) and that is the limitless problems that can arise by all the differences in linux flavors.

[Kingsley]

Blizzard desktops wouldn't have widgets, they'd have add-ons.

[starcraft.man]

I think blizzard should stick to games. Oh and I think they should give me a DAMN STARCRAFT GAME!!!! Sorry, I've really waited long enough for em to give me something (I'd even settle for Ghost right now).

Oh and games and desktop environments share very little in common, as noted.

Grrrr, this got me upset... I need to kill some zerg.

[PrimoTurbo]

Not sure if it would be such a great idea...
http://img376.imageshack.us/img376/9642/untitled1pw6.jpg

[triptoe]

lol

[bread eyes]

It would probably take them 6 years or something to make something sub par.

[Polygon]

It would probably take them 6 years or something to make something sub par.

because blizzard is defenitly know for making sub par things. I mean, starcraft brood war? meh! its only played as the national sport of south korea, nothing major. World of warcraft? only something like 10 million subscribers..... not that impressive :roll:

and btw that screenshot is FUNNY! lol, using the mini map to navigate through your hard drive, and the icons on the right for copy/cut/paste xD

[curuxz]

I said they 'hate' linux because they have made lots of comments before about not even attempting to make linux compatible products. Didnt they also ban someone from one of their sites just for asking or something along those lines....

[Dimitriid]

Not subpar ok, but still stupidly long for a proprietary code company. The most annoying kind of pc user I know is the forgiving windows gamer that is so obsessed about games that he can forgive and forget endless strings of customer abuse.

There is no excuse for taking THAT LONG to make a game when infinitely more complex software is developed 10x faster with volunteer work.

[DoctorMO]

Blizzard Entrainment and EA Games are sworn enemies of mine; I shall use what resources I have to vanquish them and with my Level 70 mage and a good pyroblast... I stand a good chance.

No seriously, Blizzard is on my boycott list for just being generally bad people.

[Xzallion]

Not subpar ok, but still stupidly long for a proprietary code company. The most annoying kind of pc user I know is the forgiving windows gamer that is so obsessed about games that he can forgive and forget endless strings of customer abuse.

There is no excuse for taking THAT LONG to make a game when infinitely more complex software is developed 10x faster with volunteer work.

I'm not sure you understand just how complex most games are. Not to mention just balancing game mechanics can take forever, let alone designing the art, music, code, and the extensive testing they put into those games. What "complex" software is being developed ten times faster with volunteers?

[vexorian]

if blizzard designed a desktop it would be terrible, and full of totally unstandard formats and languages, blizzard got one of the most pathologic NIH syndromes.

[DeadSuperHero]

It could actually look pretty neat.
But, a more important question: What if I.d software made a desktop?
They practically put them all over Doom3. They would actually do a pretty good job.

[Polygon]

Not subpar ok, but still stupidly long for a proprietary code company. The most annoying kind of pc user I know is the forgiving windows gamer that is so obsessed about games that he can forgive and forget endless strings of customer abuse.

There is no excuse for taking THAT LONG to make a game when infinitely more complex software is developed 10x faster with volunteer work.

And that kind of work and dedication to stuff like balance (talking starcraft here), coding and storyline and stuff is one of the reasons starcraft brood war is still one of the most played RTS's even after 9 years and growing.

Blizzard has been working on sc2 since 2003, but got a little delayed because of world of warcraft, and the fact that the entire of company of blizzard works on one game at a time, aka they all work on starcraft 2, then world of warcraft burning crusade, they dont have like 1/2 design sc2 and another half do a wow expansion. Its all or nothing, save like a few people to upkeep their old games. (like patches)

i like blizzard. one of the few companies to make mac ports of their games, and they play fine in wine. sure i disagree paying 15 bucks a month to play a mmorpg,..... so i just dont play it. SC2 isnt going to have a subscription based multiplayer, so its all good.

[DoctorMO]

I'm not sure you understand just how complex most games are. Not to mention just balancing game mechanics can take forever, let alone designing the art, music, code, and the extensive testing they put into those games. What "complex" software is being developed ten times faster with volunteers?

Nah, take 20 to 30 artists from deviantART, some gui people from openclipart, 4 or 5 experienced game producers and managers from current open source games or application projects, sound people from ccMixer or Jamendo, coders and developers from the open source and free software world leaning on existing open source code, engines and libraries, lots of testers and a few game architects from the community at large.

Make a great game out of that, probably sell it on CD too.

Remember before Free Software, 'they' said that creating a free operating system was too difficult and complex.

[Xzallion]

DoctorMo, you just outlined the plan I had on a game I'm working on, minus the deviantArt and Openclipart parts.

[DoctorMO]

I wouldn't diss the artists, you'll need good ones.

[phrostbyte]

Meh, never was a fan of Blizzard games. They all seem pretty amturish and cartoony. And playing WoW is a massive waste of time.

[BDNiner]

Nah, take 20 to 30 artists from deviantART, some gui people from openclipart, 4 or 5 experienced game producers and managers from current open source games or application projects, sound people from ccMixer or Jamendo, coders and developers from the open source and free software world leaning on existing open source code, engines and libraries, lots of testers and a few game architects from the community at large.

Make a great game out of that, probably sell it on CD too.

Remember before Free Software, 'they' said that creating a free operating system was too difficult and complex.

If it is was really that easy then there would be a lot more games on linux. There sure are a lot of able and extremely talented programmers for linux who probably could write some incredible games. The problem is there are too many distributions of linux and it would be difficult to get one game working well on all of them. It is hard enough to get regular software to work on the different flavors of linux. And 'they' were right, Linux didn't happen over night. It has been very difficult to get to this point. And all linux users will agree that it is very complex.

[Anthem]

Nah, take 20 to 30 artists from deviantART, some gui people from openclipart, 4 or 5 experienced game producers and managers from current open source games or application projects, sound people from ccMixer or Jamendo, coders and developers from the open source and free software world leaning on existing open source code, engines and libraries, lots of testers and a few game architects from the community at large.
Then do it.

There aren't any open source games comparable to WOW/Starcraft/Warcraft.

If there's nothing stopping you, then why isn't it done yet?

[cmat]

DoctorMo, you just outlined the plan I had on a game I'm working on, minus the deviantArt and Openclipart parts.

Man artists are really important. I was working on a RTS/FPS sim game. I was good for programming, but I realized how hard it was to do art of any kind. I abandoned a decent project. And I regret it.

[OffHand]

Not sure if it would be such a great idea...
http://img376.imageshack.us/img376/9642/untitled1pw6.jpg

That really cracked me up :lolflag:

[DeadSuperHero]

Actually, I think people need to first make more Open-Source game engines to build off of, as well as easy to use Open-Source editors.
Something similar in design to the current Adventure Game Studio (if ONLY it were Open Source)