Wishlist for Porting Projects (Pt. 2)

[L33F3R]

Not really. 10,000 using Wine is 10,000 customers that they don't have to do anything else for. The people willing to use Wine to play the game are not going to go out and buy another copy just for a Linux port, and the poeple who won't/can't use Wine are an unknown minority (as far as their sales figures are concerned).

if u cant use wine you obviously dont know how to install software.

But honestly you make a valid point. Older games both are a major putoff due to age and typically run well in wine. Because they run well in wine there is little incentive to purchase the same damn thing again.

[Fixxer_Linux]

What about "Pariah" ?
This game old of 2 years was made using the UT2004 engine. This could be relatively easy to port.
However, Pariah hasn't been the game of the year and has been rapidely forgotten. I took me at least 2 two and some googling to remember the name of that damn game.
There was a petition for porting Pariah to linux, but there was no answer from the editor of Pariah.

Probably better to forget, but it's at least worth a post...

[Olly]

Not really. 10,000 using Wine is 10,000 customers that they don't have to do anything else for. The people willing to use Wine to play the game are not going to go out and buy another copy just for a Linux port, and the poeple who won't/can't use Wine are an unknown minority (as far as their sales figures are concerned).

Yeah i guess thats true, i some times wonder how many sales the linux games companies makes, would be interested if they posted them at some point.

Also thought of another game what about independance war 2 edge of chaos might be another possibility.

[Svartalf]

I actually bought to copies one for my girlfriend and one for me, its a great game but a bit dated so sacred 2 which is brand new would be great, and surely sell better, i tend to be put of buy a lot of linux games mainly because of there age, but still buy a few.

Unfortunately, the people doing the porting, LGP, myself (through LGP and independently...), and others, oftentimes don't have a big say in what does/doesn't get ported. The studios and publishers do. The older games are what are often accessable in the first place. While you might be "put off", any time you are, you're not helping your position ANY. They have seen some of the results of that thinking you're espousing there and it's costing us down the line.

If you like the game, at this stage, you need to divorce the concept of "age", "cost", etc. because they're not going to listen to anything but sales figures. We've got very, very poor sales figures in our past on things that should have been blow-out sellers. Because we couldn't wait for the Linux version. Because it was "old". Because it was "expensive". As a result, what you see available is sort of the wages of that thinking.

Heh... If Caster keeps going as well as it's currently doing, coupled with a few of the other indie titles I'm about to start propositioning, I'll have better ammo for LGP and myself to see quite a bit better deals in the medium term future.

I can understand this although i think there are already quite a lot of linux player / users only because i come across them quite often in game, and i know there are some linux specific guild, the game work really well with wine however its a shame because to ncsoft we would all show up as windows users.

WINE's not our friend in that regard. It's part of WHY I say what I've always said about it. It's roughly analogous to the Win3.11 compatibility mode on OS/2- and that was part of what doomed THAT OS to obscurity. (There's definitely other factors there, but that was one of the biggies that didn't help...)

shame there not a way of reporting back to the games company that your using wine to play there game that way they would get some stats on how many player are not using windows, they would also be able to say if we get 10,000 people using wine we will make a native port or somethng along those lines.

Unfortunately, that wouldn't help things. As others have pointed out- if they have that figure, it's 10k people that were' just happy fine with using what they were already producing. That's 10k people that're willing to settle for something that could get broken on a moment's notice or a change in the game (Witness what happened to all those World of Warcraft Linux users- and they were just going to screw all those subscribers until a big enough stink was brought about over it... With WINE, you could be one game update away from that sort of thing with no recourse. The box typically says WINDOWS, not WINE- if it doesn't work, you won't get a refund on it. ).

Why settle on that score? If you're going to settle, why not do things that might help lessen having to settle in the medium to long term?

[Apopas]

Not really. 10,000 using Wine is 10,000 customers that they don't have to do anything else for. The people willing to use Wine to play the game are not going to go out and buy another copy just for a Linux port, and the poeple who won't/can't use Wine are an unknown minority (as far as their sales figures are concerned).

What do you mean they don't have to do anything else for?
Probably they won't buy a new copy just for Linux but most of these guys would buy the Linux version at first place if they had the chance. Also, as far as I have seen and believe, a lot of guys are eager to pirate the game they can play only under wine, while they prefer to buy the games which have native ports since there is always the manner "You don't support me, so I don't support you".

[Svartalf]

Yeah i guess thats true, i some times wonder how many sales the linux games companies makes, would be interested if they posted them at some point.

I can't reveal any current sales figures that I know about, but...

Q3:Arena sold only approximately 200 copies in the past. Unfortunately, with the other figures we've seen on that game, the number SHOULD have been something on the order of about 20k or so. Why? Because people couldn't wait three or so weeks on the Linux version, bought the Windows version, and "patched" it with the conversion binaries. This was one of the things that sealed Loki Games' fate, by the way. It's also why we don't have official Linux versions of anything from iD- it's all the same, buy the Windows version and "patch" it.

And, I can't reveal too much about LGP info, but...

My titles that I've worked on haven't done as well as they ought to. We're seeing more bittorrent flow of them than sales- to the point that we've got people that have infringed copies trying to get technical support on the stuff.

X3 or Sacred- I do know that they're doing "okay" right at the moment, but could be doing better on their sales at this point.

Caster...heh...much, much better, but not QUITE good enough yet.

Also thought of another game what about independance war 2 edge of chaos might be another possibility.

I'll go back through the thread and add it, probably this weekend. It's in the "maybe" pile for now.

[Svartalf]

What do you mean they don't have to do anything else for?

I believe they were referring to situations with World of Warcraft, City of Heroes, etc.

You don't have a choice in the matter with those games. You either run it under WINE or VirtualBox with it's new 3D support if the game uses OpenGL or enough of the D3D shim to work right...

[Svartalf]

But honestly you make a valid point. Older games both are a major putoff due to age and typically run well in wine. Because they run well in wine there is little incentive to purchase the same damn thing again.

Depends on the game.

Tropico doesn't work well.
Diablo doesn't really work well. (But Diablo II does... My only WINE game right at the moment...)
There's others.

WINE doesn't do QUITE as well at this stuff as everyone thinks it does. It's getting better all the time, but it's NOT the answer for things people make it out to be.

[djack]

What do you mean they don't have to do anything else for?

If your customers are already running the game under Wine, what commercial reason is there to put in the time and expense of a Linux port?

Probably they won't buy a new copy just for Linux but most of these guys would buy the Linux version at first place if they had the chance.

Yes, but why bother with a port if those same people would just buy the Windows version instead?

Also, as far as I have seen and believe, a lot of guys are eager to pirate the game they can play only under wine, while they prefer to buy the games which have native ports since there is always the manner "You don't support me, so I don't support you".

Pirates aren't customers.

[Apopas]

Q3:Arena sold only approximately 200 copies in the past. Unfortunately, with the other figures we've seen on that game, the number SHOULD have been something on the order of about 20k or so. Why? Because people couldn't wait three or so weeks on the Linux version, bought the Windows version, and "patched" it with the conversion binaries. This was one of the things that sealed Loki Games' fate, by the way. It's also why we don't have official Linux versions of anything from iD- it's all the same, buy the Windows version and "patch" it.

That's so distressing and I suppose the same happened with Unreal Tournament as well, right?

X3 or Sacred- I do know that they're doing "okay" right at the moment, but could be doing better on their sales at this point.

Caster...heh...much, much better, but not QUITE good enough yet.

Do you have any idea what was the most succesful port so far?