[quote]I just wanted to add that we here are game developers. And unfortunately, Linux is a piece of shit when it comes to gaming. (We pray that a game studio releases their source code of a 6 year old game, so that someone can build a Linux port). Are there any Linux game port companies left? I don’t think so. So why should we, Java game programmers build Linux games if nobody cares?
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Don’t make the mistake of thinking people don’t care. Windows comes free with nearly all PC’s (and you don’t usually get a refund if you ask for a PC without one, thanks to some rather dodgy MS practices). If you have a PC, you probably have windows…even if you run Linux, if you’re a games player you keep windows around simply to play games.
There was a time when you kept windows around mainly because there were lots of basic apps you occasionally needed that only existed on windows - but now there’s a top-notch web-browser, email, graphical IDE’s, desktop, DVD/mpeg/mp3 players, Office clone that’s 99% compatible with MSOffice, etc etc. IME, few people actually need Windows for anything other than games these days…leaving aside all those who depend on custom applications.
Hence people like lokigames go out of business at least partly because the vast majority of PC players who’d play a linux conversion already can play it on windows. And for many of the games, you had to buy the original first anyway - so why the heck would you bother paying extra to be able to play something you already owned on linux as well as windows? (cough cough American business practices - sell you something you already own :P).
Healthy demand for linux games exists, but it’s masked by the widespread existence of Windows. This is a chicken-and-egg situation of course - until the good games start appearing on linux and windows simultaneously, people will still need to reboot into windows to play their favourite games, and so won’t bother showing demand for any particular game to move to linux - e.g. they have to reboot to play Doom3 anyway, so they don’t mind doing it for Warcraft 4 as well. But when (if) a significant number of people’s favourite games don’t need the reboot, they will be less inclined to play the games that require extra effort (no-one enjoys rebooting ;)).
IMHO even if such a sea-change occurs, it’s at least 5 years away, and will only happen because - like RenderWare - the cost economics of writing in java can very rapidly make java games the norm (look at how fast and large RW grew…admittedly this is largely due to their infamous sales force, but it also had something to do with the palpable sense of relief to developers who no longer had to support three or four target platforms, but just one).
IMHO.
