Categories
Games Geek / Technical Politics/Government

Richard Stallman Finds Love Through World of Warcraft

RMS is known for his promotion of Free Software, or maybe more so for his disdain of non-Free, proprietary software. So it came as a surprise to many visitors to the GNU home page to see an announcement not asking for a call to arms against software patents or so-called DRM, but to say that he was getting married.

What makes the news surprising? He found his soon-to-be wife by playing World of Warcraft.

RMS, the founder of the Free Software movement, playing WoW?

At first, I didn’t want anything to do with WoW, but as I found more and more of the people I knew playing it, I had to look into it. Since this entertainment seems to distract so many people from otherwise being productive at the Free Software Foundation, I thought perhaps if we tried to create a free alternative, it would remind people of our mission.

…

It was a few days later when I realized that I was really hungry. I hadn’t eaten! This game was dangerous! But I just had to keep playing. Well, it was for research for the free alternative we would create later, of course.

Within weeks, he had participated in a few raids as his Paladin, rms53, and that’s when he met Tybressa, the Priestess.

I began each session as I always did, by telling everyone about the values of free software, hoping to recruit people into developing the free alternative. Tybressa at first didn’t seem to understand what freedoms I was talking about. I think she thought it was an in-character game thing! We spent the next few hours walking and talking…well, virtually, I mean. She lives in San Francisco, and I live in Boston. Still, it was as if we had known each other forever.

Since that time, they always make sure to login at the same time. Tybressa, who is actually 54-year-old Sheila Chesil, has been playing WoW since the MMORPG was launched. She has been helping RMS get the hang of the game as well as providing companionship.

I don’t know. I just felt like he was a very nice newbie, and I always try to help them out. When he started going on about freedom, I thought he was role-playing, and so I played along. Since then, we’ve been inseparable.

Chesil had arranged to meet RMS at a protest he was organizing, and they have made it a point to meet each other every month.

Asked about his opinion on WoW as a proprietary piece of entertainment, RMS said, “Well, the FSF has never really focused on entertainment too heavily, and at least in my case, I have found a new life partner through it, so it can’t be that bad.”

The marriage will take place in Azeroth, although no date has been set yet.

Bradley M. Kuhn, former executive director of the FSF, was not aware of RMS’ pending wedding. “I was a bit worried when he wouldn’t come to meetings he had scheduled with the Software Freedom Law Center. I guess the guy had other priorities.”

[tags]World of Warcraft, GPL, FSF, free software, RMS, video games[/tags]

Categories
Game Development Linux Game Development Personal Development

Thousander Club Update: March 31st

For this week’s Thousander Club update:

Game Hours: 409.25(previous two years) + 37 (current year) = 446.25 / 1000
Game Ideas: 710 (previous two years) + 35 (current year) = 745 / 1000

I tend to hear a lot of excuses for why people won’t develop games for a Linux-based platform. There’s too many different distributions, and it would be a nightmare to support them all. Why would I go through the herculean effort to port a game for such a small market? Linux users don’t pay for software.

To answer the last two questions, read Why Aren’t There More Linux Using Gamers?. To summarize: they exist. They just need more games.

So if the porting effort is worth it, the big issue is supporting all of the different distributions. If we take a look at DistroWatch.com, you’ll see over 300 different names for distributions! Even a major publisher wouldn’t have the resources to test their games against each one, especially when you take into account the different hardware combinations running all of them! It’s enough to make people thankful that there are only 5 different versions of Windows Vista!

The truth is, though, that each of those distributions is just a name for the same OS in different configurations. And you don’t really need to make sure that your game runs on Debian, Mint, Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Xubuntu, Fluxbuntu, Mythbuntu, and Edubuntu. You don’t need to worry about the differences between Fedora and Mandriva. You don’t need to worry about someone rolling their own. If you really want to worry about the differences between distributions, then focus on the types of distributions, such as dpkg/apt-based distros versus RPM-based distros.

If you think about it, if you are making your game for Windows, you’re not concerned about WindowsCE usually. No one freaks out that they won’t be able to support it. They just don’t. For some reason when it comes to porting to Linux, all of a sudden they are including distributions that are meant to run routers or embedded devices when they complain about supporting too many distros. It’s silly.

In my own experience with my current beta testing of Killer Kittens from Katis Minor, I’m finding that most of the problems with making sure my game runs on everyone’s systems are bugs. Not their bugs. My game’s bugs. My game had a dependency on a library on MY system when it should either provide that dependency or not depend on it at all. My game assumed that the dimensions of the screen would be large enough to support it in windowed mode when some people had desktops with the same resolution or smaller.

These kinds of problems aren’t unique to GNU/Linux, either. Windows games that run at 1024×768 won’t look right on systems with a max resolution desktop of 1024×768 unless the game supports fullscreen mode. How many times have you seen someone pass around a work in progress game only to find that it won’t run because it wasn’t able to find MSCVC2005.DLL or some other DLL?

That isn’t to say that developing for Linux-based platforms doesn’t have its own unique challenges. But then, so does the Mac, and people have no problem porting their games there. After all, Mac users pay for software.

But we already pointed out that Linux users do, too.

I’m not saying that making your game portable across three systems is easy, but if you can already acknowledge that making it portable between Windows and Mac is worth the effort, how much more effort can it be to make it work on a third platform? It seems to me that it isn’t that much harder to make a game portable between all three systems, especially from the beginning. So why not?

In any case, I’m getting plenty of feedback from the beta testers. Some of them are using Debian and Ubuntu. Some are using 64-bit versions of these systems. Some are using Slackware. Some are using Red Hat. One person built his own distro. When I find out that my game doesn’t run on one of their systems, I just fix the bug. I’m trying to make this game so that it Just Works, and I’m not going to whine about how hard it is to do it. Whining isn’t very productive. I’ll reap the rewards for my efforts. Whiners will just have a significant number of people who can’t play their games.

[tags]game, game design, productivity, personal development, video game development, indie[/tags]

Categories
Game Design Game Development Games Marketing/Business

Chicago Game Developer Gathering Panel

Last night’s panel was fun, and I think everyone got a lot out of it. My throat is a bit sore from doing so much talking. I think everyone should be glad the time was limited because I felt like I could have kept talking about video games and the business of making them for much longer.

It’s exciting to see so many students interested in game development as a career. When I was going to college, the game development curriculum was just getting launched, and game development was kind of the black sheep of software development. The feeling I always got was “You COULD work in games, but you can also get a REAL job”. Sure, some of my friends knew how cool it could be, but most people didn’t think of making video games as any more of a job than doodling in a notebook. Being interested in game development, I let it become nothing more than a hobby for a long time. At this event, you could feel the enthusiasm in the room after the formal panel was finished. These were people who wanted to make games.

The panel participants covered a wide range of topics. We touched on business, legal, and accounting concerns, such as what business entity to form and the importance of copyright, trademark, and patent laws. We talked about targeting niche markets and how to sell games to them. We talked about the problems with the video game industry as a whole, gender inclusive game design and development, and the market for people who don’t know that they play video games or might like to do so.

I learned later that the supposedly mundane topics focusing on legal and business matters were the most interesting to the students. I think this is great news. When I was first thinking about getting into the video game industry, I assumed I would have to work for a company like Nintendo. Later I figured I’d work at Midway or Konami (they used to have an office outside of Chicago). It was only recently that I realized that I could start my own company, and here was a room full of people who are contemplating doing so!

Since this event was such a success, it looks like the Chicago Game Developer Gathering will be a regular meetup. I think Chicago game developers need more opportunities to connect with each other. San Diego and San Francisco have healthy and active IGDA chapters, but Chicago’s game companies have always seemed unfriendly and less open. Hopefully the CGDG can help Chicago be the game development hub it can be.

Categories
Game Design Game Development Games Marketing/Business

Chicago Game Developer Gathering Today

This post is a reminder that the Chicago Game Developer Gathering is tonight. The panel of indie developers will discuss what it takes to start (and run) a business, how they create games, and what lessons they can share.

I’ll be joined on the panel with Mike Boeh of Retro64, Shawn Recinto of Immersive Realms, and Chauncy Hollingsworth of Zephyr Syndicate. When I participated in the conference call to talk about the panel, it’s obvious that everyone is excited about this event.

Hopefully you’re one of the many people who have registered for it, and I hope to see you there! If you’re not one of those people, I was told that there will be notes and photos up within a few days, and a video should be up a week or so later.

[tags]indie, video games, business[/tags]

Categories
Game Development Linux Game Development Personal Development

Thousander Club Update: March 24th

For this week’s Thousander Club update:

Game Hours: 409.25(previous two years) + 35 (current year) = 444.25 / 1000
Game Ideas: 710 (previous two years) + 35 (current year) = 745 / 1000

Since starting to do beta testing on Killer Kittens, I learned about system library dependencies that my game had. The first problem was a quick fix. I had followed the advice of Dirk Dashing‘s creator in his series, Linux Game Development, which I first read in the ASP newsletter before GameDev.net picked up the articles. In part 2, Troy Hepfner talks about creating binaries that are distributable, and reducing dependencies allows you to ensure that you only provide what you need and no more. One of the options to pass SDL’s configure script was “–enable-sdl-dlopen”, which allows SDL to dynamically link to certain low-level libraries without requiring that they exist. For some reason, my game wouldn’t run on someone’s system because of one of these low-level libraries. It turns out that I had typed “-enable-sdl-open” instead, which failed silently.

The next difficulty involved someone using Ubuntu 64-bit. Apparently there was still a dependency on libaa, which I found was some ascii graphics library. Why was my game depending on it? It wasn’t. The Kyra Sprite Engine was. I spent a few hours digging through the autotools script for it before figuring out that it was including all sorts of random libraries for no good reason. It was like –enable-sdl-dlopen worked for libSDL but Kyra was ignoring the use of it. In the end, I believe the problem involved certain library flags defined in configure.in that really had no business being there. One I removed those flags, libkyra had fewer dependencies and seemed to pay attention to the fact that I am using custom libraries.

Then I found out that SDL_mixer had dependencies on libvorbis and libogg, and since I am not using OGG files, I don’t need those dependencies, either. A quick update of my build scripts, and the problem was fixed.

I’ve posted a thread on HappyPenguin.org to help solve another problem. A couple of beta testers informed me that my game would not run on older distros, such Debian Stable or Slackware 11. They find the following error message: ./killerkittens.bin: /lib/tls/i686/cmov/libc.so.6: version `GLIBC_2.4′ not found (required by ./killerkittens.bin)

I’m really tempted to switch to Java, but it may just be that I can switch away from using the Kyra Sprite Engine and solve most of my dependency problems. I thought that maybe I can release my game and then switch from it to using just SDL (and save 10MB or so, since Kyra is a large library) or changing to Allegro. I may need to change before release.

[tags]game, game design, productivity, personal development, video game development, indie[/tags]

Categories
Marketing/Business Personal Development

Happy Anniversary, GBGames!

Today is the two year anniversary since GBGames, LLC was officially formed! Time to think about what has happened in the past two years.

I announced the creation of the business back in 2006, and I’ve been rereading the comments from people simultaneously congratulating me and encouraging me to make something happen. So far, I’m still not making a profit, but this past year I’ve made twice as much income as the year before. It’s an improvement.

This year, I hope to make more money from my games than from my blog. I also hope to break even. Originally I felt good because my income easily paid for my web hosting and domain name, but the legal costs of forming an LLC and filing the annual reports totals $1000 over two years. My income hasn’t paid for half of that. Looking at it in this way, twice as much income as the year before sounds like it isn’t nearly enough improvement.

I need to get on the ball when it comes to product development. Two years to make a simple clone with a very slight twist is way too long. Since portals release about five to seven games each week, and non-portal games are also getting released fairly often, I can’t lag so much and expect to remain competitive.

More importantly, I need to focus on sales, whatever form it takes. Without sales, you’re sunk. I already knew this fact about business, but it hasn’t been as big a focus as it should have been.

I’m looking forward to another year, and hopefully a more productive and profitable one!

Categories
Game Development Games Linux Game Development Marketing/Business

Killer Kittens from Katis Minor: Beta Testers Wanted

I’m really close to releasing v1.0 of Killer Kittens from Katis Minor, but I need beta testers to help me verify that there aren’t any show-stopping bugs.

I’ve asked a number of people, including a few friends. Unfortunately, it seems that I am having a hard time finding many, as only a few people have responded so far.

That’s where you may come in.

If you are a GNU/Linux user and are interested in trying out a pre-release version of my game, drop me a line using the contact form in About Me. I’d appreciate it if you could tell me as much about your system as possible, including Linux distribution, kernel version, and hardware specs (graphics card, processor, sound card, memory). Also, tell me about your tastes in video games, especially about the types of games you would like to see more often.

If you participate in beta testing, as a thank you, your name will appear in the credits of the game.

Categories
Game Development Personal Development

Thousander Club Update: March 17th

For this week’s Thousander Club update:

Game Hours: 409.25(previous two years) + 28 (current year) = 437.25 / 1000
Game Ideas: 710 (previous two years) + 35 (current year) = 745 / 1000

I updated the graphics. Here is one of the first screen shots I took of this game, way back in December of 2006:

See that background? And the player’s ship? Yeah, those were supposed to be placeholder art. I’ve replaced them finally. The new art isn’t great, and it is still programmer art, but it isn’t horrible. The sky is just an exploded part of the title screen’s background, and the ground is…well, it is still a giant rectangle of green, only it is darker and has different shades of green sprayed around to give a bad illusion of grass. The ship is actually sci-fi looking instead of abstract.

Oh, and I should address this part. I can’t believe I’ve had this project on my plate since 2006! That’s over a year working on a clone! Granted, I’m going through the entire process of making, packaging, and distributing the game, and so it required more work and polish than my Pong clone. I had to make a menu system, for one thing. I also had to deal with figuring out license compliance issues since I am distributing certain libraries the game requires. Not having gone through these issues before, I had a lot of research to do and mistakes to make.

Now that I’m on the tail end of this project, I’m much more confident about tackling the next one. I have build scripts that are far and away much better than they were when I started, and those scripts and my know-how can come with me when I start a new project. It will be great to have the ability to create a distributable file from day one.

[tags]game, game design, productivity, personal development, video game development, indie[/tags]

Categories
Game Development Games Linux Game Development Marketing/Business

Why Aren’t There More Linux-Using Gamers?

Rarely do major game developers and publishers make a cross-platform game, and those that do rarely release the game for all platforms at the same time. Usually if there is a Linux or Mac version of a game, it won’t be released for weeks, months, or even years after the Windows version.

Indie developers seem to follow suit. Introversion Software released Defcon for Windows in September of 2006, and there wasn’t a Linux version of the game until May of 2007. The Mac version was released a month earlier.

At least these games get released. Most developers focus on Windows exclusively. The thinking is that Windows has such a large market share that there is no need to focus on the smaller Mac and Linux user base.

Of course, indie developers have already found that the Mac users are starving for good games. Providing a Mac version can sometimes double your sales, according to the sales figures that some developers have released.

But why not Linux? Oddlabs created Tribal Trouble, and the sales figures were as follows:

Direct online sales: 1500
….. Windows: 460 (31%)
….. Mac OS X: 680 (47%)
….. Linux: 160 (11%)
….. Undefined: 200 (11%)

160 direct sales, while lower than either Windows or Mac sales, are nothing to sneeze at. The conversion rate for Linux was 1.1%, while for Windows it was 0.8%. The difference between having a Linux version of a game and not having one is clearly significant.

And Tribal Trouble is just one example. I know A Tale in the Desert is an MMO, but there were two Linux users for every Windows user subscribed to it at one point. I would love to see stats for Vendetta Online as well.

What about games that release a Linux client after the Windows version has been released? I imagine that sales would be much lower. After all, since there aren’t many games available for GNU/Linux, many gamers will continue to run a Windows machine specifically for games. If they can buy the game for Windows, why wait for the Linux version to be released?

And so publishers find no reason to support a completely new platform when they know that their customers will buy their games anyway. Those publishers who invest in a port after the original Windows release will of course be disappointed when the only people buying the Linux version of the game will be those who waited patiently. Linux users who play games on Windows aren’t going to buy the game a second time just because it is available on their OS of choice. I’m wondering how Defcon for Linux sold since it was released seven months after the Windows version. I would also love to see a comparison to Darwinia, since the time between the Windows release and the Linux release was a little over a week.

A lot of people point to the now-dead Loki Games as proof that there is no market for Linux games, but from what I was able to learn about Loki’s business, it didn’t close its doors due to lack of sales so much as bad business management. Having the owner of your company order tens of thousands of units over what could be sold is painful financially, but Loki: A promising plan gone terribly wrong also details a lot of the shadiness that contributed to the damage. It’s hard enough to be a success when running a business without someone sabotaging it.

Of course, why would I buy Quake 3 Arena (I actually do have the Loki Q3A tin, still unopened, that I found at a store after Loki was liquidated), Railroad Tycoon II, or any number of games for Linux when I was already playing them on Windows? Was Loki going to make original, exclusive games as well as ports? It didn’t seem like it was going to do so anytime soon.

So perhaps the problem isn’t so much that there aren’t any games for Linux. While there are fewer games, they exist. It’s just that most of them were bought and paid for when they were initially released on a different platform, and people don’t like spending money on the same product twice. At least with Quake 3 Arena, I can use the same CD to play on my Linux-based system as well as my Windows system. When I downloaded the full versions of Orbz and Dark Horizons:Lore Invasion from Garage Games, I could grab the Windows, Mac, or Linux versions without paying separately for each. Now compare the experience with buying The Sims for the Mac. If you already own the PC version and just bought a Mac? Tough. EA outsourced the port to another company, and that company handles Mac sales. It’s the same game, but you’re expected to treat it as if there are two separate games to pay for. Great for EA, but not so great for the customer. I know of one person who decided that paying for The Sims and all of the expansion packs a second time just to play it on her new computer was not worth it, and so she turned to not-so-legal channels instead.

Anyway, back to the existence of Linux games…where are they?

TuxGames and Linux Game Publishing are two online retailers that get mentioned often. It seems most of their catalog includes major publishers’ offerings, such as X3: Reunion and Unreal Tournament 3

LinuxGames.com is always announcing new games, but there is also a podcast, sometimes featuring icculus, a former Loki employee who makes a living porting games and game engines to Linux. The Linux Game Tome will announce new games as well, but the forums and irc channels are great places to talk about games, whether playing them or developing them.

And usually on these news sites you will find indie game developers mentioned almost as often as the open source games are. In fact, recently an update to Dark Horizons: Lore was in the news, sitting next to stories about Nvidia’s new 3D accelerated drivers and updates to Abuse and Battle for Wesnoth.

With over 30,000 registered IDs in the forums, even if not all of them are active, you have to wonder what the total market for Linux gamers looks like. Just 160 of them paid for a Real Time Strategy game about vikings and islanders. The creator of Dirk Dashing claimed that 33% of total sales were from the Linux version after it had been released for only 10 days.

What I am learning is that the Linux user base is actually very diverse, and there are a lot of people who use Linux simply because they don’t like Windows and want an alternative – at the end of the day, they don’t care about the ideals of the FSF or the GPL, they just want something safe and reliable that they can use. And they are very hungry for commercial-quality games!

…

While Linux may not be a viable platform for every kind of application, I think it is certainly viable for games. And I am so glad we tried a Linux version of one of our games – this has turned out to be a huge shot in the arm for our business!

Clearly the market exists, and it is significant. It may not be as significant as Windows or Mac, but it can be for some developers.

So forget about asking where the Linux gamers are. I think a better question should be: why aren’t there more games being made for Linux?

[tags] linux, video game, game development, tools, indie, business, sales [/tags]

Categories
Game Development Games Linux Game Development Marketing/Business

Torque Dropped Linux Support?

Thanks to Slashdot, I saw the article at MadPenguin.org called Linux Gaming 2.0: Why More Linux Users Aren’t Gamers and immediately dove into it.

Never dive into shallow water head first.

I was really expecting to see an in-depth article on the subject. Instead, it seemed to be a very short advertisement for Garage Games and Torque. Back on Slashdot, ChuckyKibbles wrote a comment called
On Hobbyists Hocking GarageGames:

The reason I started using torque, years ago now, was its unrivalled cross-platformness.
Oh, how things change

He proceeded to list out the ways that GarageGames’ offerings, such as Torque Game Builder and Torque 2, went from fully supporting Windows, Mac, and Linux platforms to only really supporting Windows, with Mac and Linux offerings being afterthoughts or “community supported”.

I hadn’t heard about this development until now, and when I checked the system requirements for Torque Game Builder, sure enough, I saw: “Linux version is supported by the community.”

The Torque Game Engine itself looked promising since it listed actual system requirements, but then I saw: “NOTE: Linux is community supported. The last known version to run on Ubuntu was TGE 1.4.1. Using Linux requires expert knowledge of C++, the compilation process, and Linux itself. Please do not try to use Linux if you are new to the OS.” The current version of the engine is 1.5.

Considering games like Dark Horizons: Lore Invasion and Orbz were made to run on Linux-based systems AND used Torque, I was expecting Garage Games to provide a wealth of new cross-platform games. It seems now that the Linux versions of their engines and tools are considered marginal and essentially unsupported, it isn’t likely that new games will be available, and that’s too bad. To top it all off, if I were to decide to use Torque anyway, I have to pay for a product that isn’t fully functional, and if I want to change that, I’m paying for the privilege of getting it to work, and Garage Games gets to take advantage of that work. It doesn’t sound win-win to me.

I’m sure Garage Games has a reason for dropping Linux support, most likely to do with the combination of support costs and low income. Still, it’s sad to learn that Torque is no longer THE cross-platform game engine for indies to use.

Is there anything to take its place?

[tags] linux, video game, game development, tools, indie [/tags]