Interesting article, games

Ben Eisenbraun bene at klatsch.org
Thu Mar 4 22:48:01 EST 2010


On Thu, Mar 04, 2010 at 06:12:53PM -0500, Star wrote:
> There have been a couple of great releases specifically targeting Linux
> as a platform.  I'm thinking of Unreal, EVE, and Farcry (i think?)

There have been some.  I remember playing Tribes 2 during lunch on the
linux workstations in the NOC.  Id has historically been good about
releasing its games for Linux, but then the driver problem arises.  Even
with the binary Nvidia driver, you can expect a 25-50% drop in frame rate
on the same hardware switching between linux and Windows.

There's just not enough of a market for linux games for the publishers to
port their games and for the hardware manufacturers to spend time tuning
their drivers for linux.

As Ben pointed out, it's a bit of a chicken and egg problem.  Apple might
be getting over the hump a bit, since the hot rumor is that Valve is
porting Steam to OS X.  OS X is supposedly up to about 11% market share in
North America: http://blog.quantcast.com/quantcast/2010/02/os-share.html

I wonder if iPhone/iTouch game development is driving game development on
OS X.

I was at Apple's Worldwide Developer Conference in May 2007 when the iPhone
application development plan was "build web apps".  It was your standard
Apple crowd: education, design-oriented businesses, some scientists, indie
developers and a sprinkling of IT guys that worked in those fields.  Lots
of jeans and tie dye, long hair and Penny Arcade tee-shirts.  In 5 days, I
saw 3 non-Apple laptops.

The 2008 WWDC had a totally different feel.  The official iPhone SDK had
been announced, and I bet a third of the attendees went solely for the
iPhone development sessions.  There were a ton of guys wearing button down
shirts and ugly pants carrying Windows laptops around.  I stopped counting
after a few hundred.  It was an odd juxtaposition with the traditional Apple
crowd.

Anyway, I think if Apple makes it as a gaming platform, it will be because
they made it as a mainstream OS first.  (Or possibly because they used the
mobile gaming arena as the fulcrum upon which they levered game developers
on to OS X.)

-ben

--
inspiration exists, but it has to find you working.     <pablo picasso>


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