Direction of Linux games...

[Veljko Krunic <krunic@platte.com>]

First, sorry for the long post but I could not make my point with less
text... 

One observation I have, and that I could not recall that it was
mentioned anywhere: I believe that Linux games have overlooked one
important target market. What I mean by that is that nobody tried to see
what are the greatest weaknesses of the Windows games, and how Linux
could profit by exploiting this weaknesses.

Where I believe that is a big potential strength of the open source
projects is in the niche markets. Reason for that is that game companies
don't like to make them (niche game would not make anyone rich), and
even when started this games are very often shutdown or published in
non-finished or unusable state. Let me give you couple of examples what
I am talking about:

1. Space combat hard-core simulation: BC3000AD (http://www.bc3000ad.com)
based on the story of the original author was published by Take Two in
the unusable form, regardless of the  of the original author strong
dislike (the complete story is somewhere on the site or maybe in the
download of the version 1.0, and is a great look at the some of the
worst things that could happened to the game in development).

2. Hard-core military flight simulator: Flanker 4.0
(http://www.flanker4.com) was relaesed with tons of bugs, not completly
usable (see first review at http://www.combatsim.com), and was patched
for months to be brought in the stable form. As company said: "if we
don't release it now in the incomplete state and patch it later, we will
be forced to shut down complete project".

3. WWII naval combat: Fighting Steel (http://www.fightingsteel.com) was
released with lot of bugs, and soon after its premature release,
publisher cuts partnership with the company that developed it,
dissapointed by the sales and reaction of the people on the message
board (imagine, some people did not liked the fact that the game is
unstable and lacks some minor features that were cut off to make it
faster, like land!)... 

4. Hard-core modern naval war simulation: Harpoon 2... you need to see
how many bugs this thing have...

Why I enumerated this games? Becuase you should see how much support
this games generate between peoples who were playing them, how their
message boards are acttive, and how many free add-ons are made by their
players. In many respects they look similar like Linux community, are
usually technically versatile, and contribute both code and art (sound,
technical data and graphics). Furthermore, they are not too picky about
graphics - one very popular hard-core flight simulator (Su-27 Flanker
1.5) has simple polygonal graphics, and was played by many people until
a few days ago (release of the successor).

Now, Falcon 4 or BC2000AD are probably far from the resources this
community could devote to games (maybe FGear prove that I am wrong on
this one). But Harpoon 2 and Fighting Steel are probably within our
rich. Maybe reasonably size hard-core niche products, and not a clone of
existing games, are a way to go? Maybe that could give Linux an edge
over Windows gaming? Open source nature of Linux games could integrate
hard-core gamer feedback much better than any Windows game company, and
I think that developers could count on the hard-core gamers to provide
them with the technical data they need (like weapon characteristics).
And people who like this kind of games are usually technically literate
enough to accept Linux easily (if they don't already have Linux). If
such projects succeed, maybe Linux community could claim that we have
BETTER games in some categories than Windows, or that better games
originate from the Linux first. And that it could integrate some game
communities much better than Windows game companies.

Of course, for something like this to succseed, we must first ask
hard-core gamers what they want (or who starts this project must be a
hard-core gamer).

Now, I could not start such a project, and I don't have almost any spear
time to contribute so I don't have answer on "show me the code". But I
hope that this ideas (and probably discussion of this topic) could help
to someone with more time (and technical expertise).

Just my two cents. Sorry if I made you read a long post and you feel
that I am way of target.

Veljko Krunic                           

P.S. Disclaimer: The games here are only enumarated as representatives
of the niche markets. I am not advocating making a clone of the Harpoon
2 (or any other game, for that matter). First, with the Harpoon 4 coming
that would probably be stupid. Second, we need a new games not clones of
the old ones.