[ut3] Invitation to connect on LinkedIn

Keith Z-G keithzg at gmail.com
Mon Jul 4 14:13:38 EDT 2011


Robin: Language can be a very insular and/or local thing, despite how
universal the internet and modern communication in general otherwise
makes it; I know all my friends (and people in general that I interact
with) still use the term "geeks", it doesn't sound dated to me at all,
so I find it very interesting that it sounds like an 80's term to you.

Anyways, reported market share is ridiculously tricky in regards to
Linux, because nearly all the numbers that are terribly reliable in
turn rely on sales . . . which obviously doesn't work for Linux. I've
heard wildly different numbers, always with reference to data, but the
data out there is so slippery and indirect that it's really difficult
to say. Plus as we've established, the actual share of the population
interested in any particular thing can change dramatically. For one,
that makes net stats very problematic (along with the fog of user
identity that shrouds such things---often deliberately, as for example
these days I can finally let gmail know I'm on Linux, but a few years
back unless I lied to it the site would break, which is ridiculous).
But secondly, and I think more importantly, it shows how the wider
numbers can very quickly stop mattering when your subject matter or
appeal isn't also 100% of the population, which is why I figure those
ephemeral wider market stats are, in addition to their imprecision,
probably irrelevant for now.

I did find the Humble Indie Bundles very visible on the more
mainstream PC gaming (by which I mean "personal computer", not just
goddamn Windows! okay, now that I've gotten that off my chest...)
website like Rock Paper Shotgun, and of course Notch was fairly public
in his love for the initiative and his game only runs on Linux by
coincidence, he's a Windows user through-and-through.

There's something to the piracy theory, in regards to the Humble Bundle:
http://blog.wolfire.com/2010/05/Saving-a-penny----pirating-the-Humble-Indie-Bundle
It is fairly astonishing that people would pirate a game they could
get for a penny. Certainly, as much as I doubt the cries of "Piracy is
ruining industry X!" it skews the sales story pretty strangely in
cases like this.

I've been trying to dig up other actual game stats, since again, for
the sake of "is it worth it to port my game?", as different as each
case may be I think it's far more applicable than
sales-determined-market-share or netstats. World of Goo is, then, one
of the few recent examples:

http://2dboy.com/2009/02/12/world-of-goo-linux-version-is-ready/

Only two days after being released, it was already almost 5% of direct
downloads for them. But of course, for the sake of balance it's worth
pointing out:

http://2dboy.com/2011/02/08/ipad-launch/

Now, I'll concede that that's another not-fancy-3D-stuff game, and I
do agree with Robin that there's a subset of folks for whom that
superficial sheen and "ooh, the shaders!" are a driving factor.
Honestly, though, I think if anything, World of Goo's successes show
that it's worth writing your code in a way that's portable as widely
as possible. And hell, wasn't that what EPIC has always claimed about
their engine? They may a big deal about how it runs on every platform,
but then they throw in restricted middleware and only hire a single
outside contractor to do two entire platforms . . .

And again, the UT2004 master server stats favored Linux over OSX. If
EPIC is favoring OSX over Linux, it's not thanks to any logical
analysis of their own customer base.

It was bad enough when they announced iOS support, since the
underlying technologies are not only nearly the same but there's some
extra porting they'd have to do that they *wouldn't* need for Linux or
OSX (ex OpenGL ES), which makes it look like they're saying "oh, it'd
be too much work..." as they're nonetheless doing the work to get to
Linux and then just keep on going past it. But no, that wasn't
ridiculous enough, nowadays UE3 is on Android and OSX too. At that
point "porting" becomes a matter of fiddling with compile-time flags.
I mean, seriously guys? They're drawing big circles around Linux,
porting it to every possibly Linux-like platform and doing 99% of the
work---they might as well just come out and say "yeah, Linux isn't a
company or a brandname or a consumer market share, so our corporate
culture is to hate and dismiss it irrationally."


On Sun, Jul 3, 2011 at 5:41 AM, Valeriy <jazzvoid at gmail.com> wrote:
> I think Windows users did not buy Humble Bunlde because it's a drop in the
> ocean, it probably just passed unnoticed. "I'm not going to pay for it" is
> an attitude indifferent to OS. You can pirate almost every commercial Linux
> game nowadays, LGP' DRM was cracked in a short period after they've
> introduced it and pirate versions spread everywhere just because people "are
> not going to pay such price for a port of old game".
>
> 2011/7/3 robin van ee <robin.vanee at gmail.com>
>>
>> I think that the Humble Indie Bundle just hits a soft spot for Linux
>> users, where most Windows gamers just don't care.
>> Most gamers I know don't want to buy 2D games, just because they're
>> 2D. People I know spend hundreds of hours on a pirated version of
>> Minecraft, just because (and I quote) "I'm not going to pay for a game
>> that looks like this".
>>
>> Now OS-X and Linux users don't have a whole lot of games, so they buy
>> the Humble Indie Bundle. There's not much of a choice, and they
>> appreciate all the choices they get.
>> Linux users pay more, because there's a large amount of programmers in
>> the Linux demographic. They know how much effort it takes to make a
>> game, and thus know what it's worth and pay more.
>>
>> The market share of desktop OS's are generally believed to look like
>> this (forgot the source):
>> Windows 90%
>> OS-X 9%
>> Linux 1%
>>
>> The rest are so little you can hardly even count them.
>>
>> On my website, I do see something different:
>> I get an explosive amount (60%) of Mac users, and about 2% of Linux
>> users. I think that has a lot to do with the subject of my site, more
>> than the actual values. Also, I think my stats application counts
>> Android as Linux, so that counts towards the value for Linux too.
>>
>> Steam and the Mac App Store tie most Mac users to the same place,
>> which is very convenient for the developers and publishers. Bringing
>> Steam to Linux might do the same thing, and hopefully Linux users
>> would take up more than 5% of Steam users by then.
>>
>> Also, calling gamers 'geeks' is a bit 1980's.
>>
>> 2011/7/3 Keith Z-G <keithzg at gmail.com>:
>> > Sure, that's one interpretation (and although I generally disagree,
>> > it's probably still part of it). But even if that's the entire
>> > picture, it still proves that Linux gamers are more worthwhile to
>> > cater to, though. For that, the "why" doesn't matter yet.
>> >
>> > On Sun, Jul 3, 2011 at 12:06 AM, Valeriy <jazzvoid at gmail.com> wrote:
>> >> Humble Bundle sale might show as well that Linux users just have less
>> >> games
>> >> to play and are willing to pay for anything.
>> >>
>> >> 2011/7/3 Keith Z-G <keithzg at gmail.com>
>> >>>
>> >>> Brizz brings up a good point. I know back in the day, Ryan commented
>> >>> that the UT2004 master server showed about 10 times as many *Linux*
>> >>> users than it showed OSX users; still single-digit numbers, but it
>> >>> seemed to show that if you're figuring it's worth targeting OSX then
>> >>> it's pretty obviously worth targeting Linux. Now, OSX has grown quite
>> >>> a bit since those days, but there's also a hell of a lot more people
>> >>> running Linux now (it's no longer exclusively the domain of a
>> >>> particular subset of geeks).
>> >>>
>> >>> There's the perception that because OSX is put out there by a visible
>> >>> and single company (which spends tons of money making their products
>> >>> appear everywhere) that it's orders of magnitude more popular than
>> >>> Linux, but not only is that misleading, I think it forgets that
>> >>> there's a far larger overlap between "people geeky enough to pay for
>> >>> computer games" and "people running Linux" than the former and "people
>> >>> running OSX". So apart from raw numbers of sales and players most of
>> >>> what people are spouting is going to be a bit divorced from the actual
>> >>> reality.
>> >>>
>> >>> As such, I present for your consideration:
>> >>>
>> >>> http://www.humblebundle.com/
>> >>>
>> >>> Just take a look at the sales percentages, and I think that shows
>> >>> pretty clearly that there can't be 10 times more Mac gamers than Linux
>> >>> gamers; hell, if those numbers are representative (which of course, as
>> >>> a single skewed example, they aren't) the conclusion would be that
>> >>> indeed Linux has a richer playerbase to tap.
>> >>>
>> >>> On Fri, Jul 1, 2011 at 5:36 PM, Valeriy <jazzvoid at gmail.com> wrote:
>> >>> > Well
>> >>> > http://www.mobygames.com/browse/games/macintosh/
>> >>> > http://www.mobygames.com/browse/games/linux/
>> >>> > 2011/7/2 Sir Brizz <sir.brizz at gmail.com>
>> >>> >>
>> >>> >> Are there 10 times more Mac gamers, though? I doubt it.
>> >>> >>
>> >>> >> On Fri, Jun 24, 2011 at 2:53 AM, robin van ee
>> >>> >> <robin.vanee at gmail.com>
>> >>> >> wrote:
>> >>> >>>
>> >>> >>> Referring to Windows as "PC" pisses me off.
>> >>> >>> Anyway, Linux games are hard to market, I have heard it said that
>> >>> >>> it's
>> >>> >>> simply not worth it. A Mac game, you can simply pop into the
>> >>> >>> Appstore
>> >>> >>> and Steam, and while Linux does have some of that, it's not as
>> >>> >>> widespread.
>> >>> >>> Besides that, there's about 10 times more Mac users than Linux
>> >>> >>> users.
>> >>> >>> It's more worth it than Linux.
>> >>> >>>
>> >>> >>> 2011/6/24 Zato-2 <zato.two at gmail.com>:
>> >>> >>> >> Not seeing Linux there but seeing OSX there just pisses me off.
>> >>> >>> >> Apple
>> >>> >>> >> may be
>> >>> >>> >> at the so-called "forefront" of gaming with their mobile
>> >>> >>> >> devices,
>> >>> >>> >> but
>> >>> >>> >> on the
>> >>> >>> >> desktop they are still "worthless" to support (arguably even
>> >>> >>> >> more
>> >>> >>> >> so
>> >>> >>> >> than
>> >>> >>> >> Linux).
>> >>> >>> >
>> >>> >>> > Steam supports PC and Mac but not linux, as do many games.
>> >>> >>> > _______________________________________________
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>> >>> >>> >
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>> >>> >>
>> >>> >>
>> >>> >> --
>> >>> >> Sir_Brizz
>> >>> >> Technical Manager
>> >>> >> sir_brizz at beyondunreal.com
>> >>> >>
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>> >>> >
>> >>> >
>> >>> >
>> >>> > --
>> >>> > Valeriy
>> >>> >
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>> >>> >
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>> >>
>> >>
>> >> --
>> >> Valeriy
>> >>
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>
> --
> Valeriy
>
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