Road Trip Report Synergy & Desktop Summits
by Jay Moore · 02/14/2005 (1:12 am) · 12 comments
Well the post show euphoria isn't wearing off quickly this time... On top of MacWorld with MB Gold rolling out on the Mac Mini, G.A.M.E.S. Synergy Summit where we premiered our first Torque Boot Camp and now Desktop Summit where Michael Robertson launched (or relaunched depending on how you look at it) MP3tunes.com and GG released DH: Lore Invasion exclusively first on Linspire, it has been a very wild few weeks.
Three years ago John Quigley, you all remember John he's the guy that before he started working at BraveTree and porting ThinkTanks to Xbox Live Arcade I could always count on to goto Linux Desktop Summit or Desktop Linux Summit (the only conference with 3 different names in 3 years) with me, so three years ago John and I went down to San Diego to see what was then just a dream of having a consumer friendly Linux distro - 3.0 was cute, but not really your mom's linux distro yet (at that time I didn't know anything about KDE or Debian, but John patiently tried to layout for me all the religious dogmas so I didn't offend too many people with my n00b presentation at that first conference).
This time I had Benjamin Bradley (he's the guy I met at Desktop Summit last year and later hired) along to get me to a console prompt and get all our games up and running on what were SCREAMING game machines in our GarageGames Arcade (we had amazing AMD 64 bit Athlon's with 2GB of memory and nVIDIA 5950's)... and boy did we have fun!
Lots happened during the week, Michael spoke, Mitch Kapor spoke, Doc Searle spoke, many others... Rob Glaser - CEO of Real Networks was a no show and wasn't missed. The real buzz was around the room besides the MP3tunes was the getting to play games (ok I maybe biased because I didn't get much time anywhere else in the hall, but in our booth).
We had some great GISH, ThinkTanks, Orbz and Zap! tournaments, but if I had to say where the heat was it was in dRacer wheelchair races and in DH: Lore Invasions play. Who knew that the BraveTree guys had put a wheelchair into dRacer (well anyone who went to select the vehicle with the tightest collision mesh) it was a riot and fun as well - lots of buzz.
Getting to play some heated DH:Lore Invasion had all the hardcore guys out playing and it seemed to be unanimous 'I'm definitely going to get this game!' both after playing the single player quick action as well as in our tournaments. It was great having people relate to our how independents who had a passion for playing mech games had created this very immersive game built on their passion for making the game that players could drive its outcome and contribute to its success.
The consumer Linux market and Linspire in particular have so many parallels to what we're doing at GarageGames - its building a new way of computing / for us gaming, its community based and dependent on good word of mouth, the markets are disruptive, but not interesting in size and scope to the current status quo and most of all they require an extreme change in human behavior (I'm comparing open source to indie game dev now). Linux doesn't represent a huge market to indies right now, but it does represent an immerging market that is hungry and dependent at the desktop level on independent game developers creating compelling entertainment content consumers will enjoy, for them to succeed (AAA commercial games don't look to be coming soon).
You'll probably see an announcement about it soon, but we're going to be shipping MB Gold with every Linspire 5.0 - maybe not quite as many units as with every OS X machine shipped globally, but still more fun for the consumer and more people who will find out about the indie games and GarageGames.
Three years ago John Quigley, you all remember John he's the guy that before he started working at BraveTree and porting ThinkTanks to Xbox Live Arcade I could always count on to goto Linux Desktop Summit or Desktop Linux Summit (the only conference with 3 different names in 3 years) with me, so three years ago John and I went down to San Diego to see what was then just a dream of having a consumer friendly Linux distro - 3.0 was cute, but not really your mom's linux distro yet (at that time I didn't know anything about KDE or Debian, but John patiently tried to layout for me all the religious dogmas so I didn't offend too many people with my n00b presentation at that first conference).
This time I had Benjamin Bradley (he's the guy I met at Desktop Summit last year and later hired) along to get me to a console prompt and get all our games up and running on what were SCREAMING game machines in our GarageGames Arcade (we had amazing AMD 64 bit Athlon's with 2GB of memory and nVIDIA 5950's)... and boy did we have fun!
Lots happened during the week, Michael spoke, Mitch Kapor spoke, Doc Searle spoke, many others... Rob Glaser - CEO of Real Networks was a no show and wasn't missed. The real buzz was around the room besides the MP3tunes was the getting to play games (ok I maybe biased because I didn't get much time anywhere else in the hall, but in our booth).
We had some great GISH, ThinkTanks, Orbz and Zap! tournaments, but if I had to say where the heat was it was in dRacer wheelchair races and in DH: Lore Invasions play. Who knew that the BraveTree guys had put a wheelchair into dRacer (well anyone who went to select the vehicle with the tightest collision mesh) it was a riot and fun as well - lots of buzz.
Getting to play some heated DH:Lore Invasion had all the hardcore guys out playing and it seemed to be unanimous 'I'm definitely going to get this game!' both after playing the single player quick action as well as in our tournaments. It was great having people relate to our how independents who had a passion for playing mech games had created this very immersive game built on their passion for making the game that players could drive its outcome and contribute to its success.
The consumer Linux market and Linspire in particular have so many parallels to what we're doing at GarageGames - its building a new way of computing / for us gaming, its community based and dependent on good word of mouth, the markets are disruptive, but not interesting in size and scope to the current status quo and most of all they require an extreme change in human behavior (I'm comparing open source to indie game dev now). Linux doesn't represent a huge market to indies right now, but it does represent an immerging market that is hungry and dependent at the desktop level on independent game developers creating compelling entertainment content consumers will enjoy, for them to succeed (AAA commercial games don't look to be coming soon).
You'll probably see an announcement about it soon, but we're going to be shipping MB Gold with every Linspire 5.0 - maybe not quite as many units as with every OS X machine shipped globally, but still more fun for the consumer and more people who will find out about the indie games and GarageGames.
About the author
Serial / parallel entrepreneur, insight merchant, sailor and red wine enthusiast. Co-founder of BitRaider, out to change the game. An original partner in GarageGames and hosted Indie Game Con `02-`05.
#2
I think a big boon to forging a connection between indie games and Linux would be to simply have Linux boxes with various GG games them at IGC. People can then see for themselves what it looks, feels, and performs like. Seeing some GG games on Macs at IGC did wonders for my interest in making sure there was full compatibility with the game for that platform and that porting it wasn't merely an afterthought.
02/14/2005 (3:11 am)
Right now I'm planning on going Win & Mac for the game I'm working on, with Linux being considered but not definite. 7% of GG sales are Linux and TGE's an easy to port to it, so why not, right? I have this vaguely paranoid feeling that anyone smart enough to use Linux is smart enough to hack themselves a free copy of my game... is this a valid concern? Obviously as Linux moves to more of a desktop friendly environment it won't be, but currently are there any numbers on piracy rates per OS?I think a big boon to forging a connection between indie games and Linux would be to simply have Linux boxes with various GG games them at IGC. People can then see for themselves what it looks, feels, and performs like. Seeing some GG games on Macs at IGC did wonders for my interest in making sure there was full compatibility with the game for that platform and that porting it wasn't merely an afterthought.
#3
GG got obliquely /.'d again last night :)
linux.slashdot.org/linux/05/02/14/0217219.shtml?tid=163&tid=189&tid=154&tid=106&...
02/14/2005 (6:11 am)
Happy happy. Joy Joy.GG got obliquely /.'d again last night :)
linux.slashdot.org/linux/05/02/14/0217219.shtml?tid=163&tid=189&tid=154&tid=106&...
#4
02/14/2005 (7:47 am)
I would think you're more likely to see a cracked version of your games appear on windows than on Mac OSX or Linux. It's quite opposite to what you're thinking. The more users you get on a certain platform, the more likely that one of them will crack it.
#5
02/14/2005 (9:54 am)
I usually think that hacking is done out of lack of respect for a developer (or simply because the developer tried to put some cockamaney anti-crack scheme in the game and the hacker just couldn't resist 'outsmarting' the developer). Porting your game to Linux I would think would earn you more respect not less. It shows that your thinking of everyone out there ... or at least more people out there to enjoying your game.
#6
02/14/2005 (1:32 pm)
Yeah, you guys are probably right.
#7
02/14/2005 (1:57 pm)
@Joshua - Yacine & Jeremy have it right. 1) Linux guys have the skillz, but they're not the problem. 2) Linux packaged correctly has almost zero support issues compared to Windows or OS X where if a new driver update is needed these guys don't need to have you hold their hand. 3) On OS X & Linux they don't have 100,000 other free demos to chose from - so a game trailer or demo actually gets more heat than on Windows.
#8
02/15/2005 (1:04 pm)
Sounds like there is a huge potential market for a game featuring mechs in wheelchairs. 
#9
02/15/2005 (3:52 pm)
Haha Mark. I'd buy it.
#11
02/16/2005 (7:20 pm)
A Linux Programmer is more likely to think they dont need to pay for anything then a windows programmer. (Every linux user I know locally belongs to that though that all software should be free regardless.) Though I got some to go more along my line, which is where essential software should be available free in one form or another. Entertainment is pure luxury and isn't necessary. 
#12
Linux Programmers like games, the lack of high quality games leaves it open with some room for shelling out some dollars to get that good gaming fix.
02/17/2005 (8:57 am)
I'd agree with you Sebastien (formerly being of that group) though gaming is a different issue, like you mentioned...Linux Programmers like games, the lack of high quality games leaves it open with some room for shelling out some dollars to get that good gaming fix.
dakz0rz