Linux Gets Gooey on Friday The 13th

We have given out the last of the 10 free WOG downloads. Thank you to the bloggers who helped us make the point...there ARE Linux users who will support their developers. I am not at liberty to divulge the numbers but if you people knew the impact you made by supporting the 2DBoys, you would swallow your teeth. - h

It's been one of the loudest excuses I've heard for people not wanting to use Linux.

"Linux won't play my games."

Well first, that's not near as true as it was a short year ago. Second - if it is so, it's because the people that write the games don't think you are a market force worth investing in.

That, it seems, is changing as well.
Blogger Gedece brought this to my attention a while back and without his input, I would have not known about it.

Linux Community...Prepare to get Goo'ed.

Kyle Gabler and Ron Carmel are Indie Game Developers. They've both spent some time "in the trenches" with companies such as EA...they made fairly good money and had steady work, but something ate at them...something uncomfortable and
nagging.

It wasn't the fairy dust and wind chime world they wanted to work in. Reality can suck...why make your living in it? Most of us have to. They don't...they write games.

And now they've written a game and ported it to Linux. This masterpiece has opened to rave reviews...and reviews by those who count.

82 percent of the people who play this game are likely to have stolen it. A twenty dollar game and they steal it. That's a shame. The World of Goo is a joyful, giggleful, and beautiful way to completely waste hours of your life. I know.

I'm not a gamer. I lack the dexterity to even tie my shoes correctly, thank Heaven for Velcro straps on my tennies. So when Kyle sent me a fully-licensed copy of TWOG to test, I wasn't exactly thrumming my fingers on the desk waiting for the download to complete. It was more out of needing to know what I was talking about than anything else that made me navigate to the "games" menu and click the entry.

It's a good thing I have a bit of discipline or I'd still be playing the game.

The Question.

It nagged me throughout the gameplay.

Why? Although a wildly successful game sales-wise, this 20 dollar bobble is still stolen without shame. Kyle and Ron refuse to chain their work with DRM or Regions. Why would you port this masterpiece to Linux? We are undoubtably the biggest Jack Benny-level cheapskates on the planet. Again, the question.

Why Linux?

Kyle Explains:

"We knew from the beginning that we wanted to make our game available to everyone, regardless of platform. We've also always had a secret desire to see the open ideas behind Linux take over. We met the guy who did our Linux port because he was a fan who created an open wiki for translating our game into a bunch of other languages. We were surprised - the language contributions from our community were of much higher quality than the translations we received from a paid translation service. They were so good, and fast, in fact, that we decided to use the community's translations for our European Wii release. They even helped us beta test each of the languages."
Yes, it is available for the Wii...and Mac and...

Linux.

With a smattering of Python and coding skills, I knew this undertaking wasn't easy. The genius behind the Linux Port is Maks Verver. He is the one responsible for the frame by frame marriage to the original Windows game. He has done some stunning work, and we didn't make it easy for him as will be discussed.

I asked Kyle about the technical problems involved in getting this done for us and I let him run with it. Some of his remarks strike home with us Linux Zealots but you have to remember, this is a guy who shoots straight...you cannot ask a question and then pout when the answers aren't what you want to hear.

Linux challenges (technical)

"There were a few small technical hurdles, but Maks is either a genius, or the port was not much trouble at all! One technical hurdle was with Pulse Audio, which apparently comes standard on major distros like Ubuntu. It introduces quite a bit of audio lag. This would be fine for most applications, but it's not good for games, where the goal is to build an extremely responsive system that feels snappy. We were able to work with it, and get the game feeling right, but it took a bit of effort. I realize I'll get shot for saying this, but in Windows, it just worked right away!"

"Also, and I've mentioned this before - Linux is created by too many smart opinionated people! There are a lot of very good ideas, but it can become difficult for developers to support all the different distro formats, bundles, audio/video systems. For linux to REALLY take over, it has to be easy for developers to make stuff, and easy for users to get stuff. It's one of those things where too many options can be suffocating, and ultimately hurt the cause."

Linux challenges (non-technical)

"Our blog stats tell us that only about 5% or less of our visitors are using a form of Linux, so we weren't sure if there would be much interest from the Linux community or not. Do Linux users play a lot of games? Maybe it's just a chicken and egg problem where Linux users would play more games if more people made their games available for Linux?
Our decision to make World of Goo available for Linux users was mostly out of principle - because games SHOULD be available for Linux! We just released it a few hours ago, so I suppose we'll find out soon if our decision made any business sense!"

*****This is an edit 72 hours after the fact. While I've been asked not to crow about numbers and specifics, let it be known that the "Linux Community" shattered one-day sales records for 2dBoy sales of World of Goo. You shattered it by 40% - h

Hurt the cause indeed. But there is something else that "hurts the cause" more than that.

Not supporting someone who has labored on your behalf.

We have always said that "We support those who support us." Well, it's time for us to do just that. This game is gonna run you 20 bucks and will bring you or someone you purchase for, hours of joyful, giggleful entertainment.

You can see an earlier and much more insightful interview with these two here.

OK folks...we are almost to Christian Einfeldt's Digital Tipping Point. Others are recognizing we are here and we have money to spend...we are all not skinflints that would rather go without than spend a few bucks on ourselves.

Kyle and Ron have donated 10 games for us to give out. Blog about this great game or tell folks about it in your forums and send us a link...we will send the first ten that do so a license.

We now get the chance to do what we say we are going to do. It's been coming for a long time...now it's here. The "big boys" won't give us games...the little guys will. It's time to say thank you.

And just so you know...I just did. You can do the same here.










I'm putting this on the next HeliOS Project Computer we put out.

All-Righty Then





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