Re: Loki...

[Chris <chris@starforge.co.uk>]

Steve Baker wrote:


> That's why we *needed* Loki - and I'm sad to see them go. (I have every
> game they ever produced - so I did my part to try to keep them afloat).


Sorry, but I don't agree with that. Loki was a flawed at the core: porting
has incredibly small profit margins. Even for a year old game the license 
fees can be astronomical, assuming that you get funding for that you need
to employ a team of programmers to do the port (and woe betide you if they
use DirectX rather than OpenGL, entailing an almost complete rewrite of the
engine, sound and input systems). Once you have the game ported you then 
need to try and convince a market that could have bought the same game a 
year ago if they dual boot (which something like 75% of linux users
probably do) for the same price *or more* than the original Windows version 
was going for a year ago.

That doesn't work.

IF Loki had made original games /then/ I would support your statement, as
it is I can only support it on the subtext of "we need a commercial games 
company, whether they make originals or not".

Yes, I know the arguments against making a commercial game from scratch, 
believe me I've been through it. But that's not the point here.



>   1) With most OpenSource packages, the developers write it because they
>      want to *use* it.  Nobody wants to play the game they just wrote
>      because they already know all it's little secrets and are heartily
>      sick of the sight of it by the time they are done.


Well, I wouldn't completely agree with that, but I can see how that would
be the case for some. I exect that depends on the reasons you have for
doing it in the first place.


>   5) Only one in 35 commercial games makes a profit.  OpenSource games don't
>      have to be profitable - but to be worth writing at all, you DO want them to
>      have a reasonable "happy-audience-to-effort" ratio...which is kinda the
>      same thing.  It's tough to go into an OpenSource development that's going
>      to suck up all your free time for a year or more knowing that there is
>      only a 3% chance that it will be loved.


Depends. I don't frankly care that much how many people will love mine - I 
know that I will and the team I'm working with and the peopel on my lists 
will. That's enough for me.



> But for all that, I don't feel that the process has been terribly fulfilling.

Don't take this the wrong way, but if that is how you feel why do you 
continue? If you aren't getting anything out of it but stress, why bother?



Chris
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