How do you expect FOSS to make serious gains into the gaming market? Big commercial games (read COD, Oblivion, Fallout, most RPGs) are like interactive movies and they take about the same amount of money and manpower to produce... That's something FOSS is rarely going to be able to reproduce.<br>
<br>You're treating this as if Windows gamers don't use Ubuntu because they don't have enough access to FOSS games. Truth is, most popular FOSS games have binary installers for Windows but you ask one Windows gamer if they care about something like Nexuiz and chances are they've never heard of it because they're too busy with the likes of Fallout 3, Bioshock, Assassins Creed or Call of Duty World at War. <b><i>That's </i>where the problem is; studios aren't making the games for Linux so gamers don't migrate.<br>
<br></b>It's Chicken vs Egg. You're pushing for the Chicken. Get the gamers here and studios will make the games cross-platform. But I think you infinitely more chance of success backing the Egg. "If you build it, they will come"<br>
<br>If I were you, I'd talk to small independent game studios. Give them a route-to-market (coming up next) and help them with the development. There are a couple of companies that provide porting services but they're not in-house, they're not cheap and they're not ideal for the end-users.<br>
<br>They're still commercial games, so they still need to sell. One thing stopping companies moving over is there isn't a decent platform for selling their games. If there was "a Steam" for Linux, showing off the best of Linux gaming (both FOSS and commercial), I think a LOT more companies (large and small) would consider Linux as a viable platform.<br>
<br>Once that reaches critical mass, your work is done. Critical mass. More users will move over and more companies will develop for it.<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Fri, Apr 24, 2009 at 9:33 AM, Danny Piccirillo <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:danny.piccirillo@ubuntu.com">danny.piccirillo@ubuntu.com</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;"><div><div><div>In recognition of the value of FOSS gaming, the Ubuntu Gaming Team has been formed of mutual benefit to Ubuntu and FOSS gaming. As of today, the team is now open for anyone to join and participate in. Working towards improving FOSS games and developing its community will turn a significant barrier against Ubuntu adoption into an appealing reason to switch.</div>
<div><br></div><div>The Ubuntu Gaming Team will work to address the obstacles hindering growth in FOSS gaming such as the need for effective distributed content management or significant investment in free content development in order to promote FOSS gaming through Ubuntu and Ubuntu through FOSS gaming. New ideas are encouraged and appreciated.</div>
<div><br></div><div>FOSS gaming is important to Ubuntu as a lack of quality games is one of the most cited reasons preventing users from switching from Windows. Gamers, who currently feed off of the proprietary software model, represent a large and valuable user base. They will not even begin to gradually migrate to Ubuntu until their needs are met. They are very capable of understanding the ideological and technical benefits of using a free operating system like Ubuntu, and are often interested in switching, but higher value is placed on high quality gaming and the entire demographic will not budge until the pragmatic advantages of open source actualize through FOSS gaming.</div>
<div><br></div><div>The team is dedicated to FOSS gaming, and will not push for commercial games on Linux as significant effort is already put into the development of Wine and pressuring video game publishers to port their work to Linux. Once FOSS gaming reaches its "tipping point", code and content will be easily reused to foster the development of new games and innovative ideas in gaming. The Ubuntu Gaming Team fills a great need for an organized effort to support FOSS gaming.</div>
</div><a href="http://pinstack.blogspot.com/2009/04/announcing-ubuntu-gaming-team.html" target="_blank">http://pinstack.blogspot.com/2009/04/announcing-ubuntu-gaming-team.html</a></div><br>Launchpad: <a href="https://edge.launchpad.net/%7Eubuntu-gaming" target="_blank">https://edge.launchpad.net/~ubuntu-gaming</a><br>
Wiki: <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/GamingTeam" target="_blank">https://wiki.ubuntu.com/GamingTeam</a><br><a href="http://java.freenode.net//index.php?channel=ubuntu-gaming" target="_blank">#ubuntu-gaming</a><br><a href="mailto:ubuntu-gaming@lists.launchpad.net" target="_blank">ubuntu-gaming@lists.launchpad.net</a>
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<br></blockquote></div><br>