On Tuesday 10 August 2004 7:19 am, Tim Green wrote:
Just last week I re-discovered my Loki copy of Alpha Centauri which I bought before I had a Linux PC powerful enough to play it properly. Over the weekend the pesky Hive were proving difficult.
Unfortunately Loki discovered the hard way just how many paying Linux gamers there were. Did anyone else buy a game or two?
Haven't bought any Loki titles, did however buy Quake 3 Linux and UT2004. The games company I used to work for in Cambs tried authoring a linux port of one of it's titiles. In fact a lot of the porting effort was completed by a dedicated linux evangelist who worked there*, he only made the company officially aware of the port once it was almost done and then organised a deal with LGP to distribute it.
(* Actually I think there is a list member who probably helped more than I am aware, apologies to them if I have given Francis all the credit)
Despite his superhuman efforts the linux port flopped (it's still for sale today but to date I don't think they have sold many copies) Had it not been for the fact that Francis completed most of the port in his spare time, then the cost of porting (or developing for another platform) would have exceeded the sales royalties.
(www.linuxgamepublishing.com is down at the moment, but the game I mention is Creatures Internet Edition)
Loki had a few issues I feel.
1. Games traditionally have a very short shelf life, if you are going to sell multiple platforms then the golden rule is that you need to release your title for all promised platforms at the same time (or at least very close together) Loki rarely achieved this as most of the titles were ports rather than an alternative platform developed in parallel.
2. I beleve that Loki didn't work with the developers close enough at the beginning of the games development phase. This could have stopped decisions being made that would affect the titles portability (DirectX or third party Rapid Development tools like renderware) thus making Loki's job easier/cheaper and quicker.
3. At the time of Loki's rise (and arguably today) Linux on the desktop (even more so on the gamer's desktop) was too smaller a target to base a business model on. Also facilities required for a lot of the titles such as reliable sound suport and workable 3D were not mature or available enough (and probably still aren't today). To fund development of a high quality game or anything other than a very simple porting effort you need a huge installed base of your target platform...or you need to charge a lot for the games (something else Loki tried).
4. At the time I wanted to purchase some Loki games, it was difficult to obtain them in Europe. You could of course import from the States but the costs of that combined with the fact that Loki often charged more for his versions resulted in me just deciding to stay with dual boot.
All that said the quality of the Loki releases was fantastic, they were very well done and often ran better than their Windows counterparts. It was a sad (but somehow inevitable) day when Loki closed shop.