Why Game Developers Should Support OS X and Linux

kevind23 writes "Although Mac OS X and Linux have a small (but growing) market share, Jeff from Wolfire Games argues that supporting non-Windows platforms can lead to a huge increase in game sales. Using their popular game Lugaru as an example, he shows how less-popular platforms, or more specifically, their userbase can be a powerful advertising force. This can lead to a dramatic increase in popularity and exposure, which usually means a large boost in overall sales. The short article is an interesting read, especially for those working in game development and sales."

Cached Copy

[rsmith-mac]

It seems that the poor blog has been Slashdotted, so here's the Google cache entry for it [209.85.173.132] complete with graphics.

Re:Who'd have thought it?

[Daengbo]

Really, his point was that targeting platforms with small market share give you a lot more exposure and increases sales in other, more popular platforms due to that exposure.

I don't think you would have guessed that.

Re:OGL vs DirectX

[kazade84]

Both those articles don't relate to what I said..

1. SDL doesn't have text functions, but in that discussion they are talking about using SDL without OpenGL. 3D games wouldn't be using the 2D blitting abilities of SDL so the point is irrelevant when OpenGL is being used. Now you could point out that DX on Windows has outline fonts and bitmap fonts, but then there are plenty of FreeType based OpenGL font libraries out there.

2. As I said, use OpenAL for sound, I never suggested SDL for audio, AT ALL. I don't even think it supports 3D positional sound.

Re:Mac users spend more money

[rm999]

Mirror's Edge was a big monetary loss for EA, and Spore was received far less enthusiastically than expected. The game that made EA the most money last year? Madden - one of the least innovative series in the industry. And Portal may have helped sell Orange Box, but it never would have stood on its own as a serious revenue generator for Valve.

Sadly, game companies don't always feel the need to innovate because people are finicky and games cost millions to make. After all, they are businesses, usually with stock holders to answer to.

semi-OT: Lugaru isn't working on current distros

[bersl2]

The game and modern versions of SDL don't like each other.

As with many great Linux ports, icculus maintains the Linux version.

Older bug report [icculus.org]
New bug report [icculus.org]

Re:OGL vs DirectX

[TheRaven64]

first as far as i can tell mac only supports openal 1.0. when ever other platform including the xbox supports at least 1.1 and most likely 1.2.

OS X has supported OpenAL 1.2 since OS X 10.4.

Planning with 'gut feeligns'

[jythie]

I've never understood software houses that insist on releasing games on a single platform with propriatry APIs rather then starting development with a cross platform engine and then porting to other platforms.
 
In any other industry, if I went up to a manager and said 'hey, this API will get us an extra 10-15% market share for similar development costs' and they will go 'wow! let's go with that! more money for us!'
 
yet in software there seems to be this almost psychotic attachment to 'we must support only Windows because that is all people use'.

A former game developer's perspective

[OppositeLock]

(apologies if this is a re-post, my previous comment seems to be missing) Releasing a game for Windows, Mac and Linux sounds all well and good, and the adoption rates on the smaller platforms may be higher as a percentage of the OS install base, but it doesn't make financial sense for most companies to spend the effort to write games for the mac, or especially Linux. I'm a former game developer who has written games for Windows, OS X, Linux, and all the consoles, so I know the market and development challenges pretty well. Windows, for the time being, is still the prime software development platform for games, the rest just don't have the necessary tools and third party software. It's pretty much certain that all of your game data will be processed on a windows machine, so windows will have de-facto support as long as this is the case. If the game is written with portability in mind, and quite a few nowadays are, then it may be ported to the mac. The mac's development tools aren't as good as those available on windows, but between XCode, Shark, dtrace, and the OpenGL profiler, you can get some real work done. The problem is that even if your install rate on the mac is double that on windows, you're still talking about numbers off in the noise. Windows will probably be about 90% of your users, mac would be less than 10%, but it takes more than 10% additional effort to ship the game on the mac, so most companies won't bother. Now, Slashdot is a very pro-linux crowd, so I'm bound to get a lot of disagreement on this next point. Linux will never be a games platform. No game company will ever devote the resources to support linux as a primary platform. The reason is that "Linux" isn't really a platform, the platforms are Ubuntu, Fedora, SUSE, and stuff we don't care about. If anyone claims that you can write the code once and run on all three, you've never tried to do so for a large project. What happens in practice is that you can get your game running pretty well, with random crashes in X and OpenGL that then take a huge amount of effort to track down, per platform. These platforms differ subtly in their API's and libraries for things like OpenGL, libc, and audio so you are guaranteed that you will never ship a single linux binary. If I was writing a game from scratch right now, I would still consider windows my primary platform and I'd probably port it to the mac, but Linux would not be worth the cost and then resulting support burden.

Oops, bad formatting

[OppositeLock]

Releasing a game for Windows, Mac and Linux sounds all well and good, and the adoption rates on the smaller platforms may be higher as a percentage of the OS install base, but it doesn't make financial sense for most companies to spend the effort to write games for the mac, or especially Linux.

I'm a former game developer who has written games for Windows, OS X, Linux, and all the consoles, so I know the market and development challenges pretty well.

Windows, for the time being, is still the prime software development platform for games, the rest just don't have the necessary tools and third party software. It's pretty much certain that all of your game data will be processed on a windows machine, so windows will have de-facto support as long as this is the case.

If the game is written with portability in mind, and quite a few nowadays are, then it may be ported to the mac. The mac's development tools aren't as good as those available on windows, but between XCode, Shark, dtrace, and the OpenGL profiler, you can get some real work done. The problem is that even if your install rate on the mac is double that on windows, you're still talking about numbers off in the noise. Windows will probably be about 90% of your users, mac would be less than 10%, but it takes more than 10% additional effort to ship the game on the mac, so most companies won't bother.

Now, Slashdot is a very pro-linux crowd, so I'm bound to get a lot of disagreement on this next point. Linux will never be a games platform. No game company will ever devote the resources to support linux as a primary platform. The reason is that "Linux" isn't really a platform, the platforms are Ubuntu, Fedora, SUSE, and stuff we don't care about. If anyone claims that you can write the code once and run on all three, you've never tried to do so for a large project. What happens in practice is that you can get your game running pretty well, with random crashes in X and OpenGL that then take a huge amount of effort to track down, per platform. These platforms differ subtly in their API's and libraries for things like OpenGL, libc, and audio so you are guaranteed that you will never ship a single linux binary.

If I was writing a game from scratch right now, I would still consider windows my primary platform and I'd probably port it to the mac, but Linux would not be worth the cost and then resulting support burden.

Re:TINSTAAFL

[Just Some Guy]

There is plenty of free open-source software on OS X if that's what you're looking for, it isn't magically turned into shareware

Actually, it is. Take Memtest86+ [memtest.org], the de facto standard RAM tester. Now Google for "memtest os x" and you'll find this jerk [memtestosx.org] who sells a compiled version but doesn't make the source available to it. To rub salt in the wound, he's too lazy to make his own website graphics and uses the default "Joomla! ...because open source matters".

Sure, you can get Memtest for free if you know how. It's just irksome that the source-deprived shareware version is the one most Mac users will know about. So one program isn't the end of the world, but it seems par for the course for OS X.

Re:Mac users spend more money

[Anonymous Coward]

Preview can do this, quite simple actually:

1) Open the image in Preview (duh)
2) Click the Select tool (Cmd+3 or Tools->Select or the Select icon the Toolbar)
3) Select the part you want to crop
4) Crop it (Cmd+K or Tools->Crop)

Preview can do all sorts of neat stuff along with Automator! e.g. you can convert a crapload of images to a different format and such ;)

Re:Mac users spend more money

[immcintosh]

This may be beside your point, but I would love to be able to pay $50 for TextMate in Linux. It's the only Mac-only app I'm jealous of. Even better, make something with the UI and feature set of TextMate that understands VI commands. I'd be sold.