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I think you both misunderstood my original post - I was not actually arguing for monolithic curation or limiting their selection like you seem to be implying, and I even said that doing so would be a never ending task for the service. What I did say was actually in line with flesk's comment about itch.io making it harder than it needs to be to find games that meet certain users defined thresholds of completeness or quality. This is an area where itch.io badly needs some improvement, as it is hurting their brand unnecessarily.

To say that the service only needs to function as a generic storefront also seems a little misguided in my opinion. I only buy games from a few services now (GOG.com and Humble specifically). While this is admittedly mostly due to the convenience of only having to manage one or two accounts, it is also due to the fact that I am not comfortable with handing out my financial information to too many different groups. In order to purchase games from itch.io I need to have some confidence both in them and the fact that I would be willing to buy more than one game from them. Otherwise the activation energy is simply not there to get onboard.

Some level of discoverability is key in this, especially considering recent moves such as making the Itch client do suggest they want to promote a coherent brand.

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Still no tux icon. I think adding such games to the wishlist is just unnecessary temptation. Every major sale leads to cringing.

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Still no tux icon?

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Yeah, I think it's more important that itch.io gives creators the means to distribute and promote their games and provide the tools to make it an interesting place to find and play games for users. We already have several good curated DRM free stores, like GOG, FireFlower Games and IndieGameStand, and itch.io is a more democratic approach that I think fills its own niche.

Browsing the store front for games for a user who expects to find games of the same quality as on other store fronts is less than ideal though, and even after they made it possible to combine platform filters with tags and other filters, I still find it difficult to find anything I want to play there. Even though I knew that both Blocks that Matter and Tetrobot and Co., neither showed up even after spending well over an hour looking through the most popular Linux games from top to bottom.

I don't want to limit the collection to my own taste, and I figure if at least one person can say that they enjoyed a game, it's worth adding, even if it doesn't have a high Metascore or user ratings on other distribution platforms.

Quoting: rustybroomhandle

Quoting: Robert

Quoting: fleskThanks. :) I have a couple of of those in my "staging" collection of games I haven't checked out properly yet...

You can safely move the Zork series out of staging, they were one of the best-selling games of their time, but I wonder if they're legit...

I seem to recall that for some bizarre reason, Activision chose to renew the copyright on Leather Goddesses of Phobos, but not the Zork series.

Yeah, the reason why it's in "staging" is because I couldn't figure out if it's legit.

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Quoting: HamishObviously the whole point of the service is to promote raw creativity, and these games do deserve their place on the service, but itch.io really does need a way to separate the cream from the crop.

I'm not so sure. Currently itch.io is the same kind of service that Bandcamp is for music. It's not really a discoverability platform and doesn't need to be - it's a hosting/storefront service that developers can use in conjunction with other marketing efforts rather than a place where monolithic curation is appropriate.

At the end of the day, what constitutes the"good stuff" is subjective, and it's super important for a distribution platform (a general platform like Steam or itch.io rather than a platform that tailors itself to a specific flavour of game) to not overtly favour one set of tastes above another IMO.

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Quoting: KeyrockHowever, in terms of writing, it's plain to see (to me at least) how far BioWare has fallen off. The very game series you cited as an example, Mass Effect, serves as a perfect example of that very thing. Look at the writing from Mass Effect 1 to Mass Effect 3. Mass Effect 1 had a pretty good and concise story with a memorable and interesting antagonist. By Mass Effect 3 the story had devolved into a mess with little rhyme or reason other than to make Shepard into Space Jesus

This we agree with. The series took a dive in ME3 - so much so that I didn't even care to finish it, and that's a first for me with a BioWare game. Personally I do however think ME2 were the best of them overall, while the first had a better "rpg" feel. And the first two were, in my humble opinion of course, fantastic. No less. They were fantastic adventures full of surprises and magical moments.

But my main point is, to write off BioWare because of one-two titles (I assume you too have little good to say about DA2) of SIX latest releases just isn't fair at all, especially since it's not even the last two. So even though we essentially agree I have much, much more faith in BioWare than that. Everyone are allowed a misstep or two.

Quoting: tuubiUnless we don't have the budget or the skills to do it all. If we think we've still got something to give to the gaming public, we absolutely should try our best. Maybe we might even make enough money so that our next masterpiece might appeal to an even broader audience with its technical whizbangery and state-of-the-art visuals.

Ok hold on for a minute: You are one of the indie game companies? I was not aware of that, I thought you spoke as a regular gamer. Had I known that I'd never express myself this undiplomatic. Please accept my apologies.

Quoting: tuubiPlease don't be that guy and act like your way is the only way.

Quoting: throghThis is YOUR perspective and yours alone, but don't give up arguments as speaker for a greater group.

Ah but I only present my point of view - and only that. I am aware that I am in the minority of much of what I express. I'm ok with that. :)

I enjoy these discussions, and hope I am not too much of an annoyance to others. Thanks, Tuubi and Keyrock, for an interesting exchange of views. :)

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Quoting: UlukaiGame runs like a train, never drops under 60 FPS and gameplay is solid. Very stable port!
Community server is unreachable, but that seems to be a problem on Windows as well.

Xbox 360 controller works just as expected without issues, but then I tried the Steam Controller today and I can't get it to work! Only the right pad works as a mouse, but no buttons seem to respond and I can't even select things in the menu. :( Anyone else having this? I read in the article that SC works for The Boss??

Guess I just found out what was causing the issue. When I unplugged the Xbox controller and rebooted the system, the SC worked as expected. The main difference with the situation before seems to be that the steamos-xpad gets loaded when you plug in an Xbox controller, which wasn't the case after the reboot.

Mind the combination of Xbox controllers ans SC, or at least as far as Saints Row is concerned, haven't tested the other games.

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Quoting: ZanvalWe are working on a linux port, but have a dependency that isn't compatible with the target system.

To me as a software developer, this translates to "We have no idea what we're doing!"

Pretty much this. It's amazing how unprofessional some studios are. If you plan to release for a number of platforms you need to plan what components and technology to use and if everything you want to use is available for all target platforms. Before you write a single line of code that is. I think that's sometimes referred to as "proper project management".
What they do is announcing a multiplatform release, but then develop as if no platform other then Windows would even exist. They write a Windows game using Windows components and Windows-exclusive technology and then are somehow surprised that their product doesn't magically compile for MacOS or Linux.

You really wonder where these people learned their craft.

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Game runs like a train, never drops under 60 FPS and gameplay is solid. Very stable port!
Community server is unreachable, but that seems to be a problem on Windows as well.

Xbox 360 controller works just as expected without issues, but then I tried the Steam Controller today and I can't get it to work! Only the right pad works as a mouse, but no buttons seem to respond and I can't even select things in the menu. :( Anyone else having this? I read in the article that SC works for The Boss??

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Regarding The Talos Principle, Crimson and radeonsi being evenly matched would hint at a lack of game profile for the game. A bit like CS:GO a while ago, of all the Source engine games it was the only one that didn't share the same name for the executable binary. Renaming it to hl2 was a short term hack for a quick +50% boost.
Does TTP share the same engine as Serious Sam 3? The binary for the latter is called Sam3, and there is a Crimson profile for it. What's the name of the main launcher for TTP? Worth giving it a shot.

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Quoting: DrMcCoy

Quoting: Avehicle7887what GPU are you running?

It's a GeForce GT 630, i.e. one of the smaller, budget-level nvidia cards. I used to have a GeForce 8600 GTS , but it died on me. Raw performance-wise, as "measured" by the FPS counter in glxgears, or vertex through-put in other benchmarks, those two cards are about the same, interestingly. Of course, the GT 630 has support for newer OpenGL features, and way more memory than the 8600 GTS.

Thanks, quite impressive for an old spec system running D: OS. I have to say such great performance makes up for the game's delay big time.

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Quoting: Avehicle7887what GPU are you running?

It's a GeForce GT 630, i.e. one of the smaller, budget-level nvidia cards. I used to have a GeForce 8600 GTS , but it died on me. Raw performance-wise, as "measured" by the FPS counter in glxgears, or vertex through-put in other benchmarks, those two cards are about the same, interestingly. Of course, the GT 630 has support for newer OpenGL features, and way more memory than the 8600 GTS.

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Quoting: DrMcCoyIgnoring all this bickering here...

I'm back at my place, back at my (granted, also older) desktop, and I can play Divinity: Original Sin now. And I'm surprised: it does work.

Sure, my FPS isn't high (about 20-25), but that's my own system's fault, after all. Most of the graphic options don't change anything for me framerate-wise, so I'm certain it's at least partially CPU bound. I have an Athlon 64 X2 6000+, a dual core AMD cpu from 2006 (running at 3GHz, for what little that information is worth), so that's about what I expected.

20-25fps on such an old CPU is not bad at all, what GPU are you running? I'm asking because I've been thinking about building a budget friendly system and would be great to have this game running on it too.

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And it's out on GOG now too: https://www.gog.com/game/divinity_original_sin_enhanced_edition

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Ignoring all this bickering here...

I'm back at my place, back at my (granted, also older) desktop, and I can play Divinity: Original Sin now. And I'm surprised: it does work.

Sure, my FPS isn't high (about 20-25), but that's my own system's fault, after all. Most of the graphic options don't change anything for me framerate-wise, so I'm certain it's at least partially CPU bound. I have an Athlon 64 X2 6000+, a dual core AMD cpu from 2006 (running at 3GHz, for what little that information is worth), so that's about what I expected.

I also see RAM consumptions frequently polling into dangerous territories for me. I have 4GB, and the game leaves about 900MB free when fully loaded, and dips into 600MB free at times. I hope that this won't bite me further into the game.

For an interesting factoid: especially saving seems to make it allocate about 100MB worth. You can continue to play while it saves, so I'd guess their save system does a quick clone of all data it wants to save before processing it further in a background thread. That's actually a very neat idea.

From my perspective, when it comes to the game itself, I'm actually satisfied with it now (*). And I might need to eat some crow from when I announced that I'm skeptical that it'll come this year at all. :)

(*) I'd still like to see a multi-platform toolset, though. :/

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The Mac & Linux versions of D: OS are now available on GOG too :-)

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I am planning to try Spirits of Xanadu at some point:
http://allen.itch.io/spirits-of-xanadu

It was covered on GoL, but the article only mentioned a Steam release, so I passed over it at the time.

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Quoting: BeamboomWhy sit there with Microsoft Paint if you can use Photoshop. Why read cheap digital novels written by amateurs when you can purchase great work published by professional houses. Why sit there with an old Casio keyboard when you can enjoy the full suite of Bitwig.

Simple as that to answer: Because some of the names and actions got a price to high: Photoshop is just another proprietary software package and there is more than just one example that open-source software could get the same quality. And your so-called cheap novels are just entry points from some beginners, everyone has to start at some point. This is YOUR perspective and yours alone, but don't give up arguments as speaker for a greater group. For example you are not speaking for my perspective, because I give nothing about proprietary platforms like STEAM or software-packages with online-activation building some addiction for me as customer like Adobe always does. It is better having a great little Indie-game like Eldritch instead searching for the next blockbuster.

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Quoting: Beamboom

Quoting: tuubiA great game is a great game, even if it could have been made ten or twenty years ago.

Then it's outdated and cheap and could (should!) have been made better - cause now we can.

Unless we don't have the budget or the skills to do it all. If we think we've still got something to give to the gaming public, we absolutely should try our best. Maybe we might even make enough money so that our next masterpiece might appeal to an even broader audience with its technical whizbangery and state-of-the-art visuals.

Don't take me for a nostalgia freak with a stiffy for all things retro. I love me some eye candy, but if I have to choose between an old-looking game with great writing and gameplay, or the latest blockbuster with prettier-than-life visuals and groan-inducingly mediocre everything else, I don't have to think twice.

Now, what we consider good writing is naturally a matter of taste, but I find that most big-budget stuff these days suffers from an obvious case of Hollywood-style writing-by-committee. If the rest of the game is great fun, I don't mind that much of course. I'd buy stuff like SoM and Saints' Row IV in a heartbeat if only I weren't broke. Hell, even the open world stuff Ubisoft puts out if they released them on Linux, even if these games seem to be pretty much perfect text book examples of pandering to the lowest common denominator.

Quoting: Beamboom

Quoting: tuubiYou're seriously missing out if you pick your games based on their budget, but that's your prerogative. Naturally the game is even more enjoyable if it also looks and sounds nice, but these are just potential cherries on the cake, not the cake itself.

I haven't picked my games based on the budget. You simply can't be a Linux gamer if you do that. I've never played more indie games than the last couple of years. But during those years I've discovered my expectations are higher than what's been on offer on the cheap indie scene. I know I can get both - so why settle with less?

You don't have to, but if you don't, you'll be playing a lot of mediocre stuff with pretty visuals and missing out on some gems. Feel free to disagree.

Quoting: BeamboomWhy sit there with Microsoft Paint if you can use Photoshop. Why read cheap digital novels written by amateurs when you can purchase great work published by professional houses. Why sit there with an old Casio keyboard when you can enjoy the full suite of Bitwig.

None of these are very good analogues. Especially the middle one about cheap digital novels.

Quoting: BeamboomTo care about the presentation doesn't mean you don't care about the content. But to excuse everything else if only you get a great story... Well then, buy a good book?

I buy a book when I want to read a book, but isn't it a bit disingenuous to suggest I fail to see the difference? I love games, but obviously enjoy different aspects of gaming than you do. Please don't be that guy and act like your way is the only way.

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Quoting: tuubi

Quoting: BeamboomOk - I'm realizing you're the kind who thinks everything was better before (no offence intended).

I don't think he is. It's just that we think content is more important than presentation. But I'm quite sure it's just a basic difference in what we enjoy and look for in a game. And I say we, as I find it very easy to identify with Keyrock based on his side of the conversation.

In any case, A great game is a great game, even if it could have been made ten or twenty years ago. You're seriously missing out if you pick your games based on their budget, but that's your prerogative. Naturally the game is even more enjoyable if it also looks and sounds nice, but these are just potential cherries on the cake, not the cake itself.

Exactly. It's obvious that we and Beamboom simply have different priorities in our games. Beamboom seems to prioritize production value, and that's fine, there is value in having nice looking games on Linux, it's what is most likely to legitimize Linux as a gaming platform in the eyes of the mainstream masses, since they tend to gravitate toward bombastic games.

For me, writing and depth are the priority, production value is a bonus. I would like to have production value in addition to depth of writing and depth of mechanics, but production value is not necessary for me to enjoy a game. My top 3 games right now that give me Windows envy that came out this year are Age of Decadence, Underrail, and Rebel Galaxy. Of those 3, 2 look like 10+ year old games and 1 looks nice but far from AAA.

As for my statement regarding BioWare, it's not a case of I just think everything made in the past is better. Games have come a long way in many ways. I would never trade the UI improvements of modern games for the clunky UIs of old games, for example. However, in terms of writing, it's plain to see (to me at least) how far BioWare has fallen off. The very game series you cited as an example, Mass Effect, serves as a perfect example of that very thing. Look at the writing from Mass Effect 1 to Mass Effect 3. Mass Effect 1 had a pretty good and concise story with a memorable and interesting antagonist. By Mass Effect 3 the story had devolved into a mess with little rhyme or reason other than to make Shepard into Space Jesus, included the mess that was Kai Leng, and ended with the train wreck that was the Starchild God. The ending to Mass Effect 3 is complete and utter rubbish.

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Seems like AMD's advantages consist of having a capable open source driver and that very same open source driver boasting incontestable, superior performance in Wine with Gallium Nine the vast majority of the time, even overshadowing Nvidia's mighty proprietary driver considerably. Many thanks for these benchmarks, Samsai!

Many of us undoubtedly have games left from our Windows days which are unlikely to come to Linux, or some might even still have Windows around for that one game or two. Needless to say, this alleviates the problem significantly, and makes AMD worth recommending not just if one cares about open source software, but if they do a lot of gaming in Wine as well.

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Quoting: Robert

Quoting: fleskThanks. :) I have a couple of of those in my "staging" collection of games I haven't checked out properly yet...

You can safely move the Zork series out of staging, they were one of the best-selling games of their time, but I wonder if they're legit...

I seem to recall that for some bizarre reason, Activision chose to renew the copyright on Leather Goddesses of Phobos, but not the Zork series.

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Quoting: tuubiA great game is a great game, even if it could have been made ten or twenty years ago.

Then it's outdated and cheap and could (should!) have been made better - cause now we can. Cause remember, the point'n'click 2d games of yesteryear was the bleeding edge of what we technically COULD do back then - they didn't make it like that just cause they felt like it. They pushed the hardware to the absolute limits. And we applauded that.

A game is, to a much greater extent than movies, music and obviously books a technical product. They are outdated much faster, faster than any other media I can think of from the top of my head.

Games are essentially like action movies. Have you seen again action movies you marvelled at decades ago? That once were hailed for their qualities? By far most of them look totally different through the eyes of today. Poor production techniques, bad editing, scenery that so obviously are made of cardboard, obviously poor special effects, etc. It can be better today! Why should we expect less?

Quoting: tuubiYou're seriously missing out if you pick your games based on their budget, but that's your prerogative. Naturally the game is even more enjoyable if it also looks and sounds nice, but these are just potential cherries on the cake, not the cake itself.

I haven't picked my games based on the budget. You simply can't be a Linux gamer if you do that. I've never played more indie games than the last couple of years. But during those years I've discovered my expectations are higher than what's been on offer on the cheap indie scene. I know I can get both - so why settle with less?

Like the METRO games. That's in my opinion a great example of a good, modern production with an interesting story and a very cool setting. That's what I want to see. I'm no big fan of shooters and stealth games but I kept playing simply cause the game had that special something to the atmosphere and story.
Now, had that same game been a retro thing with all dialogue as text on static faces, isometric view and poor animations it's not been the same at ALL, regardless if the writing had been the exact same - word for word.

Why sit there with Microsoft Paint if you can use Photoshop. Why read cheap digital novels written by amateurs when you can purchase great work published by professional houses. Why sit there with an old Casio keyboard when you can enjoy the full suite of Bitwig.

To care about the presentation doesn't mean you don't care about the content. But to excuse everything else if only you get a great story... Well then, buy a good book?

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Quoting: BeamboomOk - I'm realizing you're the kind who thinks everything was better before (no offence intended).

I don't think he is. It's just that we think content is more important than presentation. But I'm quite sure it's just a basic difference in what we enjoy and look for in a game. And I say we, as I find it very easy to identify with Keyrock based on his side of the conversation.

In any case, A great game is a great game, even if it could have been made ten or twenty years ago. You're seriously missing out if you pick your games based on their budget, but that's your prerogative. Naturally the game is even more enjoyable if it also looks and sounds nice, but these are just potential cherries on the cake, not the cake itself.

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Quoting: fleskThanks. :) I have a couple of of those in my "staging" collection of games I haven't checked out properly yet...

You can safely move the Zork series out of staging, they were one of the best-selling games of their time, but I wonder if they're legit...

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Ok - I'm realizing you're the kind who thinks everything was better before (no offence intended).

But I gotta say that Mass Effect was one of the biggest and most epic trilogies in my years of gaming so far. I can't see for instance KOTOR or Neverwinter being better in any way (although I hold KOTOR high too). All right so the third game was disappointing after the masterpiece that was ME2 (the loyalty missions were fantastic), but overall? Oh boy what an experience.

I also found the first Dragon Age to be a great adventure - and that's quite the achievement considering my aversion to fantasy. So while BioWare also delivered great experiences in the past, and while DA2 and ME3 were indeed a bit disappointing (although DA2 were underrated imo), I still trust BioWare to deliver on the content - in particular on the characters (who I believe has always been their biggest strength). And everyone says DA Inquisition is a return both to RPG and storytelling for BioWare.

And I'm dying to get to know more about Mass Effect next year. If only... If only it would come to Linux too. I've not yet played neither Fallout 4, Dragon Age Inquisition or GTA5 cause of platform. Just in case it would come, eventually... But I still got my Windows partition reserved for those games.

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Quoting: Robert

Quoting: flesk...if you have a favorite game on itch.io which isn't in my collection, please tell me about it in the comments.

Some games came to my mind:
Retro-Pixel Castles
Sky Rogue
Crystal Picnic
Sage Fusion
Detective Chirpums

Thanks. :) I have a couple of of those in my "staging" collection of games I haven't checked out properly yet. If you or anyone else wants to contribute to the collection, and eventually write short blurbs for each game, just give me your itch.io user name and I'll add you.

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Quoting: flesk...if you have a favorite game on itch.io which isn't in my collection, please tell me about it in the comments.

Some games came to my mind:
Retro-Pixel Castles
Sky Rogue
Crystal Picnic
Sage Fusion
Detective Chirpums

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Steredenn is too damn hard :(

*yeah I am a casual cry baby it seems*

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Quoting: HamishObviously the whole point of the service is to promote raw creativity, and these games do deserve their place on the service, but itch.io really does need a way to separate the cream from the crop.

On the other end is GOG, which is very curated and sometimes rejects games for their own undisclosed reasons (like Dex for example). In general, if you want an easy place to find good games - some entry barrier like GOG requires is a must, but it still can be skewed because perception of what is a good game, is to a degree subjective.

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