Quoting: GuestDon't suppose we can stop the grumbling at each other and move more back into discussion territory?

Good suggestion.

Quoting: GuestMy own view of course is that I think more people should try spend extra time on indie gaming, just to expand their experience.

That (imo of course) is actually the only solid argument *for* our lack of "headliner" games. There are indeed games I discovered "out of boredom" in the period before Steam Play were launched. But I hate to admit it (seriously, I do), while entertained I was only so for a relatively short period of time. There was too much lacking for me to really find them to be worth extended investment of time.

And it wasn't only because they were too small/basic/retro (pick your adjective :) ). I miss the layer of polish that high budget games have. They are simply more professionally made, created by experienced designers and it obviously makes a difference.

And no, I do not now talk about graphics (in fact there's plenty indie games with great visuals - I'm not one that demand "realistic" graphics at all, and rate artistic style much higher than the number of polygons or the visual effects).
No, the polish I talk about is on all the other things. The hundreds of little components that makes out a game. Everything from an intuitive interface to a well thought out tutorial to fluid mechanics, responsiveness, camera control, map design, every other little thing that isolated doesn't mean all, but each on their own adds up.

And THEN, on top of THAT, we can start talking about content: Voice acting, scripting, story line, animations, cut scenes, visuals, audio, network play, size of player base (in multi-player), freedom of movement, character creation, etc.

And the closer we conceptually get to the big budget games I love, the more the indies falls behind. With today's engines "anyone" can make a sleek twin stick shooter. But if you seek open worlds to explore, then the indie scene don't have much to offer at all. We got 7 Days 2 Die (who is a great game by the way). But that's about it.

There's a reason why those games are built by the large developers. It takes a hell of a lot of manpower to create something adequate. Again, not just in regards to graphics, but in regards to sheer content. Map design. Story lines. Assets. Scripting. Mechanics. It's a massive endeavour.

There are some attempts at this from small developers - and I believe I own a good share of them (Planet Explorers springs to mind as a hugely ambitious example) - but I am sorry to say they all fell short. Some adorable attempts, especially when we talk about a team of 2-3 guys or even solo projects - and I can totally see what they try to do, but it just doesn't cut it. It's too big of a task.

(btw: When I talk about "AAA" I don't mean the strict meaning of only games from devs owned by the big distributors. From that definition CD Project Red was an indie. Obsidian would be an indie. I essentially talk about the games created by larger developers, backed by high budgets.)

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Quoting: TheSHEEEPTake it or leave it, but know that leaving it will only reinforce my "assumptions" about you - not that I could give you any real reason why you should even care about what a random online person thinks about you.

Like I said, you have your answers to that in the first post you replied to. There is no reason for me to repeat that.

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Quoting: GuestSeriously, can you name 5 quality AAA games released in 2019 that you "can't live without" and are not playable using WINE? I can't.

I agree! At least if we now only talk single player games.
Generally speaking I don't find many games worth playing each year. But then again - I don't need to when one game alone represent potentially hundreds of hours gaming time.

Quoting: GuestThis year? What are the really cool AAA games we need? Well, there is Cyberpunk 2070 (the main reason i am keeping the Windows 10 partition), what else?

For me maybe the most anticipated game this year is Vampire Bloodlines. That game, if done right, has huge potential of being a GOTY this year. And the ingame videos so far are really¸really promising. It's SO great getting an action RPG that's not a cookie-cutter fantasy setting. Gothic modern day urban vampires... I mean how can that not be cool :)

And yeah Cyberpunk is of course practically guaranteed to be epic.

Quoting: GuestWitcher 3, Fallout 4, Skyrim SE, Deus Ex MD, the Tomb Raiders, the Far Cries, Grand theft Auto V, Red Dead Redemption 2 and a few more. Some of them are native on Linux or playable under Wine+DXVK/Proton.

Indeed. And that is also why I said that I am happy we got Steam Play. :)

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Quoting: TheSHEEEPOf which you did not counter a single point, so I am most likely simply right about you.

Again an assumption. You are really eager at judging others, aren't you.
The problem is your attitude, it's not one I care to spend time on. Be a bit more inviting and not so full of attitude and you may establish an interesting conversation. I don't have a single thing against people with different perception on things than me. But I do have a thing against people that respond like you.

And quite frankly you already found the answers in the post you replied to, had you bothered reading it without already having made up your mind about your response.

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Quoting: Liam DaweI think it's more a case of the attitude. We're a niche, a tiny one and nothing has changed on that. Seeing people repeat the "there's no AAA games" thing over and over again just gets tiring. We are where we are, a lot of us enjoying what we have.

fair point. I'm just sitting here, eagerly, worked up by the massive whirl around the "Steam Machines" a while back. It was a glimpse of what COULD have happened, had that thing been handled with enough focus while it was hot. The response from various devs and distributors demonstrated to us with no doubt that it *is* possible - had just Valve made the Steam Machine and pushed it on market the year after.
If only they did things in a different order - earned some experience with making hardware first and then launched the Steam Machine, then we quite likely would have been in an entirely different situation now.

But point taken.

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Quoting: TheSHEEEPEdit: Sorry if that all sounded too aggressive, but graphics-whorism always gets to me.

Then stop assuming everyone you disagree with are just whores. Cause what you released there was plain ignorant nonsense, hot air.

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Quoting: Samsaiat least to me this indie stuff is more interesting anyway because indie games feel like they at least have some soul

And that's your opinion, and one you are fully entitled to, of course. Just like I am entitled to mine. I respect your point of view. I'm glad for you. Cool! Enjoy the small games!

But I've been a gamer for four decades now. I have played Pong on coin-up arcades back when people still paid to play that black'n'white game with coloured transparent stickers to create an illusion of colour. It's not like I've never played anything but the flagships of today.

Quite the contrary. I've played sprite based 2D games for thousands of hours back when that were the bleeding edge technology - there wasn't anything else. I played games back when they had to make them unfairly hard just to make them last, as they could not write bigger programs, the machines would not tackle it.

So for me, to go back to that kind of software - low budget, short games, small team efforts, limited resources, limited everything - well, I played nothing but that for years.

I don't play for score anymore, I don't play to win at a strategy board. I play for immersion. For fantastic experiences, gorgeous landscapes, excellent acting, touching characters, and a freedom to be and do what I want in a universe like the ones I see in the movies I love.
I don't sit on a machine capable of delivering me a holodeck experience just to play pong again. That's where you have me. Is that really something to patronise?

But all this is irrelevant for my comment. My comment was written in the context of the wider perspective. I am really, really hoping for Linux to become a viable gaming platform for the general gaming audience. There's few things I'd rather love to see than that. And for that to happen we need to enter the same universe, and not operate on a kind of an alternative dimension where GOTYs are handed out to titles that's not even mentioned anywhere else. It's not a strength of the platform, never will be.

And judging from the nominees this year, I don't think we've ever been more in our own dimension than this year.

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Oh dear me, that was a load of obscurities as far as I'm concerned. So much so that I can't even vote - I've not even heard of the vast majority here.
Not the fault of anyone of us course, but a rather depressing picture of Linux gaming anno 2019.

I thank the gaming gods for Steam Play... When maybe I should curse it?

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Quoting: Patola

Quoting: BeamboomLooks like Xonotic may finally meet a worthy competitor. :)

How's that? I don't see any mention of Prodeus being or becoming open-source like Xonotic is.

I obviously talk about gameplay, not licence. To separate closed VS open is meaningless from a gaming perspective.

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Looks like Xonotic may finally meet a worthy competitor. :)

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