Quoting: Segata Sanshiro1 - The internet has completely changed things in that regard. You can watch a let's play or a review and get an idea of what the game is about without playing it.

Of course, there are some aspects you get to know with a video and some you don't (how quick the game reacts, how well it works on your system, if you could solve the puzzle yourself, ...). But I feel that's not the real reason why I very much prefer the demo over a video. Watching a video more feels like a spoiler to me, while playing a demo seems like an introduction. Might have to do with me not growing up with Youtube, though, I don't know.

Quoting: Segata Sanshiro2 - Impulse buying is where devs selling on Steam make most of their money. People don't even play 50% of their games or for more than one hour. If you give people demos, they get a chance to think about it rather than "oh, this looks good. I'll buy it for 75% off"

It seems the big ones are more fearing people not doing the impulse buying while the smaller ones take a chance on people getting to know their games.

The other aspect has been mentioned in articles I read about demos: That people might actually be satisfied with the demo's content. When looking at how many people are not even reaching early achivements in games, this might be true.

Quoting: Segata SanshiroI should really start trying demos more... I wouldn't have bought Battle Worlds: Kronos if I had played the demo... Then again, like I said, that's one of the reasons there aren't demos in the first place.

That was one I was sure I'd not buy after trying the demo, it simply crashes on my machine. When doing another test for the list, I was disappointed that it hadn't improved.

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Quoting: Guest

Quoting: EikePeople using Debian 7 (Wheezy) should know that they need a newer libc

You’re saying that as if there was some sort of Debian Gaming Licence that people can only get by passing a glibc test.

If I remember correctly, Steam doesn't even start without the newer libc?
(And according to the gamingonlinux survey, the vast majority of Linux players do use Steam...)

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Quoting: a4360825...
...
...
traitors
...

You might have some point. But I wont care about it as long as you're trolling around and don't get to it. Show numbers instead of assertions. Be specific instead of nonsensically generalizing. "All xy are" is a wrong statement in most of the cases.

Ciao,
Eike ( > 15 years of Linux)

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Quoting: GuestPersonally I’d like to know if there are (many) people using Debian 7, because from a game developer point of view it’s useful to know: Debian 7 uses glibc 2.13 while Ubuntu 12.04 LTS (the oldest supported Ubuntu) uses glibc 2.15. So if a game is built under Ubuntu it will not work under Debian.

People using Debian 7 (Wheezy) should know that they need a newer libc and get it some way or the others (there are scripts for it, or they fetch it from Jessie, or just download it, ...). You can rely on a glibc > 2.13 if you need to.

But I've a question (as a developer): What's the big difference between these versions?

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I'd love to click through the pages of comments from above the comments (maybe additional to below), so you don't always have to scroll down to switch pages.

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Quoting: MadeanaccounttocommentGoing to be honest and say most indie games are garbage and that most of those 700 games qualify as indie games. Of course I may only be saying this because an indie developer I invested in let their game become abandonware before it reached a completed state. Remember Legends of Aetherus?

It seems you're mixing up two things that don't belong together: Early access and indie. In early days of Steam for Linux, when there where very few games, I buyed my first indie games - never did so before on Windows - and was quite surprised of what they could do to me.

Amnesia: The Dark Descent and Antichamber absorbed me, I've spent more than 200 hours with Frozen Synapse, Gone Home is a great experience IMHO, The Journey Down is beautiful and lovely, The Swapper is atmospheric with tough puzzles, Thomas Was Alone makes you feel with colored squares, Bastion has the flow. Or how about Braid, FTL, Limbo, FEZ, Don't Starve, ...?

Hard to say if most indie games are garbage, as I didn't try out most, but surely indie neither means bad nor unfinished.

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Quoting: GuestI’m surprised Arch amounts to 25%. But it’s good, it might make some developers/publishers/distributors think twice before saying they only support Ubuntu :P.

That's another reason why I proposed splitting up the Debian based distros.
You might read it as mostly Ubuntu, but perhaps, there's lot of Debian and Debian-but-not-Ubuntu-based stuff hiding in the big piece of pie...

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I wonder what "building one's own Steam Machine" actually means.
I've got a Linux only PC, will continue to have it, will be replacing parts.
Maybe someday I'll buy a Steam Controller - does my PC get a Steam Machine by attaching it?
Or by installing SteamOS?
Or does it take both?
Or does it have to be built especially for that?
Or must it reside in the living room to qualify?
My best guess would be Steam Controller and SteamOS. (On the other hand they said that a Steam Machine may run Windows...)

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Quoting: a4360825Please stop circle-jerking!!! There is cca. 15-20 good quality ports (B2,Civ5,x-com,valve-games...) and all other is garbage, all Unity3D and C#/Mono/XNA/Flash based games are pure 5hit.

Ah...
You did play all 700, right?
Otherwise you obviously couldn't judge them.
I've got more than 20 good ports in my played-through-and-enjoyed-it category.
(BTW, do you know what Terry Pratchett wrote about using multiple exclamation marks?)

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Wasteland 2 and, still, Deponia

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