Quoting: Quote from adolsonThe Humble Bundles clearly show that "Linux gamers" are so starved for games that they outpay the guys on the other platforms

That notion doesn't hold up when there have been developers have been citing similar revenue share percentages (10% - 18%) outside of Humble Bundle's promotions.

Quoting: Quote from adolsonand still pay far less than the value received

Without knowing the frequency of payment values, there's no way to know whether Linux gamers are generally paying less than the value received, or whether there is a segment with exceedingly low contribution values pulling the average down (same goes for other platforms, potentially to a greater extent since their averages are so low).

Either way, pay-what-you-want promotions can never be a reliable indicator for fixed price point market conditions.

Quoting: Quote from adolsoneven bundles that only have Windows games

This is very true. Even outside of bundles and other sales, there are still plenty of Linux users buying non-native software, creating a differential of two sales (+1 for Windows and -1 for Linux).

This isn't necessarily bad if developers can be convinced to talk about changes in existing player bases rather than fixating on sales. If developers can see porting legacy games as an investment in customer satisfaction and loyalty, then we're more likely to see positive change moving forward (the difference between Valve's outlook on porting their catalogue vs Garry's yammering about not seeing many Linux sales post Linux launch)..

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Quoting: Quote from neffothe steam survey detects the wine version correctly, so it's probably showing up in the "other" column.

We don't know that that information is actually represented in the results, though. Valve have never stated that Wine numbers appear distinct from Windows numbers (not that I've been able to fine anyway).

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Just had a quick chat with the dev on Twitter who says they're going to look into windowed mode and Linux Rift support :D

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Quoting: Quote from SimmyDYew!  Need to go to the next TasLUG at Hobart cheeseness.

It's pretty tough to find time at the moment. I'm not expecting to be in Hobart again this year :(

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I spent a couple of hours on this today. What a fantastic homage to Shufflepuck Cafe.

A couple of things to be aware of for anybody who's looking to purchase this game. First up, it needs read (and maybe write?) access to /dev/input/event* to access input during gameplay (hopefully that's something they're willing to sort out - it boggles my mind a little bit). The menu and environment screens are usable without that, but as soon as you're controlling a "mallet", you're dead in the water.

The game doesn't seem to have a Windowed mode, and it seems to prefer to take up both monitors on my twinview setup, which I suspect would make it unplayable for most (you can get around this by disabling one monitor before launching the game). So far as I can tell, configuration is stored in a binary save file, so it's not readily editable.

The game doesn't seem to have a quit option, though it seems to shut itself down gracefully after smacking Alt+F4 a bunch of times (most likely triggered by Steam closing - it's hard to tell).

Edit: You can press Esc to bring up a quit menu. I'm sure I tried this previously, but after chatting with a developer and doing some testing, it seems to work.

Beyond those issues, the gameplay is good, solid airhockey fun. The characters seem well rounded, if a little cliché, and each have different play styles and special abilities that encourage different/tactical gameplay. There are a whole stack of missions and challenges which seem like they'll give you stuff to do even after you've hit 100 hours, though unlocking them will most likely feel like a bit of a grindfest if you're not playing for fun.

All up though, even with it split across my monitors, and not being able to Alt+Tab to respond to emails or chat messages, I'm really enjoying this.

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Quoting: Quote from adolsonIt just makes me wonder, will the Linux version be available in a timely fashion? I can't, in good faith, Kickstart the project but I'll definitely take note if I ever see it pop up somewhere for Linux.

They said in their Reddit IAmA that they'd be doing a simultaneous launch, but weren't sure what kind of hiccoughs they'd encounter during their pre-release phases.

Same time. It's part of the package now, so it's come to the table late, but it's not an afterthought.

That said, this is our first time out of the gate for Linux and Mac, so I expect to hit some hurdles in Alpha that we can hopefully get ironed out by Beta/Release.

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Quoting: Quote from RenzaticWell, it's obviously not polling every single person who regularly uses Steam, but it does seems to be polling roughly the same amount of people per month.

Hmm, where do you see indications of sample size? I've never been able to get a feel for whether sample size is consistent or scales with the number of active Steam accounts (this was something I touched on in my recent article [External Link]. If there are indicators (beyond a lack of extreme fluctuation in the results), I'd love to check them out.

I've tried to keep all the solid information I've been able to gather on the survey and how it's run here [External Link] if that's of any help.