Quoting: GuestUnfortunately, it was even the case when MAC hardware made them good gaming platforms. Apple was never interested. Also, back in the day compilers for beginners were simply not easy to get by so you did not learn to program on a mac. I never did on mine, i did a few thing on a DOS dinosaur because the resource was available there.

Another problem is devs complain of the huge support burden from MAC users. You sometimes hear the same remarks about Linux gamers but on a more nuanced tone.

I get the impression that in the Linux case, although on one hand there might be support headaches, on the other Linux gamers have a strong contingent willing and able to get their hands dirty pinpointing and working around bugs (a contingent I don't belong to but for which I am thankful). In the Mac case, this is just a wild guess but I'm thinking there are far fewer such, so no silver lining.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: salamanderrakeIts strange as there are games EAC that work on linux natively that they wouldn't actually try to get it working with proton, but who knows, developers are sometimes funny and believe that its easier to cheat on Linux then on windows, except that 90% if not all of the cheating software only runs on windows.

Heh. One category we don't mind missing out on. But it probably runs on Wine . . .

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: KimyrielleLast time I checked, the number of big-budget games on Linux was not really stunning, and we seem to get LESS these days than 2-3 years back. Some genres are still missing completely (the number of good MMORPGs having a native client is still zero).

What about the number of true Scotsmen? :P
Not that I disagree with your point.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: Alm888Who cares about yet another Windows game not running on Linux? As if it is the only one…

By now we are basically swimming in good native games, so why bother spending your time on some Windows title which developers don't even care about Linux?

P.S. And the "But… But… But it is sooooo popular with my classmates!!!" argument is just lame. As it was stated before, "Appeal to Popularity" is a common logic pitfall.

P.P.S. I know I'm also using a logic trick, basically "I personally do not care so every one else should not care" statement thinly veiled as a question. But it is no worse than "Many people care so you also should care" approach. :)

Appeal to popularity is a logic pitfall if the argument is about quality. If the argument is about relevance to advancement of Linux as a gaming platform for the masses, then whether things the masses want to play run on it is absolutely a logical question.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

That looks pretty cool.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

I remember there being an article about this here before. Quick search . . . there were two articles about this here before.
The first one
The second one

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Anglo-Saxons . . . that reminds me of something. It occurs to me that although these sorts of games are trying to portray warfare of the period, organizationally they almost always treat the situation like that of a modern nation-state or maybe Rome: You have basically professional, permanent armies which you march around and station in barracks-type things and so on.

The Saxons in particular and a whole lot of older civilizations in general didn't actually have that. They had a small permanent "warband" of upper class more-or-less-professional warriors, and then they had a whole lot of temporary troops, the "fyrd", a mass of fairly prosperous well-armed farmers and their farmhands, who could be called on for a certain amount of military service every year and don't even think about calling them up during harvest. A major key to effective Saxon warfare was to be really careful when you called up the fyrd--too early and they'd go home before the main event, too late and they wouldn't get to the battle in time. But they were plenty tough when they showed up. And they were pretty much free--the king didn't pay them or arm them and they supported themselves all the time except maybe when they were actually fighting.

Medieval warfare had something similar in that the backbone of the army tended to be knights and their entourages, but a lot of the bulk was peasant levies who were grabbed for a particular campaign and would go home afterward (and would probably scarper off home the moment they got the chance even before the campaign was over). And then there's the whole decentralization problem, where the king mounts an effective war effort by persuading and bullying various nobles into bringing their gangs to his war.

I wonder if it would ever be workable for a game to reflect some of that stuff.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: skinnyraf

Quoting: Purple Library GuyFor a while it seemed like cyberpunk went away, but it really seems to be making a comeback lately--particularly today though.
This looks pretty interesting.

Yes, it is interesting. Consider recent advances of gene splicing, bionics/prosthetics, VR, robotics and AI. Consider corporations becoming more and more powerful, all-knowing about our life and filtering how we perceive the world. Consider ever increasing inequality between the rich (who become more and more like Tessier-Ashpools) and the poor - especially the working poor, trying to survive from one gig to another in the emerging "gig economy". Finally, almost everyone has always-on access to the internet and we can follow lives of celebrities 24/7.

Functionally, cyberpunk today would be just a realistic genre, think GTA with more accents on technology. Instead, cyberpunk is all about aesthetics: neon lights, chrome, bright colours, over-sized guns, body modifications, whining antique prosthetics and music. And it's this aesthetics that sees a revival, more than the underlying social themes of cyberpunk.

Well, I do think that the underlying social themes are being referred to more as well. And the aesthetics are less irrelevant than one might think. I think they often operate as a sort of shorthand for attitudes associated with them. For instance, for a while it seemed like every bloody game had a military theme, and it went with a time where there was a distinct "Rah Rah!" attitude. So now, even if someone makes a game that has no social content as such, the choice of cyberpunk aesthetics invokes the whole cyberpunk schtick in people's minds, like a certain cynicism about corporate rule and the establishment, and I think that attitude has become more common. And from the developers' side, I expect that the choice of that aesthetic reflects a feeling that those themes are somehow relevant.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

For a while it seemed like cyberpunk went away, but it really seems to be making a comeback lately--particularly today though.
This looks pretty interesting.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: Mountain ManWow, that trailer gives you absolutely no idea what the game will actually be like.

True enough. I guess strategy titles tend that way--a trailer that shows you clicking on a piece of terrain to build a road or an aqueduct just wouldn't pack a lot of punch drama-wise.

View this comment - View article - View full comments