Quoting: Cheeseness

Quoting: Bumadarnice review, It really seems to lock you into agame / removes the outside world so to speak, I could not imagine playing something like Amnesia with it on.   A logical next step would be a headset for sound and your all plugged in :)

Yeah, I wouldn't touch Amnesia with it :D

Might do for a nice laxative ^_^

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Man, that just sounds so promising!

I really wish there was some good way to recapture a large portion of your 800 backers and $30k of funding, like a relaunched Kickstarter campaign for a somewhat smaller game?  I'm not really sure.  I know that alpha-funding can work for some, but it's pretty much like a Kickstarter, but continuously promoting without a break.  Nobody can do that forever!

I do see that none of the reward tiers include gift keys to your past game (Brand), which is always a lovely enticement, and also reminds your new visitors that you already are a professional game development studio with a cool title already.  If you choose to launch a Kickstarter to follow up this one, I suggest adding keys to your past games, if you can do so in a cost-effective way.  Indies always forget to to do this!  Also, it will give at least your Windows gaming fans something to play while waiting between releases of Wingmen :)

On another note... I wonder if any luck has been had trying to build Brand for Linux & Mac via Flibitijibibo's branch of MonoGame specially for porting XNA games [External Link]...  supposedly he's ported entire games in a matter of days with his MonoGame branch.

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Ah, OK... I understand.  Still a pity you were not aware at the beginning, but Kickstarters are always such volatile beasts, and it is reasonable.  Yes, we are small still, but growing quickly!  I hope you can be successful, against the odds, and welcome to our community!  :D

It is true that not every project has a great success on our platform.  On one hand, your countrymen with Tribute Games ported a game to Linux and hadn't enough success to justify continued Linux development (their game Wizorb), but in contrast, another studio in Canada, Gaslamp Games (their game, Dungeons of Dredmor), has had great success!  It's a complex mix of the type of game itself coupled with your ability to cleverly market it.

It is my feeling that very small studios are best positioned to take a chance on us when they feel very good about the community and begin to connect with us, and when the threshold for portability is low.  It seems that all the right signs line up for Wingmen!  For the first (feeling & community), you've started off really well by selecting a beloved and under-served genre (space sim), and added-in something lacking widely on our platform, i.e., the competitive multi-player capabilities.  We haven't many of that combination!  In fact, I'm not even aware of one (someone will come correct me if I'm wrong, of course)

For the second, portability should be more possible due to your wise choice of a highly portable game engine.

Of course, at this point, you need to be funded first.  We will do what we can :)

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Quoting: SteamPenguinVery very suprised there was no mention of Frontiers, in the in the running section, especially as its doing so well.

Send a PM to Speedster to get it included :)

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Great article, Munt!  Just noticed that the "Race To Mars" text URL in the descriptive paragraph is very broken :-)

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The alpha gameplay looks fantastic, very colorful... but I have to wonder.  Why announce this in the final two days of their Kickstarter?  Why not pick up hundreds of Linux gamers in the first week instead?

I saw this title on Kickstarter several weeks ago, watched the pitch video, only to be sorely disappointed to see "Linux is also a possibility, but no promise as of yet."  So, not only did I refuse to pledge, but also why bother spreading the word about the game to anyone else?  My energies are finite, and we see many wonderful looking games on Kickstarter which promise us Linux support, or at the bare minimum are able to divulge a stretchgoal price, so why waste this energy on projects that choose not to commit to us?  It's frustrating.

That said, I can't really blame the devs for coming to our way of thinking eventually, but I do think it's a damn shame that they were unable to avail themselves of our enthusiasm early in the campaign, when the momentum is so crucial.

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Looks great, fun to play with!  I think your dates for the first Android bundle are off, though (it says 42 days?!)

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Quoting: Mike FrettThose GOG games bother me also, I'm severely reluctant to give money to people who have so much hate for Linux.

Nah, they don't hate Linux at all!  They just aren't convinced that they can pull it off and still make money.  The CD Projekt RED/GOG team put a lot of attention into their games (i.e., they license sources when possible & patch the games to run properly on modern Windows & Mac, completely rewrite installers from native to InnoSetup, etc), and continue to support them.

From what I've read of their statements regarding Linux, it's like "We know!  We just don't know how to do it right..."   I honestly think they're basically terrified of what it means to support Linux, and are pretty steeped in the FUD (successfully sown by other OS vendors over the years).

My personal opinion?  They're waiting to see what happens with Steam.  If we make an impact there, and exceed the 2% we're currently stuck in right now by enough, I suspect that's when we'll see some movement from them in the Linux regard.

That said, most of the games would end up being converted from an installer to the raw data files in a tarball (which we can easily do anyway).  The barrier to entry for us is so low, and confidence that we'll end up with a working product (specifically DOSBox games I mean) that I can see why the community is willing to accept the status quo.  Getting any awesome old DOSBox game working perfectly is so much easier than screwing with the Windows version of Steam, and then the Steam game to be launched by Windows Steam (which many folks still regularly do for some games).

I've done the GOG voting and commenting, etc., but I honestly think it's more of a business decision based on a "wait and see" strategy than anything malicious.

Still, don't let that convince you to hand them a red cent if you don't feel your money's going to the right place.  My aim is not to get GOG more customers, it's to separate this notion of "hatred".

Amazon I can't speak to as a software vendor, but they did ensure that their Netflix-competitor can use flash & works in Linux, and they did port their music downloader app natively to Linux, in addition (of course) to sneaking Linux into their ecosystem via the Kindle product line, all of which were embedded Linux (or Linux-by-way-of-Android).  Their web services & elastic cloud are all Linux based.  So, they're not the least Linux-friendly company by any measure.  However, they're also responsible for that awful 1-click patent & for ignoring Mike Frett's Linux questions... so it's a mixed bag with them, as usual :P

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.

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Greenlit today on Steam:  http://steamcommunity.com/games/765/announcements/detail/1585547885807672930 [External Link]

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