[Linux-aus] Computer users and linux: moving upstream to software producers.

[Christopher Yeoh]

At 2007/2/13 12:19+1100  Sridhar Dhanapalan writes:
> 
> Considering that so many commercial games have their server counterparts 
> working on GNU/Linux, how hard would it be to have the clients working as 
> well?

Writing/porting the game is just half of the problem. Its the testing
and support side where shipping games on multiple platforms gets
expensive. I spoke to a some management type people at a games company
a few years ago - their view was that they really didn't care whether
the platform was Windows or Linux, its just that they only wanted to
have *one* to test, ship and support for.

Servers tend to be a different from the game itself in that you have
more knowledgable people running the servers and expectations that it
will "just work when you pop the CD in" are much lower. Incidentally
this same company did go to some effort in the background to make sure
that their games worked under wine - but there was no expectation of
support/help for people if things didn't work properly.

Chris
-- 
cyeoh at samba.org