
Gabe Newell: Linux is the future of gaming, new hardware coming soon - onosendai
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2013/09/gabe-newell-linux-is-the-future-of-gaming-new-hardware-coming-soon/
======
adwf
I agree. I think this point really hit home for me when Rome Total War 2 came
out. This has been one of my favourite game franchises ever since the original
Shogun TW.

But.

I haven't bought it yet because it doesn't run on Linux. I don't want to
reboot my dual-boot system anymore.

Now, I just want to take a sec to point out that I'm not saying this from a
snobbish boycotting point of view. But from a purely practical one. I've been
toying with the Steam Linux beta since release and whilst I've had a lot of
indie games in my catalogue (thanks Humble Bundle!), I've had hardly any AAA
games except some old Valve titles - which I'd finished playing years ago.

But recently there have been a couple of great Linux versions of strategy
games that have come out (Crusader Kings 2, Europa Universalis 4), and when I
weigh up the decision between rebooting to Windows to play something, or just
stay in Linux and play one of those. I always stay. And that's in spite of a
potentially great game like Rome TW2.

Then when you add in some great looking upcoming games on Kickstarter, like
Wasteland, Project Eternity, Torment Numenera, etc... Also, a huge victory
(for a UK fan) of Football Manager 2014 upcoming for Linux. The future is
looking very bright.

All of this adds up to one thing, I don't have a need to reboot anymore. I
used to get forced into using Windows just for gaming, now I actually have a
choice.

NB. On a side note, the catalogue for Linux isn't looking too bad either. I
just checked my account and I have 310 games, of which 76 will run in Linux.
Not too shabby anymore.

~~~
asdasf
It is interesting, because I am a long time hardcore unix guy, and I have the
exact opposite feeling. I don't think linux offers any advantage over windows
for a desktop/gaming environment any more. Back when we had to deal with the
instability of windows 98, having games work on linux was a fantasy. But now,
between the increased stability that came with moving to NT for windows, and
the decreased stability that came with all the crap that comes with gaming on
linux, I don't see the benefit. That combined with linux moving so far away
from unix, and so much closer to the bloated complexity of windows, just makes
it seem pointless.

~~~
csense
> I don't think linux offers any advantage over windows

It's free in beer, and free as in speech. The developer experience is much
better on Linux; doing something like running all your video assets through a
converter in parallel is a one-line shell script on Linux [1], but a hundred-
line Python script on Windows. Subjectively, on Linux filesystems seem to be
faster and overall memory usage seems to be smaller.

Seriously, a _long time hardcore unix guy_ doesn't see the benefits of Linux
over Windows?

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6363676](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6363676)

~~~
asdasf
>Seriously, a long time hardcore unix guy doesn't see the benefits of Linux
over Windows?

Nope. Linux barely even resembles unix at this point, as I mentioned. That one
line shell script is also a one line shell script on windows, install cygwin
or learn powershell. I find the developer experience on linux to be terrible,
I do my development on openbsd running in virtualbox regardless of whether I
am running windows or linux.

------
beloch
Newell has the ulterior motive of killing Microsoft's app store, which he
clearly sees as a direct threat to Steam. If it takes off, indeed it will be!
I remain unconvinced that Linux has passed the tipping point and is on it's
way to becoming the home entertainment OS of the future though. I use it on my
work laptop and love it, but Win8 runs my HTPC.

1\. A home entertainment box does more than play games these days. Windows is
_still_ the only OS with acceptable bluray support. OSX is as out in the cold
as Linux on this score even though Apple is a member of the bluray consortium!
Some may be tempted to scoff at physical media, but it's still alive and well,
especially with the audio/video-phile crowd.

2\. If games have to be rewritten to operate on Linux, most existing games
never will. Most games, once their sales have ceased bringing in cash, are
abandoned and never updated again. Legacy gaming support is important. A lot
of people have beloved games that are years or decades old that they still
occasionally play. If switching to Linux means they have to abandon those,
they won't.

If Newell is serious about his Steam boxes succeeding, he needs to support
work that will let older games run on Linux without modification and he needs
to support development of a bluray support package for Linux, plus any future
formats. No open source software will ever legally support bluray. I like open
source and I'm sure some fanatics will be tempted to blast me for calling for
more closed-source software on Linux, but that's precisely what Newell is
doing. He's bringing closed source, non-free software to Linux. If you want to
see Steam on Linux succeed, you're demanding something free, open-source
software has yet to deliver.

~~~
Shivetya
Considering the paucity of games written for OS X I think its a stretch to see
any number of games running on Linux. Even on OS X far too many are ports or
wine type encapsulation and the OS X base does tend to spend more than what is
normally attributed to Linux users.

On Steam now, there are 289 Linux capable games, versus 809 for OS X, and
thousands more for Windows. So they have a lot of ground to make up

~~~
stormbrew
To be fair, steam for linux has been out for about 6 months. Steam for OSX
more like 3 years. That's some pretty significant progress in that time.

~~~
ekianjo
Yeah, support for Indie titles has been very impressive so far. Besides,
Newell said "Linux Gaming is the Future", i.e. it's not there yet.

But if they indeed launch a "Steambox" with dedicated Linux support, that's a
whole new story in terms of user base and market expansion.

------
joeld42
'"When we talk to developers and say, 'if you can pick one thing for Valve to
work on the tools side to make Linux a better development target,' they always
say we should build a debugger," he said.'

Yes, please. That would be awesome.

~~~
rwmj
Yeah, gdb really _really_ sucks. I was yet again reminded of this today when
trying to debug some multithreaded qemu code.

~~~
qznc
Is there really a problem with gdb apart from IDE integration?

I am using gdb sometimes and it is just fine. Especially with the Python
scripting support now. I used the Eclipse CDT gdb wrapper once and that, I
agree, really sucks.

~~~
benjamincburns
> Especially with the Python scripting support now.

Yes. A thousand times _yes_.

> I used the Eclipse CDT gdb wrapper once and that, I agree, really sucks.

Just curious, how long ago was that? My opinion of Eclipse kind of ebbs and
flows. I've used the GDB support a bunch for remote debugging of embedded
systems (including, surprisingly, the Linux kernel).

In fairness, my gripe was always more with the IDE than its debugger support.
CDT has always felt like the red-headed stepchild in comparison to Java
support. The extra intelligence is nice, but it makes it so that you have to
jump through _lots_ of hoops to get it to be even remotely usable with a large
codebase (again, the Linux kernel). Even on smaller codebases it can consume a
buttload of memory and still be quite slow. But the debugger interface always
seemed to "just work" for me.

------
SCdF
While it's super cool that maybe I'll be able to run linux at home and still
play games some time in the future, it's kind of sad that the only reason he
cares is because he's worried about a MS app store potentially being a
competitor to steam, and yet people are fervently praising him for it.

He doesn't really care about linux, he doesn't really think Windows is a bad
platform for gaming, he just wants to try to crush a competitor. If he did
care he would have done something years ago. Id has managed to release the
vast majority of their games on linux, and it didn't take a potential fiscal
threat to make them do it.

~~~
astrodust
If there was ever a competitor that deserved to be crushed, it's Microsoft.

I'm all for this. If Microsoft wants to turn their OS into a consumer toy or a
corporate tool, go ahead. I'd love to have an open-source OS that happened to
be a first-class gaming platform as well, where if there's problems with
performance, companies like Valve has a recourse: patch the OS.

~~~
nightski
Yea that would be outstanding. You need a custom kernel to play this game.

~~~
astrodust
Not "need", but if Valve wanted to submit patches, they could. Secondly, they
could make their own distro for their own hardware which they are allegedly
doing. Then they can do whatever they want with the kernel.

See also: Android.

------
vor_
I'm skeptical because Linux has been called the future of gaming for at least
15 years. During its heyday in the 1990s, id Software released a Linux port of
every Quake game, and that still wasn't enough to cause a major shift in
adoption, and that was at a time when PC users on average were more
technically inclined.

I also can't help but note that Gabe only began this public crusade when
Microsoft released an app store that competed with Valve's app store. So I'm
interested to see what happens, but I'm skeptical.

~~~
forgottenpass
_I also can 't help but note that Gabe only began this public crusade when
Microsoft released an app store that competed with Valve's app store._

Well, of course. It's not hard to see the writing on the wall. Valve is
looking for a platform where they can't be muscled out before they're muscled
out of the one they're on. You can only compete with a vertical integrator for
a long as they allow you compete. Doubly so with software platforms. If you
look at the trajectory of Microsoft's platform control, there is zero reason
Valve _shouldn 't_ be shitting their pants right now.

~~~
vdaniuk
Well, Valve owns social gaming graph for every user. Until Microsoft creates
seamless integration between Windows and Xbox and imports xbox graph, Valve
has pretty powerful network effect on its side.

~~~
AdrianRossouw
they've already tried (and flubbed) this once. Not to mention that they
already have a unified authentication platform in place. They just flubbed the
'seamless' part.

------
JonnieCache
The presentation:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gzn6E2m3otg#t=13](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gzn6E2m3otg#t=13)

~~~
300bps
Thanks for posting that. Before watching that, I was under the impression that
Gabe was against Windows 8 because he fears competition from new digital
distribution systems that can compete with Steam.

After watching that, it has solidified my belief that his only complaint about
Windows 8 is that competition is coming.

What am I missing?

~~~
benjamincburns
I know one issue they're worried about is display latency. DRM complicates
this issue and potentially adds yet another layer of indirection to worry
about. Though to be fair, I wonder how big of a driver this is for them.

See Michael Abrash's discussion on VR latency:
[http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/abrash/latency-the-sine-
qua-n...](http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/abrash/latency-the-sine-qua-non-of-
ar-and-vr/)

And also this tweet:

    
    
      I can send an IP packet to Europe faster than I can send a
      pixel to the screen.  How f’d up is that?
        
        - John Carmack, Id Software

------
desireco42
I wish Gabe Newell promoted Linux with same passion before MS launched App
Store and his business was threatened. I find it hard to believe anything he
says.

On other hand, I wish all best to Linux :)

~~~
jlgreco
That criticism seemed sensible several months ago, but where we are at right
now, does it really seem like MS's App Store is doing any significant
threatening? Just looking at [http://windows.microsoft.com/en-
us/windows-8/apps](http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-8/apps) it seems
clear to me that this is not a threat. These are "iphone games", not "PC
games".

From what I have seen, the only competitor to Steam that is even a blip on the
radar of gamers is Origin. If anything, Valve is pushing into territory that
they think _Origin_ cannot enter, not MS.

~~~
mikevm
Do you really care about Valve's reasons? Let's just shut up and let them use
their industry muscle to encourage Linux gaming, and in the end we will all
win.

~~~
jlgreco
Not particularly.

I'm not a "real" gamer anyway so none of it really matters to me anyway, I
just find the notion of the future of "real" gaming being touch based low-
powered "Surface-like" devices to be very silly. Whether the future of PC
gaming is on Windows 8 or Linux, it will look very similar to how looks right
now: beefy machines chewing up somewhere around half a kilowatt of power,
controlled by keyboard/mice and game controllers.

The most change I consider plausible/viable is in display tech. Either high-
dpi screens, or next-generation "Rift-like" displays _could_ complement PC
gaming. Input and power are here to stay though.

Also I find it bizarre that so many people seem so invested in being sure that
Microsoft's App Store presents the largest threat to Steam. It doesn't
currently, clearly, and I rather doubt it will in the future. Origin on the
other hand does, but nobody here seems to be interested in them. Origin is a
_real and current_ threat, not some sort of hypothetical threat. Maybe there
just aren't many EA shareholders/employees on HN...

------
rlu
I sort of got bored of the presentation 15 minutes in (and was only half
paying attention, truth be told) but it seems to me that Gabe is operating
under the (gigantic) assumption that Microsoft would remove the Desktop and
move Windows into a 100% closed environment.

Sounds like he's jumping the gun. I don't see that future happening.

~~~
ChikkaChiChi
Both Microsoft and Apple recently implemented similar 'Gatekeeper' software to
scare people away from using or installing binaries that aren't from their
blessed App Stores.

~~~
rlu
What are you talking about? I run Windows 8 at home and install non-App store
software all the time.

~~~
ChikkaChiChi
Try running Minecraft. It's an unsigned binary so Windows "helps" you by
hiding the 'Run Anyway' under the more info warning.

~~~
ygra
Given enough downloads that warning disappears. Basically it displays for
unsigned executables with low download counts which may imply malware. It
usually goes away after a few hours for moderately popular software.

And apparently notch can't afford a code signing certificate.

------
Zikes
Title is misleading, Gabe isn't promising any new hardware. Valve is poised to
release "more information about how we get there and what are the hardware
opportunities we see".

~~~
criley2
It's like when we all waited months to hear Elon Musk explain how, in very
vague statements, the hyperloop could maybe work, if everyone (the government)
pitched in a hand.

~~~
Zikes
I think it's fair to say it'll be a fairly long road. Dealing with hardware
vendors, especially with GPU manufacturers, will be the biggest hurdle, and
getting them all to fall in line will take a lot of work.

Even if he announces the "Steambox" tomorrow, without a truly open Linux
solution with very broad drivers support it won't mean much to games
developers. It'd just be one more platform they'd have to explicitly support,
i.e. they'd have to make a Windows version, Mac version, PS version, Xbox
version, and finally a Steambox version

------
nostromo
I think people forget that Gabe started his career at Microsoft, and spent
over a decade there.

It may have been a million years ago by tech standards, but I think that
subcontext makes his statements about Linux even more interesting.

~~~
Paradigma11
Disgruntled Ex-Worker?

------
BashiBazouk
As someone who games on a PS3, steam via OSX and ios I'm not convinced there
will ever be or needs to be a "winner". Some games are better close to the
screen with a mouse. Some are better more relaxed on the couch and some are
better on a tablet. I could picture getting a small gaming box running Linux
if most of my steam library transferred over and anything new was offered in
Linux. Professionally, I'm in print production and design, so Linux is
unlikely to ever be my sole OS.

I'm finding with the new batch of consoles and micro consoles there has been
surprisingly little talk of cheating prevention. I was once almost completely
a PC gamer but cheating in just about every multiplayer game I played pushed
me to consoles. Even today most of the games I play on console that have PC
versions are hacked quickly. There is cheating on consoles but at a much, much
lower rate. If Linux via Steam can do something significant about cheating
that would be a huge plus.

As far as digital download services, Steam has value to me working on
different OS's. All the games in my steam library work on windows. This has
proved a godsend when visiting the in laws on the other side of the country
for a week at a time. Ios has proven quite good at having apps last through
many generations of hardware. Many apps I bought on the original iphone work
on all modern ios devices. I have given up on buying digital versions on PS3
as they seem like a dead end. At least with the disk there is a good chance
sometime down the line an emulator will come out for what ever computer I will
be running in the future...

------
stormbrew
One thing game devs, from my experience playing games on linux steam, need to
work on with linux is how to deal with multimonitor setups.

Every game I have in steam that runs on linux attempts to spread itself out
across all my displays, which is especially busted when I have a vertical
monitor. Entire sections of the screen are just cut off completely as the
height of my virtual display is higher than 2 of my 3 monitors.

Now, I use intel's video support and not nvidia, so I'm using randr to set up
my monitors and not nvidia's proprietary stuff. I wonder if that's the issue.

~~~
kevingadd
Multimonitor support in games is terrible on Windows too. Game devs just
almost universally get it wrong. (I don't understand why; literally every dev
I know uses multiple monitors...)

~~~
stormbrew
Well, my experience on windows was always that the 'getting it wrong' was just
choosing to play the game exclusively on the primary display. This at least
leaves the game playable, and it never bothered me, I could never get used to
paying attention to two screens joined into one for gaming. The result on
linux is to literally make the game unplayable unless you manually disable
extra displays.

------
Mikeb85
This is great news. More developer support, and more hardware support to be
able to create a Steam box just as easily as a home theatre box (w/ something
like XBMC) would be fantastic.

Heck, I think even desktop gamers would simply be happy to be able to use
Linux full-time, with the control and performance that comes with it.

------
TruthSHIFT
I really like the idea of gaming on Linux, but I feel like there are still has
a lot of unanswered questions. How do you stop developers from using Direct X?
How do you convince graphics card companies to optimize their drivers for
linux?

~~~
adwf
Two answers that I can think of at first glance:

1) A large proportion of the games that I own for Linux are developed using
the Unity engine. This has many advantages for an indie developer (ease of
use, cheap license), but is especially useful because it can cross-compile to
Windows/Mac/Linux/Android/iOS/Xbox/PS. Even Blackberry! This is a godsend for
indie developers trying to reach as large a market as possible.

So the challenge isn't necessarily to get developers to stop using DirectX,
but to get the major engine developers (eg. Unreal) to ensure good cross-
compilation support. They already have to a certain extent, because the PS3 is
already using a form of OpenGL. All we really need is a little extra effort
from them to make sure it's compatible with Linux. This would immediately add
a large proportion of the current game releases to the Linux market.

2) Driver optimisation isn't as important as you might think. The average PC
graphics card vastly overtook consoles in graphical power a very long time
ago. Certainly within a year or two of the current generation of consoles.
Even without optimised drivers, they are still far more powerful than the
Xbox360 or PS3.

All in all, the obstacles are very surmountable. The biggest problem that I
can see lies in convincing the big game engines, like Unreal, to bother with
such a small market. But if Valve leads the way with the Source engine, they
could start eating away at the likes of Unreal - simply by being the only AAA
choice on Linux.

~~~
pachydermic
Good driver support is still pretty important... it's definitely one of the
worst parts of Linux right now. I have an Nvidia card with Optimus in my
laptop, and it's a total headache... I can't do stuff like connect a TV to my
laptop and extend my display like I can with windows. The performance is not
as good (which obviously matters for demanding games). The battery life is not
as good. I just broke my X server when I tried installing some package (with
apt) which wiped out some of my graphics libraries somehow... definitely not
something your average joe can handle.

Overall, it is a huge pain in the ass. I oh-so-wish that graphics cards would
"just work" like wireless cards now do.

But if you're on a desktop and get a well-supported card, you're right. It's
not a big deal.

~~~
adwf
Oh god, I'd forgotten about Optimus, it's a whole new level of messed up! I
completely agree on that front. Took me days to get my laptop working right
over the summer. Thankfully I don't game on my laptop, but if I did, I'd be
very annoyed. The only way I actually got everything working was by installing
Gnome Shell of all things...

------
OWaz
Is Gabe specifically suggesting creating native Linux games? It wasn't too
long ago when John Carmack commented that "The conventional wisdom is that
native Linux games are not a good market". So then does Steam carry enough
weight to challenge conventional wisdom?

1:
[http://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/17x0sh/john_carmack_a...](http://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/17x0sh/john_carmack_asks_why_wine_isnt_good_enough/c89sfto)

------
archagon
Question is, if Windows becomes a closed ecosystem or flops altogether, would
PC gamers elect to move to Linux? Even if they do, there's going to be a
significant loss of numbers along the way, and it's already a smaller market
than consoles. I can see a future where most game companies (barring maybe
Valve, Blizzard, and a few others) cut their losses and decide to focus solely
on consoles and iOS/Android. That would be a sad future indeed.

~~~
Fuzzwah
I'd suggest that the users will move to what ever platform best allows them to
play games from their steam libraries. Gabe's end game has to be that the
users aren't even aware they've moved to Linux; they just plug in their
steambox and play their games.

------
runn1ng
It feels like cognitive dissonance when the maker of Steam, that is full of
DRM and, of course, closed source, talks about the successes of open source.

I mean, I have nothing against proprietary source (the difference between open
source games quality and proprietary games quality is giant), but Valve made
their living on proprietary code and now they are preaching the opposite.

~~~
Fuzzwah
Valve made it big because they released portions of their code along with the
tools to create mods and total conversions of their games. They then hired the
most talented people who were using these tools, either pulling them in to
work on half-life or to create commercial versions of their own projects.

Then then made it bigger by making it easier for outside devs to publish on
steam. Over the course of a decade they worked to turn steam from something
that everyone hated into something that nearly everyone loves. The turn around
has been incredible; from a hindrance no one wanted to a platform no one wants
to do with out.

I believe that Gabe is more interested in Linux because it is an "open
platform" rather than it being "open source". Valve were quite happy working
on Windows when it was an "open platform" that they could release games onto
with out having to jump through hoops. As MS moves to force everything through
their own app store, Valve are looking elsewhere.

------
rlu
FYI (only tangentially related to the presentation), here are the latest
hardware survey results for Steam users.

[http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey](http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey)

You'll notice Windows 7 is still #1 (not surprising) but Windows 8 and 8.1 are
the fastest growing, with almost 15% of Steam users running Win8 64bit.

~~~
BashiBazouk
An interesting stat to see would be different OS's or hardware models per
person or IP address. Here there are a few graphs that I would be in multiple
categories...

------
virtualwhys
One issue that needs to be addressed is driver support, particularly around
multi-monitor setups. Nvidia apparently now has at least partial support for
Optimus laptops as of driver 319+ (currently 325).

The biggest PITA with multi-monitor Linux based systems is dealing with forced
max power state (read: constant heat generation and fan noise).

Optimus should allow Intel graphics chip to drive say, your laptop display and
one external monitor via VGA, and then the Nvidia chip drives an external via
HDMI and Display Port.

On Fedora 18 so can't yet upgrade to Nvidia driver >= 319. When I initially
connected 2 external monitors to my laptop, the laptop GPU fan kicked on
_every single minute_ click-whirrrr, click-whirrr, click-whirrrr, total
madness.

Was forced to mod the VBIOS, undervolting the Nvidia chip and slightly
reducing GPU fan speed, a risky though rewarding operation. Now the laptop
stays quiet since the GPU is constantly in adaptive/power saving state.

Hardware undervolting is obviously a no-op for gamers; hopefully with Optimus
the multi-monitor heat generation situation will improve to the point where
users don't have to risk bricking their graphics card in order to have a sane
Linux work environment when not gaming.

------
Arjuna
This piece from Gabe's talk [1] is interesting:

"But the one entity we wouldn't ever want to compete with is our own users,
right? They have already out-stripped us spectacularly. You can't compete with
them once you give them the tools that allow them to participate in the
creation of the experiences that they find are valuable. And it's not by a
little bit; it's like an order of magnitude more productive already, and we're
only a couple of years into thinking about how to do that.

[...]

The point is that the connected groups of users are going to be way more
successful if they're properly enabled and supported than any of the
individual game developers are going to be.

But, there's this huge tension between, if that's the direction that gaming is
going, or if that's the direction content creation is going, these other
systems actually put a tremendous number of road-blocks in the way of doing
that.

It takes Valve several months to get through certification process for a
single update. I mean, it took us 6 months to get one update through the Apple
Store to ship an iPad update. We have a lot of resources and have a huge
commercial motivation. No individual user, if they're the sort of center of
gravity for content production, is going to have the wherewithal or the
stubbornness to get through that.

That's just one example of the many ways that the closed systems appear to us
to be antithetical to our user-centric model of content production, going
forward."

\--

Like you, I'm just trying to "read the tea leaves" here, but the future is
user-generated content. Valve needs to leverage that by offering a hardware
platform [2] that will allow them to be in complete and full control, both
technologically and financially. A hardware platform that they can update as
needed, that will give users more control to generate content; free from the
concerns of pushing an update through Apple or Microsoft. In turn, their goal
will be to leverage content creation by connecting users in a unified economy,
again, that they control. They engaged Yanis Varoufakis [3], who is a renowned
academic economist, no doubt to assist in that endeavor.

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gzn6E2m3otg&t=783](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gzn6E2m3otg&t=783)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steambox#Steam_Box](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steambox#Steam_Box)

[3] [http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/economics/it-all-began-
with-a...](http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/economics/it-all-began-with-a-
strange-email)

~~~
m3mnoch
> the future is user-generated content

as a veteran of the "user-generated" game content industry, i can honestly say
5 years ago, i had that same vision. 5 years of blood, sweat, money and tears
later, i can (also honestly) say -- that's not the case. and won't be.

for those of you who've never made (finished and shipped!) a game before, it's
an incredibly frustrating experience. you have what would be called an mvp in
ycombinator terms inside of a month. "i will crush the rest of this thing out
3 months and ship!" uh... no.

i'm here to tell you that is not the case. the whole "first 90%" vs. the
"second 90%" thing is magnified 10-fold in games. it's a really long post for
me to explain the myriad of gotchas involved from safely syncing game state
between sleep-and-non-sleep-packets-suddenly-flood-in-but-omg-my-clock to btw-
you-need-3-times-the-states-in-your-state-machine-oops to why-am-i-
getting-3-fps-on-a-faster-device to all-of-the-above-times-multiplayer-
exponentially. i plan on writing that post someday, but not now.

anyway.

the prototype flies off your finger tips and then the next 2 and a half years
(please see the common thread of 3 years to make a game, from the movie indie
gamer [highly recommended!] to that recent atomic brawl post) working through
obscure bugs and corner cases because games have more complex interactions
than non-games and gamers don't have a clue how to follow the damn happy path
when they play.

so, yes. i said 1 month of fun, fast iterative prototype and 2 years of awful,
in-the-weeds debugging where your strength of will to finish is tested daily.
(insert rovio making 51 games before angry birds here) finishing a good game
is goddamnhard. finishing a shitty game is a snap -- just ship your prototype!

what we found was that anyone who has the strength and perseverance to
actually build and (more importantly) finish a game was already working in the
game industry -- mostly because they possess a proven will to finish.

i guess what's i'm saying is lots of people can snap together sweet, use-with-
care prototypes ugc-style. almost nobody -- and i really, really mean almost
nobody, like 0.0001% of "i want to make a game" developers -- can actually
finish and launch a game regardless of scope.

mind you -- i don't view indie games as ugc. if you ship (SHIP, not start) an
indie game, you have what it takes to work in the non-indie game world. you
just choose not to.

if you don't believe me, i challenge you to prove me wrong and just make a
simple game this weekend and let your friends play it where you can watch, but
not talk or help them at all. it will take approximately 12 seconds of them
touching your game before you're completely "wtf -- how did that happen?!?!?"
screwed.

m3mnoch.

~~~
r0s
> i challenge you to prove me wrong and just make a simple game this weekend

Erm, if you take "content creation" to mean full, playable games then you're
right. But...

I'm pretty sure Valve is referring to content at every level, from hats to in-
game items to custom levels to mods.

~~~
grogenaut
Yep, cause making single thousand K poly models and full mods are the same
thing. Just like bespoke that one bespoke metalworker made the entire 2013
line of camrys or that 8 year old t-baller who started for the yankees the
next year.

~~~
randac
Well, that didn't make much sense.

His point stands, however, and you only have to look at the quality of many of
the Steam Workshop addons produced by hobbyists. Yes, this includes plenty of
high poly models and much more, easily comparable to anything produced
professionally.

~~~
grogenaut
I'm not denigrating the steam folk's quality. My point was that AAA game
companies have lots of professionals making models like this. This likely pays
much better than an entry modeling job at a game studio. You can also find
really good models out on turbosquid and other places. Seems like vale
marketplace is a better deal for artists if you get popular.

But what I was saying is that these guys are making single models of very high
quality, not filling out an entire GTA V5. And especially not coding, acting,
mocapping, producing, marketing etc a game. They're not even building somthing
like bastion with a small team. They are many orders of magnitude between
doing one model that sells well and building a full game. Especially one that
does well.

------
MLR
I think he's completely off base to be honest, I think in the coming years
Surface like devices will replace the traditional desktop, and unless Linux
moves quickly, there's no way that space will be anything but Windows
dominated.

With Windows 8.1 out soon, which improves Windows 8 massively, I see it
continuing to dominate into the future where desktops become increasingly
marginalised.

~~~
simonh
Tablets are the future and Windiws 8 will dominate. Got it!

Can't help thinking there's a Linux kernel based OS by some internet company
already out there that's selling on a few tablets. Obviously it can't be
selling as many tablets as the continuing-to-dominate Windows so it must be an
aberration. And there's another unix based OS out there doing even better,
from some company in Cupertino I think. What are their names again?

Never mind, Windows will continue to dominate. On tablets. Right!

~~~
bentcorner
As far as iOS and Android go, IMO Valve sees these as just as bad as Windows,
if not worse.

In the market of "Tablets on which you can game through Steam", the GP is
speculating that Windows will continue to be the leader.

~~~
Dylan16807
Android doesn't stop you from installing a steam store; are you sure about
that?

~~~
bentcorner
I don't have an android device, but from the looks of things it's like the iOS
app - the store is there but it's only to shop for PC games. You can't install
anything. I could be wrong, though.

~~~
Dylan16807
I'm ignoring whatever steam actually offers; I'm only talking about the
capabilities of android. You can easily install third party stores, so it's a
much better situation than iOS or Metro.

------
akurilin
Knowing that Valve will from now on be heavily supporting game development and
deployment onto Linux machines is very encouraging.

------
kriro
I applaud more Linux everywhere and am quite happy about Steam on Linux but it
is a little odd to see Valve talk about the virtues of openness while shipping
DRMed games (I understand why they do it and don't even mind all that much
it's just odd).

I'm mostly a retrogamer anyways so I tend to wait/hope the games I like hit
GOG

------
deepblueq
I just ordered parts for a gaming machine the other day, and it'll be running
Linux. A surprising number of games run on it directly now, and Wine works for
the ones I care about that don't. There's now absolutely nothing I want to do
that requires Windows - even two years ago that wasn't at all the case.

------
jalada
"20xx: The year of Linux gaming" is the new "20xx: The year of the Linux
desktop"

------
frankcaron
HL3 will be a timed Linux-exclusive for Valve's official Steambox. Calling it
now.

------
zerr
Funny, how he packs one of the most real underlying reason - Linux is free as
in beer.

~~~
walid
Why is this funny? If I had the choice of either parting with 30%-20% of what
I make or supporting another platform that gives me back that 30%-20% I'd
support that other platform. After all Valve is a business and it doesn't make
sense to accept someone dictating that they have a toll gate for your sales.

Remember that Microsoft charges 30%-20% not for the user's sake but to make
money for themselves.

~~~
zerr
No, no. The decision is right, and I'd do the same. The "packing" itself, i.e.
how he speaks about this, is funny. He doesn't articulate on this obvious
reason.

------
sytelus
This statement feels like so last century. Isn't the future of the gaming is
in the _browser_? Operating software wars feels meaningless and ridiculous
these days.

~~~
csense
> Isn't the future of the gaming is in the browser?

I'm of the belief that the amount of revenue that can be squeezed out of games
written by Zynga and the like represents a relatively small share of the
overall gaming market.

I think there will always be gamers who want full-screen games with large
assets -- and there's no plugin or browser subsystem that adequately delivers
that experience, and the content files for a modern 3D game are often a little
too large to host remotely. Especially on phones.

> Operating software wars feels meaningless and ridiculous these days

Apple's App Store, Microsoft's secure-boot and app-store ecosystem lockdown
attempts that numerous others have commented on in this thread, Android's
capture of a significant portion of the mobile market, Linux's powers waxing
by the year, the fall of Sun and the implosion of Solaris...

The OS wars are getting interesting again! For many years there was more-or-
less total stagnation in the market, with Windows ascendant, a few UNIX
flavors and the remnants of OS/2 holding their own in the business market, IBM
in full retreat from the PC market, and all competitors struggling to survive
with marginal userbases for many years after Microsoft's decisive victory over
IBM OS/2 in the mid '90s.

------
kayoone
Gabe is scared of Valve being like Netscape when Internet Explorer came out.
If he'd really care about linux, he would have started this years ago.

------
jlebrech
Steam needs to Wine certify games, or launch games using wine and have a
minimum/recommended requirements for using wine.

~~~
Sprint
Wine and DRM is a problematic combination.

------
synchronise
Does he say at all what frameworks he'll be targeting e.g. Fedora, Ubuntu,
Wayland, Mir??

------
phaus
I hope they finish CS:GO soon, that's the only reason I still dual-boot
Windows.

~~~
darkstalker
I still dual boot Windows to play League of Legends.

------
kmfrk
"Kick the ball, Charlie! The future of gaming on Linux is bright!"

~~~
wmf
What incentive does Valve have to pull some kind of bait-and-switch? They may
be wrong about the future, but I don't think they're being intentionally
deceptive.

------
vikas0380
new hardware coming soon :-) But what about the drivers,optimus technology
still not officially supported.

