Self-introduction: Aamir Aijaz Bhutto

Tue Jan 12 21:13:08 UTC 2010

Just off the top of my head...

I did some research on a project revolving around a video-game concept
a few years back.  Long story short, one of the interesting things I
found was that many APAC countries have a LOT of gamers using games
that most europeans and americans have not heard of - with HUGE
subscription rates.  However, unlike the US, where a big company might
charge $15-20 a month for a subscription, these games are charging, in
comparison, very low fees - $1 - $5 a month - because their end users
in those countries do not have the same average income as Europe /
Americas users do.

These gamers are the ones who would directly benefit from a free OS -
and the software developers would certainly widen their pool of
available users if they were developing games to run on a linux
platform, thereby increasing their subscription revenues.

So while I don't have anything USEFUL here - you know, like the names
of the games or the companies developing them, which would obviously
be helpful - maybe that would be a good place to start researching
companies that might be interested in developing games for Linux (or
may already be, and would be interested in perhaps collaborating with
Fedora on how to make those end-users' experiences better).

Some google search terms you might try out are

* most popular online games South Korea
(insert other country names as needed)

* online game revenues (country here)

* MMORPG popular (country here)

... See if you can narrow down the field to some specific Games, or
companies, that might be using Linux, or might be a good target to
work witha  company on converting them.  And in the meantime, develop
a set of "why developing games to run on Linux is a good idea" that
could be pitched to those companies.

-robyn

On Tue, Jan 12, 2010 at 12:12 PM, Frankie Mangoa
<frankiemangoa at gmail.com> wrote:
> you nailed it on the head.
>
> On Tue, Jan 12, 2010 at 10:01 PM, Athanasios E. Samaras
> <ath.samaras at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Maybe we could spin out a project to create a "proof-of-concept" ...
>>
>> S
>>
>> On Tue, Jan 12, 2010 at 8:48 PM, Frankie Mangoa <frankiemangoa at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>>
>>> Hi Guys,
>>> >From the message above I have deduced some solutions:
>>> 1.we need developers to create an environment similar to crossover by
>>> default o the os where these games can run.
>>> 2.Have a special tea work on the development of this environment.This
>>> is because this is something that will have to start on alpha.
>>> 3.Ask developers to also make the equivalent o linux.To be honest I
>>> think highly unlikely because they will say the ROI is either slow or
>>> 0
>>>
>>>
>>> all these will require a lot of work and thus according to me this are
>>> the lines we can take .Maybe I am not seeing something that you are so
>>> I will ask to have people send me more of their solutions.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> frankie
>>>
>>> On Tue, Jan 12, 2010 at 9:11 PM, Athanasios E. Samaras
>>> <ath.samaras at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> > Heeeeelo and welcome!
>>> > Since I have been around for almost 24 years now, I will tell you a
>>> > story
>>> > about games on home micros (Spectrum/CBM64/CBM128/Arcon/Atari/Amiga) /
>>> > consoles (Atari 2000/Sony etc)/ Personal Computers (such as AMSTRAD
>>> > CPC/Commodore+ /QL+ etc) / IBM Compatible Personal Computers (today's
>>> > P.C.s)
>>> > It was back then (mid '80) that home micros got to the point when they
>>> > could
>>> > support 4 colors out of a palette of 16 and offered the possibility to
>>> > game
>>> > developers to create titles that could be acceptable by the market. Back
>>> > then the publishers had to maintain more than one development team
>>> > programming for different hardware platforms mainly under some
>>> > assembler.
>>> > Each of the home micros had it's own capabilities and used a set of
>>> > special
>>> > routines stored in ROM to expose functionality
>>> > (sound/graphics/input/joystick/midi etc) not to mention the full
>>> > incompatibility of file systems.
>>> > Back then it was just a dream to have an "engine" available for more any
>>> > platform that would enable developers to create games; it was all from
>>> > "scratch" for each hardware platform. By the time, developers managed to
>>> > create a functional code base (please do no think of objects) that
>>> > enabled
>>> > them to include already tested code to perform some standard operations
>>> > (kind of functional functions library)  creating a layer of abstraction
>>> > that
>>> > could be used to create the "back-bone" for the titles, but again had to
>>> > be
>>> > either compiled or cross compiled for a specific target hardware. The
>>> > process was hard and costly. This was the reason that some publishers
>>> > targeted one or two platforms leaving the rest.
>>> > At later stages when the home micro category died, consoles was revived
>>> > together with IBM Compatible PCs. Some of us remember our first EGA
>>> > video
>>> > addapter that actually supported 32 colors from a palette of 256 then
>>> > came
>>> > VGA (256 colors and 640X480 resolution yeeeey), now first video cards
>>> > supported 2 colors (Hercules) or 4 colors (CGA) , but with 256 colors on
>>> > screen, it was a revolution so the developers that supported
>>> > Amiga/AtariST/CPC 64/CPC 128 found a new platform (with more RAM but
>>> > less
>>> > hardware capabilities) that offered a common API available under a lot
>>> > of
>>> > different languages and manufactured by various manufacturers all over
>>> > the
>>> > world.
>>> > At the same time all the prices was dropping creating a potential large
>>> > market for software.
>>> > Since it is all about cost and ROI, it was more or less "default" to
>>> > release
>>> > titles for Microsoft DOS (or IBM DOS initially) since this was the
>>> > operating
>>> > system that IBM and other vendors include in their packages. Some of the
>>> > vendors still preferred to sell boxes without any operating system (you
>>> > could buy and use SCO unix, Thoroughbred and other strange acronyms).
>>> > When Linux came to O/S world, it was mainly a "toy" for hard-core
>>> > programmers  / unix users / students / universities. It was OPEN,
>>> > something
>>> > you really could not find in other O/S. If something was broken, you
>>> > could
>>> > take some time to fix it and then publish your fix for comments to the
>>> > rest
>>> > of the world.
>>> > Through the time, Linux became a real desktop operating system (if I
>>> > may, I
>>> > would say that Fedora together with Ubuntu and Knopix was the distros
>>> > that
>>> > made that happen) .
>>> > All the above just to make a point: If we can convince Publishers to
>>> > hire
>>> > some developers to port their engines to Linux, this would enable all
>>> > the
>>> > rest of developers that use the engine to create a Linux release in a
>>> > very
>>> > short time.
>>> > But then again it would not be open.
>>> > Maybe if the community could spin a project to provide a game engine
>>> > that
>>> > would be open sourced and scriptable supporting open 3d graphics models
>>> > etc.
>>> > Basically the same with Java or Flash based games but more close to the
>>> > hardware (imagine a full 64 bit game that could allocate and use more
>>> > than 2
>>> > GB or RAM and "talk" to your GPU directly for rendering/pre-render etc).
>>> > Just a thought (and a lot of history)
>>> >
>>> > Cheers
>>> >
>>> > Sakis Samaras
>>> >
>>> >
>>> >
>>> > On Mon, Jan 11, 2010 at 6:11 PM, sai ganesh <ganesai at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> >>
>>> >> On 01/11/2010 8:21 PM Nicu Buculei wrote
>>> >>>
>>> >>> Note he said *favorite* game, not *some* game or a *casual* game.
>>> >>> There
>>> >>> is this category of users (I am part of it) for whom a Windows PC at
>>> >>> home is pretty much a game console (but with better games than an
>>> >>> ordinary game console).
>>> >>>
>>> >>
>>> >> absolutely true i am a part of that league too.
>>> >>
>>> >>
>>> >>>
>>> >>> Unfortunately here we can't do much beyond getting an as good as
>>> >>> possible Wine, is all about 3-rd party entities porting their games to
>>> >>> Linux (some argue this will happen when Linux will have a large enough
>>> >>> market share).
>>> >>>
>>> >>> --
>>> >>
>>> >> hope the days are not far away where 3-rd party entities are releasing
>>> >> games for linux. i think quake 3 is already a member of it.and what
>>> >> about
>>> >> cedega? may that can help a little.i think this is the only area of
>>> >> concern
>>> >> for marketing linux to students who happen to be gamers.the first thing
>>> >> they
>>> >> ask is "can i play call of duty 4 in linux".hopefully a solution will
>>> >> be
>>> >> found in the years to come.
>>> >>>
>>> >>
>>> >>
>>> >> --
>>> >> s.saiganesh
>>> >> “The Linux philosophy is 'Laugh in the face of danger'. Oops. Wrong
>>> >> One.
>>> >> 'Do it yourself'. Yes, that's it
>>> >>
>>> >>
>>> >> --
>>> >> marketing mailing list
>>> >> marketing at lists.fedoraproject.org
>>> >> https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing
>>> >
>>> >
>>> > --
>>> > marketing mailing list
>>> > marketing at lists.fedoraproject.org
>>> > https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing
>>> >
>>> --
>>> marketing mailing list
>>> marketing at lists.fedoraproject.org
>>> https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing
>>
>>
>> --
>> marketing mailing list
>> marketing at lists.fedoraproject.org
>> https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing
>>
> --
> marketing mailing list
> marketing at lists.fedoraproject.org
> https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing
>