Hope someone in the game industry sees this and realises that linux gamers are a viable demographic. Not many companies apart from id have released AAA linux titles offlate. Initial efforts to create linux gaming companies (like Loki games) shut down and I am afraid the wrong lessons were learned - that linux gamers wont pay for games. Hope this post changes some of that, at least for indie developers.
I don't know, what I see is that you can make over twice as much on a Windows platform. Even if the users won't pay as much, there are still so many that it more than makes up for it. Distribution costs are low if you distribute online so the total revenue is the main factor (as opposed to per unit price). I imagine the development costs to port a title to Linux are fairly substantial as well, not to mention the additional support costs.
Besides, I doubt Linux users would be happy about paying $100+ for a game if translated to normal game prices ($50-$60 or so).
What I see is you ignoring a significant chunk of the market, and entering a market with more competition, and more fierce competition to boot, from bigger dev houses. If anything it makes more sense to go for Mac + Linux instead of Windows (for indie devs anyway), and in that case since you've written things in a cross-platform manner you can ship for Windows anyway and win even bigger.
> I imagine the development costs to port a title to Linux are fairly substantial as well
If you target OpenGL instead of a proprietary MS platform then there is no porting (or little porting). Existing games don't have the luxury of choice, but new ones do.
(I have ignored things like differing sound APIs, but not a huge upfront cost if you simply intend to be cross-platform from day #1)
> Besides, I doubt Linux users would be happy about paying $100+ for a game if translated to normal game prices ($50-$60 or so).
Well yeah, if you just jack up the price on the Linux game and leave the rest at $50-60 of course they won't be happy. The point is that people say Linux users won't pay for software, and that's clearly false.
I'd never pay a $50 premium for Linux support, but wouldn't mind a $5-$10 premium if it means I don't have to reboot every time I want to play.
Assuming a game is written using portable technologies (OpenGL, GLSL, cg, OpenAL, SDL), I doubt that porting it would be difficult. Obviously, a game which uses Direct3D, MFC, embeds IE, etc, will be a different matter.
Hopefully, Valve will release the rumored Steam for Linux and make massive profits. That would go a long way towards proving that Linux users will buy stuff.
If you look at the top contributors in the stats area (http://www.wolfire.com/humble#statistics), there's a guy that contributed $FF under the name 'unsigned char'. Brilliant.
Why windows user might be paying less:
1. They have loads of choices for cheap games compared to the other platforms and hence are used to paying less for most games but big titles (Oblivion, street fighter)
2. They have gotten ripped off often with people promising the best software/game in the world and ended up buying a dud.
Interesting thoughts:
1. Age distributions: My guess would be that a linux demographic would have a much different age distribution than the windows user. If a 10yo is trying to dl the package he might be susceptible to paying less.
2. Gender distribution
etc.
It probably depends on the revenue model. If you charge the same amount for your game on Linux as Windows, then the fact that Linux users donate more cash is meaningless to you.
On top of this, I would bet that they have so many Linux contributors precisely because no-one releases AAA games to Linux, so their sample size is disproportionately represented by Linux users.
On top of this, I would bet that they have so many Linux
contributors precisely because no-one releases AAA games
to Linux, so their sample size is disproportionately
represented by Linux users.
That's the point tho - if you're an indie developer it might be worth your time to develop a cross platform game even tho not that many people use linux & mac compared to windows (since you care about people who buy your game not people who run that particular OS).
Interesting to note that since posting donation averages on the front page, each average has increased by 10 to 20 cents. There's probably a dozen psychological studies on this sort of thing.
There's the possibility that the average Linux user is a supporter of donating (to open source software, and the like) and so is more likely to contribute to packages such as these.
Having written code myself makes me more appreciative of the amount of effort that goes into building good software. Compared to Windows users, more Linux users probably interact with code in one form or another.
My guess is that it is simply regression to the mean. There are more Windows contributors than Linux contributors, so their average contribution is likely to be smaller.
I paid $5. Why did I pay? Because I approve of their marketing style. Why didn't I pay more, am I a cheapskate bastard? No; I probably won't ever play a one of those games.
Point: There are so many things going on here, it's hard to draw clear conclusions from the numbers we're getting.
