Why We Want Native Ports Only (Gaming On Linux)

Here is an interesting read by Gaming On Linux staff: Why We Want Native Ports Only

Of course we already know most of the information he is describing. We want native ports for all new games, but what about the old games?

Moby Games lists almost 18,000 games for Windows alone.
Amazon shows almost 52,000 games for PC (DOS, Amiga, Commodore, Windows, etc)

We will never see the majority of those games ported to Linux. Wine is our only solution.

Here is another article about Sales Figures for companies that develop Windows only games and are interested in using Wine to wrap their game for Linux:
Sales Figures To Generate Profits With Linux Port

This encourages developers to use a wrapper instead of native port because of cost and support.

Yes it has been beaten-to-death, which is why I posted about it here. I would love to hear some productive feedback instead of the same old comments.

Part of me thinks these articles are about getting information published online and to educate new Linux gamers. Thats about it. The rest of us are already using Wine and the hardcore are refusing to buy games until they are ported as "native", as a result are playing less games.

I know there is no "final" decision to be made because its about communities but it seems we have to continue waiting cause we have no other choice. Meanwhile I'll keep playing/testing games in PlayOnLinux (Wine)

I just finished Dark Void and it ran beautifully!

Totally understood...
Its kind of ironic how we complicate something that is simple: Just play the game
Just like sports... as a kid we "play" basketball, football, baseball, but it quickly becomes complicated.
We focus too much on the resolution, eye-candy and frame rates.
It starts to ruin all the fun trying to get the highest quality experience.

I just want to play games and show the world you can play them in Linux and save money.
That is all I really care about.

I never purchase brand new games, I mostly purchase bundles and games on sale...
I would love to support developers but I have to support my family first.
In my free time I'm testing games, playing games, creating videos and guides.
I'm even doing websites and concept art for indie developers.

I hope Valve leads the way to standardization

I will continue to support Valve, they are the "risk takers"

Agreed, I'm in the same "boat"
I'll take what I can get, but would rather have native ports than wrappers.

Unfortunately, there are some competing issues here.

First and foremost, there's got to be a large enough market for the developers to justify their time making a dedicated version.
Second, there's got to be some significant advantage to be gained if the developers make a dedicated version.

Windows wasn't always a viable gaming platform. Back in the Windows 3.1 days, and even Win95 and Win98 days, the vast majority of games were written to run on DOS. Initially, this was because Windows had a low market penetration. Even after that hurdle was overcome, there was still a performance problem: Windows games had to contend with a lot more overhead and thus suffered from lower performance. It actually wasn't until Microsoft made the decision that they wanted to get rid of DOS and recognized they couldn't do that without improving Windows' gaming performance that things started to change, and that was when DirectX was born. Even then, it really wasn't until the advent of DX3 (and arguably not even until DX6) that it really became viable to move from DOS to Windows as a gaming platform.

The same issue exists in Linux, to a certain extent. WINE allows Windows games to run on Linux reasonably well most of the time. In addition, using WINE means that developers can take advantage of tools they already know and are familiar with, as well as an API (DirectX). I've no experience writing games on Linux (or anything else, TBH), so I can't comment on the difficulty (lack thereof) of writing video, audio, and input code for Linux, but my sense is that the APIs are not as polished or as consistent in many cases on Linux as they are for Windows. From my admittedly limited viewpoint that means the following:

1. Linux needs to grow its market-share.
2. Linux needs to develop a 'gaming API'. Game engines help with this enormously, but there still needs to be some consistent way in Linux to talk to the hardware so that even if you 'roll your own' engine, you can be confident it will run across the various 'nuxen.
3. Running in 'native' Linux needs to offer significant advantages to running in a WINE wrapper.

The 3rd item will almost certainly take care of itself if the 2nd is adequately addressed.

As I said, I'm not a game writer. Even my limited interaction with DirectX has been limited to some audio stuff, so I could very well be wildly off-base with my observations, but at this point, the above is what I think.

Thanks for your input Gizmo! Its a lot of fun knowing Windows and Mac had to go through these same seasons in order to grow. I've read many-a-post on this issue and you seem to be right on all accounts.
Vulkan might be the API Linux needs thanks to Valve.
Wine and PlayOnLinux might be the way to grow Linux communities and market-share. Its getting better at every release.
Then hopefully the result is more native built games and more ported older games.

Until then, us consumers are stuck to running our games any way can.
Bioshock Infinite has proven wrappers do work, Wine has proved many games and programs run almost flawlessly in Linux and companies like Valve, Humble Bundle and GOG prove that there is a need/desire for more games in Linux.

No problem, thanks for the compliments!
It seems some people have a hard time seeing things in a simple manner. I get caught up in technicalities as well.
I'm not sure why the zealots have to push their views on everyone and have this "higher than mighty" pride?
I think they over-react because they spent $60.00 on a game claiming to be released in Linux and got burned. They tried it in Wine and found that it was slow and buggy. Then the rest of their life they trash Wine and everyone that uses it.

I see us all as a community in an imperfect world. You play your game, I play mine.
Some run native some run in Wine.
No problems

My experience has always been the opposite.
I never invest a lot of money in games. I invest my money in computers because I have 9 of them. 6 are gaming computers.
I already have a huge library of Retail games and Steam games. So naturally when I checked out Linux, I went ahead and tested a few of my games to see how Wine is performing.
These were older DirectX 9 games and they ran perfectly!
Of course I started testing more and more and more....
I found that 90% of my retail games were running just fine. The rest had bad performance or DRM causing the game to not install/run.

So I didn't invest a lot of money and didn't expect the newly released game to run in Linux
As the last three years have passed, I have purchased a bunch of bundles and games on sale.
Now I have a lot of Steam, GOG, Desura & Origin games to test.

My Linux gaming experience isn't based on one or two games that I invested a lot of money in.
So this website was the next step...
Show the world that your old games can run fine in PlayOnLinux and you don't have to spend a lot of money

In fact, you can build a gaming Desktop computer for around $500.00 and play almost all of your Windows games just fine.
Who can complain about that?

Instead of pushing this on people and having flame-wars, I just post my results and show you how to install/configure them.

I still don't fully understand that...
I am not in Linux every time I purchase a game, so how do I insure that game purchase is considered a Linux purchase?

I have a feeling they have statistics for downloads as well as purchases.
I've purchased many games from my windows machine at work and then download the GOG, Humble Bundle, Steam game in Linux. So I hope the downloads count as well. Specially because I never buy a game on release day.

Wine is totally irrelevant when it comes to purchases.... of course.
But I wouldn't be playing games in Linux at all if it wasn't for Wine.
If anything, Wine is a gaming introduction to Linux and when gamers find their old games run great in Wine, they might start using Linux for gaming. Then hopefully start making purchases for native Linux games in the future.

Unfortunately there are still a few amazing games that won't run in Wine yet, so I have to either use Windows or wait.
Besides my LAN parties, I've been able to play most games in Linux.
If I had a bit of money to add hard drives to each of my computers, then I would be able to dual-boot all of them with Win/Linux. Then I could start doing full tests of my LAN games in Linux.
That is the one thing holding me back... I have not tried all of my LAN games in Linux on all 6 computers. I still have some older video cards and full hard drives.