Half-Life2 – only half living?

I can’t say that I am a dedicated gamer by any means. I’ve always enjoyed playing computer games, but didn’t really show much promise until I hit my twenties, when suddenly I rediscovered hand-eye co-ordination, and finally completed my first non-point-and-click game (Tomb Raider).

My lack of games playing is likely one of the reasons that my move to Linux happened when it did, but it hasn’t stopped me from watching the Linux games market with great interest. I, like many, mourned the loss of Loki, who ported many Windows games to Linux, but failed to sell enough. I’m still on the look out for a copy of Loki’s Soldier of Fortune should anyone have it, but not want it……

And so we come to the here and now. In 2004 the situation is brighter than many would have you believe – we are seeing a huge increase in the number of games for which there is a native Linux version available from the manufacturer, not to mention numerous ports from the likes of Icculus.org. Unreal Tournament comes with a Linux version on its disks since the 2003 edition – their website even supports a nice picture of Tux. Enemy Territory, previously mentioned, is available for Linux, and, unsurprisingly, so does Return to Castle Wolfenstein (although you have to download a hefty binary to take advantage of it). I hope to purchase that soon.

And so we come to 2 of the latest, most anticipated, FPS games of recent times – Doom3 and Half-Life2.

id Games owes a lot to the internet community, and, to an extent, the ‘open’ community. It’s first games were popularised by careful use of shareware – the original Wolfenstein 3d was passed around on floppies before most people had the internet, and its child, Doom, was played on many a corporate network in lunchtimes. There’s nothing like blasting your coworkers online to vent frustration Doom3 is no exception. A few days after the Windows version was released, a Linux client was available, both in demo and full-game versions.

Valve is the producer of one of the best games ever – Half-Life – and it’s many offspring. They too owe a lot to the rise of the internet – Counter-Strike and other team-multiplayer games are immensely popular. Here, however, the similarity to id ends. You can get a Linux server for Half-Life and Half-Life2 – so you can host games on a Linux box quite easily. But where is the Linux client? Nowhere. If you want to play on a Linux box, you will likely have to splash out on Cedega, and run it ‘non-natively’.

I find this immensely disappointing. When the market is shifting, and so many companies are now beginning to offer games with Linux clients available, Valve are simply refusing the budge, despite the fact that they obvious have some expertise in the area, and are benefitting from Linux as much as anyone else – they are not contributing back to the community.

Linux gaming is, I know, a minority concern. I suspect if all Linux gamers didn’t purchase Half-Life2 it would make no impact at all on Valve. But bad press, and bad feeling, will eventually be bad news for the company, whereas id will continue to have vocal supporters on both sides of the divide – backing 2 horses in a 2 horse race would seem to be a sensible thing to do……

mrBen