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With all the great leaps forward which Linux gaming has made recently, it is sad to see when a step backward is made. Rather than a new game appearing on the ever-expanding library of Linux games, today it seems a game has been delayed due to the actions of a few.
The Stanley Parable was set to have a Linux port, with one of the developers working on it in his spare time, showing a positive and committed attitude towards the port which he was seemingly doing out of enjoyment. As is the norm on Steam, a series of “+1” comments and support followed with gamers eager to get their hands on this unique, story-rich, exploration/adventure game.
However, following a string of harassment from Linux users in the Steam forums (and perhaps more worryingly, in private emails), the developer has stated that he is now only working on the port in a much more limited way and has abandoned working on it in his spare time since the abuse has taken away any enjoyment he got from it. As a result, the port will take far longer than anticipated. At the same time, I fear that any 'backlash' of abusive comments could lead to all work being abandoned:
QuoteGran PC [developer]
This is exactly the case. I do like spending my free time working on games (before Stanley Parable was released, we worked on it pretty much all day!), but due to some harassment I have received regarding this subject (both on these forums and to my personal email), this port is no longer fun to work on, but more like a frustrating experience when you are trying to cater to an userbase that seems to mostly hate you. So it should come as no surprise that I am working on it only in some sort of limited 'work' time instead of pretty much all day. Sorry!
For the record, I am aware that it is just a vocal minority, but unfortunately it is hard to just shrug it off when it is actually the majority of the comments you hear about the Linux port.
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So it seems that the more militant wing of Linux users has put the developer off the port and tarnished his view of the community. This unfortunately not an isolated incident, and from what I have seen in on other forums, there are many out there who have begun to view Linux users as fanatics using abuse as a means to get the platform greater attention. Needless to say, this kind of behaviour by a very vocal minority threatens the progress which has been made towards making Linux a first-class citizen in the world of gaming and needs to stop.
There is no doubt that the internet has done great things in terms of giving people a voice, most of us know that it is often the voice of the uninformed and aggressive which is loudest on the web. While of course this is far from unique to Linux users, it is certainly more damaging for a user base which - already burdened by (misguided) preconceptions of being a niche market of militant power users and hackers - is trying to be taken seriously.
At the same time, this is worsened by a sense of entitlement shared by gamers across platforms whereby people feel that they can dictate to developers how and when they want their games whilst voicing outrage when things aren't exactly how they want them. While the interactivity and communication given by the internet has benefited gaming greatly in the areas of crowdsourcing and alpha-funding, in many areas it has created a climate of fear among developers. There is a thin line between the kind of animosity which prevents draconian DRM measures and the kind of animosity where developers feel that they need to increasingly pander towards gamers by changing the game to suit particular tastes in a kind of mob-rule which denies them artistic licence, forcing them to make alternate endings to games and sacrificing their vision to keep the mob satisfied.
This sense of entitlement has unfortunately seeped into the Linux world, where maybe three years ago we were ecstatic to hear that we had a bad port of an obscure indie title or finally getting an ancient relic of a game working through Wine, we now feel outrage when a game isn’t released at the same time as on other platforms or lacks some minor feature present in the Windows version of the game. In some ways this is a positive sign of how far Linux Gaming has come and our expectations along with it, but reactions such as this one to Expeditions: Conquistador lacking achievements on Linux are counter-productive and, unfortunately, commonplace:
QuoteArcanoxer
Still no Acheivements under Linux?
The Devs really don't give a shi* about the Linux port, to bad. /:
Despite providing a great port of a great game (after a little bit of a rocky start) on a platform which unfortunately still holds a tiny fraction of the overall market, rather than expressing gratitude, this user decided to make a stab at the developer (which they saw and responded to). While we know that with the advent of SteamOS and other such developments are making the future for Linux Gaming look bright, we have to understand that - from the point of view of developers - porting and making games for Linux can still seem like a daunting, time-consuming financial risk and negative responses to their efforts could put them off the platform for good (especially with small indie devs which monitor the community regularly, like those behind The Stanley Parable and Expeditions: Conquistador).
The reality is that although we are feeling the euphoria of games like XCOM: Enemy Unknown and Civilization V being ported- for now - Linux Gaming is still in quite a fragile infancy stage where any number of factors could result in it becoming a failed experiment like the Ouya, whose promise was overshadowed by a lack in decent titles and therefore market share. What happened with The Stanley Parable has demonstrated that the availability of Linux titles - and thus the success of Linux gaming as a whole - still largely depends on the existing user base and not solely on the future users which Valve has promised.
There is little the civilised majority can do in the ways of stopping this very vocal minority from acting the way they do, but we can drown them out by showing developers what the community is really like, as people did with the Aspyr Media port of Civilization V, expressing gratitude which they acknowledged and responded to positively. While it is largely down to companies like Valve to turn Linux into a credible gaming platform, it is also down to the community to ensure that this progress doesn’t go to waste by maintaining the momentum and hype they helped to create.
About
The Stanley Parable is a first person exploration game. You will play as Stanley, and you will not play as Stanley. You will follow a story, you will not follow a story. You will have a choice, you will have no choice. The game will end, the game will never end.
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Let's not exaggerate the "free time" and "working for fun" part too much, though. It's not a favor...it's a business decision.
After all, the company will make money from linux sales, so they should be able to deal with impatient customers. If you don't enjoy that part of your job and you can't just ignore it, just don't work in your free time. Who cares how, when or why a developer finished his work? I pay money, I get the product ... if the developer had fun making it, that's fine. If he didn't and just did "his job" ... that's also fine. Doesn't make a difference for me, to be honest.
If I personally really enjoy doing something, I enjoy it for myself and I couldn't care less what other people do, think or say about it.
I see that kind of comment a lot (I make it too, but obviously to inform in a nice way and not demand like an idiot). I'm quite curious to know from your first hand knowledge, how much extra work it is to move a game like The Stanley Parable from OSX to Linux (compared to say Windows to OSX)?
There's that "90% of the work is done after porting to OSX" figure (from the Ryan Gordon talk at Steam, Dev Days) but want to know how accurate that is and to have some perspective on it if it is true (because that 10% could be months of work for one person).
Working in my own time is not a business decision, and as you said, I just stopped doing it in my free time. Please read the post.
Yeah, it's actually pretty close. There's still a lot of work to do to get it working and stuff, but after the game's rendering is ported to OpenGL and stuff, most of the job is done.
Because I fear too many people will do take the easy way out and do the latter. Which would of course be a hell to maintain for future bug fixes and potential sequels. And, from a "professional" standpoint, it justs irks me. :P
It's the former -- just like the public Source SDK 2013 :)
Looking forward to play your game on Linux one day, then, and maybe its sequels. And, again, thanks for doing this port. A lot of developers just don't care.
Good to know. :)
No, but porting the game to Linux obviously is. I'm sorry you lost your passion to put more work into it than your company dedicates to finishing the port, but if you do it right, I don't really care if it takes a little longer now. Lots of people dedicate their free time to working on FOSS projects (without any compensation) because they are passionate about it. If they all suddenly lost their passion because of criticism/trolling....there wouldn't have been any Linux anymore for a very long time.
Thanks for the info! It's good to hear first hand that it's not a huge headache to do.
It doesn't matter that the majority of us DON'T troll - some users do and when they do they drive devs of not only games but also applications into isolation, stopping the entire back-and-forth that drives Linux forward.
I saw this kind of trolling many times.
Surely some of us remember how "Q" ass-trolled "Bridgman" (AMD driver developer) at Phoronix.
Gran-PC :
I recomend you to state clearly to the users that you won't discuss by private mail.
Reserv that use for the people you see really could be of help.
The rest is thing of the forum's moderation. If you experience that in Steam forums you've been trolled and the staff do nothing, then you shouldn't continue to post there.
First your dignity, and second the rest.
I have paid for the game as he confirmed he would port it once portal 2 is out, and I'll wait the time it needs, I have many others to play before.
But a friend on windows got me to test it, and that was hilarious and smart. I'm so happy he ports it to linux, and even more happy he does it not only for money but in his free time for fun.
There will always be mean or stupid people, in every communities.
I hope you Gran PC still have some fun developping though. That's what make the best results !
Depending on the state of the work and how the game was designed, that could be a huge project by just porting the engine. If you ever tried to untie effects from direct code creating an abstraction layer for ogl/dx, and you do it the firs time, you'd probably need some refactorings to manage that. At least, I often know where I want to go - just the way I do turns out to be stupid :D.
Saldy, most of the critism guys are the very outspoken and loud ones. The ones quietly waiting are hardly recognized. If you ever developed open source - you probably have thousands and even hundred thousands of happy users who won't loose a word about it - and a few outspoken guys with a lot of critism and judgement - even about your person. I withdrew of a project because of that reason years ago.
To be fair, there is a fine line between criticism and trolling, which in this instance seems to have been quite heavily crossed (especially by the derogatory private emails) but does not apply to all criticism or opposition to something. Going after the person certainly is objectionable, but taking issue with a project on certain grounds is not, at least not when handled in a professional and suitably respectful manner.
I was poised to buy Stanley Parable, I've heard wonderful things about this game but I've become cautious about buying things until they've been properly ported.
Don't lose faith Gran PC, there's a wonderfully warm and fuzzy Linux community away from the Steam trolls...
I don't know the source engine, so I don't know which troubles you are running into porting - guess I can't be of much help there...
Gotta say, the article here surprised me. As somebody who is waiting patiently for the game, visiting the Steam forums to rant about it (or even to offer support, since I'm aware that you already know that I'm keen) is not really something I'm likely to spend my time on, so I had no idea that this was going on.
It's super disappointing to hear, but I'm also glad that visibility of this has encouraged those of us who had obliviously been sitting on the sidelines to step in an express our enthusiasm.
Also, fancy seeing you here :D
I don't really take a difference there. Critism can be trolling.
In fact, trolling is mostly based on the product, not the person. "Critism" can often be a personal attack ("are you incompetent or just retarded? the feature XY didn't work again as I expected"). Though, despite the feature was never intended to work that way it was used which certainly was a fault on checking for the way to use it. I got personal mails like that. My answer "if you can do better do it" wasn't well received though ("you are the ******* developer and maintainer, you have to care about it!!<trillion!>"). Maybe you see it the other way around - but I consider trolling as something which has no context, just telling everything bad because you like something else. In example, trolling would be "fuck the linux port, go for more features on platform XY".