As Michael mentioned, I’ve been involved in Linux gaming for many many years, sometimes directly, sometimes indirectly. Games have always been a passion of mine and working on and with them possibly more so. I’m so excited to be at the helm of a company that I’ve loved for so very long and a company whose future I’m certain is bright.

I’ve delayed posting this greeting message for a few days, because one of the most common remarks I have noticed since Michael and I began discussing this transition is that LGP hasn’t given enough feedback to the community. I wanted to see the responses to Michael’s resignation and of course the announcement of my arrival so that I can answer questions I saw being posted on various forums, news sites and this very blog.

I have great plans for Linux Game Publishing. Since some of them coincide with queries that people have posed either directly to me in our IRC channel or in comments online, I will respond to them now:-

Regarding Michael: He is not disappearing completely, but will be working with me for some time in an advisory capacity – his knowledge and experience in the Linux gaming world is unparalleled as I’m sure you’d all agree. As well as working with me, Michael will occasionally be contributing to new and old titles. Linux games are still a huge passion of his and I don’t think we’d be able to keep him away from the code, even if we were crazy enough to want to ;)

Digital distribution channels: This medium certainly has a strong future and is only going to grow. I personally have accounts at online stores such as Steam, GOG, Desura, Gamer’s Gate, Gameolith and others. Expanding digital distribution is definitely a priority for me. I have already had tentative discussions, begun setting up and getting ready to distribute through a few big names in Linux digital distribution.

Our current shipping of physical CDs and DVDs: We’ve admittedly had problems with this and it’s something I’ve been working on in the background since Michael and I started having discussions around his handover. Once our new distribution channels are in place, those of you that have seen delays in delivery shouldn’t ever experience that again.

We’re going through a period of transition at the moment and as much as I’d love everything to happen “right now”, there’s a lot of work to be done. I’m very aware that there are unhappy people out there – you are my primary focus right now. Linux Game Publishing is a great company, with massive potential and I’m truly excited to be a part of its history in the making.

As for new games: Yes, we have some in the pipeline! With all that has happened, there have obviously been delays. We have two announced titles that everyone is aware of, namely Disciples 2: Dark Prophecy and Bandits: Phoenix Rising. I’m happy to say that there will be an announcement regarding one of them soon. There are also other unannounced titles we’re working on and I’m really looking forward to reaching the point where we can announce those to you.

LGP has a strong team of great programmers, that have stood with Michael and worked with him through the years. Some have been around for a while and we also have some new faces. I am incredibly grateful to our team for the hard work that they have put in, contributing towards what we currently have and will be producing going forward.

Keep a keen eye on us here at LGP, you won’t be disappointed ;)

Clive Crous
CEO – Linux Game Publishing

These last 12 years have been, to coin a phrase, “interesting”. There have been highs and lows, great times and bad times. But always fun.

The last year or so, LGP has been quiet, too quiet some have said, and they would be right. I will hold my hand up and say, ‘My bad’.

You see, 10 years of working 7 days a week had taken its toll. You can’t continue on a high energy rampage for 10 years without something breaking, and in the end I burned out. I started letting things slip, and I started to neglect the companies.

I take no blame for this, it was bound to happen, as anyone knows when they work so hard they neglect social life, sleep, proper eating habits, the outcome is inevitable. I have put in a massive effort into Linux gaming, an average of 60-80 hours a week for 10 years and an investment that totals close to half a million pounds out of my own pocket, so I consider blame to be the wrong word. Probably, responsibility is more the correct word.

It took me some months to notice what was going on, and even longer to accept that my burnout was going to kill LGP unless I did something about it. The lack of drive slowed down production of new titles, shipping, customer service, everything that I either handled or had a big part in helping with, was all being compromised. The answer didn’t come from Dr’s, and it didn’t come from telling myself to ‘just stop slacking and get on with it’. The answer came by accepting the new reality that my burnout was not going away and I was no longer the right person to be at the heart of Linux gaming. I still love Linux and I love Linux gaming. LGP is my baby, and you don’t devote 12 years of your life to something like this without being proud of, and attached to, your creation.

And so in recent months I took the decision to stop. Difficult doesn’t even come close to how hard the decision was. I lost a lot of sleep over it, and it was depressing, stressful, and disheartening, but I knew in the end it was the best thing for me to do for myself and for the company.

But I didn’t want to let the company die. Of course not, I have invested too much time, money, blood sweat and tears into LGP to just say ‘That is it, bye’. And so I sat down and had a long think about how to save it.

The decision was made to find and hand over control of the company to someone new, someone who could move it forwards where I no longer had the drive and energy. To that end, I selected Clive Crous to take over my position in the company.

Clive has been a part time developer for LGP for many years, having a hand in quite a few games. But his primary qualification for the job comes with his unrestrained enthusiasm for Linux gaming. I selected Clive not because he offered the most money for the company, as the decision was made that only a token payment would be made, so don’t worry I just decided to ’sell out’ . I chose Clive as he will bring about new energy and drive to LGP, the main thing it has been lacking in the recent past. He has some big plans, and I won’t steal his thunder by telling you what he is going to be doing, but I think you’ll be happy with the new and revitalised LGP. Give him some time though, things won’t change overnight. He has a lot of work to do, and a lot to learn about the industry. Treat him gently!

So, as I say goodbye, I would like to thank the many many people who have supported me over the years in keeping LGP alive. Not in the least I need to give special thanks to Mel, Gareth and Eskild, who have been there offering support, a dose of reality, and a kick up the backside whenever it was needed, and to all the dozens and dozens of others who have given up their time, often for nothing in return, to keep LGP and myself running.

I know Clive is preparing a hello speech, like this is my goodbye speech, and his posting will follow this one in a day or two.

And with that, I give you, Clive Crous, CEO, Tux Games and Linux Game Publishing.

Meanwhile, feel free to contact me with any questions or feedback you have (other than “what’s the port?” that is, because I won’t be able to tell you that yet, no matter how hard you try :).

If you have any input, suggestions or questions for me, feel free to ask them here in the comments, on IRC (Zero_Dogg in #lgp on irc.freenode.net), via identi.ca/twitter or via e-mail (to eskild at the domain linuxgamepublishing dot com).

Update: Patches are now available for X² and X³, the workarounds for these games are no longer needed. Ballistics might still need it.

Ballistics, X2 & X3: Problems starting on Ubuntu 10.04

Several users have contacted us concerning problems starting Ballistics, X²: The Threat and X³: Reunion.The problem is due to Ubuntu changing their system for managing ld.so paths and the games not handling it like they are suppose to. A patch will be released soon which addresses this problem, meanwhile you can use the following workarounds to play the games. Instead of just using the “ballistics”, “x2″ or “x3″ commands, use one of these to launch the game instead:

Ballistics:

ballistics --withgl $(\tail -n 1 /etc/ld.so.conf.d/GL.conf)

X²: The Threat:

x2 --withgl $(\tail -n 1 /etc/ld.so.conf.d/GL.conf)

X³: Reunion:

x3 --withgl $(\tail -n 1 /etc/ld.so.conf.d/GL.conf)

]]> /2010/08/18/customer-services-update-for-august-2010/feed/ 7 /2010/01/14/becoming-an-lgp-reseller/ /2010/01/14/becoming-an-lgp-reseller/#comments Thu, 14 Jan 2010 09:50:59 +0000 Michael Simms (CEO and head of Development) /?p=394 We get a lot of emails about becoming a reseller for LGP. So, after dozens of individual answers to people, I’ve decided to write it all up into a blog article, so that the customer service guys can just point people here instead. Also, I thought it may prove interesting to those who are thinking ‘what can I do to help the awareness and spread of Linux games’.

We have tried to make it as easy as possible to become a reseller, and we encourage any company or individual who is interested to apply. You do not need to be rich to start a store, we have resellers that started with no advance money needed.

The different types of reseller

When you decide to become an LGP reseller, you have a number of different options open to you.

1. Traditional reseller
   This kind of reseller operates in the time honoured tradition of buying stock from us at a discount, and reselling it to their customers. The same kind of reselling that has been going on for centuries in all industries. We offer these resellers a discount of around 40%, and we ask that they buy at least 10 games at a time. Not a huge amount, we like to set the barriers  to entry low.
   Of course, for the bigger buyer, there is incentive to buy more and get bigger discounts. The more games that you buy at once, the bigger your discount.
2. Dropship reseller
   This kind of reseller is the type with the lowest barriers to entry. If you have a website and would like to sell LGP games, you can simply list all our games, right now if you like, and if you get any orders, simply have us ship them to your customers. You simply login to your reseller account, and buy the game with your credit card, and leave the rest to us.
   This system was set up specifically for those who want to ‘give it a try’, and who don’t want to spend money buying games they aren’t sure they will sell. Of course, with less risk is less profit. The discount for this kind of reselling method is around 30% instead of the 40% we offer for standard resellers.
3. Download resellers
   This is, as many of you will know, our newest method of game distribution. We offer the ability, with some of our games, to buy a downloadable version of the game. The system for this works a little differently.
   When you sell a downloadable copy of a game, it is the responsibility of the reseller to supply the download to the customer. Whether that be as a disc image (which is how we supply the data to the resellers), an RPM, or any other method, that is up to the reseller. The reseller also needs to supply a key to unlock the game.
   The keys are the bit that you as the reseller would pay for. The discounts on keys are similar to the discounts for standard resellers, but they work a little differently. Instead of asking resellers to buy keys in advance (which they may of course do if they wish), we offer them the ability to buy ‘key credit’ and then buy they keys in real time when a customer orders a game.
   The simple web-based system involves sending a request to our webserver, and if you have purchased enough key credit, then a new key is returned, and you can then provide that key to the customer.
4. Private groups
   While not quite a reseller, private groups are also welcome to apply for discounts. Examples of such groups would be Linux User Groups, or companies that run Linux desktops who want to buy lots of copies of games for internal use.
   Private groups receive the same benefits as traditional resellers. The same discounts, but just aren’t listed on the website as places to buy our games (for obvious reasons). If you are part of a group that would like to buy games for your group at a discount, you should set up the standard reseller account with us.

So, now you know what the options are, lets get into the mechanics of how.

The task of creating an account is actually very simple. You simply go to our website and follow the ‘Account’ link that you will see on every page of the site. From here, you can follow the correct path, and apply for an account.

Once accounts are created, we check them out, and authorise genuine resellers or groups. We are happy for anyone to apply, but if you are an online reseller, we ask that you have some kind of web infrastructure available for us to examine before you create your account. We generally do not open accounts for people who ‘will make a website soon’. Accounts that are authorised are generally authorised within 24 hours, or we will send you an email to let you know why they have been rejected (which happens rarely).

Each account is capable of any of the resale options described above, you do not have to open a type of account for downloads or for dropship. Just a reseller account.

So, now you know what is available, and how to do it. The last thing to know is why would you.

For three reasons:

1. For You
   If you own an online or physical store already, our products make a good addition to the lineup, and with the dropship system, you can add them at no risk.
   Even if you don’t, then starting reselling LGP games as a part time website owner, or even to your local Linux using friends, is a nice second income, and probably better than all these ‘get rich quick through Google’ ads that you see all over the place.
2. For Us
   Simply, because LGP needs as many resellers as we can get. We need as many people talking about our products as possible. The more games we sell, the more games we can make, and the more games we can make, the better it is for you, us, and everyone.
3. For the Community
   Because games are, without doubt, the big block to Linux adoption on the desktop. Do you want everyone running Linux? So do we, and games help to make that happen.

It seems that she has adopted us, as she spends pretty much all of her time in the office, and is a constant disruption to work. At every opportunity she loves to sit on keyboards – especially when typing is going on, and she is very insistent when she wants some attention, as you can see from the picture above when she decided to sit on my keyboard and demand my time.

I decided we weren’t going to name her until she had stuck around for a couple of weeks, afterall, she could have just wandered off again. But it does seem she is here to stay.

So, we have a few ideas for names, but we can’t quite decide which, if any, of them are right. So, I thought, lets get a bit of community involvement, and set up a name poll.

So, add your votes below, and if you have suggestions for a better name that isn’t on the list, add a comment, an if we like it, we’ll add it to the poll! You can choose multiple answers if you like.

EDIT Oct 8th: Well, the poll has been going for just under 4 days now, and you can’t leave a cat without a name for too long! We will now be taking the top three, Qwerty, Switch, and CatMonster, and over the next week we’ll see which one seems to fit her best. The one that works best, we’ll name her, and update this post with the final result! Thanks everyone for your contribution, and I’m sorry I never got around to adding some of the new suggestions to the poll!

EDIT Oct 16th: After a weeks trialling, one name is clearly a winner based on her personality and attitude and what comes naturally when talking to her. CatMonster! It is great as an all-purpose name that can have its start changed, so when she meows a lot she is a NoiseMonster, when she’s asleep she can sometimes be the SnoozeMonster. And when she sneezed a while ago she was the SnotMonster. All in all, CatMonster wins!

A bit of explanation as to some of these names…

• CatMonster: A bit like KateMonster from Avenue Q
• Ceefer: Ceefer Cat. Say it aloud, you’ll get it.
• Natasha: The whole Boris and Natasha thing, and she likes eating spiders (Boris the spider). Its a bit convoluted, but made the list
• Piper: She’s a mouser. So from the Pied Piper. Also has a nice link in to the ‘Charmed’ TV show
• Quark: She loves having her ears scratched, so a Ferengi name was needed!
• Qwerty: She is a keyboard cat. Obvious really
• Splodge: I mentioned the new addition to my mother on the phone a week or so ago, and she insisted this be the new name.
• Spot: Another Star Trek reference. Data’s cat.
• Switch: Her favourite place to sit is on the office gigabit switch. Its warm and by the window. Also a Matrix tie-in
• UsrBin: /usr/bin/cat. OK so cat is usually in /bin but you can’t call a cat just Bin

At that point, fresh from our completion of Majesty, we were convinced world domination was just around the corner and we would all have our ferraris quite soon. We had a number of copies of Majesty printed (no, I’m not saying how many), and expected to have to get a reprint within 2 months, judging by the number of applications for the beta test, and the enthusiasm shown by people.

Over the next few months, reality, and a certain level of depression set in. We didn’t need to reprint Majesty. In fact in the first 3 months we didn’t even sell a quarter of the copies we had produced, and after the first few months, sales begin to slow down, so it didn’t look likely that we would suddenly see a huge rush of orders. The optimism pretty much evaporated.

So, realising it wouldn’t all be parties and glamour and free money by the bucketload, we settled down to some real work. We had more projects going on, with NingPo, Soul Ride and HDB, and we had new ideas. One of the new ideas that we went with was to open a physical shop.

Not a lot of people know we did that. We opened a shop in Nottingham, that was selling games. I admit we didn’t just sell Linux games, we sold all kinds of games, but the idea was to get a bit of local publicity for Linux games, while raising money using sales of other games, to fund the development of Linux games. It also didn’t feel horrible to see a shop where Linux games were on the same shelves as Windows games.

To be honest it didn’t do that great. The shop was small, and the people we rented the premises from made vastly inflated claims of how busy the mall we rented in was. Oh they didn’t lie, but they neglected to mention that the figures for mall visitors also included people walking in one side and straight out of the other side, as it was the only direct route from the city centre to the train station… However we sold a few Linux games, and increased company turnover (which always looks good on the books). In the end though, it was fairly obvious it wasn’t going to be the cash cow we had hoped for, in fact it was more a cash sink. So we closed it down after a few months.

Shortly after, I had been invited to talk at LinuxWorld Expo in San Francisco, and on my return to the UK, found we had had a disaster. Overnight on the day I returned, our stock room (also our server room) flooded. Our premesis is on a hill, and a severe rainstorm caused a building uphill from ours to flood, and the flooding cascaded downhill until reaching our stockroom, which seemed to be waterproof on the downhill side and not on the uphill side. End result was that the water pooled there, causing thousands of pounds of damage, and days of downtime. 6 inches of water took several days and a quite elaborate pumping system to remove, and obviously while half of the electrical system was underwater, we couldn’t fire up the servers!

Luckily, the damage wasn’t catastrophic. while hundreds of games had been destroyed, and computers had been submerged, no game was completely wiped out of stock, so we had no mad rush to reprint, and no orders were delayed. Backups ensured no data had been lost, but it was a bit of a scare! We spent a good few days raising everything in the room up by 6 inches, so that if it ever happened again we wouldn’t have a big problem, and we even installed a pumping system just in case!

Following one disaster, it is only appropriate that we mention another company disaster at this point. Disciples, a great game, but unfortunately LGP’s DNF. It was around this point that Disciples caused the first of many resignations from LGP. Mike Phillips left the company after one too many late nights trying to beat the game into submission. It isn’t that there is anything wrong with Disciples, it is simply that you need a developer with just the right development style to be able to port it, and they have proven hard to find over the years. And so over those years, Disciples has been part-ported several times, leading to belief it will never be released. I can say for sure it will be released, I just cannot, still to this day, say for sure when!

Despite the downsides, the flooding, the game that refused to be ported, and the staff that left, we had successes. Postal 2 became the fastest selling game in its first month, and when we looked back at the accounts we found that we had, in many ways done it right. The company had proven itself sustainable. Where Loki had come in in a blaze of glory and burned out just as quickly, we had been around for as long as Loki, and we were still here. We were not as high profile, the games we ported were not the ones you see advertised on TV, but they were all undoubtedly as good as the games produced by Loki. Just because a game is high profile doesn’t make it good, and just because a game is less well known doesn’t make it bad.

So, we were stable, we were ready for the future, and we now had to make some decisions. How could we grow. What could we do to drag Linux gaming into the mainstream. And how could we do it without the blaze of glory ending…

In some ways it is a fair question, you bought a license to play the game, but in reality it is not going to happen. Let me explain why.

When LGP ports a game, it takes time and money. We only get revenue back from people buying the Linux version. This means that if we were to say ’sure’ to that question, we would then suddenly get no revenue, as buying the windows version will earn us nothing.

We license games from companies who make the Windows version, and we do not get paid for making the games, and so selling them is the only revenue we receive. If, for example, you bought a game for Windows, you wouldn’t expect to be able to get a free copy of the same game for the Playstation. This is pretty standard for any industry. If you go pay to see a film at the cinema, you wouldn’t expect to get free pay-per-view access of the film on TV later on just because you paid money to the cinema.

We have had many people try and justify why they should have a free installer. We even had one bright spark take the demo for X2, hack the Windows datafiles into it, and then came asking for help wondering why he couldn’t save the game. The answer of course being ‘its a demo, its meant to not save the game’. Our demos are all written in such a way that they will not run the full version of the game.

Some Linux games, for example Quake 4, you get a downloadable installer because the same people who made the Windows version made the Linux version. They went to the expense and they recoup the money by selling the Windows boxed version. Other times, such as Unreal Tournament, where Loki released a downloadable installer for the Windows boxed version, the company who made the Linux version were paid to do so, and so the revenue is generated in that way. This is not the case with LGP games, and is unlikely to become so.

Of course, to leave things on an optimistic note, when Linux finally becomes the ruler of the desktop, then of course, Linux versions will be released first, and Windows gamers will end up in the shoes we Linux gamers currently wear. However, that will be a while coming, so until then, the answer is no. No installer!

So, there I was, back in the tail end of 2001, with a contract to do Creatures and Majesty, and really, no idea how. Creatures wasn’t much of a problem, as Creature Labs had done the port already, and just needed a publisher. I pretty much winged that, I got the game made up, but made the mistake of doing it in parts. To this day, each copy of creatures that is shipped has to be hand assembled with each of its 4 parts. It may not sound like much, but over the years, it’s been a real pain. All other games we had made since then, we had made ready to ship.

At around this time I got the news that we had all been expecting. Loki was going out of business. I immediately contacted Loki, and asked them if LGP could obtain the rights to carry on producing the games they had made. This would have been a great boost to the new company, and would have allowed us to keep on making the games that were still in great demand by Linux gamers. Unfortunately Scott, the CEO of Loki at the time, was asking for such a ludicrous amount of money for the licenses (way more than they were possibly worth, and probably more money than the games had made by selling for the entire history of Loki) that I had to let the idea go. We made a second attempt at the liquidation of Loki to acquire the rights, but the company handling the liquidation was so unprofessional, that they made it impossible to do so. With their policy being that the only way for me to officially state our interest being to fax them, and their only fax machine being broken for over 2 months (they kept telling us it would be fixed any day), we didn’t really have a hope. The liquidation hearing came and went before they contacted me, several months later, and acknowledged LGP’s interest in the liquidation. Not a lot of use really.

So then there was Majesty. I had the porting rights, but I had no idea what to do with it. I mean, I pride myself in being a very good programmer, but porting was something I had no real experience in.

Sam saved the day. Sam Lantinga, previously one of the Loki developers, pointed me at a number of ex-Loki staff who were still interested in doing more porting work. Of those, Mike Phillips was the one that ended up joining us, and even though he left the company some years ago, his influence shapes the way we do porting development to this day.

Mike spent quite a while pushing me in the right direction. I had a number of preconceptions that he had to beat out of me, but I also had to push back on some of his ideas, and I think, in the end, we got the right mix of decisions. Mike set up the idea for the LGP build environment, one that we still use a derivative of, as it has proven to be a build system that is very very portable, and enables us to make games that run on all distros. He also introduced me to the idea of IRC, which has enabled the company to have a real interaction with our customers.

Before Majesty work could start, Mike spent a number of months sorting out the LGP build system, and building some of the basic building blocks that LGP uses to make porting easier. He wrote wrapper functions for file handling and other common tasks, and established the tools we would use for our games. SDL for input and graphics, smpeg for video, SDL Mixer for sound, and openplay for networking, were the main choices.

Majesty work started in earnest. Mike spent a lot of hours on the project, while I carried on trying to find resellers and distributors for our games, and at the same time finding new games for the company. I ended up making an agreement for a couple of smaller games by Pyrogon, and also managed to pick up the rights to Mindrover, one of the Loki games we had missed out on earlier.

Majesty porting finally came to an end, and then we had a decision to make, that has influenced how we do business from that moment, and a decision I am very happy that we made right. After the beta test, we had one bug left, where network games occasionally went out of sync. Mike wanted to go gold, and ignore the bug. I wanted to find the bug, despite the fact that the bug happened in the Windows version too. I put my foot down and insisted, and that was a turning point for the company. From then on, LGP’s policy was always to delay release as long as it takes, to get a good release, not an almost right game, but one that we can be proud of. So Mike spent a good few weeks hunting for the bug. In the end, I joined him in the hunt when his resolve started to waiver, and between us, we found the bug after a hunt that lasted for over 8 weeks. It was a simple 1 line change, and the multiplayer game was fixed.

Majesty was finished, and our first game, ported from scratch, was done!

The thing is, a one day sale can never give us useful information. The one day sale was a HUGE success. We turned over more stock in one day than we usually do in 6 months. The problem is, we made less than we would usually make in a month.

But that sale was never part of the calculations. The real test came after.

We looked at the sales figures from resellers. These sales figures spanned a number of weeks, and gave us a much better idea of how sales long term would go, when prices were lower.

The first week of sales was, as expected, higher than usual. Week two, sales dropped back to the same sales levels as we were getting before the sale was announced. Week three, sales levels stayed flat, at around the level of before the sale was announced.

This was the important test. What happens over an extended period of time, and the result was, the same number of sales, less profit per sale.

And so, I think we can say that we gave it a shot, we gave a fair ear to the people that demanded lower prices, and the result was, it is not economical for us to do so. Sales spike, obviously, but then go back to normal. A person coming to the site seems no more or less likely to make a purchase based on the lower prices.

On the plus side for those that wanted lower prices, we now have the rental scheme in place and at least one reseller implementing it, and so, some games are now available at the lowest prices ever!