Comments on: Marketing confuses me http://safetyfork.net/2007/09/23/marketing-confuses-me/ Harmless...but useless. Thu, 05 Jun 2008 20:23:37 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.1.2 By: Kris Browne http://safetyfork.net/2007/09/23/marketing-confuses-me/comment-page-1/#comment-17371 Kris Browne Mon, 24 Sep 2007 15:33:13 +0000 http://safetyfork.net/2007/09/23/marketing-confuses-me/#comment-17371 I don't believe that in the end, limiting development to a single platform really provides the best decision for the customer... The best games of history, certainly of the 80's, were popular partially because they were developed for every system and computer they could. Bard's Tale, Ultima, King's Quest... All these series found their demise when they limited themselves to a single platform that didn't have their audience's following. Adventure games found a home on consoles long after the dos/windows gamers had moved on to FPS's and other "Hard Core" games, and much of the Ultima series fans were on Mac or even Linux when Ultima 8 became the first non-cross-platform entry. It's telling that the fans who weren't on the platforms they followed have built engines to allow their favorite games to keep running where the original games hadn't been created for (Exult, ScummVM.) Many of the best games developed today are still created as cross-platform titles if they're not started on that monopolist's dream that is Direct X... I noted that many games today use OpenGL and SDL to build cross-platform goodness between Windows, Linux, and OSX, and some of those run better on the non-MS platforms than the popular platform. I don’t believe that in the end, limiting development to a single platform really provides the best decision for the customer… The best games of history, certainly of the 80′s, were popular partially because they were developed for every system and computer they could. Bard’s Tale, Ultima, King’s Quest… All these series found their demise when they limited themselves to a single platform that didn’t have their audience’s following. Adventure games found a home on consoles long after the dos/windows gamers had moved on to FPS’s and other “Hard Core” games, and much of the Ultima series fans were on Mac or even Linux when Ultima 8 became the first non-cross-platform entry. It’s telling that the fans who weren’t on the platforms they followed have built engines to allow their favorite games to keep running where the original games hadn’t been created for (Exult, ScummVM.)

Many of the best games developed today are still created as cross-platform titles if they’re not started on that monopolist’s dream that is Direct X… I noted that many games today use OpenGL and SDL to build cross-platform goodness between Windows, Linux, and OSX, and some of those run better on the non-MS platforms than the popular platform.

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