Latinoware 2012

In their official blog on Steam for Linux, Valve released a post talking about the performance of the company’s first port for Penguin, the acclaimed ‘Left 4 Dead 2′. Information is encouraging. Imagem: Disclosure

Ignored for many years by major studios as a gaming platform, Linux is experiencing a new moment, especially after the announcement of important partnerships in the sector. That’s what Julian Fernandes will address in his lecture at Latinoware 2012. Check out our interview with the speaker:

1. What is the content of your lecture at Latinoware?

The lecture will focus on the gamer audience, not programmers. The idea is to show that we can have fun using Linux too, and that it is not necessary to leave Windows in dual boot to play.

In it I’ll show some interesting games developed by the community and by some companies focused on the subject, in addition to bringing everyone up to speed on the latest news and theories in the area.

Overall, it’s a lecture by a gamer for gamers.

2. What is the current situation of the market for games developed in open source code? Has it grown and evolved in recent years?

I cannot speak about Brazil as I have no information on the subject, since unfortunately the Brazilian open source gamer community seems to be unaware of the power of online marketing.

Globally, it is growing, as it was to be expected. With new engines being released, the work also becomes easier. With respect to engine and programming, we are very well served.

Unfortunately the area lacks designers, causing the assets of open source games to be quite precarious as compared to its proprietary competitors, which results in a negative bias for these games, given that unfortunately this generation values visual aspects rather than the game as a whole.

Overall the market has grown. We have new open source games appearing, new engines being released, more people getting interested … but this is an area that is still dominated by proprietary code.

3. There is still a lot of prejudice against games in OS?

There is a lot of prejudice, mainly around the graphics. Users prefer to dual boot because the open source games do not reach the same graphic quality as proprietary games, and even when they do, they lack a good single player mode.

The trend is that this bias will continue for quite some time, but it must be said that it was much worse.

4. The theme of your lecture points to 2013 as the year of the Games in Linux. What are the major highlights of the year? What can we expect as future novelties?

The big news is, without doubt, the coming of Steam for Ubuntu. Valve is investing heavily in the area, so in their own games and talking other studios into doing the same.

Another innovation that is changing the scenario is the coming of the Unity engine, responsible for many games, in particular on smartphones. With the coming of the engine, numerous promising projects have appeared on Kickstarter, a crowd-funding platform.

And to top it off, we also have the partnership between Canonical and Electronic Arts, with the company posting some games directly on Ubuntu Program Center and certifying hardware for games with Ubuntu. Despite the company’s plans for Ubuntu still being small, the fact that they signed this partnership shows that it is keeping an eye on the orange operating system.

I think it would be correct to say that 2013 is the year of gaming on Linux, since although Valve have promised a beta for this year, the stable version will only come in 2013, as will the Unity engine.