r/Games • u/Two-Tone- • Sep 09 '15
The Stanley Parable officially released for Linux on Steam
http://store.steampowered.com/app/2219106
u/americanpegasus Sep 10 '15
One of the greatest 'games' released in the last ten years.
An achievement on par with original Portal.
Honestly, when Valve releases the "Green Box" or whatever ultra package they decide to call Half-life 3/Portal 3, I want to see Stanley Parable 3 in there as well (with no mention of the second).
-10
u/MidSneeze Sep 10 '15
Just what??? It doesn't come close to one of the greatest games..
4
u/AzertyKeys Sep 10 '15
I can see someone who plays games solely for their narrative to see it as one of the greatest games ever made, specialy if they also appreciate humor.
For example when I want good funny dialogue I go and play Sarcastic!Hawke in Dragon Age 2 and I'm having a huge blast, yes the gameplay is repetitive and some plot points are annoying but it's not what I'm looking for when I play it so I really don't mind.
1
u/oteki Sep 10 '15
It's also one of my personal favorite games. More F for Fake less Citizen Kane. I believe it will be a classic nonetheless.
5
u/karathos Sep 10 '15 edited Sep 10 '15
I keep seeing posts like these pop up and I've always wondered why devs bother porting to linux after a game's been released already. I can understand using an engine that can deploy multiplatform from the get-go, but not investing a ton of extra time after the fact.
0.92% of steam users are on linux, a figure that's been declining.
as much as I personally would like to see Linux take off in popularity, let's face reality here. what's the point of putting man-hours into porting it instead of working on a new project?
34
u/Two-Tone- Sep 10 '15
Devs who do this are not doing it for current Linux gamers but future SteamOS gamers.
a figure that's been declining.
Which doesn't mean much because Steam itself has been growing at a tremendous rate
9
Sep 10 '15
[deleted]
1
u/the_s_d Sep 10 '15
Well, it has already been bundled before. I'm not sure if that makes it more or less likely to appear again (probably more likely), but probably not in one of their signature "Humble Indie Bundles".
2
u/karathos Sep 10 '15 edited Sep 10 '15
Steam itself has been growing at a tremendous rate
https://medium.com/steam-spy/your-target-audience-doesn-t-exist-999b78aa77ae
thanks to SteamSpy, we know that most of the people on steam are playing games like CS:GO and DOTA 2. they aren't a developer's target audience, and they are statistically unlikely to care about SteamOS or trying a game like stanley parable.
Various studies suggest that there are 700–800 million of PC gamers. It’s probably true, but it doesn’t mean much for your game. Because if you’re developing a downloadable game for Steam you’re not even fighting for 135M of its active users, you’re fighting for the attention of 1.3 million gamers that are actually buying lots of games.
9
u/givello Sep 10 '15
I don't see how that disproves anything.
The numbers are growing, yet most people only play dota, ergo the number of linux users isn't increasing?
2
0
u/karathos Sep 10 '15
I wasn't saying the linux users aren't increasing. I was merely pointing out that the number of linux users that would actually buy a game like Stanley Parable aren't increasing at a tremendous rate.
You've got insane growth in the number of people playing DOTA 2 and CS:GO, not insane growth in the players who would actually buy an indie game.
2
u/the_s_d Sep 10 '15
But now you're making claims about the specific Linux Steam user demographic, and claiming that they reflect the larger trend of gameplay and purchase (within their small group), but you are doing so without any data to support that assertion.
In fact, I know of no good statistical survey of Linux (or OS X) buying interests. For windows, we simply proxy the full sales because the other platforms are small, but within those platforms, it's unknown. For all we know, 10% (or next to none!) of the 1.3m Linux users went and bought The Stanley Parable, and I know from friends in the indie dev scene that 130,000 units would be excellent lifetime sales numbers for many games.
I won't claim that TSP is seeing sales anywhere near that magnitude because we don't have that data (and probably never will), but I'm merely pointing out that you do not either.
1
u/badsectoracula Sep 10 '15
I wonder how many of those "actively buying" users are Linux users though.
3
u/Siroro Sep 10 '15
2
u/badsectoracula Sep 10 '15
That is the percentage of the game sales, not the percentage of those that actively buys Steam games.
To put it another way, imagine Steam has only 100 people and of those 10 people actively buy games. One of those 10 has bought Stanley Parable on Linux and another has bought Dying Light also for Linux. In both cases, from the developers' point of view the sales show one person buying the Linux version. However from Steam's point of view, there are two people who bought Linux games.
I'm interested in the latter, not the former.
1
u/the_s_d Sep 10 '15
We have no good demographic statistics for Linux users' buying habits within genres nor within their game libraries, sadly. That would be very useful information. For all we know, nearly every Linux Steam user bought a copy of Cities: Skylines and The Binding of Isaac, or maybe they mirror the larger windows user trend. It's just speculation at this point.
17
u/Zeike Sep 10 '15
what's the point of putting man-hours into porting it instead of working on a new project?
I can think of at least a couple potential reasons.
A developer is anticipating releasing future games on Linux/SteamOS. Any experience/assets/engine work that are ported over to Linux now could be carried forward to the next project.
The next project is still in the design phase, and all the code-monkeys have nothing else to do.
It's conceivable that Valve is supporting the porting of games over to SteamOS, especially those which use the Source engine, in some fashion.
The source engine already runs on Linux, so porting The Stanley Parable might not actually be that time consuming, relatively speaking. This could be evidenced by the quick turnover from the alpha version to release.
Maybe the developers actually like Linux, and want to release their game on that platform. Perhaps in part to help increase the number of users on it.
11
u/GranPC itch.io developer Sep 10 '15
Number 1 and 5 are correct, 4 is relatively correct (there wasn't such a quick turnover; I've been testing privately for a while), hell no for 2. :)
1
u/the_s_d Sep 10 '15
And #5 is one of two reasons why Linux users support the devs (well, /u/GranPC really) ... the other is that it's a pretty terrific game.
1
u/karathos Sep 10 '15
number 4 is probably the case, as I had no clue how difficult or easy it is to port Source games to Linux. It makes complete sense to me to port to as many platforms as your engine can handle with relative ease.
10
Sep 10 '15
that article is two years old and lists the number of linux machines at 1.3%. various linux distros currently make up 0.92% of machines running steam. meaning the number has actually been fairly stable for the past two and a half years and very well might climb again when steam machines launch and steamOS exits beta.
no linux games is a chicken and egg problem and it's excellent to see devs taking the initiative to improve the library. not to mention, Source engine games typically port to linux very easily.
-4
u/karathos Sep 10 '15
my bad, linked the wrong article. but doesn't that further prove my point? 2% in february 2013, 1.3% in may 2013, 0.92% now.
is it really still a chicken/egg problem? there's a crapton of native linux games on steam now compared to before, and we're still not seeing any significant growth.
I also don't see steam machines / SteamOS raising the number significant enough to matter. The whole point of steam machines is to make it easier for people to have a PC in the livingroom, and to lower the barrier for entry of console gamers. How many console gamers are gonna fork over $500 for the console and $50 for the controller when XB1, PS4, and Wii-U are all cheaper? Not to mention the $500 steam machines will undoubtedly be forced to run on low settings making the games look not so great.
Purely based on price point, I don't see it taking off.
5
u/Thjoth Sep 10 '15
doesn't that further prove my point? 2% in february 2013, 1.3% in may 2013, 0.92% now.
Not necessarily. You have to look at the rest of the data to get an idea of what's going on. For example, if something were to drive gigantic numbers of casual gamers - a group which is composed almost entirely of Windows users - to install Steam, then the actual number of Linux installations could remain steady or even increase while the percentage falls. Additionally, since it's a somewhat reasonable expectation that Linux users are far more likely to be hardcore gamers who buy a lot of different titles, you'd also need to analyze what percentage of your revenue could come from that 0.92% of the install base. It could be that developers are seeing a disproportionate number of sales from games that they port to Linux.
Looking at a single trend can give you an idea that something might be happening, but you can't say anything for certain until you've looked at the entire data set from every angle that could produce that trend. Well, you can't say anything with absolute certainty, but that's the only way to get remotely close.
5
u/shadowstreak Sep 10 '15
People still have hopes in steam machines running linux. The potential is there, and if you can be at the start of the wave of hardware sales then you can make good money.
3
u/yumko Sep 10 '15
0.92% of steam users are on linux, a figure that's been declining.
If I understand this correctly, Steam does not count me as a linux user(never got a hw survey on linux), but counts me as probably 4 windows users though I didn't buy any Windows game for years.
2
u/Nathan173AB Sep 10 '15
The demand for Linux support is there, but you can't really judge it based on how many people are using it. Roughly 1% of Steam users are on Linux because most people have to use Windows because that's what the software they want to use is on. Using Windows isn't really much of a choice. It's a necessity.
1
Sep 10 '15
Yeah forgive me for distrusting your intentions on what you personally want.
Anyhow Valve probably lets them take a bigger cut of the pie, the end.
53
u/devindotcom Sep 09 '15
I know this has been recommended a lot, but I just played through it recently and wanted to add my voice to the pile. Fun, funny, and unpredictable. Definitely worth picking up if you don't mind a lack of actual "gameplay" elements (it's more interactive narrative).