[Ayatana] "Games"-application idea

[Niklas Rosenqvist <niklas.s.rosenqvist@xxxxxxxxx>]

Sorry, I mistakenly sent it to only Shane and I want everyone to participate in the discussion so I forward this :)

Thanks for the contribution Shane! What I understand from your blueprint is that you guys were designing a "games application" with social community features like Steam or Desura. This would make it a fairly big project and I think that it might be too big for something that could ship as standard in Ubuntu. What I want from this idea is that it should be an easy to use and lightweight application which all users could make use of not only the hardcore gamers, even the ones just playing mines and mahjong. As Desura is coming to Linux I think that need will be met. But there were a bunch of really great ideas in your blueprint and I think that there was one that was exceptional:

Save game synchronization! It would be great to be able to integrate the application with Ubuntu One so that the saves can be synchronized (and backed up) between devices! This is a feature I think that many would appreciate. Maybe even high scores and such can be synced.

Also the possibility of adding videos to games in Software Center is an interesting idea. But it presents itself with a bunch of problems: Would only trailers be allowed or also explanatory videos? Should there be a quality standard? Should only games be allowed to have videos or regular applications as well? I think it is a good idea but one that requires a lot of thought and design, maybe it should wait for a later iteration of Ubuntu...

Please continue the discussion :)

I think I will try make a mockup of such an application. Don't know when I will have time though...

2011/5/3 Shane Fagan <shanepatrickfagan@xxxxxxxxxx>

On this entire thread I had a blueprint at the last UDS talking about
how to improve the gaming experience on Ubuntu and it got some
interesting responses although we didn't really do anything in the end
with it but we came up with a list of things that we could do in the
future and I think that was good. I cant remember the link to the
outcome but the original ideas (a big brain dump really) was
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/GamesIntegration take with it what you will.

--fagan

On Tue, May 3, 2011 at 3:06 PM, Niklas Rosenqvist
<niklas.s.rosenqvist@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> I think it would be used rather extensively since most people don't want to
> put all their games in the launcher since it clutters it completely and I
> atleast don't want to have to search for them everytime I want to find a
> game. I guess it's the feeling of well organised content that appeals most.
> This would also simplify the whole process by having one launcher for all
> your games and even provide meta data.
>
> Regular Steam users tend to (from my experience) put all their games in
> their steam launcher to make them easily accessible. On my windows partition
> I only have one icon for all my games and that is Steam. It makes the whole
> thing fast and easy. Most importantly, as I stated before, it would
> encourage gaming on Ubuntu.
> I believe that instead of just dismissing the gaming situation on linux as
> "Developers will never focus on us since they don't have market here" and
> settle for having it as an office workstation we should make it as gamer
> friendly we can! Because if we get the gamers to Ubuntu, we also get the
> hardware vendors to create good drivers.
> 2011/5/3 James Gifford <james@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>>
>> Ah right. I agree that it could be more visible - but I'm not sure how
>> many users would use something like that. You have to balance features
>> with "How many users are actually going to use this thing?"
>>
>> Cheers,
>> James Gifford
>> http://jamesrgifford.com
>>
>> On 05/02/2011 06:01 PM, Niklas Rosenqvist wrote:
>> > I know, that's why I said: "we have the 'applications'-lens which is
>> > good but it can't give a description of any of the games or meta
>> > information as: 'last played' or '10 hours of total game time'".
>> >
>> > Also sorry about mentioning Desura, I just realised it hasn't been
>> > released yet. All the talk about Project Bossanova these days got me
>> > fooled :)
>> >
>> > On 02/05/11 23:51, James Gifford wrote:
>> >> There is already a way to do this - it's hidden, but it's there [1]
>> >>
>> >> Cheers,
>> >> James Gifford
>> >> http://jamesrgifford.com
>> >>
>> >> [1] http://lts.cr/arr
>> >>
>> >> On 05/02/2011 05:05 PM, Niklas Rosenqvist wrote:
>> >>> Wouldn't it be sweet to be able to gather up all games into a
>> >>> "games"-application, similar to the one used for system settings or
>> >>> the
>> >>> games folder in windows vista/7? Since the traditional gnome menu is
>> >>> gone we need a new way to gather up games, we have the
>> >>> "applications"-lens which is good but it can't give a description of
>> >>> any
>> >>> of the games or meta information as: "last played" or "10 hours of
>> >>> total
>> >>> game time". Think of it as a mini-Desura or mini-Steam client. Without
>> >>> all the extra bling and functions. Just a simple way to organise games
>> >>> which can be set as a launcher, which also supports a quick list for
>> >>> recently played games.
>> >>>
>> >>> How about it? Couldn't that be a great addition to the Unity shell?
>> >>> This
>> >>> would also encourage gaming on Linux platforms and hopefully also
>> >>> developers to start providing Linux-clients.
>> >>>
>> >>> (Ubuntu should also try to include more games into it's repositories
>> >>> to
>> >>> encourage gaming on ubuntu, games like Minecraft which is hugely
>> >>> popular
>> >>> should definitely be there as well as Desura)
>> >>>
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