The Silent Number

Posted: 2009-04-15

It's no surprise that gaming is one of the areas lagging most in the Free Software world. Fanatics will say that yes there are good FOSS games, but the truth is, they're nothing compared to the plethora of proprietary options for Windows. The current open source games won't hold over people who crave the latest games that are being cranked out. Free Software emerges and evolves out of necessity and innovation. It's hard to see a real need for gaming, but better games could offer a lot for the spread of GNU/Linux adoption.
Games are already cited as being the only factor holding many many people back from switching over from Windows completely. Think about it-- if FOSS gaming reached the "tipping point" and games were compareable to the newest proprietary titles, the fact that users could have similar games for free would be a huge selling point for Linux.
The world of gamers is HUGE. There are individual players, groups of friends, competitions, and professional gaming leagues. Gamers play on whatever platform has their games. This can be exploited for Linux. Right now, tournaments can be held for games like Nexuiz (donate!), and in the future when games are attractive enough to adopt Linux for the games, the world of gamers will start to migrate. Until then, they won't even budge. We can't hope to even chip at them until Linux gaming improves.
What can you do? Contribute! Linux needs games, and games need you. Of course, it's a good idea to support and FOSS products you use, but games are in serious need of support. If you're a programmer, you can obviously help with that. For the average anybody, you can download and try the game, submit bug reports, or at least send in a donation. Even if it's just $5, it makes difference.
Here's my request to you: Donate $25 to FOSS gaming. You could donate all $25 to one game, or $5 to five different games, or whatever you like. Just google a list of top FOSS games to try. It's easy, and gaming needs a boost...and Linux needs gaming. So spread this far and wide and give Linux the games it so desperately wants and needs!
Update 2009.04.16: I recieved a very insightful email response you can read here.