NewsForge: Loki’s Draeker: If I had to do it over, I’d create Linux native games

“If I were going to start a new Linux game company
tomorrow that’s what I would do.

The idea with Loki was never to create a thriving Linux porting
business. We wanted to create a Linux gaming industry. If you want
a perfect example of the difference, just look at Mac gaming. There
are many games available for the Mac put out by several great Mac
porting companies. But no one develops new games for the Mac. As a
result Mac gaming is always a second cousin to Windows gaming.
Games come out after the Windows versions do. They look and feel
like Windows games, not Mac games. And there’s nothing you can play
on a Mac that you can’t also play on Windows.

We saw porting as a transitional stage. By porting games we were
able to develop the software infrastructure needed for gaming on
Linux. We were also able to prove that a market for Linux games
exists. The next step would have been to use what we had created to
start making original games for Linux. That has always been our
ultimate goal — we wanted Linux to have its own unique, compelling
games. Think how many people would be running Linux on their
desktop if Diablo had come out for Linux six months before
Windows!”

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