Is Vista Going To Dampen Indie Gaming?

[Greg Squire]

Some of you may have read Alex St. John's comments on Vista and PC/Indie gaming on Gamasutra (see links below).

Alext St. John comments on how Vista could have a chilling effect on Indie gaming.
Is Vista Going to Destroy Indie Gaming?

So is Alex "right on target", "up in the night", or something in-between on this?

I'm not terribly familiar with Vista yet, but it appears there are some extra requirements being placed on software in general (all in the name of keeping the user "safe", of course). It seems there will be extra security warnings that may pop-up for games or any other downloadable software. Further, if software does integrate with the new "Game Explorer", but it doesn't have an ESRB rating, the parental controls may still block it by default, as it is "un-rated and potentially dangerous".

All these seem to be more hoops for the developer to jump through. Some of those hoops (like obtaining an ESRB rating) could definitely scare some users and developers away from indie games. Thanks again Microsoft.

Here's some other threads on Vista and Games.

http://forums.indiegamer.com/showthread.php?t=8232
http://forums.indiegamer.com/showthread.php?t=8826


So, what's everyone's take on this?

[cyrus_zuo]

My guess is that:

1. Most people won't immediately use game explorer...if ever (I'm not sure it will be as useful as media player is in organizing your music...I'm inclined to believe that most people keep shortcuts to the games they are playing on the desktop and get to them that way. I don't think that will change for the majority of people)
2. Vista will take some time before it is widespreed...if there are problems...solutions will be figured out in the time it takes Vista to be widely adopted
3. WildTangent has a lot more to lose as it pre-installs games on PCs and would therefore need them to be in the Explorer from day one...I seriously DOUBT that it will impact anyone else all that much (and the few things Alex has pointed out that will impact others I am betting will quickly be rectified by MS due to his posts and thoughts...so a thanks to him for that)
4. Parent Controls will rarely be set, even by that small percentage of people using Game Explorer (Do you use them for IE? They've been there for years). Making this a small percentage of a minority of Vista users that will run into Parent Control issues...doubtful it will impact sales at that number (fraction of a %)
5. ESRB could become an issue through Vista or governmental changes, but I doubt it will impact games in the next 3 years

[lennard]

This came up on another casual mailing thread I subscribe to. I'm not normally a Micro$oft basher but this one really grates - I don't know what new features that Vista offers that warrants that a large percentage of the world is going to send them $150-$200 for the new OS. I responded as such on that list and a softie got on the mailing list and scolded me sternly for voicing an opinion that while, maybe a little cranky towards MS, was accurate.

I took my beef offline to my blog. I'm no longer rational about Vista other than having resigned myself to the fact that I am going to have to buy it and make sure Real E$tate Empire is compatible so I'm going to leave off griping now. Making Mac and Linux games is the obvious answer if you don't want to make a living - my feelings are that Micro$oft has a monopoly on the OS market and that we as consumers need to start figuring out how to not be paying them money on an on going basis unless we are getting features that merit the expense.

[jankoM]

I think at the end of the story MS can't afford to screw up smaller game developers too much because smaller games are becoming one of rare things where Windows (as an OS) still has a point for masses. For the most we now just need something which can pop up a decent browser.

Office, probably the last big desktop app for masses is moving to browser, Email, Web, Biz-apps, PIMs are allready there...

Only more consuming things like games, CADs, Video editing... have any point to still exist on native OS.. IMO

[GolfHacker]

I'm not too concerned yet.

First, as Russell pointed out, MS will probably end up fixing these issues before Vista becomes widely adopted (just like they fixed a lot of similar frustrating issues after XP was released).

Second, I think Vista is going to drive a lot more users toward alternative operating systems, namely Mac and Linux. This has already started to happen, due to the rampant security holes in Windows and MS software - I think Vista is just going to add to user frustration and push more people into alternative OS's. I know the migration has already started to happen for at least a small percentage of users, because I've received several requests in the past year from previous customers who have switched to either Mac or Linux, and they have been asking me when we were going to start supporting their favorite OS. The frequency of these e-mails seems to be growing. That's one of the reasons we have started developing our games cross-platform.

[mot]

Is Vista Going To Dampen Indie Gaming?

No it isn't. Next question!

[arcadetown]

I spoke to Alex at CES and granted he needs to poke holes in msft but he did point out some very valid issues including that by default users use an LUA (limited user account). So after downloading a user must do the standard "an exe may be harmful, ok" then are prompted to enter admin account info just to install the game. This will definitely hurt install rates, huge problem!

Plus many games write data files to the program files folder however running under a LUA this will be a problem since LUA's don't have access to it. The registry may have similar lockdown issues, but not sure what they are.

Has anyone installed Vista and can they confirm if this is true? I haven't yet but plan to get on this asap!

[Applewood]

I won't be installing it ever* because it will keep asking me even more dumb questions over and over and over. I won't read them once, honest.

I want to copy files or do whatever it is I want to do without the O/S assuming I'm some kind of retard. By all accounts Vista is yet another step backwards down this route. I honestly can't believe how badly they're missing the point of an O/S.

(* Of course "ever" means as long as I can resist their monopoly abuse until the critical point comes when I have to spend money to downgrade my computing experience)

I'm very rarely an MS basher, but this constant assumption that I'm a 5-yr old whose never sat in front of a computer before is pissing me off in spades.
I mean, this is the company that gave us the little dog search box as a key part of the fucking operating system. Enough said on that, I think.

[James Gwertzman]

Vista is gorgeous; we've been running it in our QA labs for months and i can't wait for us to receive the RTM build so I can put it on my laptop. It's just got so many little fixes and improvements everywhere, not to mention great eye candy. and i genuinely like the idea of the game explorer although it does have some issues.

I personally am quite happy with most of the security fixes in there since they will help protect the average customer - we are terrified of our customers turning away from download games because of fears of viruses, spyware, etc. as for myself, i'll certainly be running as an administrator since i trust myself not to get in trouble and like other posters to this thread don't want to deal with extra prompts -- though it's not like other OS's don't do the same thing. on Mac OS/X, whenever you install software you need to type your password again and no one complains about that.

We're in the process right now of making sure that all of our apps are signed correctly, have GDF files set up correctly, are ESRB rated, etc. A little bit of homework now and you won't have any problems when Vista launches - in fact you might even have a bit of a competitive advantage

[Bad Sector]

If LUAs (btw, is it my idea, or microsoft has a trend on using names from opensource/free programs and libraries?) cannot write to program files directory, then:

a) how are we supposed to install our games?
b) how are saves going to be implemented?
c) if a free notepad replacement comes out which kiss Notepad's ass, how is it going to be used since you won't be able to save your files??
d) how firefox stores it's preferences?

Back when i was interested in GameBoy development, i did a small research on making an custom compressed filesystem... i think i should revive that having the filesystem and the data as a part of the exe :-(.

Damn Microsoft. I completelly stopped using their OS at 2002 (except for gaming). But for me, it's still the most annoying piece of software even written.

I really hope (wish) that Apple makes one of their somewhat sarcastic "mac vs pc" ads with something about Vista's restrictions :-).

[scriptedfun]

I'm sure that Microsoft will do something about this. I think that Microsoft's move to make freely-available versions of its developer tools (the Express editions), together with making Game Studio Express available (with great tutorials freely available as well) tells us that Microsoft really wants to make sure that programs, and games, should be easily developed by anyone. I don't think that it would make sense to allow making programs to be easy, but actually running those programs to be difficult.

[Applewood]

on Mac OS/X, whenever you install software you need to type your password again and no one complains about that

I do!

I'm all for a friendly user experience so that novices can feel safe. What I expect though is that all these things are optional settings that can be turned off by people who know what they're doing.

DOS is an O/S. Windows *** is a UI program. One I'd choose not to install tbh because it assumes I can't use a computer and stays assuming that, even after it knows I've been using it for 5 years.

Why for example is their not an option to stop it asking me if a folder copy should just go ahead without further prompting, etc. It could even be done by user profile for all those who'd prefer things how they are now.

[arcadetown]

Did some preliminary tests using an LUA (limited user account) on winxp, which is what a typical user on Vista will use. A random test showed that about 40% of games here have definite problems with LUA's. Our DRM and installers (installed using admin account) worked fine. Most of the problems seem to be games trying to write files to local program files folder and ended up crashing.

Not good. If it's true that most Vista users will be on LUA's then it seems a lot of devs will have some major homework to do!!

[cliffski]

If LUAs (btw, is it my idea, or microsoft has a trend on using names from opensource/free programs and libraries?) cannot write to program files directory, then:

a) how are we supposed to install our games?
b) how are saves going to be implemented?
c) if a free notepad replacement comes out which kiss Notepad's ass, how is it going to be used since you won't be able to save your files??
d) how firefox stores it's preferences?

As I understand it installers can install files to your personal disk area, so that's ok. And save games work fine with LUA. Kudos stores all its user preference data and save games in a directory under the users MyDocuments dir. I did this because some people use LUAs under XP. It's really simple to do.

[zoombapup]

Sheeesh, this isnt exactly new.

Try getting some casual games installed from your favourite casual game site in a University games computing labs to see how nightmarish it already is on XP!

The whole issue stems from things like certain accounts not having access to permissions. I've found that a good many install programs do stuff that would simply fail in the labs. For instance, our student accounts cant write to the registry. So what do most installers do? thats right! edit the registry!

So, while I'm not particularly happy about the new stuff, I dont think its a massive loss either. If they figure out a decent convention for ALL installers to adhere to, then thats fine by me.

[zoombapup]

Of course, the whole problem with most windows apps and games, is that its damn near impossible to be sure you cleaned them off your machine.

If we start having to install app in one place and data in another, we're DOOMED!!!

[arcadetown]

Kudos stores all its user preference data and save games in a directory under the users MyDocuments dir. I did this because some people use LUAs under XP. It's really simple to do.

I just tried Kudos. After firing it up it creates a MyDocuments/kudos directory and stores files there. It worked great when using an LUA. So I guess the solution for most developers that store data files is to determine what the my documents folder is, create a subdirectory there, and store data files there? Note your installer installed to program files folder so I assume you typically must have access to an admin account to install anything?

btw - I tried Democracy and it crashes when using an LUA so guess it hasn't been updated yet?

[papillon]

Of course, the whole problem with most windows apps and games, is that its damn near impossible to be sure you cleaned them off your machine.

indeed... I *hate* it when a program dumps data anywhere outside its own folder or subfolders. Some of them think that littering the drive root with dozens of files while running is apparently fine and dandy (Westward, I am glaring at YOU), others run off and hide data somewhere on C: when I installed them on E: for a REASON (E is bigger, C is mostly full!) and if I wanted your save files in My Documents I would have saved them there myself...

How is it more secure to make a mess on MORE of my computer than the specific spot I put you?

[James Sutherland]

If LUAs (btw, is it my idea, or microsoft has a trend on using names from opensource/free programs and libraries?) cannot write to program files directory, then:

a) how are we supposed to install our games?
b) how are saves going to be implemented?

As noted above, the user will be prompted to go into admin mode in order to install the app. Once the application is installed, though, you're right that the game can't write into program files, so it can't put saves there.

However, MS are aware that this would break a lot of existing software, so under Vista if you do try to write to something in Program Files without permission, Windows will silently copy the file to somewhere under the user's AppData folder, and give you a handle to that local copy instead. When you later come to read from the file, it'll read from the user's copy rather than the one in Program Files. A similar thing happens to registry data.

So, in theory, Vista will automatically make your game work for multiple users, even if it didn't work on XP. Though really, you should be saving to My Documents or Application Data anyway (for most games, I think Application Data is actually the right place, rather than My Docs, by the way).

This document on the MSDN goes into a fair bit of detail about the Vista file system virtualization stuff.

[Bad Sector]

I hope this virtualisation thing works with programs using standard fopen calls...

So, in theory, Vista will automatically make your game work for multiple users, even if it didn't work on XP. Though really, you should be saving to My Documents or Application Data anyway (for most games, I think Application Data is actually the right place, rather than My Docs, by the way).

I think that the user's home directory (that is Documents and Settings\Username or Users\Username in Vista AFAIK) is the ideal place for such stuff. This is where i'm storing everything (so each user has it's own copy of profiles, configuration and stuff). This is the right place.

However.

Last time i tried a program of mine that does that in a lab where LUAs existed, i couldn't get permission to write.

And using MyDocuments to store profiles and options is a bad idea. I hate those games who do that. Savegames are "somewhat" ok though, but then again i would prefer another place.

[Ryan Clark]

I just tried Kudos. After firing it up it creates a MyDocuments/kudos directory and stores files there.

Hey Brian, if you have a chance, can you give FizzBall a try? It stores info in the following location:

C:\Documents and Settings\YOUR_USERNAME\Local Settings\Application Data\Grubby Games

Which I assume should be permissible. I imagine anything under your user's Documents and Settings folder should be ok? Or maybe only in your user's Application Data or My Documents folders?

[James Sutherland]

I think that the user's home directory (that is Documents and Settings\Username or Users\Username in Vista AFAIK) is the ideal place for such stuff. This is where i'm storing everything (so each user has it's own copy of profiles, configuration and stuff). This is the right place.

Directly in the user folder itself? I don't think that's right. Settings files and whatnot should go into the user's Application Data folder, not directly in the user folder itself. If you're trying to write there, then I think you'd need admin access.

AFAIK, you're supposed to store stuff in \Documents and Settings\<User Name>\Application Data\Your Company Name\Your Game Name\Version Number\. There are definite advantages to doing this, as it means your game's settings will roam correctly if the user moves his profile between different machines, as well as the fact you won't run into permission problems.

I agree that putting config files in My Documents is wrong. Any file in My Docs should be able to cope with the user moving it around, renaming it, emailing it and so on, which setting files generally won't. I think they're also supposed to be associated with the creating application so the user can double click them to load, which most game saves also don't do.

[Tom Gilleland]

Back to the original question of Vista dampening Indie Gaming, the answer is certainly Yes. Maybe that's the point of implementing it this way. I'm sure Microsoft would rather sell customers games that they have financial interest in, verses independent competitors. They're just leveraging their monopoly position, that's what Microsoft does.

Just think of all the programs that people are going to download and find that they don't work. This will result in millions of experiences of users having their program/machine crash. Think of the results of all these end-user's experiences. Sure, this version of Windows is more secure, but it bombs all the time. The solution will be Microsoft offering certified versions of everything through their distribution channels. The end users will go through Microsoft to get their software because those are the programs that work. I think the whole thing is just a distribution channel grab.

The trend for many years now is toward closed systems (hardware or distribution) controlled by the big players. So as a small developer it looks like you're going to have to partner up with a big guy, or target a small niche and go direct. Like that one saying goes, "The only thing that is constant is change."

Tom

[electronicStar]

Oh well...
If only Microsoft cared less about the needs of software vendors and little cops everywhere and stopped giving the finger to the average user , and if some independant develloper group somewhere had some balls to actually release a competitive free alternative to windows(like firefox did for the browser part)...
</rant off>

is it too late for new year's wishes?

[Bad Sector]

Oh well...
If only Microsoft cared less about the needs of software vendors and little cops everywhere and stopped giving the finger to the average user , and if some independant develloper group somewhere had some balls to actually release a competitive free alternative to windows(like firefox did for the browser part)...
</rant off>

is it too late for new year's wishes?

If you don't count Linux, FreeBSD and other UNIX-like as free alternatives, then does ReactOS probably count? It's a free software NT clone which (as i can see from the shots) is able to run many Windows programs (mIRC, Firefox, Opera, OpenOffice) and some games (Unreal, Deus Ex, Doom, DOTT, OpenTTD).

The problem isn't the availability, but the fact that Average Joe doesn't know about these projects (especially about ReactOS).

[electronicStar]

There was a window of opportunity for Linux. Everybody gave it its chance, it was everywhere remember? A lot of mainstream game where even ported to it (including for example most of the unreal engine 1 games)
Unfortunately the linux community has failed to lift it to the mainstream audience, it remained a complex, close-minded OS whose community of geeks and computer geniuses didn't help it to take the necessary steps to become more ergonomic and user friendly.(same for all unix offsprings).
You can install windows without being a computer expert, most of the time it's even pre-installed on computers when you buy them. If an Os wanted to compete with Windows it would need to be as easy to operate and install or even easier. Yes I know that would imply investing a lot in research and actual implementation, but that's the price . It was definitely not the case with linux.
One thing a windows competitor would absolutely need is an intuitive installation for the OS and for the user software. Having to learn new file and directory structure paradigms and cryptic commands is not an option IMO.
It would have to be very close to Windows ways and what people are comfortable with, without being a clone or an emulator.

[Bad Sector]

You know, Linux didn't started as a Windows replacement or something (when the first Linux kernels came out there weren't even Windows 95 and Win 3.1 was considered a joke by many). And still it isn't a Windows replacement.

You asked about a free alternative, not a free Windows clone. Linux is a free alternative (and a very powerful one). A free Windows clone, however, may be found in ReactOS, although currently they have some work to do before they reach the usable state. However, unlike Linux, they clearly state that their goal is to make a free Windows clone for the reasons you mentioned: many people don't want to learn a different system.

In your post, you say many false things (f.e. linux was never a close-minded OS, in fact it's the most open minded environment you'll ever see, allowing you to do everything in many different ways). I'm not going to comment on them because we'll go way offtopic. However, please check your assumptions before writing them. Linux and it's environments, like many other opensource projects, evolve all the time and in different speed each time. It's very hard to be correct for today on data you gathered yesterday and it's even harder to predict where it will be tomorrow using today's data.

When it comes to usability, for me Linux is much easier than Windows. This may comes as a surprise to many, but i wasn't afraid to learn a new platform and learn it's ways. Most people come to Linux with a Windows mindset. But since Linux is not Windows they usually get frustrated and leave before realizing that they're not using Windows but a different system. Those people may find ReactOS more interesting at the future.

[zoombapup]

See, requiring someone to have admin access to actually INSTALL a game, is totally going to screw us all isnt it. I mean, at work, we dont allow students to have admin accounts. So when we go "go and get this peice of software and have a look" it breaks because the installer cant run without admin!

Whats the point of having software if you cant actually install it? Surely just having an application keep itself to itself and only write files to its OWN directory is the most secure system there is? So why not write the OS to enforce that rule? With some API thats security checked for writing to shared data spaces for shared apps.

I love the way on linux, if you have an app, you can just copy it into a directory and it works. If you want it on another disk, you copy it there and it STILL works.

Windows application management architecture is fundamentally flawed already, so I doubt that anything will improve under Vista and dont get me started with DLL's, shared libraries like that are the lamest idea of them all.

[cliffski]

btw - I tried Democracy and it crashes when using an LUA so guess it hasn't been updated yet?

yeah, democracy wasn't LUA aware at all. All my future games will be. It's so easy to do.
The only complexity is also supporting pre-XP, where the API to get MyDocuments fails. In that case, you just detect that the windows version number is earlier than XP, and then save stuff where you normally would instead.
I wrap all this up in a class with a GetUserDirectoryRoot() call, and its no problem.

[sillytuna]

Let's keep this simple. Anything that gets in the way of "Download, Install, Run" will lose players.

Any kind of warning will absolutely lose a significant % of players. Windows users are not used to it, and they may just resort to not doing it. Those creating browser based games will probably benefit, but those doing download applications will have to be very careful.

Requiring Admin for installation is going to lose those players who cannot get Admin privileges. If a product is signed, is Admin still required?

Vista is coming, like it or not, and we have to deal with it.

I'm with Applewood completely by the way.