[cw-discuss] Crossover Games?

[Chuck Harris]

Hi Jeremy,

Jeremy White wrote:
> Chuck Harris wrote:
>> I wonder if I am the only one that wishes you would stop
>> spending time on games, and put the effort on office type
>> applications?  Perhaps getting IE6 to work under windows 2000?
> 
> You're very much not the only one who feels that way; I get
> that comment a fair amount.
> 
> And you've expressed it exactly the same way everyone else
> that makes that comment does:
> 
> "Why are you working on this other thing
> I don't care about?  You should work on the one thing *I* want."

Not quite.  I do care about games, my son is using linux because my
wife and I (both electrical engineers) forbid allowing new licenses of
windows in our house.  He very much would like his favorite games to
work.  To that end, he has a subscription to Cedega, which works correctly
with exactly none of his games.

But that aside, I did not buy into CW to play games, I did
it so that the EDA applications that I use in my electronics consulting
business could be run without using windows.

And congratulations, thanks to yours, and the wine developer's, hard work
they all do!  Of course, they only work in windows 98 bottles.  They are
a complete bust in '2000 bottles.

> And while I'm teasing you a bit there, I do know that we
> can make mistakes in judgement, so it's very important to me
> that we listen carefully.  Chuck, I hope you would agree that I
> have responded seriously to both your private and public comments
> on this subject.

Yes you did, and I appreciate that.  But your kind words have done little
to solve my problem.

> I also try to be as transparent about my decision process as I can be;
> the idea behind being an open source programmer is that others catch
> your mistakes.  I'm cheerful to extend that philosophy to my business
> decisions as much as I can as well.
> 
>> Trying to be everything to everyone only results in disappointment.
> 
> Sure; that's a guideline we hold as well, although we express it
> in the inverse:  we need to rally around a specific message of something
> we do well.
> 
> Candidly, this issue is the hardest one for me to wrestle with.
> We have very limited technical resources, and work on Wine is
> very hard and very slow.  So deciding how best to spend those
> resources is something I struggle with a great deal.
> 
> Take Microsoft Office, for example.  We built our product line around
> support for MS Office.  Early incarnations of CrossOver essentially did
> nothing but Microsoft Office.  But on the Mac, it's largely unneeded.  So half
> of our market doesn't need it.  And on Linux, interest in MS Office has
> been waning, year over year.  OpenOffice is getting better, and there
> are enough alternatives that it isn't as compelling.  And, thanks to our
> work, free Wine runs MS Office increasingly well, so folks don't need
> to buy CrossOver to run it.  So if we focused
> on nothing but Microsoft Office, we'd be out of business right now.

I agree, but judging by your approved application list, you are focusing
on office productivity applications.  To work on games requires you to
delve deeply into 3D graphics, copy protection schemes, fast rendering,
game consoles, and other things that are simply a distraction from an
office productivity focus.

> Hence, one of the key things we are interested in with CrossOver Games
> is that it gives us a point of focus (most games are largely similar,
> making the technical problem straight forward) that we can rally around.
> We can work to make games work well (and they work remarkably well due
> to the hard work of a lot of great people) and bring that message forward.

Perhaps, but in the process, you are likely to lose the date that brought
you to the dance.


> The regular CrossOver can then focus more specifically on keeping productivity
> applications stable and reliable, and it's not diluted by trying to run games or Foozleware.

That sounds good in principal, but I think you will find that your entering
the games market will cause you to abandon your original concept.  I also
think you will find that your subscriptions will become much diluted due to
the usual games sharing philosophy that is abundant in the games market...

There are complete websites dedicated to cracked versions of windows games.

-Chuck Harris