"The tiny proportion of people who use Linux on the desktop will pay more for your game if you frame it in the context of 'look, you can be superior to the people who use those other OSes'?"

I buy then under "Linux" because I'd like to see more Linux games, but I only very rarely actually play them under Linux. Because it's way too much of a hassle to actually do it. My reasoning is that, perhaps (and it is certainly optimistic), a greater adoption of games on Linux might make the process of getting them to work (and, similarly, the process of developing for the platform) less obnoxious.

It's a hassle to install the deb and launch the game? It's much easier than installing games on Windows, and that's saying something.

I just bought it and I'm trying to run Crayon Physics Deluxe on Arch Linux

    $ ./crayon
    ./crayon: error while loading shared libraries: libjpeg.so.62: cannot open 
    shared object file: No such file or directory

Sigh.

Edit:

for anyone who cares, the (undocumented) dependencies are at least:

* nas from the repos

* libjpeg6, libtiff4, libpng12, libssl098 from AUR

Also libssl098 from AUR. If anyone is not doing it already, install yaourt and/or aurget, they make AUR packages much easier to install.

Note that most of these problems come from a closed-source application A) being linked against old versions of stuff and B) not using statically-linked libraries. I know that statically-linked libs are widely hated but at least where you know newer versions break compatibility, you should include static libs if your app is closed source. Of course, an open app can be rebuilt and/or tweaked as necessary so static libraries aren't needed there.

The one thing that would make HIB more exciting would be an immediate release of source for all games involved. I know many participants in HIB1 did this after HIB2, but that's not the same thing.

EDIT: Oh, and it appears Crayon Physics Deluxe must be launched by ./launcher, NOT ./crayon.

These installation issues will go away as quickly as someone puts a PKGBUILD in AUR. :D

> These installation issues will go away as quickly as someone puts a PKGBUILD in AUR. :D

I'm on my way

EDIT: it will take a while - ldd crayon / ldd launcher has a lot to say, there is no official icon and it is getting late here.

I've been using yaourt as long as I've been using Arch (about two years now) and I love it. Great package management tool!

Any advice for "/lib/tls/i686/cmov/libc.so.6: version `GLIBC_2.11' not found" error?

On Ubuntu, I also had to install mikmod.

Installing mikmod solved the mikmod dependency, then the launcher was complaining "error while loading shared libraries: libsmpeg-0.4.so.0: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory" so install libsmpeg0 but now the launcher simply says "Failed to execute 'crayon'." The customer service folks are wondering how to get it working on Ubuntu as well. :-/

Directions from the author (I think) on installing Crayon Physics on Linux. Doesn't work with my touch screen yet...

http://www.kloonigames.com/forum/index.php?topic=7684.msg199...

That has been the case in every bundle. Linux pays more than Mac pays more than Windows.

I would suggest that Windows users cover the entire range of users, including a lot of minors. It's the most accessible and prevalent OS, and therefore people with the least amount of money are most likely to be using Windows.

For Mac users: Macs are without a doubt more expensive than WinPCs. Serious question: can you get a new Mac laptop or desktop for under $800? These people have more money to spend on computers and more money to spend in general.

For Linux users... I don't know. I would posit that Linux users tend to be more educated than the average person (based on personal experience), and that more education correlates with more income (this I can actually cite: http://www.bls.gov/emp/ep_chart_001.htm). I know, a stretch, but I to me they are reasonable arguments, if lacking in evidence.

> can you get a new Mac laptop or desktop for under $800?

For low values of desktop and ignoring hackintoshes, yes: http://store.apple.com/us/browse/home/shop_mac/family/mac_mi...

> For Linux users... I don't know. I would posit that Linux users tend to be more educated than the average person (based on personal experience), and that more education correlates with more income (this I can actually cite: http://www.bls.gov/emp/ep_chart_001.htm).

I'd think more of "games starved" and "want to entice game developers".

This has probably more to do with the fact that Linux users are quite often part of a community that promotes this kind of thing.

Also the statistic don't account for people with multiple systems. Windows on the desktop for games, Linux in the desktop for development and OS X on the MacBook is not an uncommon setup for developers.

You can have your contribution factored into all three operating systems, apparently.

Yes, Windows and MacOS users spend more money on buying software so their budget is already stretched, while Linux users have money to spent.

Or Linux users cannot assess the worth of software as they are not used to buy software.

Both probably not what you wanted to hear, and probably not the real reason. I just wanted to point out that we can project everything into the fact that Linux version pays best average amount.

Or "I'll pay more for this to reward these people for making games for my platform, and more developers will hopefully follow."

Or more likely because linux has very few games, where as windows has vast amounts. I have bought every humble bundle but never played a single game, I just give them $10 each time to support the idea. I typically spend ~20 hours a week playing games.

It might be because all of the games have been released on Windows and Mac before (many over steam), and so Windows/Mac users are more likely to already own a copy. Exclusive linux users, on the other hand, are less likely to have a copy of any of the games already.

There's not many games released for Linux, so when they are released, people get very excited.

There are very few opportunities for Linux users to buy games?