Having tried to deal with Scala's macros I have joined the camp of "it's a seriously worthwhile tradeoff".

Honestly doing anything with reflection in Scala (or pretty much every non-Lisp) is just horrifyingly unintuitive (and as a result: painful). In a Lisp you're just manipulating lists using typical list manipulation functions, it is, comparatively, a piece of cake.

Reading Paul Graham's "Why nerds are unpopular" seems relevant if one wishes to dig deeper into this topic.

Geeks by their very definition have have interests that set them apart from the popular kids. "Geek" and "popular" just don't mix, though one could be popular among fellow geeks, but I'm pretty sure that wasn't what the OP had is mind.

The two billion different window managers out there supporting every imaginable workflow would like to have a word with you. Yes, they're still out there, despite all the efforts of the "userfriendliness" crowd to break them.

The problem with GNOME isn't whether it sucks (I haven't really used GNOME since the crap that was 2.0, so I have no opinion on how good or bad it is), it's that they have decided that their way is the only way and have taken over independent projects (like GTK, the "G" really doesn't stand for GNOME and it is definitely not only used by GNOME applications) and are forcing their views on those as well.

The FLOSS community used to be about cooperation and choice, but lately it seems to be more about which corporations can hire the most developers to force their vision onto the projects they support without any regard to the rest of the ecosystem.

Yeah, but that doesn't make for such an impressive OP... Spreading FUD makes for better headlines you know...

The problem is the site was already very bitrotten and was running into regular issues with security. It's probably better to build something new using the data in the database than to use the old code.

The URL for the Linux Gametome has always been happypenguin.org and the site focused heavily on FLOSS games.

It's a real shame but not really unexpected, the IRC channel (which used to be very active with both gamers as well as game developers) has been pretty dead for a few years now and it seems to have died around the same time maintainership of the website died down. My guess is that many active members in the community got sucked into this "real life" thing (quite a few of the most active people, at least on irc, were students at the time) and the "new generation" has little interest in FLOSS gaming it would seem.

Oh, for those interested, it's #gametome on Freenode, some of us oldtimers still hang out there, though, as I said, it's mostly dead.

I beg to differ. With gaming becoming more and more mainstream we've reached a critical point where mainstream games have turned into such generic appeal-to-everybody-and-their-lolcat that it leaves hardcore gamers seriously wanting.

Multiplayer (and more specifically *competitive* multiplayer) has become such a required tickbox for publishers that it very often comes at the detriment of the single player experience. While I'm sure most of us enjoy playing games with other people there are just so many genres where single player is crucial and/or competitive multiplayer doesn't make sense (like story driven RPGs). Many of these genres have been watered down to such an extent by now that they're barely recognisable, others have just pretty much died out entirely in mainstream publishers' catalogues (like adventures, not the "action adventure" kind).

The second problem is the "consolification" of everything, some genres are just not fit for controllers (sure you can attach a kb/mouse to a console, but if you do that you just have an underpowerd PC with horrendous limitations anyway) forcing them in a format that "works" for console controllers just turns them into something they aren't and that people often just do not want ("Hi Dragon Age 2!")

Thirdly are the horrendous limitations consoles impose, sure the mainstream gamer might not care too much, well, until he/she sees how you can mod some games (like Skyrim...) often fixing bugs the developers can't be bothered with, fixing broken game mechanics and just generally improving the game experience. The gaming PC isn't dead yet even though publishers might be trying very hard to kill modability in the mistaken belief that mods kill DLC sales (well, they will, if your DLCs are trivial drivel).

This explains imo the huge success of crowsourcing for games lately and frankly I think there is a market for both groups, the big publishers can keep on cranking out Hollywoodstyle appeal-to-all games while the crowdsourced developers can keep on producing interesting, innovative, oldschool or just generally off-the-beaten-path games. It's happened with film, I don't see why it would be a problem with games.

tl;dr Single player is not dead and PC gaming is far from dead either.

There is also this, which for me is reason enough to consider any and all alternatives.

Classifying RMS as "just a hacktivist" only highlights your ignorance. I suggest you read up on everything he's achieved (he started emacs, gdb and gcc to name a few) as a hacker before making such an unfounded claim.

The fact that RMS also cares about people and not just about sating his own technological cravings is a positive point imho, whether I agree with him or not (and I often don't)

Yeah, I just don't have much faith in Sony, they've run enough games into the ground not to mention how they tend to treat their community (been on the receiving end of SOE, they haven't seen a cent of me since).

Wish CCP had just made it a PC game so they didn't have to make concessions to these kinds of companies. Then again funding etc. Can't win 'em all I guess :( I would've bought a monocle if it had kept Sony away though ;-)

And yup, last patches have been really good as has their interaction with their players (CCP devs are awesome!). I really wish more developers participated in their player community like this.

I guess I've just grown really really cynical about upper management motivations for the stuff they do. Certain companies plain lying to their customers of course didn't help any (just to make it clear I am *not* referring to CCP here).

Anyway, didn't mean to sound so negative, CCP is doing awesome and we'll see what they do when they do it, if they stick to the road they're on then I'm more than happy to cruise along.

He'd have to physically assault her first though: "Karate ni sente nashi" (There is no first attack in karate) -- Gichin Funakoshi

Westwood is dead and BioWare is going the same way. In the "best" case the name will stick around for a while as a front for EA, of all the actual talent nobody still works at BioWare and hasn't for a while (which I personally think should be pretty obvious if you look at their latest releases).

MMOwise I only have some faith in World of Darkness as far as mainstream releases go, it's the only game developed by a company known for successfully running a not-a-dime-a-dozen-MMO game for years (EVE is turning 10 this year). Then again it seems they want to crack open the casual market with Dust (sucking up to Sony, that can't end well) and WoD, so we'll have to see how many of their "greed is good" attitude stuck around, they might just be trying to decrease their dependance on EVE so they can force unpopular decisions through without risking the company, but maybe I'm just cynical...(I'm also digressing horribly) But at least they know (from experience with EVE) that politics (and economics) can make for really interesting gameplay elements, most mainstream MMO lack proper politics or a proper player market.

BioWare is dead (also Westwood Studios says "Hi!"), it's EAWare now, with everything that implies. We had better get used to it. I have rather low expectations for their games now (good production quality but generic gameplay, I rather have the other way around if I can't have both). Didn't know Wasteland 2 was coming out this year though, and a new isometric Divinity game. Maybe we'll get some good RPGs this year for a change...

Honestly, the same goes for the GNOME project. Just have a read here. This situation is possibly even worse for FLOSS in the long run than the FSF's conservativeness.

FLOSS development is supposed to be about choice, I find it very unsettling that various entities try to take that choice away. "If you're not a GNOME project you don't matter, in fact we'll actively try to make your life harder." is basically what they say.

The same can be said about the entire systemd debacle, is it an improvement over what we have now? Maybe so, but that is irrelevant to this discussion, but the way they are trying to force it on everyone whether you need it or not, whether you want it or not is sickening and unworthy of a FLOSS project.

Personally I'll take the FSF's slowass development, seemingly archaic policies and Stallman's insistence on correcting every use of "Linux" to "GNU/Linux" over the current trend emanating from the likes of the GNOME project.

No, it's that nobody expects ethics from banks.