SteamOS indicative of "move toward openness" in gaming, says Levine

BioShock creator Ken Levine has received the news of Valve's championing of Linux as part of a general trend towards more open platforms in gaming.

Speaking to PCGamer, Levine said he has "a huge amount of confidence in Valve", and that SteamOS and upcoming hardware represent a "brave and powerful idea".

"I think we’ve seen a move toward openness. There’s been a democratization effect with Kickstarter or the Humble Bundles, or even Steam Workshop, where you putting faith in the audience to help enhance the experience and make the experience better. And that requires openness to a certain degree," he said.

Levine didn't seem worried about the relative lack of Linux-friendly games out there, or by the industry's traditional reluctance to support the OS, instead talking up the advantages.

"There’s a lot of Linux porting to do, but if you’ve done a Mac version of something, you’re pretty close already, because Mac is based on the Unix kernel," he said.

"It’s nice to have [a platform] where nobody can say, ‘Okay, this is what we’re doing with it, whether you like it or not.’ I think that’s interesting, because it’s not something we’ve traditionally seen. The message to me is that it’s an operating system designed around gaming, and it’s pretty open. Linux is a means to an end."

The full article contains some interesting discussion of Valve's plans to stream from Mac and PC to SteamOS devices, and the company's continued success in providing new platforms and services gamers actually enjoy using.