Making Money As An Open Source Game Developer?

Fastball asks: "I have a couple ideas for some web-based games that I'd like to develop. I'm an avid Linux, Perl, Apache, and MySQL user, and I believe in the GPL. However, I'm trying to figure out how I can develop these games as open source and still make a buck. It would be rewarding to produce them without seeing a profit, but I'd like to make enough money to get a company going and quit my current, uninspiring job. Can I get there via open source, would I be more profitable going closed source, or should I forget about make money altogether?"

Comments

We're doing the same thing

[mnmn]

Hi,
I am the owner of the firm Techyon (techyon.ca) and my friends and I have been trying to start coding games and make a living off it. The project (wired3d.techyon.ca) is an FPS game that is completely opensource but its protocols disallows cheating no matter how you alter the code.
Our plan is to give out the engines and subsequent patches to that point release all opensource, and sell the online gaming serial numbers just like halflife, along with the artwork. We will also release the artwork for free 2 years after its release, so there. And by the way we're making sure it compiles and uses opengl on Win32, linux, freebsd, beos and macosx and more if we could lay our hands on it.
The bottom line is you havet to sell something. Something without which the player wouldnt enjoy the game completely and something he would crave, and it shouldnt be just copied online like a serial number. Also dont forget to release it for windows if you plan to actually make a living off it. The reason I'm telling you this is because we believe in opensource and want centre of gravity of the gaming world to shift to *nix. It would be great to see coders of more than one game genere entering this scene and cooperating to create larger composite multi-genere games, and gamers creating and releasing mods for each of them.

I wish you luck with the project.
Ghazan Haider

Some advice from experience

[mustangdavis]

I have been running several free online (Space, WWII, etc) games for the past three years. You can take a look at them at http://www.coldfirestudios.com.

Let me give you a little advice concerning game programming and making money.

1. First, be prepared to work MANY long hours for very little thanks from your players. You will find a hand full of people that really appreciate what you are doing, but most will just complain although you are providing a free service for them.

2. We have had very little success with getting people to pay-to-play. Our games generate all of their revenue through banner advertsing. At one point, this was a very profitable market (2+ years ago), but now has become about 1/10th of what it used to be. I wouldn't plan on quitting your job to do this, but instead, do it for the experience and for fun.

3. Have your game WELL planned out before you begin coding it. After you release an alpha or beta, pay close attention to what the players say. Take their advice!!!! They'll appreciate it.

4. Be sure to not only provide a game that is challenging, but also visually appealing as well. This market is very competitive now, so you'll need every advantage you can get to generate those precious banner views.

5. After you establish a solid user base, you can ask for donations. I have several players that have donated $500+, and many are willing to donate $25 or so, but be sure to publically recognize those that do donate. Also, take the banners off of the games of those that donate. It will help keep donations up, keep profits up, and prevent those that don't donate from complaining about the banners :)

If you (or anyone else) is still seriously interested in making a game and need a company to hos the game and provide advertising (getting accepted into banner ad companies these days is rough), send an email to adavis@coldfirestudios.com and I will try to help you out. Basically, we're trying to encourage people to make free games on the web, and we're doing our best to encourage it. At a minimum, you will break even with us. If you're game becomes a huge success, you'll make some money off of it.

My best advice, do this with a couple other people! This is a bigger project than you may think it is, and you'll need all the help you can get. I'll atleast try to provide hosting, ads, and systems admin support if you have a good game.