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

Hint.

[Triskaidekaphobia]

Give the game away. Sell the hint/walkthrough book.

I want stuff too

[Anomolous Cow Herd]

I want to be paid millions of dollars a year for having sex with many beautiful women.

Is there any way I could do this? I currently work the fryer at McDonalds and I'm looking to move into a more profitable venture.

Hard Market... Fun Job... Skills First

[metacosm]

My answer to your question is: "you are going about it all wrong" -- if you really want to be a game developer, here are some facts and tips

• Facts
• When looking to break into an existing industry with a new company, you should not even bother trying until you have worked for at least one of the players in that market.
• Game coders are known for being very smart, very hard working, and very underpaid. This is a simple market reality because:
  • Many developers want to be game programmers
  • Most games are flops and never make back the money they put into development

• Tips
• Start getting in on public betas and tests of games you like
• Be a very active participant in the discussions and bug reporting
• Make yourself personally accessable to the game developers

Someday, if you are lucky, you might get a shot at being an actual game coder, and if you are really lucky, that game might be a success! (A friend of mine slid into a development position at DAOC, but she had 10+ years experience coding, was a early tester of DAOC, lived in the area, and made herself extremely involved in testing and feedback, and had to take a massive pay cut to join the team).

After you get this successful game under your belt, and you have a clue how the industry, the work enviroment, and the distribution work, then you can rethink this entire concept of an "open-source game" -- and if you decide todo it at that point, at least you will have a god-damn clue .

I do not intend to be harsh or mean, but the game market is really brutal, and from what I have heard, really fun to be involved in, so I wish you the best of luck. Perhaps you could use an individually completed open-source game as a resume point.

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

Repeat

[4of12]

Over the past few years I've cut n saved some of the Slashdot signatures. One, in particular, applies to this situation. I don't recall the specific Slashdot poster whose signature said:

Enjoy your job, make lots of money, work within the law. Choose any two.

and I don't know who said first, either.