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blacklily8 writes "What is the future of free software development for games? Is it possible? Will the games ever equal or surpass their proprietary competitors? Why should we care? After thoroughly researching the free and open source software model, and interviewing both indie and free software game developers, author Matt Barton decided that the future is indeed very bright. Stallman is quoted here saying that game engines should be free, but approves of the notion that graphics, music, and stories could all be separate and treated differently (i.e., "Non-Free.")"
Independant games tend to have the potential of having far more innovative gameplay and/or unique storylines because they have the freedom to take a chance with a concept while gaming houses are generally more restricted because development costs money and publishers like to stick with safe bets.
On the flip side, dependant games(ie games developed at cost by a gaming house) will generally have superior graphics and sound because those two areas require a lot of man hours to "get right". Thus, gaming houses are better suited to coordinate efforts to supply a superior graphic experience quickly enough before the graphics become dated by hardware advances.
That said, as we slowly begin to approach the photo-realism barrier, and as the tools to assemble graphics improve, we are once again begining to turn back towards the days when gameplay and innovation were what set a game apart from its peers.
In this, independant game designers will have the upper hand, as evidenced by the current generation of "big names in the industry" all having been independant designers back during the last time graphics were less involved(80s and early 90s).
Independant game designers are on the rise again, and you can see proof in the concern the publishing companies are having as they slowly fall away, consolidate, and/or have paniced knee jerk reactions out of concern for their future(Valve vs. Vivendi, EA's buyout frenzy, etc).
You are who you are, let no one tell you different. But, never close your mind to a new point of view.
I don't know Stallman's view on the matter.
But if I had to guess, I'd say: That's purely hypothetical, mind you -- I have no idea where RMS stands on the matter.
In any case, code is art, in my opinion -- code, painting, music, architecture, literature -- it's all art, art, art.
-kgj
-kgj
The problem with most games is that they aren't actually games in the true sense. They are more a form of entertainment. Most people play them for the bright graphics and sound, and the immersion of the game world. Which many people, including myself, love. However, as a Wesnoth developer said "Great graphics make a movie. Great sound makes an album. Great gameplay makes a game."
As much as I love the Final Fantasy series, for example, I don't consider them "games" in the truest sense. They are wonderfully immersive stories, but that doesn't make them a game. The problem is, people are starting to really expect that out of their games. And even though Free Software developers could program a game with a much better engine, meaning it has a more challenging basic set of rules, then a Final Fantasy game; I don't think we can realistically expect free software developers to program the video and sound that people have come to expect. If you take the single opening movie from Final Fantasy VII, (a game that, at 8 years old, is ancient), I don't know how it could be put together without a lot of money.
So I think the basic place for Free Games right now is games for people who love gaming. My favorite game right now, of any type, is Wesnoth , a turn based strategy game released under the GPL. The graphics and the sound are fair, but the game play is truly engaging.
Hopefully I didn't put any [] around my words.
No, I think that what they're saying is that instead of spending 'untold millions' developing the HL2 engine, Valve (perhaps in association with their competitors) should have spent 'untold thousands' kickstarting, shepherding, and cheerleading an open source engine project. A few engineers to do some of the heavy lifting (it being their job and only commitment) and to act as managers, farming out grunt-work to the excited masses. A few low-end marketing grunts to astroturf... erm, I mean "market" for them and build mindshare and other 'buzz' for the new engine (and by extension, the new games).
Then they could spend 'untold millions' developing great games ON TOP of the engine. On miles of original art, grammy-winnnig scores, and original new stories. It seems as if once you've got a solid, continuously improving engine (with major releases every 18mos or so), you could devote more resources to producing more art (games) which would lead to more revenue streams than you would get with the current system (one blockbuster released every couple years). Once the engine is a commodity, the competition would be over the artistic aspects of the game, and we might see some more innovation in storytelling. When you have more resources to invest in the story/art aspect of the game, you can take more chances on new stories than companies seem willing to do these days--perhaps with a commodity game engine, we'd see fewer sequals of sequals of games from 1994, and more original games that make a mark as "innovative."
The "open-sourcing" suggestion isn't a one-off suggestion about specific games, its a critique about industry and process, and suggests an entirely different approach, not a simple solution like "this game should be open sourced!"
Repetition does not transform a lie into the truth. - FDR
My understanding is that open source works on meritocracy, so it's great for the technical aspects of software.
It's hard to have a meritocracy with something as innately subjective as art. With technical stuff, it's usually provable what works better.
You can't submit patches to fix someone's crappy storyline (and if you did, I imagine chaos as no one agrees on whether your "story patch" actually improves the story or makes it too long, or too short, or hurts the original author's feelings, etc.). Can you imagine a bugzilla for "ugliness bugs" in the backgrounds, icons, monster design, etc. in a large game? Who gets to decide when a "garishness bug" is closed? Or that a "cacophonous section bug" in the soundtrack has been resolved?
It's always seemed this way to me, hence for a long time Linux ran great (the technical part of it), but the default icons, themes, etc. often left a lot to be desired. I think it wasn't until companies started throwing money at Linux that it started getting pretty.
It's now easy for me to imagine a complicated piece of software put together by committee (the proof was in the Linux pudding), but not a musical score (the proof again was in the Linux pudding).
I think maybe Stallman is just being practical*.
Back on topic, for these reasons I've long thought that games was one area where OSS would have a hard time competing with commercial software companies, since the important part of video games isn't the technical part, but the artistic parts where it's hard (if not impossible) to have a working meritocracy. You can't (I believe) have "bazaar like development" with 100 artists working on video games as you can with 100 programmers working on a web browser.
* OTOH, it's also only with software that not having source code means you fundamentally don't know (or can easily tell) what the software is *really * up to, hence the GPL. This is not the case with art. It could therefore also be that Stallman is just being steadfast with his freedom thing (that sadly, a lot of people criticize), which is not as meaningful with a game's soundtrack for instance.
actually it's worse than that. Planeshift are now demanding copyright assignment for code as well as art. This is why I am no longer contributing to the project.
How we know is more important than what we know.