Brave New World of Open-Source Game Design

Greg Chudecke writes "The New York Times recently ran an article on game companies that get design input from gamers. The article is branded as 'The Brave New World of Open-source Game Design.' The title may be a little misleading as it isn't exactly like the game design is open source for editing, however it is interesting that gamers are getting an opportunity to shape the games they play."

Comments

This is new how?

[cortesoft]

So the 'input design input' is basically beta-testing. It is in NO way open-source, by any of the definitions people use. A game company asks people to play the game before it is released and then uses their input to adjust the game? Shocking!

Re:This is new how?

[Kjella]

No, it's not. The first couple of paragraphs are misleading, yes, but if you actually read the entire article you'll find that what they've done is get players involved involved with the basic conceptual design before ever writing a line of code, as well as things like voice-acting and localization. That is new.

It's almost indistinguishable from free work ;) The trouble is, you have no obligation being a volunteer... so you have one of them do voice-acting, then somewhere down the road near release you decide "Hey, we need to change these couple scenes" and the guy goes "Sorry, I'm busy with exams right now" or "Oh yeah that, I'm in a WoW guild now and don't have time." At any rate, I've heard many great games on paper, not many survived into becoming actually good games. Fans with various pet features could be good, or just a distraction from making the basic gameplay fun and interesting. Somehow, I think I'll see a little more actual results before I decide if this is good or not. Btw one of several reasons many open source games just don't make it, games aren't supposed to be all-flexible tools like a word processor - they're supposed to be one coherent vision with one really well done interface and gameplay.

Take a deep breath

[AdmiralXyz]

Before we all start hyperventilating and berating the NY Times for their faulty definition of "open source", let's remember who their audience is. Using "open-source" to refer to a development process where the customers get much more ability to view and modify the content "en route" is not technically a correct definition, but it's a succinct phrase that people understand; it gets the point across.

Think of it like the difference between "hacking" and "cracking". Yes, mass media uses hacking "incorrectly" 99.9% of the time, but they are using the definition that people can understand: to insist they do otherwise is linguistic snobbery.

So no, there is no willful ignorance (or Microsoft plot to water down the definition of open source) at work here, they're just making things plain for their readers.

Re:Bad title

[Anonymous Coward]

That should be a joke. It isn't:

Google Gadgets
Microsoft Popfly
Yahoo Pipes
Apple Dashboard
Anything that calls itself a web mashup service

Re:Open source input?

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously, why was this modded Flamebait? Everything he said is true; for the most part Open Source games suck and are far behind their proprietary brethren in pretty much every aspect.