This came across the SDL mailing list recently.
There is actually a lot of cool things happening
in Linux game development, but much of it is not
yet visible to the average user yet. I may give
this bootable CD thing a look and see if it will
be useful for making gridslammer demos.
The author of the article misses the point of
one of the greatest strengths of open source
development, instead identifying it as a
weakness. Multiple projects working on the
same problem means there is a greater chance
one of the projects will yield unique and
interesting results. Over time, that project
will gain a larger following and larger
developer base, eventually crawling from the
genetic stew of proto-projects to take its
place as a land walking *real* open source
project.:)
The really good programmers may never get to have a real interview to show his/her stuff. If you have a stack of
hundreds of resumes with similar skill sets and prices MOST business will sort by price then skill. Unfortunately,
businesses do not have the foresight that you do.
I guess it works a little differently for
independent consultants vs. wage slaves. I get
most of my jobs by reputation and referal.
Interviews and resumes play a much diminished
role for the jobs I land. I tend to turn down
much more work than I accept and have the
luxury of taking only those jobs that interest
me.
I charge twice as much as the typical programmer,
but then I have a reputation of always bringing
in the project under budget and ahead of schedule,
so I manage to get away with it. My clients even
concede to silly demands like letting me work
from home and/or flex my schedule.
Like any service or consulting industry, it is
all about networking (the personal kind). You
first of all must be good at what you can do, but
then you also must be able to communicate that
fact and sell yourself. It also helps keep a
good rolodex and never loose touch with the
people you meet over the years.
I'll say it again: There is ALWAYS a market
for real talent.
After a reading the article, It seems to be saying
that there is really only a lack of CHEAP
labor, and
that companies can always hire someone if they
are willing to pay market rates.
Hit me with a clue hammer if I'm wrong here, but
isn't that the case in ANY job catagory!? We
are dealing with a free market after all.
Businesses want to bring the cost of programming
labor down... the best way to do that is to
increase the labor supply. Duh!
The article also misses the point that programmers
are not interchangeable cogs. Some programmers
are an order of magnitude better than others and
are worth paying a premium for. These are the
people who are REALLY in short supply and can
charge top dollar. I don't expect that situation
to change no matter how many H1B visas they issue
or how many new CS grads they churn out. Real
talent is always a scarce commodity... and
thank goodness for that! It is why I get paid
way more than I am worth.;)
I used to live under the illusion that 3D first person games was where the entire industry was going... but I have since realized that there is still a place for the ol' isometric viewpoint. For strategic and RPG games, it has many advantages, and you don't need expensive 3d hardware to render well. This has encouraged me to develop my own cross platform, object oriented, isometric game SDK. It has really progressed rapidly in the last few weeks, but we can always use new developers. Why not check it out at www.gridslammer.org.
This is great news for me. The Sony Picturbook is
the perfect formfactor for carrying around on my
bike or in my backpack. I just bought a used
one off
of eBay. I like it, but the battery life is
horrible (about 90 minutes). Will this new
model also include a FireWire port?
I just received my first threatening legal letter.
It is from Trek Bicycle Corp. regarding my
SkillTrek trademark. It seems the Trek Bicycle
company feels they own all rights to the
dictionary word Trek, even when it is used in
areas that have nothing to do with bicycles. The
funny thing is, a google search of the word Trek
returns a zillion Star Trek sites, but nothing on
Trek bicycles (at least not on the first few
pages of results).
I also searched on the USPO trademark database,
and turned up several hundred trademarks with
the word trek in them. Only six of them were
owned by the trek bicycle corp. Did all of
these other trademark holders get a letter? Some
of these trademarks have been in effect for quite
a few years, so I doubt it?
It looks to me like a tipical corporate scare
tactic, but I will nevertheless have to expend
money to have my attorney blast back a letter
basicly telling them to get bent (but in legal
terms).
Sigh. And I even own a Trek mountain bike. Oh
the irony.
I currently live in a geek house... a duplex
wired with ethernet and a 24x7 Internet connection. I even advertise the fact when I
rent out the lower unit.
But very soon I will instead live in a laboratory.
I am renovating an industrial warehouse into a
shared living space. It contains double
high ceilings, loading bays, and numerous power
outlets. I am outfitting it with a mechanical
and electronics workshop, a video and sound
editing studio, and of course it will be wired
with ethernet. I am even installing solar and
wind generators on the roof. Geek haven to the
max!
My current project is to build a floor standing
MP3 jukebox (like you would find in a tavern). It
will be styled like a classic wurlitzer... crossed
with an alien artifact (ala H.R. Giger). I'm
shaping the exterior out of epoxy resin painted
over an inverse mold made of styrofoam. After
scooping out most of the styrofoam, the interior
will be loaded with a linux computer and monitor. The
sound will pipe through my stereo, and the entire
thing will be controlled by two big dials and
three buttons (which will be interpreted as
mouse input by a custom written interface).
I'll be documenting the entire thing on a web
page as the project gets farther along. I have
all the materials, and the custom software is
75% written. Should I try to create
downloadable plans so
anyone can reproduce this thing?
One thing I'd like to see is a GNU C# compiler. I assume this will be worked on by those over at egcs, once the standard becomes available?
Yes, this would be very cool... assuming MS's
marketing and legal departments don't piss in
the soup and turn C# into yet another MS
proprietary weapon to snare customers into
an MS-only world. I can imagine them tying key
technology into C# and.NET that is somehow
covered by MS patents or such, making it near
impossible for a truly open implementation to
be created. They will of course wait until
C# has caught on, then break compatibility at
some point in the future. At least that is
my fear.
The designers of C# seem to have done some
really interesting things with it, but they
are not ultimately free to implement everything
in the totally open way that they seem to
desire, not unless management allows them to...
and we all have seen the track record that
MS management has in that respect
(cough)Kerberos(cough).
Excuse me for being skeptical, but I've been
burned by MS one too many times.
My personal oppinion is to release at alpha or
even pre-alpha, rather than beta. Alpha means
the code runs but some functionality is still
missing. Beta means the code is basically all
there but needs extensive debugging. The whole
point of open source is to let other people
contribute (not just debug), so as soon as you
have something that compiles cleanly and is even
marginally usuable, release it. Of course label
it very clearly as alpha code and not yet ready
for prime time, but release all the same.
At least that is the approach I took with
GridSlammer, and it has worked out very well.
"Collapse under load" what are you talking about? Any chance of a link to anything that might substantiate that...?
Well, I can't speak definitively about Win2000, but I know for a fact that Windows NT can not come close to FreeBSD/Apache for web serving. I used to be a partner in a small ISP that tried to run NT/IIS... it fell over big time. We put FreeBSD and Apache on the exact same hardware and it scaled up with no problems. Dynamic content seemed to be the real problem area for NT/IIS.
I imagine MS has made some improvements in that area with Windows 2000, but I am not about to bet MY business on it.
I'm not convinced iridium is worth the Fender mexican standard strat... how much is that thing running for on its own?
It used to be that Japan is where all the cheap electric guitar knockoffs were made... but Japan has been making some good stuff for years now. Then Mexico inherited the *knockoff* slot. Even their stuff has been improving. Nevertheless, I'd still stick with something made in the USA... like a PRS with the quilted finish, custom pickups, and a tentop. Woof!:)
Oh yeah, I've a 1992 Mazda MX3 I wouldn't mind seeing launced into orbit (and burn up on reentry). Maybe I could trade that for Iridium (hey, that was almost on topic!).
Looks like an interesting one this year. I wish I was there. The 'Civilian Hacker' lecture is particularly intriguing. Hmmm, I wonder if I could write off the trip to Vegas as a 'business trip'. >:)
So before the DMCA it was legal to use a descrambler to get free cable?
No, but it has always been legal to BUILD a descrambler... just not legal to use it to steal cable. If you are paying for cable but using your own homemade cable box, I don't think you are breaking any laws. We are talking the same thing here. DeCSS is legal to build and use for viewing your own DVDs, but using it (or anything else) to pirate movies is illegal. At least that is how I interpret the law. Lets hope Kaplan sees it the same way.
It's a social issue, at that point, as well as a design issue. Reduce the game advantage/bonus/penalty of reflexes, and you reduce the cheating on reflex actions.
I've come to basically the same conclusion myself. I've decided that my MMRPG will be a strategy game more than an action game, so the 'enhanced reflexes' issue is not so important. Also, it means the network protocol need not be quite so chatty, so a server can support more simultaneous users.
The server code will be open source, so there is the possibility of a person putting up a hacked server and running a world where they can cheat, but that is where the social engineering part of it comes into play. When they are found out, other game server admins can vote to exile that server from the web of worlds. We still need some sort of trusted repository for game character data and maybe a 'central bank', but I think that can be worked out. If anyone thinks this would be fun to work on, please join the GridSlammer mailing list.
This was an interesting article, but most of the *fixes* described were basically ways of obfuscating the code or the game data. This works fine in a closed source game but is near impossible in the open source world. I am working on a game SDK and an eventual *massively multiplayer* RPG... and the cheating issue concerns me.
The best strategy I can see so far is to keep the authoritative simulation on a central server. Game character data would have to be stored and authenticated by some central authority as well. My vision for a MMRPG involves a network of virtual worlds running on many servers, and that makes the who cheating issue even more complicated. Anyone have any thoughts to share on that?
But now that someone posted an article about the security of multiplayer games, hacking suddenly becomes a bad thing. It is "evil" to play around with a game you bought and to try to find out the security holes it has.
I didn't get that message from it. I don't think it is evil to hack on a game and find its weakenss. It IS evil to use that knowledge to screw with an unsuspecting person's game. Well, at least it is rude. I've considered writing a Battlezone bot just for the fun of it, but you can be darn sure I would have let other players know it was a bot they were playing against.
In the end, I decided to write my own game instead (or more correctly, a game toolkit). Sorry about sneaking in that shamelessly self serving plug.:)
I mean, the odds are just insurmountable, and how would it help us if we discovered that there's life somewhere in the universe that's too far for us to go, or for them to come?
First off, SETI is about much more than finding E.T. Analysis of radio telescope data is advancing the field of cosmology in countless ways. The 'little green men' part of is just the sexy PR that attracts users. And who knows, maybe we really will discover intelligent life some day. It may be unlikely, but we won't know if we never look.
And insisting in doing SETI is inhuman. I mean, enough of the people in *our* planet are starving; yet all these self-described geeks would rather find out if there's life in another planet than see if there's still life in Somalia.
Contributing to SETI at home does not bar one from helping society in other ways. By your logic, my roommate should never plug in his electric guitar. Is it really selfish of him to engage in such a frivolous, self gratifying behavior like making music when that energy could help starving people? I mean, what *real* benefit does entertainment or art of any kind have in contrast to the worlds many problems?
Give me a break! I believe in being a good citizen and all, but there needs to SOME room in the world for frivolity and advancement of knowledge for its own sake. Besides, in my experience, many systems that are running SETI@Home and such are boxes that need to stay up 24x7 anyway. Those cycles would go to waste otherwise.
It shows that they don't have any *real* concern for life, in this planet or other-- just playing with their tech toys.
You are painting with a rather broad brush there. That assumption is so unfounded I won't even argue the point. Let me ask you a question instead. Are you using alternative power sources like solar or wind? If so, good for you. If not, why not? After all, you express such concern for the consumption of those scarce resources. My lab uses a combination of solar panels and a small wind generator. On good days I put more power back onto the grid than I use. Rather than attacking SETI, why not put your energy (no pun intended) into promoting that sort of activity.
'nuff said.
Thad
P.S. Good trolling... bonus points for not being too 'over the top'.:)
One day I was watching Highlander and was interrupted by a telemarketer trying to sell me life insurance. I promptly told him I that, being immortal, I had no need to for life insurance. I then tried to sell him the secret of immortality. After a few minutes, he became very flustered and hung up. I laughed for about an hour.
Most recently, MCI called trying to sell me long distance. I acted amazed at hearing another human voice, and revealed that I had been 'hiding in my Y2K bunker for the last 7 months!' My roommate even got in on it and began shouting in the background about 'cracking open the airlock'. It was a riot!
Other ideas I have tried:
1. If they are trying to sell you a newspaper or magazine, insist that you are psychic and do not need their product, then become disgusted by what they are thinking at that moment.
2. Act like you are in the midst of hostage negotiations. Play the cop side of the conversation. "So if I agree to subscribe to that magazine, will you release some of the hostages?"
3. In an agitated and paranoid voice, ask them how they got the number. Insist that they are lying and are really 'part of the conspiracy' or 'one of them'. There are endless possibilities with this one.
There are also some really great things you can do with a prepared tape of sound effects.
Looks like I will be manually adding yesmail to my spammers blocking file. Hopefully a good precedent will be set by this case, and the RBL will not be gutted.
Find a solution that will not result in hundreds of thousands of people being laid off. Find a way that will not result in the economies of several countries being tossed down the toilet which will further result in war, unrest and more people suffering not to mention economic problems for the rest of the world.
But of course any alternative would take time to phase in. Loss of profits and job cutbacks in the oil industry would be gradual. The people leaving the oil industry could find jobs in the new markets created by the oil alternatives. The oil companies would have plenty of time to diversify into new markets. 'Protecting Jobs' is never a good argument for holding back a better technology.
The article seems critical of the idea of volunteer provided 'open art'... but my experience is that there are many talented musicians and artists who are willing to get involved, if you just approach them about it. At least that is what I am finding with my own video game SDK project www.gridslammer.org and with my independent film project. Here is what I had to say in the Linux Today forum about this article:
From the article: It's difficult to imagine how Open Source developers could match the speed, quality and quantity that the commercial gaming industry gives us each year. It would be like trying to film Star Wars with your friends on weekends.
Difficult, but not impossible. If an open source game project were to collect a large enough following of programmers and artists, it could 'pull a linux' on the game industry. It will take time to build that sort of following, but I am beginning to see it happen with several projects.
As for 'open art', I can see one big reason that a musician or graphic artist might donate their efforts to an open game project: exposure. Art is a competitive field. Getting your name out there by showcasing your art on a popular game could really advance one's career. The same could be said about the 'weekend Star Wars' comment. We are currently undergoing a renaissance in independent film making. I've seen some incredibly high quality films churned out by teams of talented volunteers. The lower cost of newer digital video technologies even allows for some amazingly good special effects. If the game industry falls into the pattern of Hollywood and begins churning out the same old big budget crap, look forward to the independent, volunteer game developers to pick up the flag.
Lets face it, video games are a type of art, and art is something that comes from individuals (sometimes working with other individuals), not faceless corporations. I see no reason why a properly motivated team of volunteer artists and programmers cannot produce a 'professional' level game. Time will tell I guess.
Slashdot Mirror
Rich O'Hanley
Christian Kirkpatrick
John Wyzalek
David J. Packer, Publisher
Cindy Carelli
Gerald Papke
Nora Konopka
Bob Stern, Publisher
Sunil Nair
Kirsty Stroud
Bob Stern
Barbara Norwitz
Becky McEldowney
Carol Hollander
John Sulzycki
Fequiere Vilsaint
John Lavender,
Bill Feldman
Chris Richardson, Director
Arline Massey,
David Packer,
Drew Gierman, Publisher
CRCweb_feedbaca
Or here are the raw addresses for cut and pasting into your mail program.
rohanley@crcpress.com
ckirkpatrick@crcpress.com
jwyzalek@crcpress.com
dpacker@crcpress.com
rpowers@crcpress.com
gpapke@crcpress.com
nkonopka@crcpress.com
bstern@crcpress.com
snair@crcpress.com
kstroud@crcpress.com
bstern@crcpress.com
bnorwitz@crcpress.com
bmceldowney@crcpress.com
chollander@crcpress.com
jsulzycki@crcpress.com
fvilsaint@crcpress.com
j.lavender@uk.crcpress.com
newsdiv@crcpress.com
crichardson@crcpress.com
amassey@crcpress.com
dpacker@crcpress.com
dgierman@crcpress.com
jlavender@crcpress.com
I have not yet sent my own letter (I will in a few minutes), so please do not blame me if any of these bounce. Enjoy.
Thad
Thad
Thad
I guess it works a little differently for independent consultants vs. wage slaves. I get most of my jobs by reputation and referal. Interviews and resumes play a much diminished role for the jobs I land. I tend to turn down much more work than I accept and have the luxury of taking only those jobs that interest me.
I charge twice as much as the typical programmer, but then I have a reputation of always bringing in the project under budget and ahead of schedule, so I manage to get away with it. My clients even concede to silly demands like letting me work from home and/or flex my schedule.
Like any service or consulting industry, it is all about networking (the personal kind). You first of all must be good at what you can do, but then you also must be able to communicate that fact and sell yourself. It also helps keep a good rolodex and never loose touch with the people you meet over the years.
I'll say it again: There is ALWAYS a market for real talent.
Thad
Hit me with a clue hammer if I'm wrong here, but isn't that the case in ANY job catagory!? We are dealing with a free market after all. Businesses want to bring the cost of programming labor down... the best way to do that is to increase the labor supply. Duh!
The article also misses the point that programmers are not interchangeable cogs. Some programmers are an order of magnitude better than others and are worth paying a premium for. These are the people who are REALLY in short supply and can charge top dollar. I don't expect that situation to change no matter how many H1B visas they issue or how many new CS grads they churn out. Real talent is always a scarce commodity... and thank goodness for that! It is why I get paid way more than I am worth. ;)
Thad
Thad
Thad
I also searched on the USPO trademark database, and turned up several hundred trademarks with the word trek in them. Only six of them were owned by the trek bicycle corp. Did all of these other trademark holders get a letter? Some of these trademarks have been in effect for quite a few years, so I doubt it?
It looks to me like a tipical corporate scare tactic, but I will nevertheless have to expend money to have my attorney blast back a letter basicly telling them to get bent (but in legal terms).
Sigh. And I even own a Trek mountain bike. Oh the irony.
Thad
But very soon I will instead live in a laboratory. I am renovating an industrial warehouse into a shared living space. It contains double high ceilings, loading bays, and numerous power outlets. I am outfitting it with a mechanical and electronics workshop, a video and sound editing studio, and of course it will be wired with ethernet. I am even installing solar and wind generators on the roof. Geek haven to the max!
Thad
I'll be documenting the entire thing on a web page as the project gets farther along. I have all the materials, and the custom software is 75% written. Should I try to create downloadable plans so anyone can reproduce this thing?
Cheers,
Thad
Yes, this would be very cool... assuming MS's marketing and legal departments don't piss in the soup and turn C# into yet another MS proprietary weapon to snare customers into an MS-only world. I can imagine them tying key technology into C# and .NET that is somehow
covered by MS patents or such, making it near
impossible for a truly open implementation to
be created. They will of course wait until
C# has caught on, then break compatibility at
some point in the future. At least that is
my fear.
The designers of C# seem to have done some really interesting things with it, but they are not ultimately free to implement everything in the totally open way that they seem to desire, not unless management allows them to... and we all have seen the track record that MS management has in that respect (cough)Kerberos(cough).
Excuse me for being skeptical, but I've been burned by MS one too many times.
Thad
At least that is the approach I took with GridSlammer, and it has worked out very well.
Thad
Well, I can't speak definitively about Win2000, but I know for a fact that Windows NT can not come close to FreeBSD/Apache for web serving. I used to be a partner in a small ISP that tried to run NT/IIS... it fell over big time. We put FreeBSD and Apache on the exact same hardware and it scaled up with no problems. Dynamic content seemed to be the real problem area for NT/IIS.
I imagine MS has made some improvements in that area with Windows 2000, but I am not about to bet MY business on it.
Thad
It used to be that Japan is where all the cheap electric guitar knockoffs were made... but Japan has been making some good stuff for years now. Then Mexico inherited the *knockoff* slot. Even their stuff has been improving. Nevertheless, I'd still stick with something made in the USA... like a PRS with the quilted finish, custom pickups, and a tentop. Woof! :)
Oh yeah, I've a 1992 Mazda MX3 I wouldn't mind seeing launced into orbit (and burn up on reentry). Maybe I could trade that for Iridium (hey, that was almost on topic!).
Thad
Thad
No, but it has always been legal to BUILD a descrambler... just not legal to use it to steal cable. If you are paying for cable but using your own homemade cable box, I don't think you are breaking any laws. We are talking the same thing here. DeCSS is legal to build and use for viewing your own DVDs, but using it (or anything else) to pirate movies is illegal. At least that is how I interpret the law. Lets hope Kaplan sees it the same way.
Thad
I've come to basically the same conclusion myself. I've decided that my MMRPG will be a strategy game more than an action game, so the 'enhanced reflexes' issue is not so important. Also, it means the network protocol need not be quite so chatty, so a server can support more simultaneous users.
The server code will be open source, so there is the possibility of a person putting up a hacked server and running a world where they can cheat, but that is where the social engineering part of it comes into play. When they are found out, other game server admins can vote to exile that server from the web of worlds. We still need some sort of trusted repository for game character data and maybe a 'central bank', but I think that can be worked out. If anyone thinks this would be fun to work on, please join the GridSlammer mailing list.
Thad
The best strategy I can see so far is to keep the authoritative simulation on a central server. Game character data would have to be stored and authenticated by some central authority as well. My vision for a MMRPG involves a network of virtual worlds running on many servers, and that makes the who cheating issue even more complicated. Anyone have any thoughts to share on that?
BTW, you can check out my SDK at www.gridslammer.org.
Later,
Thad
I didn't get that message from it. I don't think it is evil to hack on a game and find its weakenss. It IS evil to use that knowledge to screw with an unsuspecting person's game. Well, at least it is rude. I've considered writing a Battlezone bot just for the fun of it, but you can be darn sure I would have let other players know it was a bot they were playing against.
In the end, I decided to write my own game instead (or more correctly, a game toolkit). Sorry about sneaking in that shamelessly self serving plug. :)
Cheers,
Thad
I mean, the odds are just insurmountable, and how would it help us if we discovered that there's life somewhere in the universe that's too far for us to go, or for them to come?
First off, SETI is about much more than finding E.T. Analysis of radio telescope data is advancing the field of cosmology in countless ways. The 'little green men' part of is just the sexy PR that attracts users. And who knows, maybe we really will discover intelligent life some day. It may be unlikely, but we won't know if we never look.
And insisting in doing SETI is inhuman. I mean, enough of the people in *our* planet are starving; yet all these self-described geeks would rather find out if there's life in another planet than see if there's still life in Somalia.
Contributing to SETI at home does not bar one from helping society in other ways. By your logic, my roommate should never plug in his electric guitar. Is it really selfish of him to engage in such a frivolous, self gratifying behavior like making music when that energy could help starving people? I mean, what *real* benefit does entertainment or art of any kind have in contrast to the worlds many problems?
Give me a break! I believe in being a good citizen and all, but there needs to SOME room in the world for frivolity and advancement of knowledge for its own sake. Besides, in my experience, many systems that are running SETI@Home and such are boxes that need to stay up 24x7 anyway. Those cycles would go to waste otherwise.
It shows that they don't have any *real* concern for life, in this planet or other-- just playing with their tech toys.
You are painting with a rather broad brush there. That assumption is so unfounded I won't even argue the point. Let me ask you a question instead. Are you using alternative power sources like solar or wind? If so, good for you. If not, why not? After all, you express such concern for the consumption of those scarce resources. My lab uses a combination of solar panels and a small wind generator. On good days I put more power back onto the grid than I use. Rather than attacking SETI, why not put your energy (no pun intended) into promoting that sort of activity.
'nuff said.
Thad
P.S. Good trolling... bonus points for not being too 'over the top'. :)
Most recently, MCI called trying to sell me long distance. I acted amazed at hearing another human voice, and revealed that I had been 'hiding in my Y2K bunker for the last 7 months!' My roommate even got in on it and began shouting in the background about 'cracking open the airlock'. It was a riot!
Other ideas I have tried:
1. If they are trying to sell you a newspaper or magazine, insist that you are psychic and do not need their product, then become disgusted by what they are thinking at that moment.
2. Act like you are in the midst of hostage negotiations. Play the cop side of the conversation. "So if I agree to subscribe to that magazine, will you release some of the hostages?"
3. In an agitated and paranoid voice, ask them how they got the number. Insist that they are lying and are really 'part of the conspiracy' or 'one of them'. There are endless possibilities with this one.
There are also some really great things you can do with a prepared tape of sound effects.
Have fun!
Thad
:)
Thad
Thad
But of course any alternative would take time to phase in. Loss of profits and job cutbacks in the oil industry would be gradual. The people leaving the oil industry could find jobs in the new markets created by the oil alternatives. The oil companies would have plenty of time to diversify into new markets. 'Protecting Jobs' is never a good argument for holding back a better technology.
Thad
From the article:
It's difficult to imagine how Open Source developers could match the speed, quality and quantity that the commercial gaming industry gives us each year. It would be like trying to film Star Wars with your friends on weekends.
Difficult, but not impossible. If an open source game project were to collect a large enough following of programmers and artists, it could 'pull a linux' on the game industry. It will take time to build that sort of following, but I am beginning to see it happen with several projects.
As for 'open art', I can see one big reason that a musician or graphic artist might donate their efforts to an open game project: exposure. Art is a competitive field. Getting your name out there by showcasing your art on a popular game could really advance one's career. The same could be said about the 'weekend Star Wars' comment. We are currently undergoing a renaissance in independent film making. I've seen some incredibly high quality films churned out by teams of talented volunteers. The lower cost of newer digital video technologies even allows for some amazingly good special effects. If the game industry falls into the pattern of Hollywood and begins churning out the same old big budget crap, look forward to the independent, volunteer game developers to pick up the flag.
Lets face it, video games are a type of art, and art is something that comes from individuals (sometimes working with other individuals), not faceless corporations. I see no reason why a properly motivated team of volunteer artists and programmers cannot produce a 'professional' level game. Time will tell I guess.
Thad