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GNU is Not Unix Programming Entertainment Games Technology

Is Open Source An Advantage For Game Developers? 493

Posted by timothy from the if-they-want-to-be-in-debian-it-is dept.
chas7926 writes "OSNews.com is running an article that claims that the open source development model is not a very effective way to develop high quality games. Even the exceptions are not much of a threat to major label products. Does open source development only make sense for products like web servers and operating systems?"
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Is Open Source An Advantage For Game Developers? More

Is Open Source An Advantage For Game Developers?

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  • Why is Frozen Bubble used as an example? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by tgd ( 2822 ) on Wednesday September 01, 2004 @08:04AM (#10127198)
    I mean its a pretty slick polished game, but its a direct knock off of a game thats been around for ages.

    No creativity in game design, just in artwork.

    I've seen a lot of slick opensource games (Super Tux is really coming along, too), but they're all derivatives or direct clones of existing games.

    Where is the real creativity?

    • Re:Why is Frozen Bubble used as an example? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by gowen ( 141411 ) <gwowen@gmail.com> on Wednesday September 01, 2004 @08:11AM (#10127254) Homepage Journal
      Where is the real creativity?
      Good question. I think the problem is that an open source project has to be self starting to the point where it'll gain a critical mass of developers.

      For an original game, that means you'll need a good idea (pretty rare in itself), a rudimentary (or better) engine -- that you'll have to code yourself, plus sufficiently well designed graphics and sound to get people interested.

      That basically requires four separate skill sets, whereas writing a web server etc, needs at most two of those, and probably only one. And if you can't get your critical mass of developers, you're just another semi-abandoned sourceforge page.

      • Re:Why is Frozen Bubble used as an example? (Score:5, Interesting)

        by j-pimp ( 177072 ) <zippy1981.gmail@com> on Wednesday September 01, 2004 @08:27AM (#10127420) Homepage Journal
        For an original game, that means you'll need a good idea (pretty rare in itself), a rudimentary (or better) engine -- that you'll have to code yourself, plus sufficiently well designed graphics and sound to get people interested.

        Well Carmack has release the engines for Doom, Quake, and Quake II. Granted their not state fo the art, but I still enjoy a good game of Doom deathmatch. Also look at all the features that are supported by doom these days. OpenGL, mouse look, jumping (from a standstill), and more. Sure most of the creative doom and quake mods are simply counterstrike clones, but they are perfectly good engines that you could make an original game with. The diversity of games cloned with the4 engines prove that.
      • The article assumes that the only objective is to write a complete game, from scratch. The other way to look at the problem is to consider building the tools... Then people can come along and use the tools to build games. Maybe a group can add artwork to the mix, that kind of thing. There seem to be a few projects building engines, and layers. And people have started to build games on top of these.

        I think that game mods, and level builders is the way to look at it. The original company built the engin
      • open-source is completely viable for the game industry - in fact if the industry is to survive in the future beyond one or two massive 'mega-publishers' (like EA owning criterion & renderware etc), the rest of the industry is going to HAVE to shift to open-source to defend themselves against these massive companies.

        much like how linux gained it's foot hold in the webserver & OS market. the game industry is just a bit further behind the curve.

        how much longer will 'indies' (ie small non-publisher-affiliated dev houses like id) be able to compete against the mega dev studios like rockstar or EA? it's coming to the point where the return on investment is becoming too high, most companies simply can't even enter the market because of the cost of entry.

        if you can suddenly shave off $250,000 + off of your startup costs (by using an open-source engine as opposed to licensing the tech), or more (as opposed to developing the tech from the ground up, which could cost millions), why wouldn't developers want to go the open-source route?

        the main issue at this point is publisher resistance. publishers are the 'old school' business-mindset like the RIAA and the MPAA - they refuse to acknowledge that open-source exists and that it might be useful to their businesses.

        in the game industry, it's all about the IP - if you own the IP then you can make money, whereas publishers look at open-source and are just scared away because of the simple words 'open source'. it implies to them that they don't control things...

        It all comes down to the licenses and misconceptions about the requirements of those licenses.

        GPL is the death of any game-related project for example. It is the kiss of death to a game library or toolset.

        publishers have to know that they can close the source of the product, even for a short period around the release date (that crucial 3-5 months after release) so that they can make their money back...then once the game is out and 'old news' then they are more open to releasing code into the open-source field again.

        Open source is slowly creeping into the industry, more from the toolset and libraries side of things, slowly sneaking in from the sidelines. Recent games like chrome used open-source physics engines (ODE), Id releases their old tech as open-source, but this doesn't really count because no one has ever used a gpl'd license and actually released a product with it afterwards...see my above comment about the gpl regarding that...

        i personally feel that it's only a matter of time. we were at E3 last year and had really good responses from everyone we spoke with and have been making some great inroads with universities and other schools looking to work game developing into their courseware.

        so, yes there ARE projects out there that are 'self-starting' and have been around for several years...it's just a matter of time until the rest of the industry notices and starts paying attention.

        1. they laugh at you
        2. they ignore you
        3. they fight you
        4. you win.

        so far we're on step 2 - we've been laughed at, we are currently being ignored, next phase is the most interesting, when the 'old-school' mindset tries to drag it's heels avoiding the inevitable.

        • Re:Why is Frozen Bubble used as an example? (Score:5, Insightful)

          by MrAndrews ( 456547 ) * <mcm&1889,ca> on Wednesday September 01, 2004 @10:02AM (#10128479) Homepage
          But I think the point of this is that it's not the tools that are the problem: there are great open-source engines out there that will improve slowly over time as with any lively project... it's the creation of a game itself (on a case-by-case basis) that isn't viable in a traditional open source environment. Rather than slowly chipping away at a project over a few months or years, you need to slog away intensely - and very likely in secret - so that your end result is worth playing.

          I don't know that it's necessarily true, though. I'm starting to think that a "walled garden" approach might be best... keep particpation limited somewhat, and keep the product hidden from the public until it's done, and then release the source. Is there anything inherent in open source methodology that would make this impossible, or is it just that the current perception of open source doesn't involve walled gardens?

        • Re:Why is Frozen Bubble used as an example? (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Idarubicin ( 579475 ) on Wednesday September 01, 2004 @12:09PM (#10130144) Journal
          1. they laugh at you
          2. they ignore you
          3. they fight you
          4. you win.

          Although I don't mean to pick on the parent poster specifically, I see this line of reasoning (paraphrasing a popular quotation) quite often applied to open source software.

          We would all do to remember that being laughed at or ignored is not necessarily an indicator of guaranteed future success. Sometimes people ignore products that are genuinely hopeless, too. Perhaps there are some types of software development that genuinely don't lend themselves to a full-on open source apporach.

        • "if you can suddenly shave off $250,000 + off of your startup costs (by using an open-source engine as opposed to licensing the tech), or more (as opposed to developing the tech from the ground up, which could cost millions), why wouldn't developers want to go the open-source route?"

          Please show me where you can obtain a commercial quality console or PC game engine and tools for free.

          "the main issue at this point is publisher resistance. publishers are the 'old school' business-mindset like the RIAA and th

    • Re:Why is Frozen Bubble used as an example? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Cylix ( 55374 ) * on Wednesday September 01, 2004 @08:19AM (#10127345) Homepage Journal
      Woah there thunder....

      It's not like the gaming industry has been terribly innovative in itself either.

      In a very real sense, they are all incredible knock offs of each others products with a wee bit of modification.

      Hell, the top games in the industry are merely there to act as a advertisement to sale their wonderful new engine.

      The whole arguement is senseless anyway. There is no true difference between an open source and a closed source creation of a game. Depending on the project size, you may need a few people or a team of individuals to handle the task.

      The difference in the end being, one project may or may not have been made by professionals and the other project was indeed created by professionals. The added bonus is the open source project has freely available code.

      Some of the greatest games we have seen to date were not made by professionals. Remember, Counter-Strike is just a modification and was made by some people via the free Half-Life SDK.

      Again, it's a senseless arguement, the developement cycle can be nearly the same with an open source project. They imply there are strict management stereotypes which are followed when a project is not created outside of the work place.

      • Re:Why is Frozen Bubble used as an example? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Junks Jerzey ( 54586 ) on Wednesday September 01, 2004 @08:41AM (#10127531)
        It's not like the gaming industry has been terribly innovative in itself either

        The difference is that companies in the game industry don't attempt to directly clone existing games. They get very heavily inspired by existing titles and copy lots of features from them, even using a popular game as a prototype, but they don't simply attempt to write an exact version of a game right down to the name. You see this all the time in hobbyist game development.
        • That's because any hobbiest clever enough to come up with a great, original idea is also clever enough to try and get paid for it.

          If you write something completely commercially unviable, like a direct clone of a game that's been out for thirty years, you almost have to give it away.

          Back in my emulation days, crummy emulators were almost always free, while the really great ones (Magic Engine, for example) were shareware. When the crummy ones got to the same level of greatness, many of them would turn commercial, too. A community is a great thing if you don't have the knowledge or time individually to create a polished product...but if you create something new and fantastic and desirable on your own, you may as well ask for money. It's the eternal trade off: do you accept the burden of responsibility with a little cash, or do you give up reimbursement in exchange for the technical assistance of the community?

          There's also the issue that many creative people are more interested in creating then dealing with the technical hassles often associated with OSS. I've noticed that the average shareware game for the Mac is prettier and more innovative (in terms of interface, usually) than the average Windows game. And I've never seen a Linux-only game I was interested in playing (Angband and Nettrek excepted, but only due to nostalgia)...the ones I've played were visually flat and uninspired.

          Of course, the development of cross-platform game environments could change all that. If you can develop a game that looks good on a mac but will run on Linux/Windows/etc, why the hell not do so?
      • Wait there a second!

        There is a HUGE difference between "copying ideas from another game" (which is what most people do) and trying to copy a game right down to the fine gameplay details (frozen bubble)

      • Cost. (Score:3, Insightful)

        by SatanicPuppy ( 611928 )
        Especially with shooters and strategy games, the game engine is the most important, and most expensive, piece of development. Relicsencing that engine to other companies is an important source of revenue. Obviously it would be incredible if they open sourced it as well...

        Still, game companies end up in the toilet so often, I can't think they could easily toss the unique part of their work into the public domain and not suffer for it financially.

        I think this would be a good place for 5 year software patent

        • Re:Cost. (Score:5, Insightful)

          by KrackHouse ( 628313 ) on Wednesday September 01, 2004 @10:49AM (#10129147) Homepage
          I'm working on a driving simulator. We've using OGRE as our 3D engine, SDL for input, ODE for physics and we're making a lot of progress. I think a lot of people are reluctant to use 3rd party libs because they want all of the glory if it is successful. We're also making it cross platform because while a lot of people hate MS it's no reason to deny a game to the masses. Regarding innovation. No driving games have been released like MS Flight simulator because there are no flying championships and new pilots every year. Developers just rename the drivers, polish the graphics and re release the same product for $40 every year. We're trying to create a driveable encyclopedia of cars and racing history. This will never be commmercial because it would be the last driving simulator ever made and that's not good for business. I think once more people get their PCs plugged into their HDTVs open source gaming will explode. Imagine getting all of the roster updates for your favorite sport automatically instead of having to hack the system or buy next years version. I think a lot of the future Open Source games will incorporate bit torrent clients for content sharing, updates, etc.

          • Re:Cost. (Score:4, Insightful)

            by AHumbleOpinion ( 546848 ) on Wednesday September 01, 2004 @01:04PM (#10130704) Homepage
            I think a lot of people are reluctant to use 3rd party libs because they want all of the glory if it is successful

            No it is a genuine risk for your project to be dependent on a 3rd party library. If it is an established and well regarded library than it is a very low risk. If the library is also under development then it is a high risk.

            • Re:Cost. (Score:3, Interesting)

              by KrackHouse ( 628313 )
              Good point, we did excessive planning before we wrote any code. In fact we had a raging debate. The developer of OGRE, our graphics engine even pitched in his thoughts about the issue on our forum.

              Maybe planning is the problem with most open source games. We went into this project knowing it would be a painful, difficult process and accepted that before hand. It's not all fun and games but it is a heck of a lot of fun.

      • Re:Why is Frozen Bubble used as an example? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by daVinci1980 ( 73174 ) on Wednesday September 01, 2004 @09:20AM (#10127923) Homepage
        It's not like the gaming industry has been terribly innovative in itself either.


        Yes, I can see where you're coming from. There definitely haven't been any innovative games created by professionals. Definitely not Commander Keen, The Sims, Doom, Quake, Battlefield 1942, Deus Ex, GTA3, PopCap games, Everquest... Nope, none at all.

        There is no true difference between an open source and a closed source creation of a game.


        Did you read the article? He points out some very important differences. Let me add another: code control. I don't want people whom I don't know poking around in code that they don't necessarily understand. I don't want people who don't understand data structures trying to add 'features' to my code. Games push the limits of your CPU and GPU all the time. You don't want to do that because of inefficiencies in the code. You want to do that because you're adding effects that people have never seen before. Or you want to make your units more intelligent then other players.

        What strikes me as funny about your argument is that most of the innovation that has gone into games in the last 10 years is stuff that players generally don't even notice. Better pathfinding. Increased polygons count through more efficient storage. More textures used better. Better AI. Random map generation.

        But players don't notice these things.

        They just notice how this unit is similar to this other unit in this other game.

        • Re:Why is Frozen Bubble used as an example? (Score:4, Insightful)

          by An Onerous Coward ( 222037 ) on Wednesday September 01, 2004 @12:23PM (#10130286) Homepage
          Yeah, open source projects have long been hampered by the fact that project leaders cannot control who puts what into their code. For example, one time in 1997 after a vicious flame war between Linus Torvalds and Richard Stallman over the relative merits of the Linux kernel versus Hurd, Stallman went in and rewrote the TCP stack so that it dropped all packets from kernel.org. It took Linus months to figure out what was going on. They all had a good laugh about it.

          Dude. If you don't want people messing with your project, don't give them CVS commit access, and ignore unsolicited patches. Result? Complete control over your code.

    • See, when _I_ pointed this out in a previous article, _I_ was immediately modded through the floor by the 'Open Source IS CREATIVE IT JUST IS BAD MAN GO AWAY' crowd, so much so that I required several week's rest on a quiet Greek island before I could resume normal activity.

      Whereas _you_, by way of contrast, are at +4. ;_; _so_ unfair.

    • You'd think they would have instead used one of the all-time classic [nethack.org] computer games instead. Yes, it has drawn elements from prior games, but the depth, creativity, and endless playability of Nethack makes it stand out whether considering open or closed-source games...
    • I would have cited Wesnoth [wesnoth.org], GLTron [gltron.org] and . [icculus.org]

      What's interesting about that list is not only that they're all great open source games, but also that they're cross-platform!

      Life is good for open source gaming.
    • This article is just silly. The best game ever written, nethack, is open source. It is descended from rogue, but that like saying Deus Ex is just a ripoff of wolf3d. The sheer sophistication of the gameplay dwarfs any game I've ever played. Each game is its own epic with novel challenges that can be solved in unique ways. It really allows for creative thinking, which you never see in games.
    • I mean its a pretty slick polished game, but its a direct knock off of a game thats been around for ages. No creativity in game design, just in artwork.

      I apologize if this sounds like a dig but please bear with me. Aren't knock-off's what most open source projects are all about. Sometimes it's a literal knock-off, Linux/BSD being knock-off's of proprietary Unix environments. Literal knock-off as in a Unix user knows how to use the system, Unix apps generally compile and run, not literal as in source cod

  • FOSS developers don't tend to be gamers (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 01, 2004 @08:05AM (#10127203)
    Anybody ever consider that? FOSS is about scratching an itch, the drive to solve a problem. Gaming is about recreation. After an hour of Vice City you're ready to work again. I think it's for the same reason we don't see that many open-source films or CD's.

    • Re:FOSS developers don't tend to be gamers (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Nos. ( 179609 ) <andrew.thekerrs@ca> on Wednesday September 01, 2004 @08:25AM (#10127403) Homepage
      But at the same time, there's the mod community that does produce open source work for a lot of games. I guess this could be called scratching an itch as well, since they see something lacking in a game.

    • Re:FOSS developers don't tend to be gamers (Score:5, Insightful)

      by MankyD ( 567984 ) on Wednesday September 01, 2004 @08:28AM (#10127433) Homepage
      Perhaps true, but that's not the point of the article. The author is trying to point out that, even with a dedicated open-source development effort, the development model or open-source can't drive an 4 year, 80 hour work week for a game that will only have a year or two of play time.

      This is certainly no knock against open-source development, just a statement of the current state of things.

    • Or good open source code favors developers (Score:5, Insightful)

      by jaaron ( 551839 ) on Wednesday September 01, 2004 @08:40AM (#10127527) Homepage
      In answer to the main question, "Does open source development only make sense for products like web servers and operating systems?" the answer is, "No, not only, but definitely mostly." In other words, open source makes the most sense for infrastructure like projects -- servers, operating systems, programming languages and frameworks. It makes the least sense for end user projects like games, educational software, and office suites.

      You hinted at the heart of the issue: Who write open source software? Well, developers of course! And for whom is having the source open and free most advantageous? Developers, of course! My non-programmer friends and family don't really care about source code, but I do. And despite all the open source software I use, the only times I've ever really used to source was when I was programming. That is, I was using the infrastructure code such as a Java library from Apache Jakarta or tweaking some PHP or Python code for a wiki I wanted.

      The most successful open source and free software projects are those that are directly used by developers -- where developers are the end user. This means things like web servers, languages, operating systems, libraries, etc.

      Bruce Perens once even said it here on Slashdot (can't find the link at the moment) but open source development tends to favor software which can be developed incrementally. This isn't especially true of games. Games moreso than any other software product are a media production like a movie or book. It just doesn't fit with the open source development model as well. That doesn't mean that it can't work, but that the best and most successful open source tools will be those that are closest to the source of free software -- developers.

    • no OSS films? (Score:3, Informative)

      by DrSkwid ( 118965 )

      okay, it's a bit tricky to have all your pre-edit artwork lying around for someone to edit into their own film but independent film-making is *very* alive and well.

      Here's just one festival [bangshortf...stival.com]

      You can easily find plenty more, even in your local area there's probably a film making scene.

  • Chicken and Egg (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Analogy Man ( 601298 ) on Wednesday September 01, 2004 @08:06AM (#10127216)
    If enough of the big names went the open source route they would benefit from best in class architecture components. The key though will remain in:

    Generating Eye Candy

    Good game play

    Considering all the enthusiastic LAN Party / Overclocker / Case Modding folks out there I would think Linux Distro's would appeal to them. The challenge is having the return on investment for the very labor intensive bits.

    • Re:Chicken and Egg (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Tim C ( 15259 ) on Wednesday September 01, 2004 @08:27AM (#10127421)
      If enough of the big names went the open source route they would benefit from best in class architecture components.

      You mean like the Doom 3 and Unreal engines? They're not going to be open source until their respective developers judge that they have earnt all they can from them in licensing fees. Those earnings, incidentally, are already factored into the general budget for a big name game. I'd be surprised if long development time games like Half Life 2 and Doom 3 actually made much of a profit just on the retail game sales; I'd imagine that a fair chunk of it comes from licensing the engine.

      The trouble with open sourcing the engines is that you can no longer charge those licensing fees, yet you still have to expend the time and money to develop the engine in the first place.

      • Re:Chicken and Egg (Score:3, Interesting)

        by hrm ( 26016 )
        The trouble with open sourcing the engines is that you can no longer charge those licensing fees, yet you still have to expend the time and money to develop the engine in the first place.

        I disagree with that. It is quite possible (and dealt with in a gazillion different OS licenses) to distribute source for free, yet require license payments if said source, or a derivative thereof, is used in a commercial offering.

        In fact, I would argue that due to the extremly high visibility of game engine software (a

      • The trouble with open sourcing the engines is that you can no longer charge those licensing fees, yet you still have to expend the time and money to develop the engine in the first place.

        I think this statement pretty much proves the open source development model. ;)

        You see, the reason the situation is as you've stated is because each game design company is having to make a new engine from scratch. Because the technological advancement involved in making a game provides a more marketable edge on the game

  • I once had an idea for an MMPORG, where the code was completely open-- obviously, some people would write hacks, cheats, and other tools to stay ahead. Others would write patches to disable the patches from the first group. Still others would buy and sell all these add-ons to the game...

    Then I realized it had already been invented in 1969 by some CompSci geeks based on some theoretical work at the RAND corporation...

  • Open-source art (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 01, 2004 @08:08AM (#10127225)
    The article makes a good point that good art must be original and can not be generated by modifying older art.

    To make open-doom you'd also need open-source zombie models, open-source hell-growth textures and open-source moaning sounds.
    • It's just less incremental. All sample-based music builds on parts that already existed and makes a new work. Original != not generated by modifying older art. It's not much different to talking about influences, just more direct.

    • Re:Open-source art (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Analogy Man ( 601298 )
      Never underestimate the energies and interests of a devoted group of fans of a game! This is not exactly Doom 3 level material, but a budy of mine on the other side of the pond has started an open source graphics forum [fsnet.co.uk] for a shareware strategy game [vgaplanets.com]

      With no compensation beside the enjoyment of the graphics and the games folks will do quite a bit.

  • Freeciv is a good example, isn't it? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by nayigeta ( 792068 ) on Wednesday September 01, 2004 @08:08AM (#10127226) Homepage Journal
    I think Freeciv [freeciv.org] is a very good counter example.

    However, I do agree that open source model does not encourage games that are graphic intensive that involves a lot of artwork.

    • FreeOrion [freeorion.org] is another one. I was disappointed when they decided to put the starlanes in that everyone hated in Master of Orion 3.


    • > However, I do agree that open source model does not encourage games that are graphic intensive that involves a lot of artwork.

      Which could be a potential plus, since game companies, like Hollywood, have been focusing too much on effects and too little on substance.

    • Re:Freeciv is a good example, isn't it? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by RAMMS+EIN ( 578166 ) on Wednesday September 01, 2004 @08:28AM (#10127425) Homepage Journal
      Freeciv would be a better example if one could negotiate with the AI. This has been a feature request for years, and last I checked it was still not implemented.

      Besides, Freeciv is a very obvious and uncreative copy of the original Civilization. This is not bad, but it's not showing the open source model works well for games. At best, the open source model works well for cloning - this is why we have Freeciv, Stratagus, desktop environments that mimick Windoze, and MS Word and Office clones. Heck, even GNU/Linux is a UNIX imitation.

      There is also original development, but it tends to produce only very simple or even proof of concept things - which is not even bad in a world where bloatware is the standard.
    • However, I do agree that open source model does not encourage games that are graphic intensive that involves a lot of artwork.

      But hey, we do have six hundred and forty-seven variants of Angband, two hundred and thirty-eight variants of NetHack, and nine thousand three hundred and twelve Tetrises.

      And did anyone ever catch that wumpus?

    • RTFA. Freeciv is mentionned in the article.
    • This is one of the reasons I have been hoping for an embracing of GPL and/or similar licenses for purposes other than code. GPL'd art, music and the like. I know there have been steps in this direction but I'd like to see a full on trek down this path. :)

  • Different Exceptions (Score:5, Informative)

    by Snowgen ( 586732 ) on Wednesday September 01, 2004 @08:08AM (#10127228) Homepage

    Frozen Bubble? nah...

    My Exceptions would be BZFlag [bzflag.org], Battle for Wesnoth [wesnoth.org], and FreeCiv [freeciv.org].

  • It might not be open source... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by vasqzr ( 619165 ) <{ten.epacsten} {ta} {rzqsav}> on Wednesday September 01, 2004 @08:08AM (#10127229)

    When companies like ID release the 'game source' (not the actual engine code, but the code to the game) it helps mod makers, and ultimately gets more people to play the game, especially in it's modified form.

    Eventually they released the source to games like Wolf3D, Doom, and Quake but that doesn't really hurt them. Heck, the Quake source code was stolen from Crack.Com where Dave Taylor was doing a port, and that didn't seem to affect them much at all.

    • Open source still works on the coding front. How about Crystal Space [sourceforge.net] which supports everything from portals and volumetric fog to XML levels and ODE-based physics?

      Level design can be done the same way. Something like CUBE [fov120.com]'s multiplayer, online level editor would allow anyone to drop by and improve the levels.

      But unlike a general purpose application with obvious goals, games are carried by the vision of one or two people usually - and the essence of 'collaboration' is marred by this leadership. Usually e

  • Well yeah (Score:5, Insightful)

    by RsG ( 809189 ) on Wednesday September 01, 2004 @08:08AM (#10127234)
    Open Source coding versus proffesional coding is kinda like distributed computing versus a supercomputer. What people fail to recognize when promoting Linux is that it's chief competetor is a corporate giant that has stagnated. In game develpoment, where there is strong competition, the proffesionals are actually making the most of their budgets. It's no surprise that the Open Source alternative have trouble competing; they're up against the best rather than up against a corporate monoculture.

    Note that this isn't an attack on Open Source; there are many things it does well. But like distributed computing it takes advantage of a squandered resource that's already there (spare cycles = free developers). Against an effecient supercomputer (dedicated developers) it can't compete. Whereas agaisnt a _broken_ supercomputer (Microsoft), it can.

    Just my 0.02$

    • Re:Well yeah (Score:5, Insightful)

      by MyDixieWrecked ( 548719 ) on Wednesday September 01, 2004 @08:18AM (#10127326) Homepage Journal
      That's why shareware games generally do a lot better. Writing a game take a LOT of work, especially when it comes down to polishing it and making it original. If you're gonna develop a game that's going to compete against the big boys, you've gotta be very quick so as to keep up with technology.

      If it's gonna take you 3 years to put out just a beta of your game, you're gonna fall behind.

      Although, opensource mods for Q3A or Unreal are generally a lot better because it requires a HELL of a lot less work. the game's engine is already there, and if you just use the 3d engine to make a totalconversion, you're gonna have a much better product in a much shorter period of time than coding the thing from scratch.

      i'm surprised that there's not more opensource initiatives dealing with mods. Especially since you can now you can pick up Q3A for 10$ in bargain bins.
  • Check out BZflag [sourceforge.net]. I play it myself and have found very few glitches or anything. And it's cross-platform, so I have no problem finding others to frag.

    Of course, there is no single player mode and it has nowhere near the eyecandy of closed-source shooters, but it is a notable exception.
  • According to the article, the reason is the transient nature of modern games. Once you've finished it, it is not worth playing again. That is, IMHO, the main reason why the gaming industry is struggling; all they do is create ten million dollar movies for one-time entertainment. What we really need is more simulation games where the process is more important than the content. Take Civilization, for example; it is old, but still very playable. (I have upgraded to CTP these days though) This sort of game neve
    • The game industry isn't struggling. At all. Recently Interplay has gone under, and Acclaim is bankrupt, and Atari looks shaky, but these are by no means general indicators of weakness in the market. Think of it as the "crap games tax."

  • its the media (Score:3, Insightful)

    by i88i ( 720935 ) on Wednesday September 01, 2004 @08:13AM (#10127279)
    Sharing the code is all well and good, and it probably does help in many respects, but to compete with the big games these days, you really need to get a lot of talented artists, modelers and the like Then you need to get a good designer, and a musician or two, mappers, writers etc etc.
    good games dont start and finish with the code.

  • quite true ! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by phreakv6 ( 760152 ) <`moc.liamg' `ta' `6vkaerhp'> on Wednesday September 01, 2004 @08:14AM (#10127285) Homepage
    very true... the main reason i think is coz a game is not very usable until it reaches the final stage hence there are less hackers interested in working on it.. but if its a product like an instant messenger.. we have a basic product with basic features on top of which hackers would implement features like archiving,adding a new protocol,new buddy icons etc. thereby making a better product... its only the hacker-attractive products that become very successful open-source projects.Check out the top 10 in sourceforge and you will know what i mean.

  • You can't open source everything... (Score:3, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 01, 2004 @08:14AM (#10127288)
    The main reason is because developing a game seldom means rolling your own everything. Dozens of proprietary tools are used in the development process and simply can't be open sourced. Havok for example had parts of their source leaked when portions of the HL2 source was stolen. This was a bad thing for valve, and a bad thing for Havok. But that's just one example.

  • Contents-driven development (Score:4, Interesting)

    by News for nerds ( 448130 ) on Wednesday September 01, 2004 @08:14AM (#10127289) Homepage
    Today, rather than in hardcoded programming source code, heart of games gets more and more outsourced to script, texture, polygon model, FMV, and so on done by artists - which can't be Open Source in its nature. You may ask Creative Commons License for such artworks, but I don't think it can be generarized and viable for games, let alone GPL among Open Source licenses.
    • As a game programmer, I'm not too keen on the GPL. I find it a little too confining. Sure, I could use some code I got from an example somewhere, but it's GPL, and if I use that as a template, my work becomes a derivative work, so it's all in the GPL. I understand and respect the GPL, but I also don't necessarily want all of my code to be a part of it, so I often am discouraged from using and GLP'd code to learn from because I don't want to have to distribute my code.

      And for those of you who would sco

  • Settlers of Catan (Score:3, Informative)

    by saladyears ( 810006 ) on Wednesday September 01, 2004 @08:16AM (#10127303) Homepage
    Sea3D is an open source version of Settlers of Catan that is 100% free, has ELO ladder rated matches, 3D graphics, 1000+ active users, and really nice artwork. I think certain genres are more suited to open source games. FPS and RTS are not in that list. Board games clones can probably cut it, though.

  • Soo.. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by noselasd ( 594905 ) on Wednesday September 01, 2004 @08:16AM (#10127306)
    People are going to mention a heap of games now.
    Frozen Bubble, Freeciv, neverball, Torcs, Battle for Wesnorth, cube etc.

    Ok, those are nice and fun games. But,save perhaps a few simulators,
    they are rather simple games. Simple but fun.

    Where are OSS games like Knights of The Old Republic, Ratchet and Clank,
    Prince of Persia: Sands of Time. I like such games, never seen anything
    open source remotely like it.
    That's the kind og games we're talking about.

  • collaborate on technology (Score:5, Insightful)

    by _|()|\| ( 159991 ) on Wednesday September 01, 2004 @08:16AM (#10127307)
    The gist of the article is that games are too short lived to benefit from a collaborative development model: by the time you get out of alpha, everyone will be bored with the game. However, the technology underlying Unreal, and other engines, has evolved over the course of several games. Thus, projects like Crystal Space [sourceforge.net], ODE [sourceforge.net], Blender [blender.org], and SDL [libsdl.org] are ideal for advancing a game development platform. To some extent, a library of content could also benefit from collaborative development, but serious projects wouldn't likely use it past the prototyping stage.

    Story-based games, especially, deserve to be presented in a final, polished form. For that reason, I would not expect it to be released early and often. There is also a question of artistic integrity. Game designers, amateur and professional alike, have strong ideas. Can they share authorship with some dude on the Internet?

  • These kind of discussions... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    This is an endless discussion, only time will tell. It is just useless to make such theoretical discussions about what will ever happen or about the potential of this or that system.

    Unfortunately OSNews has a bad reputation in always bringing up such kind of discussions, which always ends in flamewars and trolling. Please let us be smarter than them!
  • OSS games would release much more often than a closed source company - gamers have to keep up with updates.

    And who wants to patch and recompile their favourite game every weekend?

  • two games as counter-point (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 01, 2004 @08:20AM (#10127350)
    Rogue and (it's descendent) Nethack.

    Neither have the fancy graphics, but for amount of hours spent (wasted) and general challenge / gameplay I think they are hard to beat.

    And remember, in 'scoring mode', Nethack does not have any "saved game" so if you die the game is over. It's quite an accomplishment to actually finish the game. How far would you get in Doom 3 if you had to restart from the beginning everytime you died? Note that in Doom 3 (and all modern games) the map is constant; in Nethack levels are generated every time to start a new game.

    (And if you want graphics there are mods on Nethack (and others) that add GUI interface. IMHO a good game is still good even if it's done in ASCII. Graphics should only be necessary to add to it.)
    • I like the Angband tree of nethack.

    • Yeah right. Nethack again.... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by imsabbel ( 611519 ) on Wednesday September 01, 2004 @08:38AM (#10127496)
      The same old shit everytime linux & game are in one sentence: Graphics is bad, modern games are for noobs and idiot, ect....
      Yeah, i played angband and adom a lot, but in the end its nothing else then the simple most stupid "kill, get xp, kill, get xp, get item, kill..." repeated since 1978. No innovation (oh, wow, you can play a TOURIST class. he has a camera. WOW) and no gameplay appeal for anyone who doesnt have his free time to burn (like a typical geek).
  • ...and games are mostly entertainment. Yes, there are some games that have been built up by many small contributions, but most games (at least 3D) need to have one "set" of anything to work.

    One set of models, textures/bumpmaps, sounds, animations and background, all made to fit together and work in an engine. For entertainment, it is a lot harder to get the proper team together and make that push.

    I think particularly the engine-specificness is a killer. If I designed this über-cool monster with this
  • Games have specific requirements in development that other types of software do not. Applications and O.S. are typically being improved well beyond their initial release with new features, etc. Games are usually a closed-ended design with specific goals in the mind of the creators. There is a point where the general game play and plot is laid out and the designers must decide that they have hit the cut-off point for adding new features and abilities. Massive forking and diverse feature development wouldn't

  • artists (Score:5, Insightful)

    by rayde ( 738949 ) on Wednesday September 01, 2004 @08:28AM (#10127426) Homepage
    i think one of the big advantages corporations have over the OSS writers is that these companies can afford to hire top quality artists to accompany the coders.

    while open source programmers are certainly capable of the technical aspects of a game, it is in the overall presentation that is lacking. For example, there aren't going to be too many people willing to write an entire musical score to accompany a OSS game, nevermind having an orchestra perform it.

    since open source generally means "in the programmer's free time" and "with basically no monetary resources to aid development" don't expect a game with the presentation values of Doom or Half-Life.

  • Digital artists are needed (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    You can't have a real hit game without a decent graphics/sound. Creating artwork for a game requires more time, effort, and skill than coding game engine. It's easy to spend some hours a week on Open Source coding but you need much more than that to make quality art.
    Consider also fact that contrary to code artwork is not reusable in most cases. Every time you have to reinvent the wheel.

  • doom bad example (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I think some of the point they missed are that games are an extremely restrictive environment. Nothing happens in the game unless it is planned to perfection with testers moving animation points on enemies just to scare the player in the right position.

    The challenge since 1995 with the mainstream rise of 3d environmental games was to create "a game where you can do what you want and go where you want" this is all well and good, but utterly useless when trying to create a concise game. Believe it or not t

  • Flightgear (Score:5, Insightful)

    by managementboy ( 223451 ) on Wednesday September 01, 2004 @08:31AM (#10127448) Homepage
    Did everyone forget Flightgear (http://www.flightgear.org/)?

    From the Homepage:FlightGear is an open-source project. This means as long as you abide by the terms of the GPL license you may freely download and copy FlightGear. Anyway can have easy and open access to the latest development source code. Being an open-source project, we have made our file formats open and easily accessible. We support standard 3d model formats and much of the simulator configuration is controlled through xml based ascii files. Writing 3rd party extensions for FlightGear (or even directly modifying the FlightGear source code) is straightforward and doesn't require a large amount of reverse engineering. This makes FlightGear an attractive option for use in private, commercial, research, or hobby projects.

    FlightGear is known to run on Windows, Linux, Mac OS-X, FreeBSD, Solaris, and IRIX platforms allowing the user run on their platform of preference.

    • Re:Flightgear (Score:4, Informative)

      by Animats ( 122034 ) on Wednesday September 01, 2004 @10:29AM (#10128850) Homepage
      Have you ever actually tried FlightGear? It's painful. Far worse than Flight Simulator. Maybe half the cockpits actually work. Sometimes the artificial horizon ball goes floating around the cockpit. (Somebody did their transforms in the wrong order.) And there's a wierd "turbulence" effect when you cross from one scenery region to another, because the scenery loading concurrency was botched.
  • I heard the people at Valve aren't impressed with Open Source. (I own a game that is constantly broken because of their Steam advertisement distribution system, so no, I'm not a Valve fan).

  • ...to the open source model. Games are the ultimate commodity software. Some might have lasting appeal, but most people are looking for a new game every 3-6 months. It's not like a word processor, where the old versions are good and the newer ones questionably better. Old games can lose their sparkle. Novelty is very important.

    Certainly some games are exceptions, true classics that will stay forever. But these are more like movie classics than software classics.

    Parts of games could easily be designe

  • Is Open Source An Advantage For Game Developers? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by RAMMS+EIN ( 578166 ) on Wednesday September 01, 2004 @08:35AM (#10127482) Homepage Journal
    Of course, open source is an advantage for game developers as it is for other developers. Freely available components speed the development, and allow you to focus on the things that make your game different, rather than struggling to match your competitors.

    It is a good observation that there are very few good large open source games. I think the reason is simple: OSS depends on developer interest, and developers get demotivated after a while. This is why we have many good but simple games (e.g. the KDE games), but few large games.
  • OSS just isn't popular for consumer software - save a few exceptions.

  • Games are not tools. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by deragon ( 112986 ) on Wednesday September 01, 2004 @08:39AM (#10127507) Homepage Journal
    When business and people contribute to web servers and operating systems, its mainly because they expect something in return. They use these free tools for generating business. They reduce the cost of development of the tools they use to generate $$.

    But with a open game, there is no business to be done. No $$ is returned. This is why we probably will never see IBM and the likes contributing to an open game. The only exception I could forsee is that an online game could be free, but subscription to servers would be charged.

    Sure there are some developers which on their free time develop open games. Thats why there are a few. But because there are practically no developers payed by companies to develop open games, there are simply less effort going into open games than in web servers and operating systems.

  • The Obvious Answer (Score:4, Insightful)

    by cephyn ( 461066 ) on Wednesday September 01, 2004 @11:46AM (#10129894) Homepage
    There is one obvious game genre that lends well to Open Source models: MMORPGs. These are games with LONG interest times and thousands of geeky people playing it, many with too much spare time. It is also a game genre that, even in closed source, is undergoing constant incremental updates. I think well organized communities could easily make a solid, innovative and awesome MMORPG.

    The problem of course, is the costs of bandwidth and server space needed.

  • OS Gaming hasn't moved much, but there is hope (Score:3, Insightful)

    by grumbel ( 592662 ) <grumbel+slashdot@gmail.com> on Wednesday September 01, 2004 @05:00PM (#10133071) Homepage
    Looking back at Shawn Hargreaves Article on Open Source gaming [demon.co.uk] things haven't changed much and probally won't in the near future, since the nature of games is just different from techincal programms that perform a more or less well defined task.

    However I think one of the key points to move Open Source gaming further ahead lies in the tools, the engine and the data freely available, once we have reached a point where there is 'enough' of it available, we might see free games poping up. It won't be the hollywood blockbaster games, but it will be little short-stories and stuff which can be done by two or three persons. Some years ago you needed to basically start with a blank sheet of paper and no tools when you wanted to start a game, today we have at least a bunch of tools (Gimp, Blender, Wings3d, ...) available for creating content, in the sound area there is still much missing, but we are moving slowly forwards. We also have a bunch of libraries and engines, which while not being up to Doom3 standards, still might be enough for a homebrewn game, that said, with every game that uses them, they will of course also mature a bit more. On the content side however we are still at a very low level, however in large part that might be due to the lack of proper license and to the lack of tools in the past, thing might hopefully change a bit in the future.

    Why I think it might work in the long run? Imagine in another five years we might have a repository full of 3d models, textures and sound. Now somebody comes along and wants to create a game, all he has todo is to select a collection of models and textures that will fit his story, point&click them together in some 3d editor and just add his dialogs lines to them. Some ready-to-use 3d engine will do the rest. Sure it won't look commercial quality, especially not like commercial-quality will look in five games. But a game created by such building blocks wouldn't look like it would look today, full of one-color box placeholders, but instead it would be full of well done 3d models. Sure there is still balancing and fixing needed, but those building blocks could reduce the entry level for game creation by quite a bit. It might not work for all games, but it might be still provide a good amount of entertainment. It won't replace commercial game development for sure, but it will be a good addition.

    At it stands now however we have still a huge lack of manpower, not just artists, but also programmers who are able to work on a game, since even on the code side of a game, there is some kind of art involved that an average application programmer might not be able to provide. This lack of people is most likly caused by the lack of games on Linux, since those interested in game development are naturally also interested in games.

    So if you are an artist or programmer who wants to move Linux gaming forward, stop complaining and do something, join projects which interested you be it games or the content-creation tools, which are at least equally important. If you don't know a project that would be worth joining, join us at the Game of the Month [slashdot.org] on Happy Penguin [happypenguin.org] where we pick a game every once in a while and try to polish it, thus joining forces and focusing it on a single project for a short period of time. Don't expect to end up with a Doom3, but your contribution can make a difference and might provide the gamers with another good game.

  • Open Source *Middleware* (Score:3, Insightful)

    by magic ( 19621 ) on Thursday September 02, 2004 @11:28AM (#10140143) Homepage
    Most of the core code in a game isn't related to content anymore-- it is middleware. Physics, sound, AI, 3D rendering, data processing, and tools are rapidly becoming off-the shelf components one can plug together to make a game.

    I think that open source middleware makes perfect sense. It is reused between products and between companies. The primary consumers are themselves programmers. It benefits from

    I believe this so strongly I started a project four years ago to produce open source middleware for 3D rendering in games--

    G3D (http://g3d-cpp.sf.net).

    It is now used by commercial game developers as well as hobbyists, researchers, and students. There are various networking, physics, and sound packages. We need more open source middleware for games, particularly on the tools side, where Blender and GIMP aren't yet sufficient alternatives to 3DS MAX, Maya, Photoshop, and level editors.

    -m

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