4 ms·

>The software industry is heading in very bad directions, and this is at least a glimmer of hope. I don't buy this -- Steam is just another walled garden app s

>The software industry is heading in very bad directions, and this is at least a glimmer of hope. I don't buy this -- Steam is just another walled garden app store with the same conflicts of interest that we're used to seeing, such as giving top billing to their own products on their store, using DRM, promoting itself as an advertising space, etc. The problem I have is: where are all the GPL'ed games? The Torque Engine was just released with a permissive free license, which is good, but it will probably take a really good engine being released as GPL to get people to really start embracing the development of games in a community-driven way, rather than being stuck in the ivory tower like most games are now. There really isn't any other meaningful way for us to oppose these abusive "app stores" rather than shunning them so that we can turn to more community-driven efforts.

zanny 13y ago
> The problem I have is: where are all the GPL'ed games? All the id engines have gone GPL. Ogre3d is a popular engine base. A lot of game studios use some derivative of Unreal 3, which Epic will never GPL because they make money selling rights to it. Most other engines, even beyond that, will have some proprietary inclusions that they don't hold licenses over, such as with the JK launch. The lack of community FOSS game engine projects from the ground up is strange to me. It seems it would make a lot of sense for major industry players to band together and develop a really rock solid engine in the FOSS world to minimize the costs of engine development, even if in the short term they lose the benefit of being able to license their engine or profit off specialized graphics or gameplay tech they put in it.
- wtallis 13y ago
  I suspect the biggest reason this hasn't happened is that the big studios want engines that can also target consoles, which don't have publicly available SDKs. It would be hard for a project to ensure that they weren't constantly breaking the console ports when they might not even be able to run nightly builds and share the logs publicly. And, of course, software patents are a constant threat.
- james4k 13y ago
  Aside from third party licensing for middleware like Bink, Scaleform, Havok, console APIs, etc. I'd guess some if it has to do with the constant competition over graphics technology that's only just started to slow down in the last couple years, and perhaps that will be picking up again with the next-gen consoles. I completely agree, though. There is a complete lack of solid open-source game software.
forrestthewoods 13y ago
Most good games are made by people who are paid to make them. Or people who hope to pay themselves when their game is finished and sold. It's hard to get a large volume of unpaid volunteers to collectively work together on a creative endeavor. If I'm going to spend my free time working on something creative then it's going to follow my vision and not someone else's. If you want a community driven game nothing is stopping anyone. Quake 3/Doom 3 are GPL'd. Unity is cheap. Plenty of games are incredibly mod friendly. There's been no better time in gaming history than to be indie than today.
- spacelizard 13y ago
  Whoa - I'm not advocating for people to work unpaid. Don't know where you got that idea. I just don't think anything can really honestly advertise itself as being "mod friendly" or "community friendly" unless it's GPL.
  - forrestthewoods 13y ago
    Community driven somewhat implies unpaid. At least it seems so to me? There's no proven business model for games that supports paying a staff and being GPL. Being GPL also means you can't ever release on consoles, handhelds, or mobile. I'm not sure how you could say Source engine isn't mod friendly. Lots of great mods have been made using it. Professional grade engines are also becoming increasingly available at very affordable prices. With Unity there's really nothing stopping anyone from making any game they want.
  - ekimekim 13y ago
    Minor quibble - I'd say "an open licence", not "GPL".
- b0rsuk 13y ago
  No, that's not the problem with Open Source games. Open Source developers are more than capable and willing to work on a game. The problem is: they can't agree on anything except most basic game concepts. That's why you get: - Freeciv - Wesnoth (Fire Emblem, Tactics Ogre, Final Fantasy Tactics) - Nexuiz, Cube, Warsow, Open Arena, Alien Arena, and the other 68 quake 1 clones There are very few creative Open Source games. Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup is one example, it's an OS game with no commercial equivalent. Teeworlds is another. OS developers only reach consensus on widely liked game concepts, creativity is very unlikely to be accepted. Instead of working on something exciting, they work on something everyone hates the least. It's a management problem, not technical or motivation problem. Votes become vetoes. http://blog.asmartbear.com/ignoring-the-wisdom-of-crowds.html http://blog.asmartbear.com/ignoring-the-wisdom-of-crowds.htm...
steauengeglase 13y ago
There is one huge difference, they are a 3rd party walled garden. They get a lot of flack but they were the only ones in a good position to do what they did at the time. The market place scene needs 3rd parties like Steam, GOG, (to some extent) Amazon, etc. You don't buy insurance from the hospital or heaven forbid, Pfizer. You are only guaranteeing that all of the terms and conditions are against you. So why do the same with software by giving either the platform maker and/or publisher's extra leverage (yes, Valve publishes their own games, a whopping 1 game per year, but they'd likely quit making games before they'd give up selling someone else's software)? This is the unsung problem of UPlay, Origin, etc. as well as iTunes and whatever MS call their market places this week. 3rd parties need customers to exist. 1st parties can just make deals with other 1st parties for their survival. It is the same problem we had with the recording industry. Who cares if CDs are $15? There is plenty of money in breakage, movie tie-ins, TV singing contests, cell phone ring tones, advertising cross-overs, etc. In other words, mass market incest. The road of the 1st party is the road to gamer fuel, in game ads, E.T., slow matchmaking services, platform locking, and above all product stagnation. Folks can hate Steam for whatever reason, fine, but please, go to another 3rd party if you can. Without them the future is bleak. As far as GPL'd games go, they have the same problem as regular games. Asset generation for AAA titles is too expensive and too slow. If you want to fix that problem don't look to a new engine that will be outdated by the time your game is finished or a distribution platform. Devote your time to breaking the development cost/time problem and give that to everyone. As soon as we beat that, we will break the "1999 cycle" and we'll get the game that people beg for but the industry can't afford to produce.

zanny 13y ago

> The problem I have is: where are all the GPL'ed games? All the id engines have gone GPL. Ogre3d is a popular engine base. A lot of game studios use some derivative of Unreal 3, which Epic will never GPL because they make money selling rights to it. Most other engines, even beyond that, will have some proprietary inclusions that they don't hold licenses over, such as with the JK launch. The lack of community FOSS game engine projects from the ground up is strange to me. It seems it would make a lot of sense for major industry players to band together and develop a really rock solid engine in the FOSS world to minimize the costs of engine development, even if in the short term they lose the benefit of being able to license their engine or profit off specialized graphics or gameplay tech they put in it.

wtallis 13y ago
I suspect the biggest reason this hasn't happened is that the big studios want engines that can also target consoles, which don't have publicly available SDKs. It would be hard for a project to ensure that they weren't constantly breaking the console ports when they might not even be able to run nightly builds and share the logs publicly. And, of course, software patents are a constant threat.
james4k 13y ago
Aside from third party licensing for middleware like Bink, Scaleform, Havok, console APIs, etc. I'd guess some if it has to do with the constant competition over graphics technology that's only just started to slow down in the last couple years, and perhaps that will be picking up again with the next-gen consoles. I completely agree, though. There is a complete lack of solid open-source game software.

forrestthewoods 13y ago

Most good games are made by people who are paid to make them. Or people who hope to pay themselves when their game is finished and sold. It's hard to get a large volume of unpaid volunteers to collectively work together on a creative endeavor. If I'm going to spend my free time working on something creative then it's going to follow my vision and not someone else's. If you want a community driven game nothing is stopping anyone. Quake 3/Doom 3 are GPL'd. Unity is cheap. Plenty of games are incredibly mod friendly. There's been no better time in gaming history than to be indie than today.

spacelizard 13y ago
Whoa - I'm not advocating for people to work unpaid. Don't know where you got that idea. I just don't think anything can really honestly advertise itself as being "mod friendly" or "community friendly" unless it's GPL.
- forrestthewoods 13y ago
  Community driven somewhat implies unpaid. At least it seems so to me? There's no proven business model for games that supports paying a staff and being GPL. Being GPL also means you can't ever release on consoles, handhelds, or mobile. I'm not sure how you could say Source engine isn't mod friendly. Lots of great mods have been made using it. Professional grade engines are also becoming increasingly available at very affordable prices. With Unity there's really nothing stopping anyone from making any game they want.
- ekimekim 13y ago
  Minor quibble - I'd say "an open licence", not "GPL".
b0rsuk 13y ago
No, that's not the problem with Open Source games. Open Source developers are more than capable and willing to work on a game. The problem is: they can't agree on anything except most basic game concepts. That's why you get: - Freeciv - Wesnoth (Fire Emblem, Tactics Ogre, Final Fantasy Tactics) - Nexuiz, Cube, Warsow, Open Arena, Alien Arena, and the other 68 quake 1 clones There are very few creative Open Source games. Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup is one example, it's an OS game with no commercial equivalent. Teeworlds is another. OS developers only reach consensus on widely liked game concepts, creativity is very unlikely to be accepted. Instead of working on something exciting, they work on something everyone hates the least. It's a management problem, not technical or motivation problem. Votes become vetoes. http://blog.asmartbear.com/ignoring-the-wisdom-of-crowds.html http://blog.asmartbear.com/ignoring-the-wisdom-of-crowds.htm...

steauengeglase 13y ago

There is one huge difference, they are a 3rd party walled garden. They get a lot of flack but they were the only ones in a good position to do what they did at the time. The market place scene needs 3rd parties like Steam, GOG, (to some extent) Amazon, etc. You don't buy insurance from the hospital or heaven forbid, Pfizer. You are only guaranteeing that all of the terms and conditions are against you. So why do the same with software by giving either the platform maker and/or publisher's extra leverage (yes, Valve publishes their own games, a whopping 1 game per year, but they'd likely quit making games before they'd give up selling someone else's software)? This is the unsung problem of UPlay, Origin, etc. as well as iTunes and whatever MS call their market places this week. 3rd parties need customers to exist. 1st parties can just make deals with other 1st parties for their survival. It is the same problem we had with the recording industry. Who cares if CDs are $15? There is plenty of money in breakage, movie tie-ins, TV singing contests, cell phone ring tones, advertising cross-overs, etc. In other words, mass market incest. The road of the 1st party is the road to gamer fuel, in game ads, E.T., slow matchmaking services, platform locking, and above all product stagnation. Folks can hate Steam for whatever reason, fine, but please, go to another 3rd party if you can. Without them the future is bleak. As far as GPL'd games go, they have the same problem as regular games. Asset generation for AAA titles is too expensive and too slow. If you want to fix that problem don't look to a new engine that will be outdated by the time your game is finished or a distribution platform. Devote your time to breaking the development cost/time problem and give that to everyone. As soon as we beat that, we will break the "1999 cycle" and we'll get the game that people beg for but the industry can't afford to produce.