4 ms·

Supposedly, the reason there are so few successful FOSS games is that no one wants to play a half-finished game, offer feedback (or patches) and come back and p

by wtracy 13y ago

Supposedly, the reason there are so few successful FOSS games is that no one wants to play a half-finished game, offer feedback (or patches) and come back and play the next revision. Is this changing? On a different note, I've been intrigued by the idea of an MMORPG with a mechanic that coerces players into acting in-character. I think DayZ just pulled this off. You can be the desprate survivor just trying to hang on, you can be the thug monopolizing precious resources, or you can be the dangerous, unpredictable psycho, and all these possibilities feel perfectly in-character. There's no grinding, leveling up, or amulets of +2 charisma. I suspect that right there is the real reason for this particular game's success.

jmpeax 13y ago
It's rather simple, I think. An unfinished, but still very entertaining game will be better than a beautifully polished boring game. The "finished parts" can out-weigh in entertainment an entire competing game.
ijk 13y ago
The big reason, in my opinion, for there being few successful FOSS games is that the only thing bringing the team together is a shared vision. This makes it much harder to succeed at a large project unless the project is inspired by/a clone of a nostalgic game, or is in one of the dream-niches that are now being colonized by Kickstarter projects. It's the same reason there are a lot of failed mods: putting a team together is hard, and content production isn't exponentially scalable like code is. Which is not to say that there aren't lots of open source games: every Ludum Dare Compo game is required to be open source, which is tens of thousands of games right there. There are a few "big hits" in the FOSS world: Battle for Wesnoth, Vega Strike, FreeCiv, 0 AD, Nethack, Angband, etc. The ones that don't start of clones of commercial games tend to be at the end of a long heritage of open source development: roguelikes, Netrek, and the like. _Playable_ projects with ongoing development often accrue a very dedicated fandom. It's just hard to get to "playable enough". The real breakout for FOSS and games has been in development tools: open-source engines and libraries have been one of the major reasons that this as become a golden era of indie game development. Even commercial tools like Unity rely on the existence of Mono, for example.
hrkristian 13y ago
Arguably, the unfinished-ness was part of what made World of Warcraft so wildly popular. There is much more to explore and enjoy in an open and chaotic environment, than in a streamlined and closed world. Obviously, we move away from it in real life simply because one generally does not wish to die, but in a no-consequences game, that isn't (much of) a factor.
overgard 13y ago
I think the problem with FOSS games tends to be that they get started for the wrong reasons. Like, most of them spawn from "it'd be neat to make a game like X" and "I believe in FOSS". That's fine, but when you get into the gritty details of making a game, it's /really fricking hard/. To actually finish something takes an enormous amount of passion and dedication. And people that put in that level of passion and dedication usually don't just want to give away their work for free after that much struggle. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that FOSS people lack passion or anything like that, it's just that for your average non-game FOSS project you usually start by scratching a small itch, and then if it other people like your itch-scratcher, momentum grows. Or if nobody likes it, you abandon it with minimal time lost. A game takes a lot more upfront investment before you have anything to show.

by wtracy 13y ago

jmpeax 13y ago

It's rather simple, I think. An unfinished, but still very entertaining game will be better than a beautifully polished boring game. The "finished parts" can out-weigh in entertainment an entire competing game.

ijk 13y ago

The big reason, in my opinion, for there being few successful FOSS games is that the only thing bringing the team together is a shared vision. This makes it much harder to succeed at a large project unless the project is inspired by/a clone of a nostalgic game, or is in one of the dream-niches that are now being colonized by Kickstarter projects. It's the same reason there are a lot of failed mods: putting a team together is hard, and content production isn't exponentially scalable like code is. Which is not to say that there aren't lots of open source games: every Ludum Dare Compo game is required to be open source, which is tens of thousands of games right there. There are a few "big hits" in the FOSS world: Battle for Wesnoth, Vega Strike, FreeCiv, 0 AD, Nethack, Angband, etc. The ones that don't start of clones of commercial games tend to be at the end of a long heritage of open source development: roguelikes, Netrek, and the like. _Playable_ projects with ongoing development often accrue a very dedicated fandom. It's just hard to get to "playable enough". The real breakout for FOSS and games has been in development tools: open-source engines and libraries have been one of the major reasons that this as become a golden era of indie game development. Even commercial tools like Unity rely on the existence of Mono, for example.

hrkristian 13y ago

Arguably, the unfinished-ness was part of what made World of Warcraft so wildly popular. There is much more to explore and enjoy in an open and chaotic environment, than in a streamlined and closed world. Obviously, we move away from it in real life simply because one generally does not wish to die, but in a no-consequences game, that isn't (much of) a factor.

overgard 13y ago

I think the problem with FOSS games tends to be that they get started for the wrong reasons. Like, most of them spawn from "it'd be neat to make a game like X" and "I believe in FOSS". That's fine, but when you get into the gritty details of making a game, it's /really fricking hard/. To actually finish something takes an enormous amount of passion and dedication. And people that put in that level of passion and dedication usually don't just want to give away their work for free after that much struggle. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that FOSS people lack passion or anything like that, it's just that for your average non-game FOSS project you usually start by scratching a small itch, and then if it other people like your itch-scratcher, momentum grows. Or if nobody likes it, you abandon it with minimal time lost. A game takes a lot more upfront investment before you have anything to show.