by emma.jane1313 » 28 Oct 2021, 17:42
Are you familiar with the RTFM acronym? What most dev communities responded with to open source in general and new people, especially in the early days but it seems to have come back in full force, exploring open source as a way to shut down any new interest in coding and protect their precious citadel of special people roleplaying as a priesthood of programming.
Genuine curiosity and eagerness to learn through questioning is always welcomed. But when it's done with ill-intent, which has been pretty clear in this case, and with excess protectiveness, it seems incredibly inconsistent with the entire underlying ethos of open source— of open inquiry, free access, and being super welcoming to new people... instead of assuming everything different is a scam.
In open source we look ourselves in the mirror first before jumping down someone else's throat.
Just like when the web first became widespread, or in the battles against massive corporations against Microsoft, IBM and so many others trying to shutdown the ability for us to know how our tools work or ultimately build and own our own— shouting small bands of developers down as scam artists was the easy go to response.
Almost everything in web3 is open source and could not exist without it. The difference is, that for the first time, now the value layer is open source too, allowing open source to finally be valued as it should, along with all of the devs who contribute to it.
Web3 isn't about some excessive tech like blockchain, NFTs or whatever the heck you want to call it. It's what is required to defend against centralised control and all of the scams, abuses and fraud that comes with centralisation.
It's true that in the early days of any new system it is easy for far too many to pretend to be the new thing whilst still being the old and scamming people in the process. But I would take a long hard look at the centralised corporate fiat systems we are breaking away from, and the level of scams and fraud and abuse that simply is taken for granted.
It's the decentralisation and advancing of web3 that is most in line with what free software has always meant to be. And how can we expect free software to actually succeed in a closed centralised system. The fact is that so much of it has failed and continues to. Web3 directly solves this, and IMG is a community valuing the open source layer of indie gaming and modding.
A quick simple intro to acronyms that you are not familiar with yet:
Web3 = the next evolution of the internet where not just communication infrastructure is decentralised as in web1, or semi-decentralised as in web2, but, is fully decentralised and includes everything of value end 2 end within a much deeper and richer internet.
Play 2 earn = instead of the decay of gaming we have seen, thanks to pay 2 win and pay 2 play, and, gambling addiction enabling microtransactions that only benefit a tiny few, play 2 earn is a game culture native mechanism where players are able to earn uncensorable fully individually owned assets of value for the countless hundreds and thousands of hours we put in with our effort, time, money and skill to creating interoperable game economies. In this systems the devs, designers, creators and players benefit most.
Wear 2 earn = It's another iteration of play 2 earn, focused more on the unique role that in-game skins and wearables contribute towards a player's identity, self-expression, utility and access. In this model it is these skins and wearables that are able to be directly owned by the player and also grant the player different utility and value across different gaming ecosystems, games, marketplaces, stages, levels— where depending on what skin a player, it serves not just as a cosmetic piece but also as special keys to the world they are in.
Quest 2 earn = is a summary of all of the other 2 earn models based on classic RPG questing principles, where again the player does something and gets something of real value in return that can't be shut down when blizzard, disney or whoever shuts down the server.
So in summary, IMG is open sourcing all gaming and guild content for those that are part of it, and introducing these native web3 2 earn models.
The big shift to wrap your heads around, as anyone new to NFTs, ignoring all of the noise and hype to those making a lot of money, not knowing what they are, and those peddling web2 stuff pretending it is web3, is to see that in the old economy, content including source code is locked down, packaged and shipped everywhere as the product. Now, in web3, with NFTs, the thing that is being given fine grained per user access and authorisation is time with a record of who own's what when, how they relate to each other, and the stories and relationships they allow us to build. It is a bottom up model rather than the old top down tyranny.
Hopefully this is a good start.