The Gaming Paradox: There just aren't enough Free and Open S

[mdtrooper]

Hi.

I found this article http://www.networkworld.com/article/2999877/opensource-subnet/the-gaming-paradox-there-just-arent-enough-free-and-open-source-video-games.html , and it makes me to think about the open source games.

I think that the article has not a part about the open source business, but it is good.

Regards.

[eugeneloza]

Well... Not only quantity, but quality also.
That's the problem of hobby-work. It's hard to team-up, team is unstable, time schedules are either not set or failed... Sometimes jewels like Battle for Westnoth show up, but again, they are 10 years late by graphics from proprietary games (e.g. compare to HOMM5 / I didn't play it, just watched videos on Youtube)... And FreeDroidRPG still far behind Diablo III / again I didn't play it, only watched videos.
So, maybe that's simply might be impossible to beat the quality of $100 mln budget game (first of all - the quality of assets) by a team of volunteers working in their spare time?
By speaking of assets quality I'm not speaking of game ideas and concepts. And again, for some reason we end up making clones of proprietary games, sometimes introducing interesting solutions (other than different units)... never to beat the 'cloned' game.
But free is 'freedom' and experimenting - and at least 75% of experiments fail. And those succeed, fail to meet quality demand or are quickly 'overtaken' by proprietary quality.
E.g. the Minecraft referred in the article is a crude clone of opensource Infiminer - where developers experimented with fresh ideas. But they didn't have the money and effort for marketing, and if it weren't for Minecraft, nobody would ever hear about Infiminer, right?

[onpon4]

I don't see how it's a "paradox". Commercial video game developers spend huge amounts of money on this, and it's really hard for the typical libre software development models to produce the vast quantities of games they can produce. It's just like movies. I should note that we're talking millions of dollars, not hundreds.

On the other hand, when there's enough dedication to a game from a community of developers, it can approach the quality of modern games, though the lack of money still leaves them behind a bit.

I think, ultimately, the solution is to make it easier for amateurs to make games, and convince them to use libre licenses. Take a look at Newgrounds, for example; no one there is paid substantially for their games (I think there might be a bit of an ad revenue thing, but that's it), and yet they still get made because people want to, and can do so easily with Flash. That's the kind of thing we need to emulate.

[mdwh]

I think there's another issue when it comes to creative things like games - even if there was plenty of high quality Open Source games, you're still limiting yourself if you were to only play such games, because if there's a particular closed source game you want to play, it's hard to substitute that.

If I want a word processor, an Open Source application can substitute - if it's sufficient quality, I have no need for a closed source word processor. But if I love playing Skyrim, then it doesn't matter how many Open Source RPGs there are, that doesn't mean I won't also want to play Skyrim.

For his Star Wars movie analogy - even if Open Source was equivalent to A New Hope, you'd still want to see the other films. It applies to movies, TV, music - no one wants to restrict themselves to a subset, because if there's a particular movie you want to see or band you like, that can't be substituted merely by something similar.

There are other issues: the high cost of commercial games, the extra difficulty of getting developers, artists, musicians, designers etc to work together, the fast moving technology (if you spend 10-30 years writing an office suite, operating system, web browser, it might still be useful today, but doing so for a game will have people looking at it as being outdated).

[Julius]

While it's true that "competing" with multi-million dollar games is not possible, there are certainly high profile Indie games that could have been made through FOSS means.

I think there are three main issues at hand preventing success:

1. Non-commercial mind-set, i.e. even if licenses are used that explicitly allow commercial use, the involvement of money in any form is implicitly ruled out in many projects. This might have good reasons (team dynamics etc.), but bocks the very beneficial option of out-contracting certain components that are slowing down further development (nearly every successful FOSS game had at some point artistic work done by someone being paid for it). And even in cases where successful fund-raising campaigns were done, it often ends up sitting around or paying for web-server maintenance etc. only (case in point: 0 A.D. sits on $35.000 they seem to have no clue what to do with). In Indie games on the other hand it is very common, to have certain aspects done by a 3rd party (sounds, 3D models etc.), but this is often paid out of the developers personal bank account, which usually no-one is willing to do for FOSS projects.

2. Education-mind set: i.e. many FOSS game projects are started to learn something, thus re-inventing the wheel is done on purpose, code-bases are often full of cruft, and projects are quickly abandoned once that learning goal is reached. It also turns off-potential contributors if it becomes clear that there is no real long-term commitment in the project and that the project lead has different objectives than more result focused contributors. In general this also leads to a lot of new projects started that never get anywhere.

3. Strongly catering to a niece audience and turning away more mass appealing ideas/contributions, instead of taking the route of mass-appeal first and niece audience modding second as in commercial offerings. This I can somewhat understand and it helps creating a small dedicated development community in the short run, but in the medium run this limits the available pool of contributers too much and after a while these projects tend to stall and soon after die.

[jcantero]

I'm going to copy&paste what I wrote in the related reddit thread:

There is nothing special about free software* game development. It's not harder than --let's say-- developing a kernel, or a desktop environment, or a family of compilers. Simply find out how these successful free software projects work and apply the same model to the development of a game. For example:

• Community oriented
• Code sharing and reuse between projects (avoid DRY, more efficient development, better quality)
• Forking (make a different game by only tunning or modifying a little an existing one)
• Sure there are more

The only problem I can see with current game projects is that they are understaffed. The vast majority are solo projects, or small team projects, and obviously that's hard to sustain if they don't have incentives. But projects with strong communities like OpenMW or 0 a.d. I think they are doing fine. Probably the only thing needed to see more free software* games is more people interested/involved.

* or open source software, libre software, FOSS, FLOSS, ... what you prefer

The reality is that the majority of free software* apps, not only games, are very often like this comic strip

[jcantero]

2. Education-mind set: i.e. many FOSS game projects are started to learn something, thus re-inventing the wheel is done on purpose, code-bases are often full of cruft, and projects are quickly abandoned once that learning goal is reached. It also turns off-potential contributors if it becomes clear that there is no real long-term commitment in the project and that the project lead has different objectives than more result focused contributors. In general this also leads to a lot of new projects started that never get anywhere.

That is an interesting point, Julius. Because my experience is that the best way to improve as a software developer is not by writing but reading code, many lines code (the more, the better). Not simple examples, real working code.

[charlie]

@jcantero - what you omit, which is the biggest stumbling block for open source games, is that it is nearly impossible to find a job that pays for making them. You can somehow evolve a business model (a few are starting to gain traction on Steam, for example) but most projects are developed by a person (or a few people) in their spare time. Lives change, jobs change, children arrive, and time to develop and play games dwindles, so most projects are only fleeting whilst the developer(s) has youth and lifestyle freedom on his/her side.

[mdwh]

The comic strip comes down to resources - it's harder to compete when commercial games are made with large teams of people. Though I think it's a bit unfair the way it shows the first panel with everyone chatting and being social - whilst talking and meetings are important, a large amount of time is still spent with lots of developers spending hours working individually at a computer.

But I think it's worth noting that many commercial projects, including massively successful ones, started off with one guy sitting alone writing code. Contrast that to the "ideas guy" often seen on places like GameDev.net - who wants to pull a team together because he views software development like the first panel: he'll be the guy standing around talking and giving directions and hanging up the ever-so-important buntin and pictures, whilst the "team" will write his idea for him. I think I can guess which method is more likely to lead to success.

The reality is that managing software projects and people is not all fun, party buntin and cups of tea, but stressful and hard (and can just as well lead to developers working late - it's far less fun when you're not doing it for fun). No wonder that people working for fun/free are less likely to also want to take on this aspect; and trying to start off like that may well cause more harm than help, for commercial or Open Source.

The point is it's only worth growing with more people when the software grows - and becomes successful. Large Open Source projects are like the first panel. Most Open Source projects are like the latter - but I'd argue that a large proportion of attempts at closed source projects start off or remain as the latter. For every commercial success story we hear about, there are countless failures. And why stop at software? Most non-commercial artists - or say garderners - work on their own rather in big teams, and no one would be surprised at this or think it wrong.

The only distinction I see is that it is easier for commercial projects to make the transition to more developers, because there's the money to hire them. It boils down to money, and the problem of it being harder to monetise Open Source. This also applies to the point made about indie developers investing money for art - they do that in the hopes of making money. But never mind hiring developers - where does the money come from to hire an office for everyone to hang out in? Even for an Open Source project with many people, it'd be far more sensible to conduct online rather than in the same physical place - and many commercial projects start off with people working from home and/or with people in different locations, not to mention this is an increasing trend generally.

[jcantero]

@jcantero - what you omit, which is the biggest stumbling block for open source games, is that it is nearly impossible to find a job that pays for making them.

You can replace "games" by another type of software in your statement and remains true.

People also tend to forget that even non-free software (including non-free games) doesn't guarantee to make a living out of it. The successful cases are just a few exceptions rather than the rule.

[charlie]

@jcantero - what you omit, which is the biggest stumbling block for open source games, is that it is nearly impossible to find a job that pays for making them.

You can replace "games" by another type of software in your statement and remains true.

People also tend to forget that even non-free software (including non-free games) doesn't guarantee to make a living out of it. The successful cases are just a few exceptions rather than the rule.

That's not true though. There are many paid developers on the open source projects of note - Gnome, KDE, Linux, LibreOffice etc. When a piece of software becomes viable in a commercial setting, then jobs open up for supporting and improving them. That is simply not an avenue for open source games. Nobody pays somebody to develop a game because it benefits their company?

[Julius]

Well, an MMORPG could be open-source for example with no big difference in the business model, many F2P games as well.
It's just a bit easier and more common in the non-games software industry.

[Andrettin]

Well, an MMORPG could be open-source for example with no big difference in the business model, many F2P games as well.
It's just a bit easier and more common in the non-games software industry.

Yes, that's quite true.

[Andrettin]

People also tend to forget that even non-free software (including non-free games) doesn't guarantee to make a living out of it. The successful cases are just a few exceptions rather than the rule.

Definitely. In fact, most indie titles never get completed or are unprofitable. In AAA game developing companies, there are many prototypes which are developed for a while and then get cancelled (most of which we never hear about). With open-source games everything is out in the open, so we know more about the failures; and even if there wasn't a profit or monetary gain, the work isn't lost, and can be used for future open-source projects.

[jcantero]

That's not true though. There are many paid developers on the open source projects of note - Gnome, KDE, Linux, LibreOffice etc.

That's a big myth. Even a corporate effort like LibreOffice (started by 4 big corporations) don't have more than 30 paid developers (and that including part-time developers from consulting firms) for a source base of 4.000.000 lines of code. Obviously full-time developers tend to stand out in the statistics, but there is a significant long tail of minor collaborations. Another source with more recent data: "It is worth noting that the LibreOffice developers with unknown affiliation, who contributed 23% of the changes, make up 82% of the developer base, so there would appear to be a substantial community of developers contributing from outside the above-listed companies. KDE doesn't have big corporate sponsors except SUSE, and only a pair of specialized sponsors that employs very few developers each one (like 2-3). GNOME have more because of Red Hat, but even Red Hat only pays for a few hundred developers to cover a wide range of different projects from the kernel to gcc toolchain, X.Org, systemd, GNOME, all type of user apps... They alone can't neither support nor develop several hundreds of millions of lines of code. Linux is the exception. Nowadays it's mainly developed through money (~80% are paid developers). However, if you look at the past, twenty years ago (1.3.x/2.0 development series), the kernel had around 1.000.000 lines of code and zero paid developers.

Paid development is useful and desirable if available, but not the main force behind the development of free software, even nowadays.

[charlie]

Right, full time paid development work may not be a huge market, but of those minor contributions how many do you think used LibreOffice in a commercial setting? I bet a large number. Paid work does not just mean full time contracts.

Now, who is going to accept their staff making contributions during working hours to games? How many games get used in productive environments on a day to day basis?

To quote CallOfDusty; Logic (MF).

Seriously, though, whilst the business model may be the same for some indie games and open source games, or even MMOs as Julius suggests, they still have the same issue with achieving a sustainable size of player base / volume of purchases. The difference is that an open source project usually makes nothing until it is viable, whereas most indie games still sell for something even if the game does not end up being a hit. Companies open and close all the time, but there is money trading hands. That won't happen for the vast majority of open source games in the short or medium term unless they are attempting something commercial from the get-go.

[Duion]

The problem with free and open source games is, that nobody plays them, but games can only develop and grow, when they are played. Only when being actively used you can find bugs, issues and ways to make the game better. A bigger crowd also attracts more people to help out.
People would need to be more consequent and just not play proprietary games anymore, yes this would involve playing games of inferior quality, but they will improve over time and soon will be up to date with the other proprietary games, if there is enough support. Open source games are not even always worse, some are even better than the original, but still have almost no players.

[Vandar]

The problem with free and open source games is, that nobody plays them, but games can only develop and grow, when they are played.

One of the important skills nowadays that a game developer also needs, is marketing. Marketing the idea, and the game, to attract players. There are so many good "free to play" games around, without marketing, any game will have a hard time to attract players.

For many players "free to play" is almost the same as FOSS - they aren't developers, they aren't very religious about this sort of freedom, they just want to play for free. True freeware and many "free to play" titles are "free enough" to make them happy - they can play without paying money, and often also closed source games allow some extend of modding, so even the somewhat development inclined people will not feel much amiss, even without the source.

[Duion]

Yes, sadly marketing is almost everything, some of the worst games are surprisingly also the most popular, mostly because of marketing or some hype that has build up.
But you also need some kind of hook in the game that keeps people addicted, so they come back, even if it is as simple as an achievement system, where people just get medals as reward.

[Andrettin]

Yes, sadly marketing is almost everything, some of the worst games are surprisingly also the most popular, mostly because of marketing or some hype that has build up.
But you also need some kind of hook in the game that keeps people addicted, so they come back, even if it is as simple as an achievement system, where people just get medals as reward.

Then the question is: how to do marketing (without spending a ton of money)?

[CryHam]

Hmm.
Marketing AKA thievery (in colorful disguise). The department having the most stupid people which even get paid.
For me the question would be: why would you even care about marketing or popularity if your goal is freedom.
Or why would you invest or use money (the tool of slavery) in something that promotes freedom (for other reasons than profit).
Just my POV OFC.

[Duion]

I don't think marketing works well with free projects, since the product is not suited for most people and for those who it is suited are mostly not a fan of marketing. What you need is visibility and some people who keep the community together and then you can just wait.

[Vandar]

What you need is visibility

Well, getting visibility is also marketing. You'll have to go to forums and advertise, put up videos on youtube or similar. And even if you do this, you are only on par with hundreds of other projects which also try to get attention.

A sad example that I remember is a hoax project in the roguelike scene, that only consisted of a well made video, and no code. It got more attention than any other project on the forum for a week or two, until it became obvious that the video was just a fake, and there was no game yet. Many of the serious developers felt bad, sseing that their hard work earned them less attention than a fake video from a guy who was just kidding the community.

That showed me, how important such things can be, if you want to attract people to your project.

[Duion]

If you make an open source game all by yourself in years of hard work, it still can look from the outside like something thrown together in Unity engine in a few days, using pre-made stuff from the asset-store.
The big game engines going pseudo-free is maybe the biggest reason that people leave open source engines and if there is no community left, they will not develop and will fall even more behind. You just get so much pseudo-free stuff now, no more need to do art, no more need to do coding, they give you a bit for free and the rest you can buy in their asset-store.

[charlie]

Then the question is: how to do marketing (without spending a ton of money)?

Create update logs (videos or blogs etc) on your website or forum of choice. Post those updates to popular sites and forums such as reddit or the ubuntu forums etc. It doesn't take long but it'll get many eyes on your updates. It is how I popularized Free Gamer.