by c_xong » 18 Aug 2017, 09:58
I agree that for most FOSS games, it's better (i.e. more realistic) not to aim for AAA quality assets. But yes, even if you skimp on assets, it's hard to make a good game, as it takes time and talent.
The games industry is very mature these days; that is, there is no shortage of game developers, so there's hardly any underserved market niche to take advantage of, and FOSS game developers face a lot of competition whatever they do.
So I don't think it's as simple as saying, "don't worry about assets, just focus on gameplay", because guess what, for every one FOSS game developer doing that, there's maybe 100, or 1000 indie developers doing the same. And unlike the FOSS dev who's doing it in his spare time, the indie developer might be doing this as a full time job.
I still think the ace up our sleeves is the collaborative, bazaar development model. This is one thing the proprietary world can't do easily (well they can do mods, but modders are always second class citizens as long as they don't own the IP). So do whatever it takes to make FOSS games hackable, easy to extend and easy to mod. That is:
- Make the game moddable/extendable, so that developers can contribute to the game even if they don't share the same creative vision
- Make the game fun to hack. For example, roguelikes have traditionally been pretty attractive to devs, as there's some interesting PCG algos to play with
All that is easier said than done. Moddable games take more work than those that have everything hardcoded. Games are inherently creative so people are going to disagree a lot on game design. I mean, when was the last time you tried to collaborate on someone else's FOSS game, and then for whatever reason, gave up and went back to hacking at your own game? I have, many times. Those reasons are all reasons why FOSS game developers don't collaborate with each other, and are hard problems to solve.
What can help? I think game engines like Godot can help, by solving all the tricky architectural/engine problems. I think having things like shared worlds can help people build good stories without doing all the hard work of coming up with lore. I think projects like SDL, Tiled, and all sorts of middleware help to make it easier for FOSS developers (and all developers in general). But it's still going to be harder for FOSS devs to compete with the legions of established proprietary devs.
Last edited by
c_xong on 19 Aug 2017, 06:07, edited 1 time in total.