[arcturus17]

How would the devs pay their bills?

I don’t think games are well adapted to open source. For starters, it’d be very hard to build an adjacent business like Red Hat, and there are very significant time and capital requirements even for smallish projects.

These might be the reasons why the model never caught on like it did for generalist software.

[mikepurvis]

> I don’t think games are well adapted to open source.

Not as end products, but it's pretty insane how much is available these days as far as free engines and tooling. Both in terms of beer (UE4 is free for all but the most successful of projects) and libre (Godot, LÖVE, loads of others).

There are also tons of classic games that have been rebuilt from their assets as modern open source engines: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_game_engine_recreation...

And, finally, there are also a small number of pure OSS labour-of-love titles, like the incredibly ambitious 0ad: https://play0ad.com/

None of this really disputes the notion that commercial game development is not (and has never really been) well suited to open source development. But it's nonetheless interesting to look at how these things have evolved over time.

[hutzlibu]

In an ideal world, people give back freely, when they received freely and think it was worth it and want to see more of it, in the future.

In todays world most people only give, if they have to.

[kebman]

In an ideal world, you'd always get a fair exchange for whatever you gave away. Currently money seems to be the most versatile. I remember I rented a room from a friend. He told me that his grandfather got a 100 year lease on that apartment, with an option to buy. He never did, since the lease was incredibly low. Paying for something isn't always unfair.

[kingkawn]

You cannot moralize against people for being human.

Find a way to work with us as we are rather than condemn us for not being as you can imagine.

[hutzlibu]

So you think, your specific set of habits and ethics is hardcoded to humanity in general?

I doubt so, because I know enough people who act the way, I like people to act.

In other words, I try to find a way to work towards change in culture. History shows that can be done and has been done multiple times. Every succesful open source project is a step towards that. Wikipedia is a step towards it. Blender. Inkscape. LibreOffice. Linux. VLC. And so on. I believe and hope we improve in that direction.

[GuB-42]

None of them are games.

There are some open source games but they tend to be more like engines than proper games, or are very niche. Some rather popular example:

- Nethack: Maybe the most "complete" open source game I can think of, if you like ASCII characters for graphics.

- Freeciv: The engine is original, but the game logic and assets are a complete ripoff.

- Stepmania: a DDR clone, useless without user contributed (and often illegal) songs.

- SCUMMVM: that's an engine, not a game

There are also plenty of smaller games, some of them of playable but they tend to be at "school project" level. Well below the standards for popular indie games.

As for OpenDiablo2, it is yet another engine, not a game.

I think the open source model can make good engines, because everyone can pick it up and contribute the few features they want, allowing for gradual improvement that the original developers can benefit from.

But for a complete game, you usually need a more global approach, and a lot of work making assets, open sourcing will probably benefits your competitors more than you: once your game is complete, there is little need for you to take advantage of the work of others.

[anthk]

In Freeciv the assets are NOT a ripoff. I know Freeciv since the GTK1 days.

- Battle for Wesnoth. HOMM3 quality level. Not so niche.

- XConq. Zillons of campaigns, old and with a good quality.

- Flightgear. Impressive data and models.

- Lincity/Lincity-NG. Lincity is old and amazing.

- Supertuxkart.

- Supertux. With the extra campaigns you have a long, really long game with a solid gameplay.

- FreedroidRPG.

- Foobillard.

- FreeOrion.

- GNUChess + the GUI you like most.

[sildur]

Battle of Wesnoth

Glest

The Ur-Quan masters

Neverball

Beneath a Steel Sky

Alien Arena

Armagetron Advanced

Wing Commander (not sure about the name, played it a long time ago)

Endgame: Singularity

All of those are really good free software games that I played myself. There are a lot more, but I have not played them so I don’t really know how good or bad they are.

[hutzlibu]

Tuxcart is a game I would add to that list, which is in a very mature state. My niece and nephews play it and have fun.

[cycloptic]

>open sourcing will probably benefits your competitors more than you

Solution: don't have competitors, make a unique product. You don't even have to find a niche to do this.

[kingkawn]

No, you’ve misinterpreted me to make it easier to make your same point again.

We can change all kinds of directions, in all kinds of ways.

But not through condemnation and high minded judgement. If it did anything at all it would’ve worked by now.

[hutzlibu]

I interpreted your statement as "humans are the way they are face it. So they will always give only, when they have to."

Which I don't believe is true. And you apparently neither. So lets call it a misunderstanding.

And yes, I also do not believe, that anyone changes by moral judgment. I certainly did not became a free software activist by reading RMS moral codex. I became it, by listening to inspiring people in my university. By the local linux groups who spend their free time, to help other people. By reading about and using free software. To the point, where I thought, yes, this really makes sense. The world would be such a better place if open source would be the default. Not just for software, but also hardware. Medicine. Knowledge in general.

Utopian? Maybe, but still worth working towards it. And even if the default of the industry will be IP-restricted forever - what has been achieved so far, is very useful already today.

[kebman]

If you work for free, I'd love for you to take a shot at my project! :D Nope, there's nothing in it for you, except the feeling of JOY to work on my plan on taking over the world.

[0x8BADF00D]

That’s not entirely true.

“Every Man Lives By Exchanging” means that everyone is constantly giving and taking in an exchange. That exchange can be free monetarily or not, doesn’t matter.

It’s only when third parties interfere with this natural law that some people take way more than they give.

[sdoering]

> It’s only when third parties interfere with this natural law that some people take way more than they give.

So if I read correctly you are saying, that nobody ever took more than he gave if not for a third party interfering? And that this is a law of nature?

Because if that actually is your claim I would love to read the evidence on that. Having studied history, I very much doubt that ver being the case. Also archeological evidence as far as I am aware of doesn't corroborate your words.

[magicalhippo]

While I mostly agree, there could be two ways:

Upfront crowd funding ala KickStarter.

Monthly subscription ala Patreon for new features, assets etc.

Could very well be a combination of the two, starting out with some KickStarter then going through an "eternal alpha" via Patreon.

Of course lots of potential issues with this, like people rebranding and pretending to be devs, taking donations for themselves etc. But in theory it could possibly work.

[kebman]

> How would the devs pay their bills?

Why, they'd offer consulting for a fee, of course! On such things as how to most effectively level your char, or perhaps they'd sell you a neat yet overpriced user manual that they wrote for their free software, or perhaps they'd offer printed maps for a price. :D

Jokes aside, there are loads of ways to earn money off free software, though usually you'd have to accept competition. I agree that it's probably not viable for a game, however, though there are some open source game projects out there, such as UFO:AI.[1]

[1]: https://ufoai.org/wiki/About

[devit]

1. Open source the client but not the assets

2. Open source the client and the assets but not the server

3. After a delay, open source everything but still charge for playing on the official server where there is already a thriving community

Although there is not necessarily much of a benefit.

[marcosdumay]

Minecraft made a killing from what I think was going directly to #3.

But it's easy to see how that isn't a great option for Blizzard.

[stonemetal12]

D2 could have come with a source directory and a make file then been sold just the same way it was. If they were woried about how it would effect priacy they could have added the source directory in a patch a year later.

[Rampoina]

I don't understand how this is not the obvious answer. Maybe people are equating open source with an open development model?

[dmos62]

In an ideal world, they would have found a way. I feel like the "ideal world" cue didn't communicate as effectively as I expected that this is fantasy realm.

[cyberdrunk]

What's the point of bringing up some imaginary world that has no way of materializing?

[seba_dos1]

Games are actually pretty well adapted to open source (well, unless anti-cheating solutions are required, but most games don't need that). Releasing the game's code as FLOSS doesn't prevent the art assets from being sold in order to be able to play the game and there are plenty of examples that followed this model, either at release or some time after.