Great discussion on the list these past few days. It is very gratifying to
see the clash of ideas, and despite some heated arguments, I haven't yet
been tempted to ask anyone to "cool it". Good job of self-moderation.
I think we'll see some truly Free Games come a year or two. That is, games
or settings built entirely from the ground up based on Open Game content.
And those materials will probably feature some of the richest and fastest
evolving parts of the Open Gaming development effort. There may not be a
lot of commercial development in these products directly, but they may have
substantial spin off value.
I also think we'll see a lot of hybrid products where a publisher combines a
closed plot or setting with Open Game Content to make a useable product. In
the long run, I expect that this use of the Open Gaming concept will provide
the necessary market force to make Open Gaming a viable strategy for
commercial development.
And we'll certainly see products that keep Open Game Content to an absolute
minimum; simply using the available material developed by others as a cheap
and easy way to bypass a product design and test cycle. Frankly, I think
this type of product will comprise the bulk of Open Gaming offerings for
quite some time.
And I don't think there is anything ethically or morally wrong with any of
those approaches.
Open Gaming is >not< about "giving back to the community", just as Open
Source/Free Software is not about "giving back to the community". Both
engines of development are fired by an interest on the part of developers to
improve an existing process, yes; but both are also driven forward by people
who just want to >use< the fruits of that labor.
Open Gaming is about making better games. And about making it easier to
find people to play games with by standardizing rules and promoting "best
practices". The value isn't in the design, the value is in the joy of play,
of community, of intellectual challenge.
Each of the three types of products contributes something vital to this
process. The mostly Open development projects will provide an
uncompromising forum for rules evolution, just as the active Linux community
provides an uncompromising forum for OS development. The hybrid Open/Closed
products will provide commercial proof in the form of sales to help guide
the whole community, and at the same time will do substantial development on
their own that enriches the whole. And the mostly Closed, partially Open
projects will do no harm, and may help the overall effort simply by
spreading the word.
"Open" development projects succeed or fail, in the long term, by
demonstrating improvement and iterative development. And that is why, after
an initial period of learning how to use this new tool, the Mostly Open
community will probably produce the work with the widest application and the
biggest impact - because that work will be innovating faster than the other
approaches.
One of the great things about this kind of an economy is that very little
work is wasted. Even in the most stingy Closed vs. Open project, there is a
chance that someone, somewhere will receive such a project, be exposed to
the license, and seek out the larger community and begin contributing -
enriching everyone simply through adding more brain cells to the mix.
Standing here at the starting gate, we would be foolish to scare away anyone
intent on walking this path with us, regardless of how far the intend to
travel >today<. As we take each step on this journey, we will all be
learning new things about the way our market works, what people really want
from their games, and how we can all learn to share information and describe
our ideas effectively. That process is the real value and the real point of
Open Gaming. Our watchword should be "inclusive", and our strategy should
be to embrace, not reject, anyone with the slightest interest.
Ryan
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For more information, please link to www.opengamingfoundation.org
