Il giorno ven, 24/04/2009 alle 04.33 -0400, Danny Piccirillo ha scritto: > The Ubuntu Gaming Team will work to address the obstacles hindering > growth in FOSS gaming such as the need for effective distributed > content management or significant investment in free content > development in order to promote FOSS gaming through Ubuntu and Ubuntu > through FOSS gaming. New ideas are encouraged and appreciated. >
[Please put me in CC when replying, I am not on list] A problem that I always thought of that may be a concurrent cause in this "lack of many high quality FOSS games" (but there are some very good ones) is that game production is mostly a creative business, more than a technical problem. The extreme proof of this is that you can code space invaders in one day, but space invaders will last forever :) When one writes a story, and creates characters, designing the game and determining its playability, last and so on, at some point there is a full stop. The game goes for production. And there is no need of the FOSS philosophy to improve the story or the characters: users need to enjoy a finalised product, not a constantly evolving one; imagine if the playability of Doom, or mortal kombat, had changed _in the same version of the game_. There would have been no myth at all, no person learning secret skills and becoming a god of the game. This problem is in common with novel writing, and with music. For the former, in fact, we have exactly the same problem: the majority of good books are not FOSS. The problem here is that the FOSS model does not "pay back": you don't need the work of other people, and it is even better if you work alone; I rarely saw good novels written by more than one author. Therefore, if FOSS is not paying back, somebody else should! For books, that's a problem. For music, it is very different. Live exhibitions make room for a new market, where the recordings are given out for free, but people strives to see the live artists. IMHO, this is one of the reasons why in the hit parade of Jamendo you find music which is of _much higher quality_ than your typical hit parade: people on Jamendo needs music that is good for live exhibitions, that is, good music. So, why did I write this e-mail? The question is: suppose we were in an ideal world where many game engines are FOSS, and you just need to exploit your creativity and talent to get a game done. And your money for live captures, graphic artists and so on. I personally think this time we actually live in the ideal world. How do you think game writers may be encouraged to spend a lot of time on creating a professional quality game? How are they going to be repaid? Vincenzo _______________________________________________ Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~ubuntu-gaming Post to : [email protected] Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~ubuntu-gaming More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp
