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Whither open source gaming?
In 2006, the open source movement has produced an excellent product in almost every field of software. Apache serves the majority of web sites on the internet, for its merit rather than any marketing factor. Open-source SQL databases can often meet or outperform industry heavyweights in enterprise applications. Office, Microsoft's old powerhouse, has a strong competitor in OpenOffice. Firefox is steadily gaining ground against Internet Explorer.
Even the most challenging of enterprise needs can be implemented with 100% open-source software. I can easily imagine high-end government or military projects running smoothly on linux with free software (I just can't imagine how to get the decision makers to resist the charms of the big corps).
And yet, there's a rather large field of software sticking out like a sore thumb. Virtually untouched by the open source movement (by the standards of the rest of the software world), the field of video gaming is still totally dominated by closed-source, with some of the toughest copyright protection around.
The gaming companies are getting bigger and bigger. The ones who aren't are dying. They all love the relative security of console development on their bottom line (a lot less game piracy), and they poo-poo computers because "the medium is dying". They giggle with delight when Microsoft promises them big bucks to shun Nintendo, Sony, and the PC for their latest game release, even though porting an Xbox game to PC is child's play.
Perhaps the problem lies in the method by which aspiring open-source gamers get into the business. In non-gaming software, people have an idea to write an app, and so they write an app. Maybe it gets big. Maybe it becomes the next Apache.
In the gaming world, people make mods. Same creative people, same programming skill (a lot of mediocre, a little good), but everything they make is not really their own. Their biggest hope isn't that their mod will be the next big thing. They hope their mod gets big...so they can become a "legitimate", closed-source, money-gobbling empire.
See, there's a major problem in the gaming world. Just look at any video game company's website and look at their job offerings. Programmer wanted: must have 5 years experience writing C++ for video games. Game designer wanted: must have designed x games. Artist: x years in gaming. Translator: x years...in gaming.
Sure, now that's just sensible. After all, the demand for those jobs exceeds the supply of workers, so the companies can be real picky. But all this really means is that it is impossible to break into the business. That the same few people are constantly being recycled. People split off from a company to make a new game, then they rejoin the company, or they go off on their own seeking a company to foster their great new idea.
Everyone just wants to be the next Will Wright, the next John Carmack. Video gaming is a world of bling, it's the hip-hop of software. Can you name the big-shot who came out of the Apache project? MySQL? Firefox? I can't name anyone who worked on those (I don't doubt there are those who can), but the products still exist, and the good people who work on them (not saints, but good people) keep their free (beer/speech/yadayada) software alive through desire to make a good and prosperous open-source product, not envy of the other guy's fishtank shoes and gold chains.
Now I'm sure there is a handful of open-source games out there. There are even some mainstream games that turn open-source, like Quake 1-3. But that's just the same thing as modding: the big guys allowing others to play, to a limited extent, with their closed-source software. There are no major, successful open-source games out there worth mentioning. No Apache of gaming.
Sure, game programming is hard. Game programming teams used to be a couple of guys who worked for a year, earning $100K between them and spending most of their capital just to ship the heavy cardboard boxes full of floppy disks and manuals. Now, they're teams of 90 people, few of them actual programmers, who spend years and years, and millions of dollars, making a mountainous shitload of 3d art, music, sounds, speech, content, marketing material, servers, web sites, and maybe a bit of programming in there. And most of these multi-million dollar projects are received tepidly by the gaming masses, since they're just another WWII shooter or Lineage clone.
But is modern game development any more difficult than writing a DBMS? An entire office suite?
So what gives? Are games really that much bigger than normal software? Sure, some games make a few million dollars. Big deal. I'm sure Microsoft boasts far greater revenue for their dreck.
You'd think game development, being the most desired field of programming, would attract the greatest number of open-source programmers, but this is hardly the case? Why do you suppose that is?
Even the most challenging of enterprise needs can be implemented with 100% open-source software. I can easily imagine high-end government or military projects running smoothly on linux with free software (I just can't imagine how to get the decision makers to resist the charms of the big corps).
And yet, there's a rather large field of software sticking out like a sore thumb. Virtually untouched by the open source movement (by the standards of the rest of the software world), the field of video gaming is still totally dominated by closed-source, with some of the toughest copyright protection around.
The gaming companies are getting bigger and bigger. The ones who aren't are dying. They all love the relative security of console development on their bottom line (a lot less game piracy), and they poo-poo computers because "the medium is dying". They giggle with delight when Microsoft promises them big bucks to shun Nintendo, Sony, and the PC for their latest game release, even though porting an Xbox game to PC is child's play.
Perhaps the problem lies in the method by which aspiring open-source gamers get into the business. In non-gaming software, people have an idea to write an app, and so they write an app. Maybe it gets big. Maybe it becomes the next Apache.
In the gaming world, people make mods. Same creative people, same programming skill (a lot of mediocre, a little good), but everything they make is not really their own. Their biggest hope isn't that their mod will be the next big thing. They hope their mod gets big...so they can become a "legitimate", closed-source, money-gobbling empire.
See, there's a major problem in the gaming world. Just look at any video game company's website and look at their job offerings. Programmer wanted: must have 5 years experience writing C++ for video games. Game designer wanted: must have designed x games. Artist: x years in gaming. Translator: x years...in gaming.
Sure, now that's just sensible. After all, the demand for those jobs exceeds the supply of workers, so the companies can be real picky. But all this really means is that it is impossible to break into the business. That the same few people are constantly being recycled. People split off from a company to make a new game, then they rejoin the company, or they go off on their own seeking a company to foster their great new idea.
Everyone just wants to be the next Will Wright, the next John Carmack. Video gaming is a world of bling, it's the hip-hop of software. Can you name the big-shot who came out of the Apache project? MySQL? Firefox? I can't name anyone who worked on those (I don't doubt there are those who can), but the products still exist, and the good people who work on them (not saints, but good people) keep their free (beer/speech/yadayada) software alive through desire to make a good and prosperous open-source product, not envy of the other guy's fishtank shoes and gold chains.
Now I'm sure there is a handful of open-source games out there. There are even some mainstream games that turn open-source, like Quake 1-3. But that's just the same thing as modding: the big guys allowing others to play, to a limited extent, with their closed-source software. There are no major, successful open-source games out there worth mentioning. No Apache of gaming.
Sure, game programming is hard. Game programming teams used to be a couple of guys who worked for a year, earning $100K between them and spending most of their capital just to ship the heavy cardboard boxes full of floppy disks and manuals. Now, they're teams of 90 people, few of them actual programmers, who spend years and years, and millions of dollars, making a mountainous shitload of 3d art, music, sounds, speech, content, marketing material, servers, web sites, and maybe a bit of programming in there. And most of these multi-million dollar projects are received tepidly by the gaming masses, since they're just another WWII shooter or Lineage clone.
But is modern game development any more difficult than writing a DBMS? An entire office suite?
So what gives? Are games really that much bigger than normal software? Sure, some games make a few million dollars. Big deal. I'm sure Microsoft boasts far greater revenue for their dreck.
You'd think game development, being the most desired field of programming, would attract the greatest number of open-source programmers, but this is hardly the case? Why do you suppose that is?
Comments
For all that, there are a number of them that do succeed. None as widely known as Apache, true, but quite good nonetheless.
The best I know of: Battle for Wesnoth
Despite this, here are tons of open source games out there in all genres. If you need examples, just look at the games in the package repository for any Linux distribution. Here are all the first person shooters available in Gentoo as an example.
The reason you don't know about these games is because most of them suck, relatively speaking. Without the resources, without the musicians and artists working full-time, without the ultra-powerful computers and without the development kits from NVidia and Ati, you just can't compete. Until game development becomes easier and cheaper, you won't see open source games in the limelight. Open source games now are better than closed-source games of 5 years ago. Put them in direct competition with the games of today, and they have no chance.
You probably would see some great open source games for Wii or DS, but not unless Nintendo opens up the dev kits. Homebrew kits just don't measure up to real development kits. Without real development kits the developers have to spend more time hacking the hardware than on making the games themselves.
Having said that, Cube is the premiere open source game out right now, and it's comparable to Quake3. Legends exists, but it's struggling to hold its candle up next to Tribes.
You might also like to know that Three Rings, the makers of Puzzle Pirates and Bang! Howdy, are big open sourcers. Their java-based engine Game Gardens is available for anyone to make games with. And since it's all java, their games work on all OSes.
One of the big advantages of open source is that there is a large body of work to take from. Hardly anyone writes the same code twice in the OSS world. Need an XML parser? Grab an open source XML library. Need a network stack? Grab one from another program. But for games, there is no large body of existing open source work to take from. Need a more advanced pixel shader? Gotta write it on your own. Need a realistic physics engine? Gotta write one on your own.
Game studios spend years making these things, and then keep them a secret from everyone else. Also, these are not things just anyone can do. You need a genius like John Carmack to figure out the ludicrously complex math required for that software. Even when you don't need a genuis, you need someone very smart, who probably has a full-time job and better things to do. For an HTTP daemon everything you need to know is written out in some RFC, no science required.
Working at a company like EA has a huge advantage in that you can use code from the old sports games in your new sports game. Every OSS game developer is starting from scratch. One day open source games might catch up to the rest of the gaming world, but it won't be anytime soon without some industry help.