uga team mailing list archive

[Chase Adams <chase@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hey all, I guess I'm on a roll here. I was reading Abras' commentary on 
the state of Linux gaming 
(http://gaming.gwos.org/doku.php/editorial:lgreality) -- its quite a 
good article. It got me thinking -- I've had a "plan" for linux gaming 
for some years now and never really had the chance to tell anyone.

Where do I start... People have tried to apply existing models to Linux, 
and they largely haven't worked. Linux users don't like buying stuff, 
and OSS games take a long long time to become mature enough to appreciate.

Based on that, the only real answer is to figure out something that 
isn't traditional, and try that out. I've personally come to center my 
focus on optimizing the process of making games, so here are my thoughts 
on that...

First of all, in what little project leadership experience I had before 
MirthKit, I learned that individuals are more productive in smaller 
groups -- and that's for a variety of reasons. People chat to each other 
less, but more importantly, its easier to for everyone to keep everyone 
else informed about what's going on.

That might not seem like a big deal, but I'd bet you that an individual 
working alone is about twice as productive as one working in a group of 
7 people -- this especially applies programmers. Thus, assuming an 
individual can scrape together all of the aspects of a game -- 
programming, design, content creation -- 7 people working independently 
will overall produce games twice as quickly compared to everyone working 
in a group. -- Those games will individually progress slower, and won't 
be as high quality (because each individual's specialties are only being 
put toward one game), but the overall rate will be much higher. Despite 
this, I think most developers won't feel comfortable working alone, so I 
think the ideal group size is two: one artist and one programmer.

Second, its a fact that younger people are more motivated than older 
people. The problem is that younger people need to learn a crap load of 
stuff before they can make games. I bet you there are a 100 million kids 
out there who proclaim "I want to make games" but then figure out that 
its hard as shit and never go through with it. Even out of the people 
who are motivated to learn how to program, it takes literally about four 
years to learn enough to make *your first game*. That needs to change, 
because after four years, people have all but lost their spark. Its 
important that real game development becomes accessible enough that 
these people can start making games in under a year after starting to 
learn. If that can happen, these particular people will make a lot of 
games, but also, they will have accomplishment and feel good enough to 
actually continue making games (as opposed to getting burnt out).

Between those two ideas, I think if they are carried through well 
enough, that they will present enough of an edge to produce games 
better. I think that catering to the Windows market while having games 
work in Linux also will be the best option, because it will drastically 
improve the sustainability of the developers, while at the very least 
making Linux credible as a game platform. -- On a side note, Linux 
already has a killer app -- it costs nothing -- that's why most people 
switch to it, and ultimately, I imagine it will slowly but surely take 
over the worlds' desktops because of that fact.

Also, I'd like to simply do a little spiel about MirthKit, since that's 
the implementation of my plan. The way I envision it, me/my company will 
act as a shepard for the app. I've considered making it open source, but 
its simply critical to my plan that it is kept both unified and funded 
-- as Ubuntu and Firefox have demonstrated, marketing is damn important 
for success even for OSS and marketing costs money. As it is, MirthKit's 
service charges are absolutely minuscule, so we are by no means shooting 
for profit from games sold through MirthKit. As a way of making 
MirthKit's developers/user get more power in its use, I'm considering 
setting up some kind of community council to help steer.

Hmmm ... I've run out of blabber. Tell me what you think. :)

-Chase