uga team mailing list archive

["Compiled Kernel" <compiledkernel@xxxxxxxxx>]

Ok, Im going to try to digest this bit in pieces, slowly and by as
clear a means possible.

Firstly, by no means do I represent as a whole the vision of the
gaming community. Yes, ok, I admit at times I am very Stallman droid
in nature. Free gaming is just that, free gaming. I think the intent
however as a whole is not for the freedom of games, but more over the
open nature of such games. I believe the GPL will ultimately safe the
PC gaming industry. An industry mind you that right now, at least on
the MSFT side of things is failing quite miserably. Its almost ironic
that as Wine finally comes into its own right , the Windows gaming
world is on its way out. Now sure, I can make all the assumptions
about console gaming and what its doing blah blah blah (there are
thousands of arguments to this affect for sure), so im not going to go
near that at all.

I think its not that OSS games take so long to mature, its more of a
matter of how much work goes into them. For sure when a proprietary
developer like ID goes head long into development of a game, they do
their best (at least as far as I can see) to include the Linux gaming
model into the equation. Atari Games, not so much, as we have seen via
Icculus' great displeasure.

I think smaller groups of developers work because of the unified ideal
concept. Smaller groups tend to keep the unified thought flow going in
the direction the others think in. Larger groups of developers
however, create too many varying directions. In the end you end up
with a game title that has 20 different directions, and only a very
loosely based idea of how its played. So yes, Im certainly in favor of
smaller groupings of developers, over a larger set of people.

Traditional methods for learning how to code, and develop software is
a paramount hill that most anyone isnt capable of understanding. And
surely yes, after such a long and drawn process, its concievable that
the individual themselves may have become so jaded that they probably
wouldnt want to develop such software. Generally speaking this rule
applies to software development as a whole, not just gaming. What the
industry needs is a set of Visionaries that are actually capable of
getting the idea down. Finding someone to code you the interfaces,
models, and such isnt all that hard (if you have VC, and the
motivation to do so, and those around you share the same idea, then
your pretty much set). Do we need more? No. We need devs who are
already out there, that already develop software to start developing
in our arena. The sad thing about it is, that many devs sign
non-disclosure aggreements , etc. EA is merciless about stuff like
this, and most game dev houses arent any different. There are
exceptions, but not many.

Honestly I think the Indie gaming development stance period is the way
to go. Develop for all platforms. Do not develop for windows only to
bolster your linux gaming model on going forward. All platforms should
benefit equally, not using one to bolster another. Really I see PC
gaming going GPL and Indie, and its not far away.

My two cents so far, will probably be more later.



On Wed, Nov 19, 2008 at 12:44 PM, Chase Adams <chase@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> 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
>
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