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Gaming as a service...Gaming as a service...Posted Mar 6, 2008 1:40 UTC (Thu) by pizza (subscriber, #46)Parent article: Ryzom returns?
The thing that lots of people seem to miss is that MMOGs provide a service; maintaining a persistent game world for Massive numbers of users is a lot of work and carries some substantial hardware/bandwidth/management expenses entirely independent from the cost of development. While Free Software drives the cost of the latter towards zero, it has no effect on the price of hardware and bandwidth. Also, most FOSS software is "useful" first, but games are meant to be entertainment first, and it's a lot harder to justify donating your time for something that's fundamentally unimportant.
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Gaming as a service... Posted Mar 6, 2008 7:58 UTC (Thu) by ekj (subscriber, #1524) [Link] True. But so does maintaining a encyclopedia with 10 million articles in 200 languages that is among the top-10 visited destinations on the web. So we as a community are clearly capable of running projects which require substantial infrastructure. Besides, hardware keep getting cheaper. What was a beefy expensive server a few years ago is a cheap entry-level server today. A 1U dual-core 4GB bog-standard machine for like $2500 runs circles around the Dec Alpha "big iron" server we used to run a decade ago, and that machine was more like $100K
Gaming as a service... Posted Mar 6, 2008 15:54 UTC (Thu) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link] Hardware is getting cheaper, but the processing requirements of modern software is always increasing. Second, hardware costs is only part of the ongoing expense; people also tend to cost more over time. Wikipedia is a poor example, because there is actually a legal organization set up to deal with the administrative crap and ensuring the servers and bandwidth are paid for. Sure, they rely on a lot of volunteers for the actual encyclopaedia itself, but there is a very real (and dysfunctional) paid cabal behind the scenes.
Gaming as a service... Posted Mar 7, 2008 7:32 UTC (Fri) by ekj (subscriber, #1524) [Link] People cost more measured in -dollars-, but it's no harder for an individual to donate a dozen of his/her hours now than it was a decade or a century ago. Most Open Source games are overwhelmingly volunteer-run. Sure, there is a legal organization handling the ownership of WikiPedia hardware, hosting and so on. Somebody has to do it afterall. Firefox has the Mozilla Foundation. KDE is represented by KDE e.V in legal and financial matters. Gnome has the Gnome Foundation. Basically, any project will, when it reaches a certain size, need some kind of legal entity that is capable of doing stuff like having a bank-account and signing a contract. We handle this for hundreds of projects already. It's perfectly possible that a successful Free Software MMORPG would -ALSO- need some kind of legal entity to handle paperwork, finances etc, if so, we will make one. I don't see the problem. You underestimate the community severly if you, despite numerous examples to the contrary, believe that we are not capable.
Gaming as a service... Posted Mar 6, 2008 13:16 UTC (Thu) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091) [Link] There is actually no need to give the service for free. The article calls for free code, so the situation would be:
Gaming as a service... Posted Mar 6, 2008 15:59 UTC (Thu) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link] > The second option (free server code) is apparently our editor's desire, as evidenced in the first installment of this saga. I realize that it does not look too viable right now, but stranger things have happened. And as others have pointed out, the "code" (either client or server) is actually the least time-consuming part of game development. Design, art, and metadata effort is measured in the hundreds of man-years for modern A-list games. And that art isn't really re-usable in the same sense that code is.
Gaming as a service... Posted Mar 6, 2008 21:31 UTC (Thu) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091) [Link] Exactly! Free software with proprietary artwork is perfectly acceptable to many of us; after all this is not a "free culture" advocacy site. Such server and client code liberation would open further possibilities:
Gaming as a service... Posted Mar 6, 2008 21:59 UTC (Thu) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link] >If such a universal, free game engine would ever gain traction, studios might create their own games (or more exactly worlds), and charge for admission. It is a fun concept. I'm confused -- isn't this more or less what we have now? There's already quite a choice of game engines, even if you restrict yourselves to those that are Free Software. Anyone can build anything they want on top of any of those engines, and charge (or not) for admission. Granted, there's no "grand unified game engine" but I see that as a strength.
Gaming as a service... Posted Mar 6, 2008 22:21 UTC (Thu) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091) [Link] I'm confused -- isn't this more or less what we have now?It is, but only in the client space. And even if you can choose between different free 3D engines, they are not quite state-of-the-art: this field is advancing all the time. I'm not sure a big studio would want to commit itself to any of the free engines. On the server there seem to be not viable options. So, no massive multiplayer games can be free software. Granted, there's no "grand unified game engine" but I see that as a strength.I'm sure that this is a transitional phase. Depicting a more-or-less-physical world is a complex task and we are not getting there yet. It is like color films in the 40s and 50s -- there were many different technologies (Technicolor, Multicolor...) until the industry settled to a single format (Eastman Color). If ever there is a standard protocol for player-world interactions free software might even become the most popular choice.
Gaming as a service... Posted Mar 6, 2008 22:44 UTC (Thu) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link] > If ever there is a standard protocol for player-world interactions free software might even become the most popular choice. That is the key to everything else -- Technology is always advancing; with a standard protocol (that facilitates inter-world interaction) will come the true advances, and Free Software will be behind it all.
Gaming as a service... Posted Mar 6, 2008 20:55 UTC (Thu) by GreyWizard (subscriber, #1026) [Link] maintaining a persistent game world for Massive numbers of users is a lot of work and carries some substantial hardware/bandwidth/management expenses Distributions like Fedora and Debian require considerable management, hardware and bandwidth yet these problems get solved. Your claim that Wikipedia doesn't count because some people involved get paid is bizarre. Is the Linux kernel a bad example because Linus Torvalds and others get paid to work on it? There's a legal organization set up to deal with administrative issues for that too. Also, changing the subject to artwork and other non-code resources doesn't address the point that game services can cost money even if the software itself is free. Corbet is addressing the question of free software games in a thoughtful and constructive way. In contrast you seem to be making vague and implausible arguments to the effect that it just can't be done. What exactly are you trying to achieve? From here it appears that your goal is to discourage anyone from even trying.
Gaming as a service... Posted Mar 6, 2008 22:38 UTC (Thu) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link] > Also, changing the subject to artwork and other non-code resources doesn't address the point that game services can cost money even if the software itself is free. > Corbet is addressing the question of free software games in a thoughtful and constructive way. In contrast you seem to be making vague and implausible arguments to the effect that it just can't be done. What exactly are you trying to achieve? From here it appears that your goal is to discourage anyone from even trying. ...If the code is free but the art (presumably included in the "game services" you menioned) is not, how is this any different than what we have now? We already are in a situation where "game software" is free, both on the client and server. What remains non-free is the "game content" and that is also the most expensive part of game development, in part due to its general non-reusability. If I'm discouraging effort it's only because I'd rather that the effort go into something that is actually lacking.
Gaming as a service... Posted Mar 9, 2008 0:46 UTC (Sun) by GreyWizard (subscriber, #1026) [Link] how is this any different than what we have now? This question seems to have been adequately addressed by man_ls in one of the threads above. We already are in a situation where "game software" is free Some game software is free but most is not. I don't believe there's a good reason for that (with the possible exception of the 1% of mainstream games that truly push the boundaries of hardware performance -- and even 1% is probably overstating things). I think it's just culture and force of habit. Everyone would win if we could change that situation. Companies that make games could reuse solutions to problems outside their core competency and people who play games could do so on any platform they happen to like.
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