| |||||||||||||
The state of Linux gamingThe state of Linux gamingPosted Oct 7, 2010 18:56 UTC (Thu) by iabervon (subscriber, #722)In reply to: The state of Linux gaming by dgm Parent article: The state of Linux gaming
I'd say that developing a game is often like writing a work of fiction. That's not to say that community participation isn't possible, but it does mean that it's not the same sort of interaction.
Open source developers can write KOffice, but it would be crazy to have KDE manage the documents that people write in KOffice. Wikipedia works on a very different development process from MediaWiki. Open source can provide the game engine and could provide the world and environment in which games could take place, but playing a game involves consuming content which is established as "canon", and that's inherently a process that's append-only once something is established.
Of course, there are also games which have little content and a lot of structure, like Street Fighter, Tetris, or Go. These work well for open source development. And there are sorts of content-heavy games where the tool support is sufficient that authors can take turns writing and releasing their games, which can be closed-source releases for portable open-source platforms. But there is, in general, something different going on from what happens when people write applications.
(Log in to post comments)
The state of Linux gaming Posted Oct 7, 2010 19:17 UTC (Thu) by michaeljt (subscriber, #39183) [Link]
> I'd say that developing a game is often like writing a work of fiction. That's not to say that community participation isn't possible, but it does mean that it's not the same sort of interaction.
As someone involved in amateur drama, I would think that community participation ought to work well. You just need your equivalent of the director, who provides the overall artistic direction and makes sure that everyone's contributions come together to form a consistent whole. (I have also taken part in productions with no director, in which everyone shared that responsibility, but that is a much greater challenge.)
> Open source developers can write KOffice, but it would be crazy to have KDE manage the documents that people write in KOffice.
Not quite sure what you mean by that. I would love to see KOffice limited to the actual editing, with all else pushed to other KDE components (open this document, manage recent documents, whatever) but that is probably not what you had on your mind.
The state of Linux gaming Posted Oct 7, 2010 19:50 UTC (Thu) by iabervon (subscriber, #722) [Link] As someone involved in amateur drama, I would think that community participation ought to work well. It's not that a community can't do it. But you don't incorporate audience feedback into a production once it opens. The community you start with does a particular production, and the audience can join for the next production. So an open source game community is like a theater troupe, rather than like the cast of a single production; your new energy mostly gets directed to the next episode. Open source developers can write KOffice, but it would be crazy to have KDE manage the documents that people write in KOffice. By this, I meant that, when you write a story in KOffice, the KDE team doesn't decide whether to reject or accept the changes you're making to your paper. They provide the tools for you to edit your content, and the content is under your exclusive control. With a game, what the player often gets is something like a story embedded in KOffice. After playing the game, the player might sensibly fix the functional aspects (similar to fixing KOffice to make it more pleasant to read your story) but it doesn't make so much sense to change the content aspects.
The state of Linux gaming Posted Oct 7, 2010 20:11 UTC (Thu) by michaeljt (subscriber, #39183) [Link]
> It's not that a community can't do it. But you don't incorporate audience feedback into a production once it opens. The community you start with does a particular production, and the audience can join for the next production. So an open source game community is like a theater troupe, rather than like the cast of a single production; your new energy mostly gets directed to the next episode.
Right, I take your point. That is not always strictly true of course, as you may well put on subsequent shows after the first run, and since that usually means replacing the half of the cast who are no longer available, you can also end up reworking the production quite a bit. It is still a very controlled feedback though of course.
|
|||||||||||||