FOSS Video Games

Danny Piccirillo danny.piccirillo at ubuntu.com
Thu Jul 24 20:22:51 BST 2008


Haha, thanks Martin!

On Thu, Jul 24, 2008 at 2:58 PM, Martin Owens <doctormo at gmail.com> wrote:

> > Well i see how FOSS games can be good, but i guess what i'm looking for
> is
> > why a company like EA, Ubisoft, Valve, etc. would want to make FOSS
> games.
> > How could they change their business model to profit from making FOSS
> games?
> > Games have become really advanced despite requiring a heavy investment in
> > coding and it seems the proprietary software model has worked very well
> for
> > games. Assuming games stay the way they do (install it and play it off
> your
> > computer) not any alternative that is online and played at conventions,
> how
> > could FOSS games be a successful business? Free software can be sold, but
> > most people will get the games for free, right?
>
> No you don't get it, it's not about supporting the current crop of
> game distributors. the likes of EA should die a horrible death in any
> fair system. They do none of the work and reap huge amounts of reward;
> the only thing they do is invest and if you have the population at
> large investing directly you have no need for EA and what they do
> becomes a total waste of resources and time.
>
> As for games producers like S2, Id and so on, these existing companies
> would have to radically change their business model and they couldn't
> do that unless the people change the way they buy things.
>
> Ultimately it's about people buying things. People should be buying
> the rights and investing in content but instead people are stuck in
> this Middle Age notion that nothing good can ever be publicly owned.
> Instead they buy games off the shelf in boxes that give them almost no
> rights.
>
> And then you get a whole crop of people who are leaches and their
> attitude is totally wrong, they take and give nothing back. Fine you
> can deal with them as their friends with social pressure, that's the
> way this has worked in the past; besides they're always going to be
> some like that.
>
> So to summarise, if you can cause a massive shift in the way people
> buy games, you can cause a massive shift in games (and other media
> (music/film/tv)) production.
>
> Best Regards, Martin Owens
>
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