Open Game Company

[zarfius]

I was day dreaming the other day and I came up with an interesting concept. Although, it may not be realistic I thought I'd share it anyway.

The idea would be to setup a website that drives development of a game in a similar way to how a game company would drive it. The main difference would be that it's all open source including all of the assets.

So, the idea would be to break the project up into lots of little tasks for programmers, artists, sound engineers, and so on. Then an artist or programmer comes along and picks a task and assigns it to themselves. Once they've completed it they give the asset / code back to the community and it's one step closer to completing an actual game.

Why would anyone want to do this? Well, for the same reasons people join any open source project. To learn and share knowledge. Code could be used by other programmers to learn how to implement each of the features of a game in a real world situation.

Artists could retain the copyright on there work so they can sell it, with the upside of knowing that the work has been used in a real game.

So how would this be any different to the hundreds of other open source games? Well, being an open source game company it could still have commercial intentions. Sell the end result and put the money back into the community itself. Perhaps, have paid memberships to the website and when the game makes money the funds are distributed back to the people who created it.

I know it's a pretty far out idea and has lots of flaws, but I'd be interested to know if anyone thinks it could be done?

[Klaim]

A good dev team is like a good rock band. You cannot ask for random people to come and have something working in the end.
There have to be some kind of core team driving the project.
As the quality of the team really makes the quality of the product, sorting open source participation can make things even harder to manage than in a company.

Nice dream anyway.

[lonewolff]

I agree 100% with Klaim.

I have tried a similar kind of thing. And after a couple of years have nothing to show for the effort. Everyone wants to be the 'Hero' and do it their way and there is no real agreeance on what the objective is.

A proper (small) dev team is definately the way to go.

[zarfius]

Everyone wants to be the 'Hero' and do it their way and there is no real agreeance on what the objective is.

Heh, yeh. This was the kind of thing I thought might happen. You even see this to some degree within a company.

I wonder then what makes a good open source project work (like.. ummm.. Ogre) compared with a not so good 'never get out of alpha stage' project. I suppose when it comes down to it all successful open source projects are primarily driven by a small core team anyway.

[DanielSefton]

Projects like Ogre do well because it's a library that's in the interest of everyone, who use it for their own benefit.

Also agree with the close-knit small team. Having a few team members in the same room, bouncing ideas off each other and knowing exactly what everyone is doing, is priceless. But of course, that's mostly only for commercial/closed source ventures.

It's not impossible to pull off your idea, but you'd need to have a robust design and know exactly what you want. For example, OpenFrag (an open source shooter) development lasted years, but didn't get far and eventually failed because it had no direction (just using that as an example, I don't know the in and outs)

The other problem is communication, you'll get a group of people together on the Internet, and suddenly someone drops out and disappears. Even worse if they were working on something, because it would be difficult to pick up their thought processes. Eventually all of your original team will have left, to be replaced with new team members, who know nothing about the vision of the project, etc.

I'm guessing the guy from Project Wish would know most about this.

[steven]

Check this thread http://www.ogre3d.org/forums/viewtopic. ... 7&p=362987 you will find some insights about this subject.

Everyone wants to be the 'Hero' and do it their way and there is no real agreeance on what the objective is.

Yep biggest problem.

[zarfius]

Check this thread viewtopic.php?f=5&t=53427&p=362987 you will find some insights about this subject.

I just read through this thread and found myself thinking this looks kinda familiar. Then I realised I made some points in it myself.. lol.

Here's a summary of some of the points made:
- On the surface people do actually like the idea of open game projects
- People don't want to spend countless doing things without reward
- The tools are a big part of it
- A lot of the projects are creating "generic" solutions for everyone rather than being focused on a specific game.
- There's lots of "reinventing the wheel"

I noticed you are the guy behind OGE steven. Maybe if the above problems could be solved you could ressurect the project?

[bvanevery]

I wonder then what makes a good open source project work (like.. ummm.. Ogre) compared with a not so good 'never get out of alpha stage' project.

War stories...

I think it's worth noting that historically, there have been many, many open source 3D engine projects. Almost all of them have failed, in the sense of long term commercial relevance. Ogre survived and thrived somehow, kudos to them, however they did it. My point is, from 10,000 miles up, you would rightly expect the vast majority of such projects to fail, as that's what's actually happened, and will probably always continue to happen. One might be inclined to see Ogre as an exceptional project in this regard... but instead, could it be a sort of historical accident? Just as hundreds of projects must fail, one must succeed? Like scattering acorns into the grass, one of them grows up to become an oak tree. Most rot away or are eaten by squirrels. And now that Ogre is more of an oak tree, it overshadows other open source 3d engine projects, so they are not as likely to grow. I'm not saying that's Ogre's "fault," I'm saying that's how the open source ecology probably works. There are only going to be so many successful open source projects in a particular problem space at any given time.

Some things I've noticed that stunt open source projects:

• people are not getting paid. That's the big one. Most of the time, the developers realize they're not in college anymore, they have to pay their own bills, and that volunteer open source will eventually make them starve.
• Related: when people aren't getting paid, they usually don't put as much effort into things, and aren't afraid of being fired / losing their job. They only work on the fun stuff instead of what's important to be done. If interpersonal problems arise, they pick up their toys and go home.
• people think they have an infinite amount of time to get stuff done "because it's open source." Reality is, they don't. Being alive and eating costs money over time. If things don't get done, people will lose focus, and life pressures will cause them to move on to more tangibly rewarding projects.
• the development lead is an ogre
• the development lead doesn't care that much about usability, documentation, builds, packaging, distros, demos, tutorials, SDKs, etc. Hard for a project to grow if other people have a hard time making the code do something.
• the development lead only cares about Unix or Windows. It won't hurt a small to mid-size project, in fact it's probably better to ignore cross-platform concerns initially. But at a certain point of project maturity, it needs to go cross-platform to gain more relevance. Otherwise the project remains "small time."

[zarfius]

Ogre survived and thrived somehow, kudos to them, however they did it. My point is, from 10,000 miles up, you would rightly expect the vast majority of such projects to fail, as that's what's actually happened, and will probably always continue to happen. One might be inclined to see Ogre as an exceptional project in this regard... but instead, could it be a sort of historical accident? Just as hundreds of projects must fail, one must succeed? Like scattering acorns into the grass, one of them grows up to become an oak tree. Most rot away or are eaten by squirrels. And now that Ogre is more of an oak tree, it overshadows other open source 3d engine projects, so they are not as likely to grow. I'm not saying that's Ogre's "fault," I'm saying that's how the open source ecology probably works.

I think this is a pretty cynical view of why an open source project might succeed. You are basically saying that it's completely random and any one of the projects could have just as easily succeeded at the flip of a coin.

I'd prefer to think that it is a result of a lot of hard work, dedication and motivated people.

There are only going to be so many successful open source projects in a particular problem space at any given time.

I do however agree that there can only be so many dominant projects in a particular problem space. It would be very difficult to compete with such a mature project because you'd have to create a superior project in a very short time and somehow convince people that it's so much better it's worth changing.

Some things I've noticed that stunt open source projects:

All of the other points you made are really good and make a lot of sense. I'd like to add the fact that it's very easy to start an open source project, and just as easy to abandon one. You've clearly answered why people DON'T do open source projects. The question then becomes:

Why DO people do open source projects?

[_tommo_]

I think this is a pretty cynical view of why an open source project might succeed. You are basically saying that it's completely random and any one of the projects could have just as easily succeeded at the flip of a coin.

I'd prefer to think that it is a result of a lot of hard work, dedication and motivated people.

Unfortunately from the "10,000 miles up" point of view, having hard working, dedicated and motivated peoples in the same team IS a flip of a coin in open source.
And that's exactly why most projects fail.

Then in the terms of the single project we can discuss of the merits of the team, but most projects go on from the start with the wrong premises.

[zarfius]

having hard working, dedicated and motivated peoples in the same team IS a flip of a coin in open source.

Having hard working, dedicated and motivated people in the same team is a flip of a coin in any project, commercial or open source. The only difference is that commercial projects tend to have a lot more money to throw at those people keeping them interested longer. Your certainly right though, putting together a good team is easier said than done.

[syedhs]

Projects like Ogre do well because it's a library that's in the interest of everyone, who use it for their own benefit.

Personally, I think the single most important factor why Ogre do well is because our Mr Sinbad here is talented and dedicated to ensure that Ogre is well designed with good performance, and he also work hard to ensure that there is a major release every year.

So with that in mind, if you are looking to create something like 'Open Game Company' - start with yourself first, have a clear vision why yours are worth it (compared to others). You have to be prepared with working alone for the initial few years though.. most likely it will be like that. Until the result speak itself...

[zarfius]

Personally, I think the single most important factor why Ogre do well is because our Mr Sinbad here is talented and dedicated to ensure that Ogre is well designed with good performance, and he also work hard to ensure that there is a major release every year.

Yay to that!

So with that in mind, if you are looking to create something like 'Open Game Company' - start with yourself first, have a clear vision why yours are worth it (compared to others). You have to be prepared with working alone for the initial few years though.. most likely it will be like that. Until the result speak itself...

It seems obvious when you put it like that. After a few years working on it alone though, you might find that it's worth making it a "Closed Game Company" after all.. lol

Let's take this scenario:
- a programmer is developing "space invaders" and needs a 3D model of a "spaceship"
- an artist wants to create a 3D model to sell or use in his portfolio.

It's pretty obvious that if these two talented people meet they could fullfill each others goals. The artist could create the 3D model of a spaceship and the programmer could implement it into the game. Everyone's happy right

Unfortuntaly, things don't really work this way. There are websites (http://www.turbosquid.com/) where artist's can sell 3D models to programmers, but they don't really "fit" together very well. Most of the time, programmers have a lot of trouble finding suitable 3D models and end up trying to create there own, finding a friend to help or simply giving up.

The point of the open game company idea was more to do with filling this gap by bringing together like minded people to focus on the same goal of creating a game. It seems to make more sense to do it this way because artist's wouldn't be creating random bits and peices in the hope someone will buy them.

To put it another way, there are loads of assets that turn up in games really often.. crates, barrels, bottles, bricks, baskets, wall and floor textures, bullet holes, sky's, explosions, blood, etc. Many of these are not difficult to create but have you ever tried to find these on the internet? It's surpisingly difficult. I for one would be happy to pay a few bucks for assets like these.