Lisa Hoover wrote: > Hi Zachary, > > Thanks for your quick response, my apologies that it took so long for me > to get back to you. Here are a few questions for you (please also let me > know how you'd like to be attributed in the article): Zachary J. Slater, creator of ioquake3.org, gameqablog.com, timedoctor.org, icculus.org/lgfaq/ and editor at linuxgames.com > 1) Do you think open source games can compete with commercially-produced > games? Why/why not? Open source games have an unfortunate problem when competing with commercial games. The talent working on the project has no daily commitment out of necessity to the project, so when a full-time job conflicts, the project always suffers as a result. This happens to just about every interesting open-source game and is the reason why there are so many almost-interesting games which simply lack polish. So for these reasons I think open-source games will always be at a disadvantage, they just can't compete with paying work. However, there is an interesting benefit open-source games have. For example, if Freeciv were a boxed retail product, it would certainly be more polished and pretty, but it would also not experience much upkeep post-ship. Instead, Freeciv, as an open-source game, has had many years of development time put into it, and enjoys bug fixes and improvements long after an initial wave of marketing has crested. The availability of source brings another important bonus, too: as the game gets ported, Freeciv will continue to entertain new players on new platforms. If I were so inclined, I could rejigger the game to run on my GP2X Linux-based handheld game console. Compare this with people demanding an Xbox/PS3/Wii version of their favorite title; you don't need market demand, you just need a talented individual with some free time. > 2) What's more common: embellishing existing free and/or commercial > games by adding levels, etc or producing entirely new games? Why? I believe there are many people modding and creating compelling content for free and commercial games. However it is difficult to say how many create new games. There are a lot of Tetris and Pong clones out there... As to which is more common, I would have to say modding. It's a lower barrier to entry. In the past, all that was required to create a level for a game were the tools shipped with it. However, creating levels and modifications for games is becoming more difficult as the art assets required are more difficult to produce. Producing a level for ioquake3 is significantly easier than doing the same for Doom 3. > 3) As more people migrate to Linux-based operating systems, what impact > do you think that will have on the gaming community? What does the > future of gaming hold for Linux users? I think that Linux gaming will be in a sad state until we reach a tipping point of usage, where Dell sees that statistically-significant demand for Ubuntu has transformed into a non-negotiable requirement. This is quite unfortunate when people are being driven to emulators like WINE and Transgaming's dishonorable fork of Wine, Cedega. This year, for example, I can think of two major possible native game releases to expect. Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, from our friends at id software, and possibly Unreal Tournament 3 from Epic. Both of these are probably the biggest titles we'll see. There are also three likely titles from Linux Game Publishing (.com) this year, with another two unannounced possible releases from them as well. Even if you discount every PC game that doesn't have a "Games for Windows" logo on it, that's not an impressive list. > 4) Why has gaming on Linux historically been such a challenge? In the commercial sector, a split in methods is chief among the problems. There are the porting houses, the internal ports, and the emulator groups. Each produces a different end product, with different quality and delivery speed. This is confusing to the end user, and largely sales lag behind that of their Windows counterparts. Porting houses like Linux Game Publishing and the now-defunct Loki paid publishers to acquire the rights and release a finished boxed product, which they then must still pay royalties on. This is the highest quality you can achieve when a company like LGP does it. The porting house must also pay their own developers who ported it, of course, and finance post-release support. There can be an enormous amount of overhead involved in doing even one game through this method. The finished product must then be sold to consumers through retailers like tuxgames.com, who have their own overhead, etc. I personally prefer boxed Linux versions of games; with this method, despite the expense, the end result is of the highest quality. The second process, and the only other one that produces a high quality product is when a developer ports the game internally or contracts out the porting, and then releases a native Linux binary. Neverwinter Nights, and series like Quake, Doom and Unreal have all been done this way. They're rare and they're good generally, though we definitely won't be seeing another game ported from Bioware after Neverwinter. A variation on that theme is when the source to a game is released, and then maintained by the community like in my ioquake3.org project. The important thing to note here is that generally the art/data files are still required for play, which is also confusing for end-users. The third process is emulation, which comes in various forms, regardless of what the creator of these emulators call it. This is outright damaging to the potential for native ports, which are the only way we can ever prove ourselves as a market for commercial games. Otherwise, we're Linux users buying Windows products, as far as the publishers are concerned. Unfortunately most people resort to emulation and end up with a poor version of the game that works merely as a coincidence in many cases. Any patches to games, especially with MMORPGS, can and frequently do break the emulation. Open-source games thrive on Linux, and face few of the challenges that are presented to commercial games. The main problem they see is how frustrating it is to manage a team that is under no obligation to show up. It takes leadership qualities that many people don't have interest in. Lots of people don't want to be managers, they want to be coders. > 5) What advice would you give to people considering developing an open > source game? Start off by evaluating your goals, make a timeline, stick to it. Make at least a proof of concept and make sure your team will actually stick with it. Don't ignore Windows or OS X, open-source doesn't mean Linux only. Don't just use portable libraries, code and design portably. For instance if you want your game to be able to run on smaller devices, don't use OpenGL and force 1024x768 resolution. Make sure and borrow code where possible, there are a few good open-source game engines out there. Credit where you got it from, don't assume data is licensed GPL like code. > 6) Is there anything else you'd like to add? Sure, have fun :) > Thanks for taking the time to answer these questions. One other quick > thing: can you recommend someone who is developing an open source game > that might be willing to chat with me? > > Thanks, > Lisa I'll keep an eye out and ask around. Thank you. -- - Zachary J. Slater zakk@timedoctor.org zacharyslater@gmail.com