http://www.octdev.com/tyr/ ~ Tyr Project
Just begun. If you're really interested in "open game development" check it out. Might be what you're looking for.

"The human mind is limited only by the bounds which we impose upon ourselves." -iNfuSeD

[edited by - iNfuSeD on October 20, 2002 11:39:12 PM]

quote: Original post by Hase
@henrikb:
I´ve had a look at you board, while I still think that the idea might be useful, at least for gathering ideas, there are some problems there: First, your categories seem rather arbitrary and incomplete, mixing important issues with minor ones, there isn´t much of an overall structure...

Yes, but the categories are just meant as examples, and the choice of categories to discuss should also be an open issue. Some categories will probably be closed when there is nothing more to discuss, while others might be created at a later phase in the project.

quote: if you´re aiming at creating a GD you have to attempt to cover everything, in a structured way if possible. If you have worked out a structure for your chapters you´ll have a list of ingredients for a MMORPG. Then you can start filling in content.

Yes, that''s the way I intended it to work, but I didn''t want to do this on my own since it would make me into a dictator Having other people help choosing what to discuss is part of the "openess" in the project. Maybe I only should have created one category called "What categories need to be on this board in order to cover everything needed?"

quote: Second, you have to distinguish between critical items and non-critical issues. For example, the topic about "boredom" is more of a general, philosophical or sociological question and does not belong within a GD.
Still it would be interesting to see where this thing goes.

I have to disagree with that. Surely, a game''s design influences if a lot of the players find the game boring or not. Therefore, I think it''s something that should be taken into account when the game is designed. Avoiding boredom must be an important goal of any game''s design, must it not?

/Henrik

quote: Original post by Hase
Good points all, but I believe that most objections are valid. For one, most game designers are somewhat introverted, self-centered personalities (I know I´m overgeneralising, but hear me out) - by this I mean that most game designers have very clear beliefs about what works and what doesn´t. This doesn´t imply that they can´t be criticised, but once a designer is past the "we´re just tossing around ideas" point it is usally very hard to change his mind.

This is probably a good quality for some types of games, especially smaller projects, but for a MMORPG with ambitions to be an "alternate universe" I don''t think that one person alone can and should be the sole architect. A person probably have certain aspects of the design which thinks is more fun or more important and those are the aspects the person will focus on. But where does this leave the aspects which the Designer finds boring or even unimportant? How much time and love will the designer set aside for those? Bringing in another persons who burns for thos issues must be much better!?

I am a software architect myself, but not in the game industry and I certainly have areas of the system which I care less or more about. I have happily turned over some parts of the system design to people who find those parts much more rewarding to work with that I do.

quote: So working on details between two people is a difficult process (nonetheless a very, very productive one), with more than three people involved this becomes nearly impossible.
The thing about "supplying ideas" might work, but just doing that is not the rewarding thign about gd, what most people want is for their ideas to be discussed, taken apart, examined and reassembled in an improved version. Feedback.

Exactly! Providing feedback should be one of the most important goals of an OGD project, but instead of a room full of people you''ve got a world full of people. Throw out an idea and come back in a few days and you will have two or three equally good refined ideas to choose from. Furthermore, you can count on that all weak spots have been found and eliminated in these new ideas, because "Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow".

quote: As for some of the ideas on reviews, I like the notion that all can be done in an open and democratic way, but that´s not the way it works. Not with the number of people you´re suggesting. Anythign more than three becomes unable to make deceisions, and if you put a dictator in power then a lot of the members may feel left out...

People will always feel left out if there idea is not the chosen one, but if the selection process is as democratic as possible I think all open minded people will accept that the "best" idea won and that is was for the the good of the game. If not, they are always free to start their own project!

/Henrik

why not just try it and find out if it will work or not?
make 1 game this way and you will no categorically.

also
"The human mind is limited only by the bounds which we impose upon ourselves." -iNfuSeD
why do you keep saying that.
i must have seen it a half dozen times in variuous forums.

quote: Original post by Hase
For one, most game designers are somewhat introverted, self-centered personalities (I know I´m overgeneralising, but hear me out) - by this I mean that most game designers have very clear beliefs about what works and what doesn´t. This doesn´t imply that they can´t be criticised, but once a designer is past the "we´re just tossing around ideas" point it is usally very hard to change his mind.

I think this will really lead to the problem of hanging onto dedicated members. I envision many of the people just going off to do start their own project. This is, of course, assuming that you could even attract enough people to the project for it to become useful. It would probably only work with a relatively large amount of people on-board and contributing consistently.

quote: Original post by iNfuSeD
http://www.octdev.com/tyr/ ~ Tyr Project
Just begun. If you''re really interested in "open game development" check it out. Might be what you''re looking for.

I just read the introductory texts you have published and, yes, your project seems to be very similar to what I had in mind!

Though, there seems to be a little too much bureaucracy for my taste, but that''s maybe just a way to "scare the wrong kind of people" away, i.e. you only want dedicated people to take part in the project!?

I think that it should be very easy for anyone to contribute to the project, so that you don''t scare someone with a good idea away. I must admit that I did not spend too much time on your site, but I will take a better look at it later today.

/Henrik

quote: Original post by henrikb
Lately I have thought a lot about something I call "Open Game Design". As the term implies it''s about trying to apply the same philosophies as "Open Source" does to software development but to computer game design.

Having all interested parties take part in designing a game and thus applying a sort of "natural selection" to all ideas during the design process sounds like a promising concept to me. Or does it only work in theory?

In Open Source, there are a few critical ingredients to success:

1. One or a few individuals must come up with a basic premise for a tool/program, and provide a working version that potential users and co-developers can evaluate. This working version will determine whether the project attracts developers or not.



2. A common language, vocabulary and set of tools exists (programming languages, design patterns, etc) which maximizes the communications efficiency between participants. With game design, many ideas and terms are both abstract and debatable. It will be almost necessary to first define a base set of terms, and constantly expand this vocabulary to facilitate higher-level discussion. These are things that Computer Science has done for the programming community for over 50 years.



3. Systematic peer review in a rigorous environment coupled with self selection (an individual has to choose to learn to program, then choose to contribute to a project) ensures high product quality. In effect, the barriers to entry are high for the general populace but relatively low for software developers.

All that said, I think the idea is interesting and worthwhile, but will be quite challenging.

quote:
I think that it should be very easy for anyone to contribute to the project, so that you don''t scare someone with a good idea away. I must admit that I did not spend too much time on your site, but I will take a better look at it later today.

In Open Source, while it is theoretically easy for "anyone" to start a project, it isn''t quite so easy for "anyone" to lead a successful project. Competence and ability must be demonstrated, and I think the same is necessary here (otherwise much effort will be squandered on idinviduals without the drive and skills to bring ideas to fruition - which will have a very negative effect on the Open Game Design community).

When an individual without the appropriate level of skill has an idea and wishes the start an Open Source project (or extend an existing one), the options are to a.) nicely request that someone with the required skills looks into it; b.) pay someone to do it; or c.) grab a textbook and start learning. I suggest something similar for OGD: rigor is a necessity for efficiency, and if this community cannot exhibit greater overall efficiency and productivity than traditional methods, it will die.

quote: Original post by beantas
I think this will really lead to the problem of hanging onto dedicated members. I envision many of the people just going off to do start their own project. This is, of course, assuming that you could even attract enough people to the project for it to become useful. It would probably only work with a relatively large amount of people on-board and contributing consistently.

This is an important point! An OGD project is probably very dependant on dedicated members and, at least if you want to maximize the "natural selection", many members! But which project isn''t dependent on its members and if a project wants to reach new heights it''s also dependent on dedicated members.

This holds for commercial projects as well, since having a top notch game designer running a project he''s fed up with won''t help the game. The designer will either quit his job or create a game which is not as good as it "should" have been.

I think a lot of gamers (who might actually be potential game designers!) are not satisfied with todays "state-of-the-art" games. They probably have numerous ideas on how to improve certain aspects of the game, but would never dream of creating their own game. However, they might want to participate in another project by providing valuable feedback and comments on certain (minor) aspects from time to time.

/Henrik

quote: Original post by Oluseyi
In Open Source, there are a few critical ingredients to success:

1. One or a few individuals must come up with a basic premise for a tool/program, and provide a working version that potential users and co-developers can evaluate. This working version will determine whether the project attracts developers or not.

This is probably the most critical point in the project. Hopefully it will be possible to start an OGD project around a game idea which none of the commercial companies would accept. Taken a step further, this could lead to completely new types of games, but I''m not naive enough to think that this will be the case. At least not for the first OGD projects. The first projects will probably be heavily influenced (I didn''t say copies!) by existing games.

quote:

A common language, vocabulary and set of tools exists (programming languages, design patterns, etc) which maximizes the communications efficiency between participants. With game design, many ideas and terms are both abstract and debatable. It will be almost necessary to first define a base set of terms, and constantly expand this vocabulary to facilitate higher-level discussion. These are things that Computer Science has done for the programming community for over 50 years.

These are very insightful comments and probably requires some thought before OGD can proceed beyond the stage of "interesting concept". Perhaps people here can help with that?

quote:

Systematic peer review in a rigorous environment coupled with self selection (an individual has to choose to learn to program, then choose to contribute to a project) ensures high product quality. In effect, the barriers to entry are high for the general populace but relatively low for software developers.

This is also a very interesting observation, but many open source projects actually have forums of different kinds where even laymen and simple users are allowed to make suggestions. That way, one does not have to study computer science and learn a programming language before "contributing" to an Open Source project. Similar methods can probably be used in OGD.

quote:
All that said, I think the idea is interesting and worthwhile, but will be quite challenging.

Nice to hear that you liked the idea. In fact, I have been quite surprised by the quality of feedback I have received on this idea here in the forum!

quote: In Open Source, while it is theoretically easy for "anyone" to start a project, it isn''t quite so easy for "anyone" to lead a successful project. Competence and ability must be demonstrated, and I think the same is necessary here (otherwise much effort will be squandered on idinviduals without the drive and skills to bring ideas to fruition - which will have a very negative effect on the Open Game Design community).

True, but is this really such a great problem? "Natural selection" should work equally well on the project level as it will on the idea level, i.e. "bad" project will probably die out while the "good" ones survive. But I agree that there is a risk with having too many "bad" projects around, since people might get reluctant to put time and work into a project which they don''t know if they will survive or not.

quote: When an individual without the appropriate level of skill has an idea and wishes the start an Open Source project (or extend an existing one), the options are to a.) nicely request that someone with the required skills looks into it; b.) pay someone to do it; or c.) grab a textbook and start learning. I suggest something similar for OGD: rigor is a necessity for efficiency, and if this community cannot exhibit greater overall efficiency and productivity than traditional methods, it will die.

Ah, the parallels with Open Source seem to be manifold! Who knows, perhaps we will see OGD "think tank" companies emerging all around who will sell their "idea refining services" to game companies?

Thank you for these valuablue contributions - I will have to think about this for some time...

quote: Original post by henrikb
This is probably the most critical point in the project. Hopefully it will be possible to start an OGD project around a game idea which none of the commercial companies would accept. Taken a step further, this could lead to completely new types of games, but I''m not naive enough to think that this will be the case. At least not for the first OGD projects. The first projects will probably be heavily influenced (I didn''t say copies!) by existing games.

There''s a saying that comes up often on these pages - usually when someone claims to be reluctant to divulge details about their game idea for fear of someone "stealing" it: (paraphrased) ideas are cheap; implementation is what counts.

This is what makes the concept of OGD so difficult to readily embrace. While we all believe that there are lots and lots of people with excellent ideas around here, if the objective is to translate those ideas into workable models and demonstrable (and hopefully marketable) products, then we need to first see some implementation - it can be extension of an existing game (eg a mod) - to convince us it''s feasible and worthwhile. This raises the barriers to entry somewhat and lowers the pool of possible initiators.

quote:
This is also a very interesting observation, but many open source projects actually have forums of different kinds where even laymen and simple users are allowed to make suggestions. That way, one does not have to study computer science and learn a programming language before "contributing" to an Open Source project. Similar methods can probably be used in OGD.

But these individuals cannot start new projects in Open Source. Their prestige rewards are also low because they can''t code and therefore can''t actually engage in debugging or adding new features. In essence, they are fringe players whose opinions are only useful when brainstorming in abstract fashion. When it comes time to sit down, design code interfaces and structure and do some implementation - they are shut out.

quote:
True, but is this really such a great problem? "Natural selection" should work equally well on the project level as it will on the idea level, i.e. "bad" project will probably die out while the "good" ones survive. But I agree that there is a risk with having too many "bad" projects around, since people might get reluctant to put time and work into a project which they don''t know if they will survive or not.

The initial period for a paradigm like this is critical. One way to ensure that it survives the gestation period is to make it near-exclusive (the seeds of Open Source were sown in the 70s at universities the world over; it wasn''t until the mid-90s that it became popularized and admission was effectively made open to all). If you truly have a bazaar from the get-go, the articulate ones will be drowned out by the ignorant - something that has been borne out many, many times (look up the Indrema and the Indrema Developer Network, which Nurgle, another moderator, and I were both involved in, for corroboration of this sometime.

quote:
Ah, the parallels with Open Source seem to be manifold! Who knows, perhaps we will see OGD "think tank" companies emerging all around who will sell their "idea refining services" to game companies?

Perhaps. OGD will need to first demonstrate that it can yield better solutions either faster or at lower cost to developers. Since game design is an abstract quantity, it''s difficult to do that without tying OGD to Open Source, because if the developers still need to implement the solution (and especially if they first have to get up to speed on OGD vocabulary to understand the solution) then it will fade.