Hi guys, Who has experience of working on a game open source and what was the final result? Are there any documented 'commercial' success stories for open source video games?

well, here would be a good start

Quote: Original post by HeWhoDarez
Hi guys,

Who has experience of working on a game open source and what was the final result?

Never worked on an active open source project of any description but I have tried to make games before. The final result was generally an abomination of mankind; think "Big Rigs" as GOTY.

Quote:
Are there any documented 'commercial' success stories for open source video games?

Not that I can immediately think of, no. The thing about open source software is that it tends to be free as in beer (i.e. costs £0, not "free" as in those GNU principles that I can't remember) and if you're not charging for something then guess what? Unless you have some kind of outside sponsorship, some kind of venture capitalists behind you or a general injection of money, you're unlikely to end up with anything.

That said, there's no harm for yourself in getting involved in an open source project and saying to an employer "I worked on this, isn't it shiny?" at an interview or when you send your CV in when you apply for a job. It could be a "commercial success story" for you if you get the job and start earning money. Depends on what way you look at it, I guess.

Quote: Original post by HeWhoDarezAre there any documented 'commercial' success stories for open source video games

There have been several.



Free game + non-free content works as a good model.

Back when text-based games were much more popular, there were free game players that took advantage of your particular terminal type, and they used commercial scripts.

Software-as-a-service can also work for games. Even if your game source is open source, your content and services can require payment or subscriptions. If your game is web-based, customers will not even need to know that the game code itself is open source.

Or you can look at the Quake engine, which id released under the GPL when porting the game to Linux. That was a great example of free game + non-free content.


Of course, there are always barriers to entry such as advertising, customer loyalty, development and maintenance costs, etc. Also, note that "commercial success" can have many different meanings, including just offsetting your monthly ISP bill.

I got the impression the OP is interested in games that are successfully developed in an open-source fashion, and not like the Quake games (which were never released open-source anyway, only their engines were).

If that's not the case, then I guess one example is the Freelancer games which was released openly, and is still being heavily built upon by the community to this day.

Define "commercial" success. They cover the costs? They can pay one or more developers? They're raking in the big bucks like ID software?

There are multiple business models. Free engine + non-free content has been mentioned. Engine development is another. Create a GPL engine and sell commercial licenses to people who want to build non-GPL games with it (trick: you can't use GPL libraries in your engine). MMO development is another angle. You can make the client FOSS and the server closed and ask payment for subscriptions.