Linked by Adam Geitgey on Tue 31st Aug 2004 20:12 UTC
Despite the impressive list of achievements of open source software, it can be argued that there have not been any world-class games created under the open source banner. Sure, several old games like Doom and Quake have been gifted to the open source community, but there are no comparable original creations in this area. One should not expect this situation to change anytime soon, because the open source development model does not make sense for game development.
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Is "Black and White" any more complicated than KDE? Gnome? The Linux kernel? I don't think it is, really. Plus, I was really thinking longer term. Games these days just aren't particularly original, and the programming is the least of the effort involved. You use your off the shelf 3D engine, you have an off-the-shelf genre, and so on.
Commercial games can maintain a lead up to now purely because games depend on pushing the technological envelope much more than eg a wordprocessor or VCS system does. The games of this year have to be slicker and faster than the games of last year, and that requires enromous investment in new technologies every release cycle that only commercial companies can afford, at this pace.
However, I don't think things will stay this way. I think the bottom is falling out of the games market, simply because that progress is unsustainable. It's a question of the law of diminishing returns. DOOMI was much, much more impressive and jawdropping than what went before. DOOM3 is like what went before, but a little slicker. Enormous investments in software and hardware advances are reaching a point where most gamers don't really notice all *that* much of a difference over their first 3D playstation I games. Transform&Lighting is much less impressive an advance that having 3D at all, and the next cycle of advances in games promise to be even less exciting. Add to that the dearth of decent, groundbreaking new ideas in the gaming world, and enough time, and I forsee a situation where OSS can indeed catch up very well with the world of commercial software, simply because the technological lead will no longer be relevant, and time will allow many of the exciting projects in OSS gaming today to mature, and mature, and mature..