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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If you notice something about all the big successful OSS games, they have one thing in common, and that thing is strategy. Freeciv, Nethack, and Battle of Wesnoth are all strategy games, and only the last has any kind of story. Thus, with a game that can and should be played many many times, then the OSS model works, as users will stick around. However, if your game is based off of one story line, yes closed source will fail.
And on another, slightly related point, OSS is very good for making engines and the like, and providing the framework. Thus the Doom3 people would have just had to write a great story wrapper around a already great OSS engine that is used in a great many games.
Corey