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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Personally while I'd say that the closed source games currently rule in terms of 3D glitz and animations (and that's only until open source tools for creating these get faster and easier to use -- see things like http://www.povray.org/ and the various front-ends that are being built for it to see the future of open source game graphics) the OSS games rule in terms of playability and story. Someone before mentioned NetHack: http://www.nethack.org/ and that it's got better gameplay than anything in the closed source world. If a DOOM3 style front-end were built for it, it would hands-down beat out anything else in that genre of gaming, open or closed source. Consider also XConq: http://sources.redhat.com/xconq/ for an open source app that's got a better engine than most and is just looking for a good front-end (there are already a few available but none that measure up to today's current standards of animated graphics). Look at Adonthell: http://adonthell.linuxgames.com/ for an example of an open source game with a decent story behind it (or look at virtually any of the hundreds of titles of interactive fiction from the IF Archive: http://www.ifarchive.org/indexes/if-archive.html for open source games that are pure story). Look at Parsec: http://www.parsec.org/ for an open source game that competes pretty well in all areas...