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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With the world of Open-Source Software Development gaining ground, PC game development will become one of its primary victims. Nearly all games are huge productions that operate more like a motion picture production than they do as a word processor in development. Games today are costing 10-30 million dollars each to produce. Most game developers do not want to be force to spend 10-30 million to develop a game and its engine(or license), then be force to make it available for free do to GPL mandates. Most software developers don't want to develop on the Linux platform and have to develop multiple incarnations of the same game because you have dozens(soon to be hundreds) of package managers to deal with(Autopackage won't realy help with the current state of the Linux community) and get little or no income from them(especially the smaller Package Mangers).
The most successful games in open source are the simple ones, the ones based on arcade, boardgame, computer/video game classics that have a have a high replayablity factor. Games like Tetris, Poker, Missile Command, Bomberman, Checkers etc.
With video game consoles existing as closed sourced environments, they offer a better future for game developers for a multitude of reasons. They don't have to deal with GPL, each console platform has only 1 hardware configuration, piracy is less of an issue, and PC hardware is just to expensive to validate to most people to use as a gaming platform. Besides the last great advantage that the PC's had in online play has been put to rest in the current consoles on the market.
In the end its best for major game development to leave the world of PC and fully embrace the advantages of the video game console. Besides, most people are fed up installing games on their computer that takes up 2 or 3 gigs of space and still have to use the Game CD to play the game.