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One of the biggest problems any OSS game is going to have, is finding Artists/Animators/Sound Producers who are willing to donate the amount of work to make a blockbuster titile.

It's fun and all making a skin for uber cool system resource module for KDE, but making a complete set of 3d models, animating them, lip syncing them, skinning them, etc is a totally different beast.

Certain games actually do lend themselves better to OSS then closed source, namely online games (if you could get over the hump and get one started, get a community, get someone to pay for your incredible bandwidth costs, get people to watch the game 24/7 so that people aren't abusing or hacking you, having someone doing tech support 24/7), fun puzzle games that don't "get old", simulation games, such as flight sims and sports, things that people are going to spend TONS of time on playing, not sit down and play for 35 hours and then most likely put on a shelf.

One of the benefits of having an OSS game would be 1) no dead lines, you can add cool features until your hearts content (but of course people will demand a working product, crush you with demoralzing posts on your message board about how you're game is late, there isn't enough information etc), 2) there is no big mean publisher breathing down your neck demanding you get the game down in 3 months (when you know you need at least 6 to make it *GOOD*).

Another issue that would likely come up, is lets say you wanted to make a new incarnation of Madden NFL Football OSS, you'd most likely NEVER be able to use real players, teams, leagues etc, because you'd have to add a team of lawyers to battle it out with the NFL to give you the rights (and the subsequent 50,000 changes they "demand" in order to actually grant you those rights).

How do you let the mass market know you have a really good game out there with no advertising budget, no marketing director (to kiss the magazines ass to get a nice review, or slip the head buyer for games shops a few perks to get good shelf space)? With so much out there today, even if you have a truely good game, it can easily get lost in the media blitz (often good games lose out to hyped games, because of advertising budgets not anything related to the actual games themselves).

There are good games being created today, you just have to sort through alot of "ok/cloned/knock off/junk" before you find them. Things like DOOM3 while essentially the same game as the original DOOM1, also has alot more to offer. I think it's similar (oh god a car comparison) to the difference between a car from 1985 to 2004, while they essentialy are the same thing, to say they are equivalent is a terrible falacy.

One area I think that OSS can really help with a game, is when a game reaches it's sell by date, and is basically of no direct use to the commericail developer, they can release the code into the wild, which then allows fans who still love the older game to do things they may have been dying for to the game. This helps by allowing people with older systems get some new features in games, it helps build a sense of community, and in a lot of ways it can even help you find developers for the commericial side of things as well, you'd be suprised how many people get hired based upon their contributions to the community (i.e. mod makers, editor creators etc).

*GAMERS* shouldn't be getting up in arms over how their games were developed, they should just wish for/support/help any game they truly enjoy. Whenever it becaomes a religous war about CSS/OSS it gets dumb. As a gamer I want to play good games, I could care less if Indian programmers(from India) working for IBM (who then "contributes" it to the OSS community) have provided it, or if it's a hard working closed source company that is providing it. ENJOY THE GAMES.

Sorry the post was a bit long, but I thought i'd share my thoughts.