/agdg/ - Amateur Game Development General

Because other projects can rest entirely on the shoulders of programmers, who are for some reason more likely to work for free for the community. Games take a lot of design, level, art, music, and asset work. Other workers don't tend to value this stuff as strongly as programmers do, and are less likely to get on board, especially without pay.

I was thinking that the intrinsic tendency of open source project to brech, and the absence of an autority that has full control over the design causes the fragmentation of the community.

It's there an actual study that shows that programmers are more likely to work for free? I wondered about that

>>25513

Because the whole point of making a game is to make dosh. A video game is entirely something you make for consumers, as in it is a commodity. A video game's ONLY purpose is entertainment, which again means being consumed.

Actual software, on the other hand, are tools. You're actually contributing something to the world when you create tools, and that is often enough of a reward for people who know what they're doing. You aren't contributing a damn thing with video games.

Well, if that was correct, there wouldn't be modders as well.

>>25524

Mods are great portfolio filler.

>>25523

>Because the whole point of making a game is to make dosh. A video game is entirely something you make for consumers, as in it is a commodity. A video game's ONLY purpose is entertainment,

I have to disagree with this.

Back in the 80's tons of amateur devs made games just for the hell of it. For the holidays, for a friend, to show off skillz (see also: demoscene), etc.

If you are making a game just for commercial interests then, IMO, you've lost the love of game making. I have been making little games for decades as a way to express things and share experiences with others. I only make games I want to play, and the vast majority of small-team games go unnoticed. Just because a few get "popular" and media coverage (esp. those connected with the US west coast "indie" clique), doesn't mean that games are made to make dosh.

I'd say, first and foremost games are made for the love of creating. Even in the AAA dev scene this is true. You can make more money doing easier work in business software, without crazy crunch time or anything. If it were about the dosh, then there would be no games. People put themselves through hell for the love of it.

Even if there was no chance of ever making any return on investment people would still be making games. This is the true reason that games are art. Because even if no one would buy art, painters would still paint, musicians would still play music, film makers would still make movies, gamedevs would still make games. Artists will always create.

BfW is one. https://www.wesnoth.org/

You'll notice opensource software is shit, 100% of the time. The few open games that've been made are also shit.

Without monetary gain, people lose focus, especially in groups.

>>25551

>you've lost the love of game making.

What love of it? It's a job to make money. I do have a love for video games, though.

>to express things and share experiences with others.

You are the cancer that is everything wrong with modern gaming.

>You can make more money doing easier work in business software, without crazy crunch time or anything.

Are you kidding me? Indie gamedev is the lowest hanging fruit in all of software development. It is the absolute easiest way to make the most money while working for yourself.

>If it were about the dosh, then there would be no games.

Not even remotely true, you fucking commie.

>games are art

Oh, you're just trolling. Okay.

>>25557

Your bait is almost as good as the last guy's. Free software always proves itself to be vastly superior, not to mention more secure.

>>25565

>What love of it? It's a job to make money

See, I love the act of creating games, engineering them, etc.

> You are the cancer that is everything wrong with modern gaming.

Prove it. I'm not talking about some hipster shit. It's your ilk that attempt to justify true cancer like microtransactions as game mechanics, and that milking players for every penny by selling new levels and prohibiting modders, while shoving DRM down people's throats. That's what the "it's all about the money crowd" is about.

The other extreme is cancerous too, but a healthy middle-ground is where I sit. You're only thinking in extremes. All games and every communication are fundamentally sharing experience. But only an absurdest / extremist would take this to mean that I mean that hipsterific SJW feeling simulators are what I mean by that.

> Are you kidding me? Indie gamedev is the lowest hanging fruit in all of software development.

That's why there's no money in it. Show me how much money you made at it. Unless you're in the clique you're not making shit. Confirmed for not knowing shit.

> It is the absolute easiest way to make the most money while working for yourself.

No, freelancer websites are. You'll get paid more for the same amount of work it takes to even just change the assets out and push the same iteration out again with a slight tweak here and there.

Seriously, this is not even a point of contention. It's a known fact. You clearly haven't talked to a single person making a living in AAA or independent game development. If indies are low hanging fruit, then AAA is the creme of the crop, by your logic... Meatwhile AAA dev is actually shit tier working conditions and less pay than business software or graphic design for magazines.

> >games are art

> Oh, you're just trolling. Okay.

If your conception of "art" is just hipster shit, then you're plainly ignorant. Even Logic systems can be elegant and artful. There is an art to evoking "fun". Not everything is degenerate simply because it's an art form. Games exhibit all prior art forms as well as interactivity.

>>25565

> Free software always proves itself to be vastly superior, not to mention more secure.

HeartBleed. The OpenSSL maintainers were so shit that they didn't even know how to fix anything and turned down patches. I like open source software for the end user freedom, but let's not pretend that it's more secure simply because it's open source. Just because you can read the code doesn't mean anyone actually did, and it doesn't mean that the devs aren't compromised by alphabet soup, putting in exploits on New Years Eve patches while everyone is out partying (this is actually how the Heartbleed exploit vector was introduced).

This is just one of many issues. There's a current remote code execution GNU glibc getHostAddr(), where malicious DNS can take over your machine -- and since DNS uses UDP it's trivial to exploit. Just see a packet go by and respond with the malicious payload before the actual server upstream does.

You have demonstrated you know nothing. Lay off the teen angst, your brain is still developing.

>>25566

>HeartBleed. The OpenSSL maintainers were so shit that they didn't even know how to fix anything and turned down patches

That's anecdotal evidence. The biggest-selling proprietary software project in the world, Windows, still handles scrollbars and fonts in the kernel.

One datapoint never ever proves anything. Statistically, free software is more secure by its very nature, and where security goes, it avoids the broken model of security through obscurity.

I agree with you that free software isn't necessarily more secure, but it's hard to argue for or against that point because there aren't a lot of alternatives to compare it to these days. What's the next leading proprietary SSL implementation that's used widely in the backbone of the internet? Because most of these projects are actually developed by professionals who are paid to work on them (including OpenSSL), free software is as insecure as proprietary at worst.

glibc has become its own monster.

>>25519

There isn't a study, but look at the free software community vs proprietary software, and you see that free software is a huge thing.

Look at Creative Commons music, writing, and art compared to heavily copyrighted and controlled music, writing, and art, and you see the Creative Commons counterparts are nearly nonexistent. I can't think of another community outside of programming that has a gargantuan force composed of amateurs and professionals alike dedicated to putting millions of man-hours into giving something away to the community with only the requirement that they have to continue giving it away for free if they change it (or even charging money, but still giving the product without any restrictions on use other than not allowing additional restrictions).

Most game development things I've worked on had the experienced programmers usually wanting to use a free license, and everybody else shooting it down.

>>25570

Aye. Tools and engine programmers, I've encountered for the most part, are all about MIT license.

Whereas I was practically among the only few in gamedev in a particular genre -- until Kickstarter and Patreon came about, then all of sudden you have all these LLCs.

>>25570

Code has a lot of potential beyond originally intended usage. It can be improved on, learned from or reused.

Art assets, especially baked art assets, just don't benefit this much from being shared.

>>25513

Have some reasons:

- Unlike for source code, where you get potentially increased security, portability and other devs who do it for ego, having their use case fullfilled and learning, there is nothing in it for providers of other assets, like models, images and sounds.

Making art for your own hobby project might be cool, but for other peoples project it's boring, unpaid commissional work. Chances are high you also can not use it for your portfolio.

- Like you implied, making a game needs a lot of dedication and an eye for details. Most smaller open source projects work around the idea of a rough, basic use case and removing the edges later on. That doesn't work that good for games. For games, you must deliver the core aspect why player would play it pretty much spot on.

- Most single player games live by their story. Open development is basically an instant spoiler. Worse, often "story devs" come up with ideas that work in movies or books but are cringeworthy for games, because the medium doesn't allow for the same things. For that reason you will see that competitive multiplayer games (e.g. Hedgewars or Warsow) and score-driven single player games (which are effectively the same) work out a little bit better.

That said, with network multiplayer games you easier get cheaters.

- Open Source or software projects in general attract a huge number of fucking sperglords that can't into humans. I wouldn't go as far as saying that's an imperative skill for every kind of game, but it really helps in a lot of ways.

- Big game studios have lawyers to keep a lot of bullshit from you. In one Open Source project I even witnessed team some team member becoming offensed for some worthless religious reason and for the game not being child friendly enough for his 5 or so year old.

That nearly destroyed the project and is the reason I ceased most work on most other peoples game projects.

Fuck children (in a figure of speach, of course), they are the reason a lot of quality content gets from nice and edgy to ruined.

Most consistent games I have seen were closed source before ( likehttp://cxong.github.io/cdogs-sdl/) or where the game was the important point.

If you want to see representative open source game dev, visit forum.freegamedev.net, you can basically observe all of the above.

PS: After writing this, I noticed half of the points were already mentioned. However, even this list is probably far from completion.