Video Games as a Marketing Technique: Part 5 Standing on the Shoulders of Open Source Giants
March 5th, 2009 by John RheaSo, you want to build a game, but all of that coding and leg work sounds too much like… well… work. Isn’t there another option?
The answer is a qualified “Yes.”
You’ve heard of this thing called “open source” which many penny-pinchers translate as free. While this is not the place for a deep discussion on what open source is or is not, one thing that must be remembered is that when you work with open source, you should honor the ideals of the original programmers.
Please either release your revisions with a similar license (whether or not you can release it with a different license is a question for a lawyer) and/or make significant contributions to the community whose work you are building upon. A corporation/business taking open source code and repackaging it as their own is the antithesis of the open source movement (and possibly illegal). These are people, honor their contribution.
That being said, building on an open source game can keep you from reinventing the wheel. Even so, there’s still a lot of work to be done.
The greatest failing I have found in most open source programs is usability. Most of the time, programmers will program for programmers and will focus on functionality rather than usability.
This is great in that you can find a program like Gimp that has 90% (or more) of the functionality of Photoshop without the thousand dollar price tag. The down-side is that the interface isn’t very intuitive and can be really hard to use (particularly for someone who has no graphics editing experience).
Most of the open source games that I downloaded and played while researching this blog had great graphics and horrible gameplay and/or a poor user experience.
A Note About Me: The following reviews/thoughts will be tainted by three factors (at least).
- I have a Mac so I only looked at games that would work on Mac (not all that rare considering it’s usually easier to port a Linux-based game to OSX than to Windows).
- I have a fundamental belief that I, as a player, should not have to work to play a game. I can work while playing a game, but not in order to actually play.
- I only have seven fingers. (This sounds like a joke but it’s true. I only bring it up because it affects my ability to hit certain key combinations. And, just because you’re wondering, the story involves a bar fight, a ninja, and an ancient prophecy).
N.B. I found all of these games using Wikipedia’s list of open source games.
Super Tux Kart: This Mario Kart style game was by far the best game I downloaded and the one that I often decided needed more “research.” I wasn’t a huge fan of the left-handed controls, but that’s probably more my lack of fingers than a fault of the game. Graphics – were on the whole -pretty good although many of the tracks are textured with repeated and low-quality patterns.
Nexuiz: This multiplayer first-person shooter had some of the best graphics, but I’ve never felt more “pwned” than by the “easy” bots who riddled my character with bullets and various projectiles during the training level. I don’t tend to be a fps man, but I’ve held my own on Halo and its first sequel (no, not on Legendary). This felt overly hard to me, but I’m not 13 anymore with endless time to learn how to misspell “owned.” The controls were less than responsive and were difficult to use (especially for me).
Project: Starfighter This 2D shoot ‘em up had pretty good graphics, and an in-depth story. But, the way they forced you to watch slow animations made me hate the game before I even played it. Gameplay was ok, but difficulty in precisely navigating the ship made it less fun than I wanted it to be.
Yo Frankie I’m not even sure what kind of game to call this. It has pretty good 3D graphics and a world you can walk around in, but little to no gameplay and lasts about as long as a blueberry pie in front of my Aunt Bertha. Load times are horrendous and there’s no explanation as to what you’re doing or why. This was probably built as a starting platform so that users could build levels and fill out the content (at least that’s what I’m hoping). They are in the midst of a level design contest. But, from what I can tell there’s no overarching goal of putting out a “complete” game.
Which brings me back to the “qualified” of qualified Yes. If you want to use open source to give you a jump start on creating your game, great! But, you must realize that there will still be a lot of work in developing a story, refining gameplay, creating graphics that are appropriate, and making the game something you’re ready to present to the world.
That said, using an established game engine might give you more time to focus on those things rather than starting from scratch and building every part of the game.
A word to the wise, taking an open source game, slapping your logo on it, and calling it done is worse than creating no game at all. In so doing, you’ll anger the programmers who made it, and – depending upon the game’s usability – you may also frustrate your customers/potential customers. Please don’t do this.
Happy gaming and beware of skin sores!
