If you actually do mean “MMO” and not traditional “MMORPG”, then there are skill-based games that would not necessarily depend on “fully-equipped characters” and could be made to be “Massively Multiplayer Online”.
You could have an MMO puzzle game where each federated server can host puzzles that other players have to solve… and where players can create their own puzzles for others to solve (something in the spirit of “the Castle Doctrine” game, for example, but with fixed gold for everyone).
A federated mmo could only work if there are no significant attributes/stats to keep track of, or if said attributes are only accepted from bubbles/whitelisted servers. In the end, it’d be something like Opensimulator, which is a FOSS Second Life of sorts.
I’m curious what you think making SD FOSS would add. Imo, it’s a standout example of a game that hits way above it’s weight class and price point, and a dev that just won’t stop adding content.
IMO all software would be better if FOSS, regardless of the virtues of the developers. That’s why I would love if the games that I love to play were to be FOSS as that would make them even better in my eyes.
For me, this has more to do with public ownership of folklore and cultural goods, and how something being in the public domain gives complete freedom for it to step beyond just being a specific single piece of art, to become a rich ecosystem/universe of ideas.
Let’s say I wanted to make a mario-like platformer / some-other-game in a different engine with characters and creatures from terraria, with a campaign mode, fully happening in a world that’s just terraria’s world and use the same art & characters you’ll find on the original game… well, you can’t straight away rip the assets, or even reference them too much in a way that’s obvious it’s a derived work if you don’t want to step into some legally tricky waters.
Compare this to public domain universes like greek or norse mythology, fantastically idealized historical periods and many fairy tales and legends from around the world, that have been a source for ideas during centuries and even today we make use of that folklore and remix it in new ways to further contribute to our culture.
Videogames are now pieces of culture in a similar way as those old universes are. If they are tied to companies, then this makes the companies own pieces of culture and it stops further developments of the mythology behind the collective stories that could be created.
Even if the company were to be ok with the assets/universe being ripped for other games/ideas, to what extent would they allow it? no serious project would wanna take the risk of possibly having the company one day pull the plug. And if the company doesn’t really have the intention of pulling the plug: why not formalize their good intentions with an open license?
Many games aren’t profitable to port to older or less relevant hardware and community porting efforts often takes years to properly disassemble and reassemble to work on new platforms. FOSS is easier to access and port to different hardware.
Expanded mod support. Mods are great but they always have limits and there are often certain parts of a game that either cannot (due to tech) or may not (due to developer wishes) be modified. FOSS games wouldn’t have this limitation.
The ability for the community to own FOSS and forks in the event that a company buys the rights to a game and either closes off access or stops supporting certain versions of it.
Likewise your access to a FOSS game cannot be revoked my a marketplace. If a game is for some reason pulled you’re not guaranteed continued unending access to it. The marketplace in question holds all the cards.
FOSS games may also continue to be updated, improved, and worked on after the original dev loses interest or is no longer around. Stardew is well maintained right now, but what about in 15 years when hardware is very different and the dev has stopped updating it?
I fail to see what makes games any different from other software. The piece of software can be easily studied and tinkered with, users have the power to control what exactly runs on their machine, and the software can organically be improved by people making their changes in their own derivations of that software that they make available for the whole world to use, study, reproduce, and modify.
Furthermore, if the developer dies, the game being FOSS will guarantee that it will live on and continue to benefit future generations.
Stardew valley and kind of in topic. I’d like to see an mmo that is federated.
A federated MMO would be interesting! But cheating might be a concern. Anyone could create a server with fully-equipped character and just federate.
But maybe servers could whitelist trusted servers? 🤔
If you actually do mean “MMO” and not traditional “MMORPG”, then there are skill-based games that would not necessarily depend on “fully-equipped characters” and could be made to be “Massively Multiplayer Online”.
You could have an MMO puzzle game where each federated server can host puzzles that other players have to solve… and where players can create their own puzzles for others to solve (something in the spirit of “the Castle Doctrine” game, for example, but with fixed gold for everyone).
A federated mmo could only work if there are no significant attributes/stats to keep track of, or if said attributes are only accepted from bubbles/whitelisted servers. In the end, it’d be something like Opensimulator, which is a FOSS Second Life of sorts.
I’m curious what you think making SD FOSS would add. Imo, it’s a standout example of a game that hits way above it’s weight class and price point, and a dev that just won’t stop adding content.
It’s more about longevity. If it’s open source, the game could be ported to modern systems in the future if the dev stopped updating it.
It would also allow for bigger mods, but the dev has really worked with mods already so maybe not too big of a change.
IMO all software would be better if FOSS, regardless of the virtues of the developers. That’s why I would love if the games that I love to play were to be FOSS as that would make them even better in my eyes.
Do you mind elaborating on the benefits of FOSS for games? I see the benefits of FOSS for software, but not so much for games.
For me, this has more to do with public ownership of folklore and cultural goods, and how something being in the public domain gives complete freedom for it to step beyond just being a specific single piece of art, to become a rich ecosystem/universe of ideas.
Let’s say I wanted to make a mario-like platformer / some-other-game in a different engine with characters and creatures from terraria, with a campaign mode, fully happening in a world that’s just terraria’s world and use the same art & characters you’ll find on the original game… well, you can’t straight away rip the assets, or even reference them too much in a way that’s obvious it’s a derived work if you don’t want to step into some legally tricky waters.
Compare this to public domain universes like greek or norse mythology, fantastically idealized historical periods and many fairy tales and legends from around the world, that have been a source for ideas during centuries and even today we make use of that folklore and remix it in new ways to further contribute to our culture.
Videogames are now pieces of culture in a similar way as those old universes are. If they are tied to companies, then this makes the companies own pieces of culture and it stops further developments of the mythology behind the collective stories that could be created.
Even if the company were to be ok with the assets/universe being ripped for other games/ideas, to what extent would they allow it? no serious project would wanna take the risk of possibly having the company one day pull the plug. And if the company doesn’t really have the intention of pulling the plug: why not formalize their good intentions with an open license?
Not op, but:
Many games aren’t profitable to port to older or less relevant hardware and community porting efforts often takes years to properly disassemble and reassemble to work on new platforms. FOSS is easier to access and port to different hardware.
Expanded mod support. Mods are great but they always have limits and there are often certain parts of a game that either cannot (due to tech) or may not (due to developer wishes) be modified. FOSS games wouldn’t have this limitation.
The ability for the community to own FOSS and forks in the event that a company buys the rights to a game and either closes off access or stops supporting certain versions of it.
Likewise your access to a FOSS game cannot be revoked my a marketplace. If a game is for some reason pulled you’re not guaranteed continued unending access to it. The marketplace in question holds all the cards.
FOSS games may also continue to be updated, improved, and worked on after the original dev loses interest or is no longer around. Stardew is well maintained right now, but what about in 15 years when hardware is very different and the dev has stopped updating it?
I can see the upside for some of those. Thanks for expansive response.
I fail to see what makes games any different from other software. The piece of software can be easily studied and tinkered with, users have the power to control what exactly runs on their machine, and the software can organically be improved by people making their changes in their own derivations of that software that they make available for the whole world to use, study, reproduce, and modify.
Furthermore, if the developer dies, the game being FOSS will guarantee that it will live on and continue to benefit future generations.
I see. Thanks for the reponse!