Re: [FSFLA] LibreJam - FSF* should host a Libre Game development tournament!
FSFE is doing a relevant stream today about gaming to celebrate I <3 Free Software day. """ Only [less than one hour] left till our [1]#ilovefs gaming event begins! Learn about [2]#FreeSoftware games, engines, Wild Jams, and play Veloren with our community. We are looking forward to seeing you all there! Remember that you can stream the event as well: [3]https://stream.fsfe.org/ """ [4]https://mastodon.social/@fsfe/107796971271375507 Best, Michael McMahon | Web Developer, Free Software Foundation GPG Key: 4337 2794 C8AD D5CA 8FCF FA6C D037 59DA B600 E3C0 [5]https://fsf.org US government employee? Use CFC charity code 63210 to support us through the Combined Federal Campaign. [6]https://cfcgiving.opm.gov/ On 1/19/22 10:12 PM, Sebastian Silva wrote: Once upon a time, FSF, Mozilla, and OpenGameArt and Creative Commons, actually raised funds for a two-part project:[7] Liberated Pixel Cup. I thought the discourse and organization around it was quite nice. Perhaps an annual event of the sort would be quite motivating for aspiring coders, and some not so aspiring, especially with cash prizes and shared assets, just a humble opinion. -- Sebastian Silva El mié, 19 ene 2022 a las 8:24, Ismael Luceno (<[8]ism...@iodev.co.uk>) escribió: On 18/Jan/2022 18:03, Dennis Payne wrote: > You did ask an actual indie game developer. I chose "We" in my > statement because I was including myself in the group of game > developers. I recently made Anagramarama available for sale on [9]itch.io > to gain funds for free software game development. I also have a > merchandise shop where I've started trying to make money for free > software game development. > > If you want commercial closed source game developers, I've done that > two. I worked on the game Devil's Whiskey. I enjoyed the experience > and made money from it but don't particular enjoy closed source > development so I haven't done it since. <...> I meant, to make a large representative sample. I wish everyone was of your opinion, but I've been hearing otherwise from the majority of people I talked with; geography, environment, economy, and other factors might play a role in which groups are louder and/or larger. It would be important to understand who they are, their positions, and what might prevent their games from being free software. ___ Discusion mailing list [10]discus...@fsfla.org [11]http://www.fsfla.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/discusion References 1. https://mastodon.social/tags/ilovefs 2. https://mastodon.social/tags/FreeSoftware 3. https://stream.fsfe.org/ 4. https://mastodon.social/@fsfe/107796971271375507 5. https://fsf.org/ 6. https://cfcgiving.opm.gov/ 7. https://lpc.opengameart.org/ 8. mailto:ism...@iodev.co.uk 9. http://itch.io/ 10. mailto:discus...@fsfla.org 11. http://www.fsfla.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/discusion ___ libreplanet-discuss mailing list libreplanet-discuss@libreplanet.org https://lists.libreplanet.org/mailman/listinfo/libreplanet-discuss
Re: [FSFLA] LibreJam - FSF* should host a Libre Game development tournament!
Once upon a time, FSF, Mozilla, and OpenGameArt and Creative Commons, actually raised funds for a two-part project:[1] Liberated Pixel Cup. I thought the discourse and organization around it was quite nice. Perhaps an annual event of the sort would be quite motivating for aspiring coders, and some not so aspiring, especially with cash prizes and shared assets, just a humble opinion. -- Sebastian Silva El mié, 19 ene 2022 a las 8:24, Ismael Luceno (<[2]ism...@iodev.co.uk>) escribió: On 18/Jan/2022 18:03, Dennis Payne wrote: > You did ask an actual indie game developer. I chose "We" in my > statement because I was including myself in the group of game > developers. I recently made Anagramarama available for sale on [3]itch.io > to gain funds for free software game development. I also have a > merchandise shop where I've started trying to make money for free > software game development. > > If you want commercial closed source game developers, I've done that > two. I worked on the game Devil's Whiskey. I enjoyed the experience > and made money from it but don't particular enjoy closed source > development so I haven't done it since. <...> I meant, to make a large representative sample. I wish everyone was of your opinion, but I've been hearing otherwise from the majority of people I talked with; geography, environment, economy, and other factors might play a role in which groups are louder and/or larger. It would be important to understand who they are, their positions, and what might prevent their games from being free software. ___ Discusion mailing list [4]discus...@fsfla.org [5]http://www.fsfla.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/discusion References 1. https://lpc.opengameart.org/ 2. mailto:ism...@iodev.co.uk 3. http://itch.io/ 4. mailto:discus...@fsfla.org 5. http://www.fsfla.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/discusion ___ libreplanet-discuss mailing list libreplanet-discuss@libreplanet.org https://lists.libreplanet.org/mailman/listinfo/libreplanet-discuss
Re: [FSFLA] LibreJam - FSF* should host a Libre Game development tournament!
On 18/Jan/2022 18:03, Dennis Payne wrote: > You did ask an actual indie game developer. I chose "We" in my > statement because I was including myself in the group of game > developers. I recently made Anagramarama available for sale on itch.io > to gain funds for free software game development. I also have a > merchandise shop where I've started trying to make money for free > software game development. > > If you want commercial closed source game developers, I've done that > two. I worked on the game Devil's Whiskey. I enjoyed the experience > and made money from it but don't particular enjoy closed source > development so I haven't done it since. <...> I meant, to make a large representative sample. I wish everyone was of your opinion, but I've been hearing otherwise from the majority of people I talked with; geography, environment, economy, and other factors might play a role in which groups are louder and/or larger. It would be important to understand who they are, their positions, and what might prevent their games from being free software. ___ libreplanet-discuss mailing list libreplanet-discuss@libreplanet.org https://lists.libreplanet.org/mailman/listinfo/libreplanet-discuss
Re: [FSFLA] LibreJam - FSF* should host a Libre Game development tournament!
You did ask an actual indie game developer. I chose "We" in my statement because I was including myself in the group of game developers. I recently made Anagramarama available for sale on itch.io to gain funds for free software game development. I also have a merchandise shop where I've started trying to make money for free software game development. If you want commercial closed source game developers, I've done that two. I worked on the game Devil's Whiskey. I enjoyed the experience and made money from it but don't particular enjoy closed source development so I haven't done it since. If you want someone who has entered game jams, I've entered two. I would like to enter more but haven't found the time unfortunately. If you want more game developers, I've hung out on irc channels for gamedev and godot and talked to other developers about game jams. I've also gone to a few Game Developer Conferences and Boston Festival of Indie Games. I've attended the Postmortem game developer group in Boston. If you want more free software game developers, I frequent the freegamedev.net forum. I also modify a lot of free software games and generally contact about developer about it. Feel free to reach out to other game developers. I enjoy hearing about why people make games. On Fri, 2022-01-14 at 16:26 +0100, Ismael Luceno wrote: > On 07/Jan/2022 18:23, Dennis Payne wrote: > <...> > > Most people developing games would love to make a living as game > > developers. However I disagree that most people developing games > > are > > motivated by it. We are usually motivated by a game we want to > > make. We > > might think it could make money but usually it is the desire for > > the > > game first. > > > > People join National Novel Writing Month for the same reason. They > > have > > an idea for a novel and want to write it. Some will pursue > > publishing > > it. Some will self publish perhaps even knowing it won't be a giant > > seller. Some will just give it away. > > Yes, it could be the case, but I wouldn't count on it. > > But instead of guessing, we could just ask actual indie game > developers. ___ libreplanet-discuss mailing list libreplanet-discuss@libreplanet.org https://lists.libreplanet.org/mailman/listinfo/libreplanet-discuss
Re: [FSFLA] LibreJam - FSF* should host a Libre Game development tournament!
On 07/Jan/2022 18:23, Dennis Payne wrote: <...> > Most people developing games would love to make a living as game > developers. However I disagree that most people developing games are > motivated by it. We are usually motivated by a game we want to make. We > might think it could make money but usually it is the desire for the > game first. > > People join National Novel Writing Month for the same reason. They have > an idea for a novel and want to write it. Some will pursue publishing > it. Some will self publish perhaps even knowing it won't be a giant > seller. Some will just give it away. Yes, it could be the case, but I wouldn't count on it. But instead of guessing, we could just ask actual indie game developers. ___ libreplanet-discuss mailing list libreplanet-discuss@libreplanet.org https://lists.libreplanet.org/mailman/listinfo/libreplanet-discuss
Re: [FSFLA] LibreJam - FSF* should host a Libre Game development tournament!
* Dennis Payne [2022-01-08 17:23]: > On Fri, 2022-01-07 at 10:53 +0100, Ismael Luceno wrote: > > People who value free software would publish their games as free > > software... Why don't we have so many games then? > > We do have a lot of games. Obviously not as many as commercial games. > They tend to steer towards procedural or acade games rather than > complex story games. High quality graphics are less common but not > unseen. > > https://trilarion.github.io/opensourcegames/statistics/index.html > Lists 519 linux games at the moment. Some may not be completely free > but a good chunk of them probably are. It has a backlog of games to add > as well. It is unclear what "open source" means, there are many "custom licenses" and "other licenses". > Most people developing games would love to make a living as game > developers. However I disagree that most people developing games are > motivated by it. We are usually motivated by a game we want to make. We > might think it could make money but usually it is the desire for the > game first. > > People join National Novel Writing Month for the same reason. They have > an idea for a novel and want to write it. Some will pursue publishing > it. Some will self publish perhaps even knowing it won't be a giant > seller. Some will just give it away. Great, keep it going. Jean Take action in Free Software Foundation campaigns: https://www.fsf.org/campaigns In support of Richard M. Stallman https://stallmansupport.org/ ___ libreplanet-discuss mailing list libreplanet-discuss@libreplanet.org https://lists.libreplanet.org/mailman/listinfo/libreplanet-discuss
Re: [FSFLA] LibreJam - FSF* should host a Libre Game development tournament!
On Fri, 2022-01-07 at 10:53 +0100, Ismael Luceno wrote: > People who value free software would publish their games as free > software... Why don't we have so many games then? We do have a lot of games. Obviously not as many as commercial games. They tend to steer towards procedural or acade games rather than complex story games. High quality graphics are less common but not unseen. https://trilarion.github.io/opensourcegames/statistics/index.html Lists 519 linux games at the moment. Some may not be completely free but a good chunk of them probably are. It has a backlog of games to add as well. > Most people developing games are motivated by the prospects of: > either > just being able to make a living as game developers, or worse, of > making more money as game developers than in their current day job. Most people developing games would love to make a living as game developers. However I disagree that most people developing games are motivated by it. We are usually motivated by a game we want to make. We might think it could make money but usually it is the desire for the game first. People join National Novel Writing Month for the same reason. They have an idea for a novel and want to write it. Some will pursue publishing it. Some will self publish perhaps even knowing it won't be a giant seller. Some will just give it away. -- Dennis Payne du...@identicalsoftware.com https://mastodon.gamedev.place/@dulsi ___ libreplanet-discuss mailing list libreplanet-discuss@libreplanet.org https://lists.libreplanet.org/mailman/listinfo/libreplanet-discuss
Re: [FSFLA] LibreJam - FSF* should host a Libre Game development tournament!
On 06/Jan/2022 23:21, Richard Stallman wrote: > [[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider]]] > [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies, ]]] > [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]] > > It sounds like game jams have value for education in programming, but > do they have value for the free software movement, enough for free > software activists to dedicate time to them for the sake of that? > > Can the people who want to do a game jam for free software think up a way > to make it educate about free software as well as about programming? > > I don't have answers for those questions, but I think they are the > crucial questions to pose. People who value free software would publish their games as free software... Why don't we have so many games then? It isn't just because people care, it's because some people who care can write code (sometimes), and in the end, if you're successful at making free software important to mainstream, it becomes a tiny subset of people, which might become unhappy because they're underapreciated and they share very little with the non-technical folks. Richard, I think we discussed that before, maybe I can articulate better this time; do you remember that group you "inspired" in Uruguay? how much do you think it lasted? a couple weeks. The landscape isn't uniform, software developers are different among themselves, so you need to sort them by interests and have a different approach based on that. Most people developing games are motivated by the prospects of: either just being able to make a living as game developers, or worse, of making more money as game developers than in their current day job. But don't take my word, make a poll or something and see for yourself. ___ libreplanet-discuss mailing list libreplanet-discuss@libreplanet.org https://lists.libreplanet.org/mailman/listinfo/libreplanet-discuss
Re: [FSFLA] LibreJam - FSF* should host a Libre Game development tournament!
On 05/Jan/2022 14:48, Dennis Payne wrote: > On Wed, 2022-01-05 at 16:10 +0100, Ismael Luceno wrote: > > Making it attractive would mean the prizes and frequency of the > > contests > > need to yield an average much higher than what would be possible by > > selling > > the game, which sounds unrealistic to me. > > > > A single top game can easily gross tens of millions, I don't think > > you can > > compete with the privative models this way; and even the average > > good-ish > > games makes 20k-25k USD on their first year. > > > > Making it work would require a different approach. > > I think you are misinformed. According to a 2020 study, over 50% of > indie games on Steam make less than $4000. > > https://vginsights.com/insights/article/infographic-indie-game-revenues-on-steam I don't disagree with those numbers. Is your plan to have just mediocre games? <...> > $2000 prize pool for weekend or even a week of work isn't bad. Completely different dynamics from work, it's a competition, you don't give them money all year around, neither you guarantee it. If the median game makes about 4k USD, and you don't care about quality, just the number of games, you would still need to reward above that if you want everything copylefted. Also there's the problem of how you partition that, by voting? everyone gets 4k? I can't think of any sane option. > To sell a game you need to do a lot more work. Take Celeste > for example. It was made for on pico-8 for a game jam. It was a > "difficult platformer with 30 levels". The commercial game had > "over 200 rooms spread between eight chapters." That was a lot of > work to make it a commercial success. True; but I'm just pointing out we cut out that possibility if we really want libre games. It isn't about the time invested in the jam, that's meaningless, the problem is the alternative commercial exploitation model would need to be better, or at least equivalent. > A game jam game might lead to a bigger commercial game but the game jam > itself will not be a huge seller. Game jams require you to be able to > play the games of others to give ratings and comments. You are going to > get that if you have to buy them. On itch.io I believe the only thing > you can do is make it "pay what want". Unless you do something else, you'll still get privative games in the end of the chain, and just junk prototypes from the competition itself. ___ libreplanet-discuss mailing list libreplanet-discuss@libreplanet.org https://lists.libreplanet.org/mailman/listinfo/libreplanet-discuss
Re: [FSFLA] LibreJam - FSF* should host a Libre Game development tournament!
On 05/01/2022 19:48, Dennis Payne wrote: On Wed, 2022-01-05 at 16:10 +0100, Ismael Luceno wrote: Making it attractive would mean the prizes and frequency of the contests need to yield an average much higher than what would be possible by selling the game, which sounds unrealistic to me. A single top game can easily gross tens of millions, I don't think you can compete with the privative models this way; and even the average good-ish games makes 20k-25k USD on their first year. Making it work would require a different approach. I think you are misinformed. According to a 2020 study, over 50% of indie games on Steam make less than $4000. https://vginsights.com/insights/article/infographic-indie-game-revenues-on-steam You could argue whether those were "average good-ish" but that is a lot of games. Steam requires a $100 fee just to be listed. $2000 prize pool for weekend or even a week of work isn't bad. To sell a game you need to do a lot more work. Take Celeste for example. It was made for on pico-8 for a game jam. It was a "difficult platformer with 30 levels". The commercial game had "over 200 rooms spread between eight chapters." That was a lot of work to make it a commercial success. A game jam game might lead to a bigger commercial game but the game jam itself will not be a huge seller. Game jams require you to be able to play the games of others to give ratings and comments. You are going to get that if you have to buy them. On itch.io I believe the only thing you can do is make it "pay what want". Pay what you want or perhaps what you can afford, if you are a developer on that model surely any income is welcome. Paul -- Paul Sutton, Cert Cont Sci (Open) https://personaljournal.ca/paulsutton/ OpenPGP : 4350 91C4 C8FB 681B 23A6 7944 8EA9 1B51 E27E 3D99 Pronoun : him/his/he Fedi: @zl...@qoto.org https://joinmastodon.org/ OpenPGP_0x8EA91B51E27E3D99.asc Description: OpenPGP public key OpenPGP_signature Description: OpenPGP digital signature ___ libreplanet-discuss mailing list libreplanet-discuss@libreplanet.org https://lists.libreplanet.org/mailman/listinfo/libreplanet-discuss
Re: [FSFLA] LibreJam - FSF* should host a Libre Game development tournament!
On Wed, 2022-01-05 at 16:10 +0100, Ismael Luceno wrote: > Making it attractive would mean the prizes and frequency of the > contests > need to yield an average much higher than what would be possible by > selling > the game, which sounds unrealistic to me. > > A single top game can easily gross tens of millions, I don't think > you can > compete with the privative models this way; and even the average > good-ish > games makes 20k-25k USD on their first year. > > Making it work would require a different approach. I think you are misinformed. According to a 2020 study, over 50% of indie games on Steam make less than $4000. https://vginsights.com/insights/article/infographic-indie-game-revenues-on-steam You could argue whether those were "average good-ish" but that is a lot of games. Steam requires a $100 fee just to be listed. $2000 prize pool for weekend or even a week of work isn't bad. To sell a game you need to do a lot more work. Take Celeste for example. It was made for on pico-8 for a game jam. It was a "difficult platformer with 30 levels". The commercial game had "over 200 rooms spread between eight chapters." That was a lot of work to make it a commercial success. A game jam game might lead to a bigger commercial game but the game jam itself will not be a huge seller. Game jams require you to be able to play the games of others to give ratings and comments. You are going to get that if you have to buy them. On itch.io I believe the only thing you can do is make it "pay what want". -- Dennis Payne du...@identicalsoftware.com https://mastodon.gamedev.place/@dulsi ___ libreplanet-discuss mailing list libreplanet-discuss@libreplanet.org https://lists.libreplanet.org/mailman/listinfo/libreplanet-discuss
Re: [FSFLA] LibreJam - FSF* should host a Libre Game development tournament!
> Most of these events are competitions without prizes, so the purpose is up to the developer... generally people who participate intend to make money out of the games afterwards irrespective of the type of event, so I think having users only counts if it makes money for the author. -- Ismael Lucano One of the highlighted issues was that it's very difficult to maintain freedom and fund the development of more complicated games e.g. Wolfenstein series where the developer releases all the source code under GPLv2 or GPLv3, but keeps the levels proprietary to sustain the development. So i was arguing about providing >2000 USD price pool that can be crowd sourced to help sustain the development as usually the game can sustain itself after it's playable and well known. On 1/5/22 11:38, Ismael Luceno wrote: On 04/Jan/2022 22:54, Richard Stallman wrote: [[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider]]] [[[ whether defending the US Const itution against all enemies, ]]] [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]] If the aim of a Game Jam isn't to produce a game that people use, what is its purpose? Most of these events are competitions without prizes, so the purpose is up to the developer... generally people who participate intend to make money out of the games afterwards irrespective of the type of event, so I think having users only counts if it makes money for the author. -- -- Jacob Hrbek publickey - kreyren@rixotstudio.cz - 1677db82.asc Description: application/pgp-keys signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature ___ libreplanet-discuss mailing list libreplanet-discuss@libreplanet.org https://lists.libreplanet.org/mailman/listinfo/libreplanet-discuss
Re: [FSFLA] LibreJam - FSF* should host a Libre Game development tournament!
On 04/Jan/2022 22:54, Richard Stallman wrote: > [[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider]]] > [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies, ]]] > [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]] > > If the aim of a Game Jam isn't to produce a game that people use, > what is its purpose? Most of these events are competitions without prizes, so the purpose is up to the developer... generally people who participate intend to make money out of the games afterwards irrespective of the type of event, so I think having users only counts if it makes money for the author. ___ libreplanet-discuss mailing list libreplanet-discuss@libreplanet.org https://lists.libreplanet.org/mailman/listinfo/libreplanet-discuss
Re: [FSFLA] LibreJam - FSF* should host a Libre Game development tournament!
On 05/Jan/2022 14:37, Jacob Hrbek wrote: > > Most of these events are competitions without prizes, so the purpose > is up to the developer... generally people who participate intend to > make money out of the games afterwards irrespective of the type of > event, so I think having users only counts if it makes money for the > author. -- Ismael Lucano > > One of the highlighted issues was that it's very difficult to maintain > freedom and fund the development of more complicated games e.g. > Wolfenstein series where the developer releases all the source code > under GPLv2 or GPLv3, but keeps the levels proprietary to sustain the > development. > > So i was arguing about providing >2000 USD price pool that can be crowd > sourced to help sustain the development as usually the game can sustain > itself after it's playable and well known. Making it attractive would mean the prizes and frequency of the contests need to yield an average much higher than what would be possible by selling the game, which sounds unrealistic to me. A single top game can easily gross tens of millions, I don't think you can compete with the privative models this way; and even the average good-ish games makes 20k-25k USD on their first year. Making it work would require a different approach. ___ libreplanet-discuss mailing list libreplanet-discuss@libreplanet.org https://lists.libreplanet.org/mailman/listinfo/libreplanet-discuss
