On 11 November 2012 14:00, Bianca Gibson
<bianca.rachel.gibson@gmail.com> wrote:
Years of archives of some good (though small) creative commons licensed games can be found at http://globalgamejam.org/. My own is at http://archive.globalgamejam.org/2012/whirlstrom.
Although AAA games have huge budgets, they are often managed extremely poorly and have high staff turnover. Someone high up in a big publisher (I think activision?) said that their strategy for improving employee retention was to scare them in to staying, saying they wouldn't be able to get another job or the new job would be even worse, and they were trying to take the fun out of making games. Often the staff will get mistreated, and have to work ridiculous hours, I know someone that worked 120 hour weeks.
They may not even get credited for a game that they worked on for years and left a few months before release (LA Noire).
Sometimes 24+ hour marathon shifts. Keeping a sleeping bag under your desk.
Managers will often be promoted from within - when a big publisher took over an acquaintances old work they promoted the lead programmer to CEO. He was not a good CEO, and now that studio has shut down.
Not really creativity fostering environments, or well managed. I don't think they money is spent efficiently in a lot of circumstances, and I've seen some really smart developers leave the games industry because of that treatment. These people that leave because of the mistreatment might still like to do hobby project games, and maybe could be tapped to create Free Software games if we can connect with a sizeable proportion of them.
A lot of people think that a lack of creativity is the weakness of AAA games. Rather than go for exactly the same thing, I think we'd be better off excelling where they don't, making indie games instead of AAA style games. Indie games have much smaller budgets and teams, so would be an easier starting point. Rather than trying to make the next skyrim, go for the next fruit ninja.
I do think that steam for gnu/linux is a good thing. I have on multiple occasions almost talked people in to running mostly free software, but the games have kept them on windows. It will also make some people that currently dual boot for games spend more time in a free software OS, maybe even all their time. Although running proprietary software at all is not ideal, it can reduce people's use of a proprietary OS.
What we can do if we want to take the approach I'm suggesting (go for indie games):
- Use steam for GNU/Linux to encourage gamers to start using a Free Software OS, or spend more time in a Free Software OS
- Engage with the indie games community and learn from them - more free software people at events like the global game jam, and local meetups
- Make games :)
As for why steam is considered good:
Gamers hate DRM. They like
playing games, DRM makes it hard. Restrictions on steam aren't so much
considered good as less bad. You can play it on as many computers as you
want (just need your account), it has an offline mode (though people
hate that you have to sign in online then go offline).
Comparison:
Some
DRM requires a constant internet connection for single player games. If
you have dial up (only thing available in some areas), they constantly
loose the connection and crash.
Some games install root kits for DRM.
Some
games install software that has in the license agreement that they can
pull whatever they want from the computer and send it off to the
publisher.
Obviously steam is less bad than some other DRM.