Video games are expensive even “free to play” games. You need to buy an expensive game console or PC that can run the games made in the modern day. Then, some games can cost upfront now $70 or more dollars. Then you got to buy the dlc, and the micro-transactions to get anything meaningful done on the game.
Some free to play games have paywalls you’l eventually run into to either progress, or to get more of the game such as cosmetics.
Open source games on the other hand are typically free for anyone with an internet connection and a device that can run the game, can play for free with hidden fees, or dlc, Micro-transactions. and no ads. In fact the closest thing you get to cost when playing a more demanding open source game to you is the device (some cases, the Monitor) and the internet connection even if just temporarily to download the game.
In Super Tux Kart, you got a modern ish looking game, opensourced, and is free and legal for anyone to collectively download and share this opensource game. Being an opensource game.
What would you pick capitalist games, or open source games?
Some might believe there’s only a handful of open source games especially if you only play them from the Linux repositories. Some websites might have creator putting their open source games on them, some of these might even be might even be playable in your web browser with html5.
There are loads of open source games out there, from remakes of engines of popular games (like Red Alert, Morrowind, Civilization, Rollercoaster Tycoon, Quake3Arena, Heroes of Might and Magic VI, Age of Empires, etc.) to full-fledged original games (like 0ad, Xonotic, Battle for Wesnoth, etc.)
Here’s a list: https://github.com/bobeff/open-source-games?tab=readme-ov-file#real-time-strategies
Also, anything in the repos for a Linux distro or BSD should be open source, too.
https://blends.debian.org/games/tasks/ https://openports.pl/cat/games https://www.freshports.org/games/ https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/List_of_games
A bit off-topic, but Linux runs tons of emulators, there’s one for pretty much every system out there, nintendo, playstation, sega, xbox, etc. https://github.com/DerekTurtleRoe/awesome-emulators
True, but my point was if a persons opensource library was limited to what was in a Linux repository, they were missing out on other great open source games. Just about everything thing in Linux repositories you would think would be open source, but there are some such as Ubuntu that have some repositories for nonopensouce content such as the Discord app.
True. On Debian one must also enable the “nonfree” repo. Void is like that, Fedora too iirc.
This is just a false dichotomy there is not “AAA” games on one side and open source games on the other, smaller professionally made games exists and indie closed source games exists. U can buy, well made “modern” (whatever that means) games that are reasonably priced that dont have any micro transactions and that if they have dlc its good and worth buying, they exists there are lots of them. Open source games are fine but a game doesnt need to be open source to treat its audience with decency.
My favourite game is Dwarf Fortress, which is not open-source but still freely available
It’s basically free, while still under copyright protection? This might be a complicated one because while such a game might be free to access it’s not free to do entirely whatever you want to it, such as modding it. While freely available you couldn’t just get this game from anywhere in most countires. (legally)
But idk, is this good enough for communists to enjoy, just as long that you can freely access it in it’s pure form? But since it’s still copyrighted your places of getting it legally are limited.
In this day and age, I won’t be looking a gift horse in the mouth. I trust the devs to keep the game free as long as they are around. They’ve recently put it up on Steam for a modest fee (due to them needing money for American medical expenses), and they’ve kept the free version around and up-to-date as well. There’s also enough open access to mod the game extensively.
While freely available you couldn’t just get this game from anywhere in most countires. (legally)
There’s also Aurora 4X, if anybody’s into that kind of thing, which is not open-source at all (the dev is opposed to having the game mod). Also freely available anywhere and pretty great game.
It’s important to note that these 2 games basically built the open-source, freely-available, community of games, by proving that free games can be as great and successful as the most expensive budget-bloated AAA titles.
What I meant by anywhere, I meant that you couldn’t take the game without permission if it’s still protected by copyright. If they allow anyone to just take and share it on their own app stores without asking that is neat.
I don’t think it’s fair to expect anybody to share a game they’ve put years of their life into developing, without copyright or permissions. In the current capitalist climate, you can expect AAA studios, scammers, patent trolls, etc to take advantage and monetize or steal ownership of the game.
There was such a case on itch.io a few years ago, where some developer stole someone’s game, patented it as their own, put it on Steam, then were trying to force them to take down the game on itch.io.
You just can’t risk not having copyrights, no matter your intentions.
This is why you use a copyleft license such as the GPL. Licensing under the MIT license leaves you wide open to the capitalist exploitation you describe, but if an open source project uses the GPL, then anyone who modifies or distributes your code must maintain the same freedoms they were granted for anyone else.
But by having copyrights, it makes a game less communist because you don’t know if your favorite dev might not start taking things down, or enforce their copyright.
And actually there is a way to do this, while not having restrictive copyrighted control, if you explicitly have an opensource license that prevents this applied to your project form the get go, you can almost always refer to that and usually win in court if you can prove yours was developed first and that the license was in place since day way.
Such licenses might allow people to mod said game, but then require them not to change the license terms. This in theory would protect your game even from patents made in the future by other devs because applying a newer patent would either directly or indirectly change the original license terms.
But if the patent was already in place before hand, then the license wouldn’t be able to protect the project for long.
It depends on the context of property ownership. The original definition of the dictatorship of the proletariat before the Capitalist redefinition means government by the working class and Marx never said to abolish private properties without the progress to the relevant stage of the economy. Although the Capitalists had rigged the copyright law to serve the plagiarism that the law are supposed to oppose, copyright laws that properly provide the proper amount of reward to the creators could continue under Communist governance until the intellectual property ownership become irrelevant.
There’s some AAA problems in indie games as well like drip-feeding content that should’ve been at launch.
Drip feeding content is a thing alot of modern day games do, including indie tittles but generally that content gets added for no cost but not always.
Other times it gets added as dlc you have to pay for.
Thing is, DLC is a problem when the base game is unfinished.
Yes. It is a problem. I agree with what you were going with there. If a game is released unfinished it’s not good compared to older video games.
Then there are games like Splatoon that would also use drip feed updates, with most of them being free such new maps for free introduced in updates. Although Splatoon has it’s other problems related to capitalism.
Problems related to capitalism
Aside from Nintendo being removed about their IPs?
Mindustry is the most impressive open-source game I’ve ever played. Also super fun and addictive.
Its a mix of Factorio-like factory sim and tower defense. There’s also a vibrant PVP scene on player-hosted servers. I’d love to play with any fellow players here.
The lack of centralization will always hurt open source games, they simply cannot compare to a AAA game in literally any metric. It’s not really a matter of the code being open or closed, it’s mostly the amount of people working under a centralized direction. Open source projects are hobbyist projects made mostly by privileged people from the imperial core, these are not comparable to game studios with hundreds of professional developers working towards one goal. Even indie studios cannot compare to AAA studios, these only succeed when they develop a completely new genre and find their own niche.
For example 0AD, it’s a good RTS game, FOSS, runs extremely well, distributed freely by most distros repositories but it’s only comparable to AoE 2 or age of mythology which are like 25 years old at this point, its been developed for 2 decades at this point too, a AAA studio could develop a more feature rich product in a couple of years with a much higher quality standard.
This post isn’t about if a game is better, or higher quality through capitalism or open source it’s
It’s about which is more or less exploitative. When I briefly talked about Suptertux kart having modern ish feel, for an open source game that was impressive, while still retaining the benefits of being open source.
In my other post I actually did talk about open source games being decentralized (in this same community) and how it can actually make games better than capitalism games made under capitalism. https://lemmygrad.ml/post/5761876
This is because, on that post I mentioned how if one party makes a web comic series or similar, under a creative commons licensed, then other unrelated parties could then freely make a fan game and go all in on making the game and not have to focus as much on making new characters and plot.
Basing a game off of a media, gives your game that extra feeling that man open source games are missing compared to games like Naruto: Ultimate Ninja Storm, or Dragonball Xenoverse.
It’s about which is more or less exploitative. When I briefly talked about Suptertux kart having modern ish feel, for an open source game that was impressive, while still retaining the benefits of being open source.
open source development might be even more exploitative since it’s literally free labour and relies completely on the charity of other well off imperial core workers.
This is because, on that post I mentioned how if one party makes a web comic series or similar, under a creative commons licensed, then other unrelated parties could then freely make a fan game and go all in on making the game and not have to focus as much on making new characters and plot.
I do agree that everyone should have the freedom to create stuff from any IP, but lets be real here you won’t find a fan game made by a group of hobbyists on their free time better than a game made by a professional studio, its simply a matter of labour-power spent developing these games.
It’s not exploitative the way I view it if the people worky on the game are hobbiest and genuinely wanted to do this in their free time. Which happens to be most open source projects. Some are also made by small organization who are mostly hobbiest.
When you look at a corporate game it’s almost always strictly for money.
I don’t expect every game to be better in quality under an open source license by itself, But one you build up them projects based off of multiple open ips it eventually becomes easier to compare.
People look at how it is now, and don’t realize they can change that. not by themselves but when all these projects get collectively made by different parties and you get more and more content.
What would you pick capitalist games, or open source games?
Honestly? “Capitalist” (of varying degrees of capitalistic behavior, I suppose- even within AES countries) games, usually, for my preference.
Indies are great. The DLC model, when done right (not microtransactions, but additional content over a long lifespan) is great. Even the gacha model can be utilized amazingly IMO- as several games I enjoy (Genshin, HSR, ZZZ, Reverse:1999, WuWa- all developed in China) have shown.
When and if the profit incentive goes away with games, I still think that the development of games and other certain kinds of works (assuming that other advancements do not massively simplify/reduce the work required for such works, and/or the need for labor in general still remains- something that won’t be going away for a long time probably) will benefit best from, and reach its largest scopes and most broad appeal, through a concerted effort and vision, with heavy incentives (perhaps through other means than monetary profit, if society has truly moved past it).
All AES societies, for instance, have sponsored their own works of art (in various formats- statues and monuments, paintings and posters, music, performances, showpiece architecture, film, etc). IMO there comes a point where incentives and a centralization of varying degrees is necessary so as to produce certain kinds of works, or to produce certain large scales of work. IMO this is the case for big-budget/labor intensive works of all kinds, and for works that may require consistent maintenance, updates, or upkeep costs (for instance, multiplayer servers, or software updates/patches, etc). This is not to say the capitalist system is the ideal environment for such developments- of course it is not, far from it. But beyond a certain scale, or in regards to things which require a consistent upkeep/expertise/etc- there does require a system (for instance, a socialist system) to incentivize and direct efforts in a cohesive direction- whether that be through the profit motive, or through the “sponsorship” motive, or whatever else.
If I were to compare it- well, there is no universal metric to art or enjoyment. There’s no reason why Super Tux Kart (which I’m sure is very enjoyable) should be considered inherently worse or lesser than, say, Mario Kart, Forza, or Need for Speed. And in regards to art and enjoyment, similarly, there’s no reason why a cozy Soviet cabin (which would be great in its own right as well) would be any worse or lesser than Lenin’s Mausoleum, the Moscow Metro, or St. Basil’s Cathedral. But it’s hard to see how the latter examples could have been made “open-source,” so to speak, and while I don’t doubt that “open-source” models of development (for games, or for other works incl. non-artistic/enjoyment focused ones- hell, even for things like research, production, etc) even in our current phase of human development (which has not moved past scarcity and will likely not anytime soon if ever) would certainly achieve some works of comparable immense scale- I do not think they would be anywhere near as numerous as those that have been developed through concerted, incentive-driven, organized societies (capitalist and pre-capitalist, as well as socialist alike).
I will check out the open-source games mentioned here, though. I enjoy games of varying scopes, variety is always nice. But some things I think tend to require (not always, but tend to) more than just open-source.
Given that the community has to do with the capitalism exploration of video games and its decline, I’m not necesarilly looking at the art aspect but that one is less exploitable and less degrading then another to the person playing the game.
Yes, there is more to free gaming that is open source.
if you can combine an open source game with a creative Commons license series, that’s the best case scenario.
For instance there is the creative commons licensed pepper&carrot which is just a web comic, and has spawn a bunch of small, yet open source games asked on it. (the creative commons allows for this without permision)
This combination (of open source and creative commons) can easily get you that… mainstream capitalism feel like you would on a PlayStation or Xbox in an open source environment. (mainly 3rd party licensing games.)
Given that the community has to do with the capitalism exploration of video games and its decline, I’m not necesarilly looking at the art aspect but that one is less exploitable and less degrading then another to the person playing the game.
Ah, fair enough. I just came in due to it being part of the 'grad/locals, so I wasn’t aware of the specific focus. In that case, open-source definitely wins out.
Looking at SuperTuxKart, particularly after learning there’s mods also, my interest is greatly increased. Another game (though I never really played it much, I just really like the concept) that comes to mind is MUGEN (a freeware fighting game with a similarly large fan content community, admittedly not open-source). Apparently there’s a open-source reimplimentation called “Ikemen.”
(Edit) also looking at your descriptions of the creative commons license- the Touhou games come to mind. I’ve not played any of the bullet hell ones (intend to eventually) but the fangames are pretty great.
(Secondary edit) as for the “mainstream capitalism feel”- I don’t think that’s quite an accurate descriptor, admittedly. The better descriptor for the projects I was giving examples for (for instance, including great communist works of art, architecture, etc. as well as many things that predate capitalism) was- the products of large-scale, organized society. Open source can achieve similar works, I’m sure- but those are very few and far between, especially when the majority of people are trying to survive (something that remains an issue, albeit a less extreme one, as labor of varying degrees would still be required under socialism, at least for the foreseeable future).
The new digital economy could now utilize new forms of revenue streams through the selling of personal data from their consumers to third party companies that acts as secondary consumers and through the use of their digital product as a platform for advertisement (like free to play games) or means of information control (website blocking in Google Search). Since the USA are plutocratic, they had intentionally refused to address the new problem that firms could now exploit the people through violation of privacy instead of price increase.
