Common content revisited
by m64 on Jan.28, 2009, under Possibilities
Hello there fellow Free gamers and game devs!
After the initial spike of interest in the blog I got overly ambitious and wanted to write a huge, serious article to satisfy the taste of my highly sophisticated readers. Of course I’ve overestimated my capabilities and the result was an unreadable blob of text. This morning, while taking a train to work, I started pondering about an old idea, that suddenly started making more and more sense. So I have ditched the whole previous draft and now proudly present to you the “Common content revisited”.
It looks like the most of the Open Source game devs much prefer to work on bigger, commercial-like games than to grab some low hanging fruits like the abstract or casual games. Even if a game dev decides to go with the “retro” technology like a 2d isometric engine with pixel-art sprites, he usually still wants to create an epic RPG rather than a Pacman clone. Reasons for that are numerous and I don’t wish to discuss them at this time.
What is important, is that such games require huge effort, no matter what their technology is. That effort includes coding and art creation. Also world design if somebody is ambitious enough to make something like a RPG. The coding effort can be reduced by using a game engine. The art creation effort can be reduced by using content from some common media repository. Still, there is not much to help with the design and the folk wisdom about common media pools is that although their content is useful as props and placeholders, it can’t be used as the game defining elements because these have to be unique. My proposition could help with these two drawbacks and it would be fun too. I don’t claim it’s anything original – I just have not seen it executed successfully in the Free Games community before.
The idea is to, aside from the common media repositories, create shared world projects. Shared world, or a shared universe is a literary technique in which several authors create works using the same setting. Aside from literature it is commonly used in comics, films and RPG systems. Some of the best known shared worlds are: Star Wars, Star Trek, Forgotten Realms, Marvel and DC Universes and Cthulhu Mythos. Shared worlds used in the computer games are generally either licensed from some other media (like Star Wars or Forgotten Realms), or come in the form of a series of sequels to some very successful title made by different studios. True shared universes originating in the computer games, with games not just being sequels, are not that common – the most known is probably fantasy world of “Might & Magic”.
For the Free Software games establishing the shared worlds would come with some important advantages.
- Common media repository of a shared world would hold a great lot of content that not only is perfect as props, but also can be used as the game defining elements. If Star Wars had such a repository then the same X-Wing model could be used in a space simulator, FPS, RPG, RTS, even a racing game or a platformer. Even a main character from one game can appear as a NPC in other.
- Content would undergo the same “many eyeballs” rounding effect that the code does in Open Source libraries used by many projects. One person could create a basic model of a Storm Trooper with walking and shooting animations, later some other person could add an animation of swoop riding, somebody different could make a better texture, or a version prepared for use with a specific engine and so on.
- Even if specific object is not readily available, perhaps at least a concept art is and if not, then other assets would serve as an inspiration about how it should look. Also the designers would probably be quite happy to help anyone willing to make a new asset.
- Some people like to design the game worlds – let them do it, it will be fun! That way someone who wants to make a game will have a nice framework to work within and will be able to use much better background story that he could have ever created by himself.
- Mutual promotion – if one game based on the shared world succeeds many people will want to check out the others.
- Ability to start small – you don’t have to start such a shared world by launching an epic RPG, a small episodic adventure game would be enough.
- Reinforcing the itch effect – if a player knows the same assets are very likely to be used in the next game in the same universe, he is more likely to help correct some ugly assets he does not like.
- Consolidation of effort – if these shared worlds would be successful, than aspiring game devs would naturally gravitate towards them. This would consolidate not only the asset creation effort, but also coding. If somebody gets an idea to make a RTS within a certain shared world and there already is such a project, then he is more likely to join it than to start from scratch.
- I don’t want to get into much details about it due to organizational and legal questions, but such a shared world project with an established brand and a huge asset repository would have much more possibilities to capitalize on this than a single game has – for example by licensing the brand, double licensing some content or launching a multiplayer browser game using the assets.
That’s it for now. I think I’ve made some good arguments for the idea. Just as with the previous one, I want to try to implement it. In some following posts I will evaluate different possible methods of launching a shared world project.
January 28th, 2009 on 12:27 pm
Good insight as always, m64.. Shared world projects are /definitely/ something that foss games can use to a very great extent, indeed, I think there are a few that are essentially in place (except for the sharing of media part
). Think of the Tux games, the Blobwars games, the Wesnoth games (in which case the media actually is shared), and especially in the Spring community (although the legality there is a bit sketchy)..
But yes, projects need better inter-cooperation, and shared worlds would definitely help increase the depth and quality of the content in general. The problem is, of course, in getting the devs themselves to conform to it..
January 28th, 2009 on 1:10 pm
http://forum.freegamedev.net/index.php?t=thread&frm_id=29 – if something like that will happen Common Media Projects could be a good place to share those content. It has an SF.net project with SVN. New members can be added by Charlie@freegamer.
January 28th, 2009 on 1:39 pm
Yes, Common Media Project would certainly be good for that. The “shared worlds” are not supposed to replace common media pools but rather to augment them. In fact I think that aside from holding the content in its own repository a shared world project should also submit them to some common media pool – both for the good of the Free Game community and for the publicity.
January 28th, 2009 on 2:41 pm
yep, a few shared worlds/story+modelpools/universes would be awesome for gamedev (space,strategy,multiplayer-fps,horror-fps,…).
most commercial ones like starwars, startrek, lord of the rings etc are problematic because of licensing/trademarks.
i think “angels falls first” http://www.affuniverse.com/home/ is a universe/shared world by hobbyists, there is a firstperson shooter using it, and a vegastrike spacegame mod as well afaik.
i haven’t had the time too look at licensing etc in detail, but it seems to have a nice bunch of media.
also vegastrike itself has a lot of very nice spaceships, and bits of scifi story, and they are afaik under gpl.
wesnoth & silvertree are possibly a nice basis for medieval/fantasy, but here mosts assets are 2d
there’s a bunch of nice icons shared between wesnoth and allacrost for potions/weapons/armor/attacks/spells/attacks/items … that might be useful for many other rpg projects, even if not related..
http://search.freegamedev.net/artitems/search/images%20attacks/?show=100
http://search.freegamedev.net/artitems/search/images%20items/?show=500
January 28th, 2009 on 2:52 pm
for iris we have wall-segments used to create buildings, currently the textures are old and not that good, and some of the normals might be broken, but we’re planning to clean up and improve there someday, then it might be usable for other 3d games as well. http://iris2.de/index.php/Models:Walls
maybe things like that are a good area to share/cooperate as well ? =) (i hope thats not too offtopic)
January 28th, 2009 on 5:35 pm
Certainly such “meta assets” used to make other assets should be published and shared as well. I don’t know how well such things are supported by current media sharing platforms. Also thanks for the links.
BTW. Wordpress treats comments with large number of links as potential spam, so they are put into a moderation queue for me to check. I am trying to turn this off, but don’t be surprised if your comment takes a while to appear.
January 28th, 2009 on 6:56 pm
Everything what you and everybody else has said!
However, what I’d like to point out is the sharing of GPL content between many of the Quake-projects around (namely OpenQuartz’s content used in OA and Sauerbraten/Cube, Evil’s textures used in Nexuiz, OA, Warsow, etc.), and the issues I believe I have encountered regarding that. As I said, there’s quite a big portion of content shared between those projects, not only since they have emerged from more or less the same community, but also because they’re open source (not entirely true for Warsow and Sauer/Cube). I think that, once an asset base is there, people are starting to slack off. Unlike mod projects in the current FPS (and so on) communities, where base assets are present, too, FOSS projects aren’t as actively developed and not as tightly organized as mod projects, which isn’t supposed to be critique to the model of FOSS game development, but more to the very confidence that once there is a pool of base assets, everything would be just fine.
In principle, the idea of having more shared asset polls is awesome. Just don’t wonder when they start to reuse content just like they reuse game concepts around here
I’m all for the idea of “meta assets” or dummy content though. Hooray for dummmies! 
January 28th, 2009 on 8:38 pm
Meh!
I was working in a Star Wars based roguelike some time ago, but I got increasingly more and more annoyed by being limited by the SW universe. In the end I abandoned that project and started a new game based in an entirely new universe, invented by me.
Another similar problem we have with ToME. ToME is based on the works of J.R. Tolkien and we are having some troubles filling the monster list, Tolkien don’t have that many monsters.
I guess basing a game in an existing world is good for those who just want to make a game without engaging in any creative work. Though I had like to believe most coders are creative folks instead of just mindless codemonkeys.
January 28th, 2009 on 10:28 pm
Meh? Meh?! Nah…
It’s not like I would like to forbid Free Game devs from creating entirely new worlds. But I also think many people would more inspired than limited by having that world presented to them.
Another thing is that I would not like these shared universes to be some static, cathedral creations made up-front and frozen in carbonite. I see them as something evolving as new games are created and add their own chapters to the story.
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July 14th, 2009 on 12:24 pm
Agreed here. Such a common repository would help speed up development of games.
Just look at pygame – the python bindings to SDL helped create many new projects, which would not have happened if C was the only available choice for a project.