Should we buy a game's freedom?

[christian.convey]

No offense to the hard-working folks who make games for Linux, but Linux is still, shall we say, a little behind Windows in terms of available, good games.\

Do you think we should get a collection going to buy a GPL licensing of one or two games that we could port to Linux? It seems to me that if every Linux distro came with a few truly great games, it would instantly and drastically improve Linux's appeal to home users.

Some games I thought we might approach are:
Astral Masters (http://www.astralmasters.com/)
Astral Tournament (http://www.astraltournament.com/)
Heroes of Might and Magic I, II, or III
Airstrike 2 (http://www.bigfishgames.com/downloads/airstrike2/index.html)
Star Defender 3 (http://www.bigfishgames.com/downloads/stardefender3/index.html)
Alien Shooter (http://www.bigfishgames.com/downloads/alien/index.html)Basically, I'm thinking of games where the copyright owner wouldn't feel his future earnings significantly threatened by a GPL'ed version of an old game.

Thoughts?

[dthomasdigital]

What kind of cost, would we be talking about?

[christian.convey]

I'm not sure, because I don't know how much revenue these guys typically get on games like Astral Masters, and/or whether or not they're interested in getting it up front as a lump sum.

My guess is that we could buy something like Astral Masters for < $100k. That would be 5000 x $20 donations, which might be close to doable, as long as we chose a game that donators agreed was worth the cost.

[mistergq]

This is not a bad idea. Pick a game that everyone wants, and 20 bucks is not too much to ask.

[KIAaze]

There was a similar project just a few month ago:
http://www.ryzom.org/

The goal was to free Ryzom, whose company, Nevrax, had financial problems.
We managed to get about 178037 euros of donation pledges!

Unfortunately, the game was bought by Gameforge (the company that made ogame) in the end. :(

The Free Ryzom project has now been converted into the Virtual Citizenship Association.
It also led to the creation of the Build a World (http://www.buildaworld.net/) project which tries to build a free MMORPG game engine.

We managed to get more than 100.000 euros (and almost 200.000 euros) together to free a game like Ryzom.
I believe that if a company agrees to free one of its game under the GPL for a certain price, it is possible to get enough money together for it.
Blender (http://www.blender.org/blenderorg/blender-foundation/history/) was freed like this (for 100.000 euros). Why shouldn't it be possible for a game too?

Of course, it's important to note that Blender already had a large user community, which didn't want Blender to die. The same goes for Ryzom (which only lost because of Gameforge).

But I am confident that it is possible to raise enough money to free a game.
We did it for Ryzom (including a 60.000$ donation from the FSF) and we can do it again. ;)

[christian.convey]

I think missing Rzyome was a quirk because MMORPG's were a hot commodity at the time, so there was strong competition on purchasing it.

I suspect however that there is a number of games that would significantly add to Linux's portfolio without us having to get in a price war we won't likely win.

I recommended Astral Masters as an example because I think it has the following qualities going for it:
I think it has really good replay value. I.e., it's a good game in my opinion.
It's made by a small organization that makes a variety of games, so they don't have to worry much about killing a category that they depend on for future revenue. I.e., they're probably more amenable to selling to us than someone like Valve would be.In fact, I wonder if in general, our best bet is going after games that small games like Astral Masters and Alien Shooter (http://www.bigfishgames.com/downloads/alien/index.html) than the big, epic games like Half-Life. My personal opinion is that these little games offer tremendous entertainment value relative to the effort invested by their developers, which could translate into good value for us as would-be freers of the games. And the little games still generally are of much better quality than most/all free games found on Linux.

[christian.convey]

This is not a bad idea. Pick a game that everyone wants, and 20 bucks is not too much to ask.
How do we pick a game everyone wants?

[KIAaze]

Make a list of suggested games and vote? ^^

But before that simple thing, there are more complex things to do:
-Talk to the companies/developers to see if they are willing to GPL their game and at what price.
-Find persons willing to organize all the legal & commercial stuff, which we and the companies can trust (trust was a big problem in the Free Ryzom campaign)
-Set up a company or organization (I don't know the legal details) to buy the game (code+artwork) (or just to make the legal transaction of the money if the company agrees to GPL the game themselves (and hopefully license the artwork under the creative commons license))
-Create a website like ryzom.org, a place where people can get information about the campaign and its status.

There are also already a lot of so-called abandonware games out there, some of which already run under Linux (Beneath a steel sky for example).
What would be great would be to make the other abandonware games available under Linux.
Since the companies will probably not be willing to do it because of the costs, the code would first have to be open-sourced (and hopefully GPLed).

Such games would probably be easier to free (as in freedom), since the company already made them available for free (as in free beer).

[christian.convey]

Make a list of suggested games and vote? ^^

But before that simple thing, there are more complex things to do:
-Talk to the companies/developers to see if they are willing to GPL their game and at what price.
-Find persons willing to organize all the legal & commercial stuff, which we and the companies can trust (trust was a big problem in the Free Ryzom campaign)
-Set up a company or organization (I don't know the legal details) to buy the game (code+artwork) (or just to make the legal transaction of the money if the company agrees to GPL the game themselves (and hopefully license the artwork under the creative commons license))
-Create a website like ryzom.org, a place where people can get information about the campaign and its status.

There are also already a lot of so-called abandonware games out there, some of which already run under Linux (Beneath a steel sky for example).
What would be great would be to make the other abandonware games available under Linux.
Since the companies will probably not be willing to do it because of the costs, the code would first have to be open-sourced (and hopefully GPLed).

Such games would probably be easier to free (as in freedom), since the company already made them available for free (as in free beer).
I've contacted two distributors and heard back from one so far.

Apus Software (makers of Astral Masters) seems generally willing to entertain the idea, they'd need to look more carefully once we were more serious. I just emailed Big Fish Games tonight, so I haven't heard back from them again.

One thing I'm trying to avoid doing is over-selling to either side (linux fans, game distributors) without being fairly confident that there's an equal level of interest in the other side.

I wonder if we're getting close the the right time to ask persons to vote on the top 10 games they think (a) would benefit OSS and (b) we have a prayer of getting. Any idea where would be a good site for such a poll?

I suspect /. would be the best place in terms of traffic and shaking out good ideas, but I think that's a premature forum since I'm still seeing if we can even potentially pull this off. OTOH, I don't think this forum gets enough traffic to have a poll generate representative results.

[Jeremy88]

Yes, A decent game that ships with Ubuntu would be nice. Though, Most people don't like to GPL there games because games take alot of work to make and selling them for nothing is probably a waste of someones time.

But, I am up for the Idea above.

[JT673]

Hmms...How about Defcon (www.everybody-dies.com/)? It's made by a fairly small developer (Introversion), and/but it's still under development.

[compiledkernel]

What about lobbying Linux Game Publishers to build a port?

Would this not be as equally effective?

Theyve done incredible workt with X2 and X3 (which hasnt been released).

[KIAaze]

Hmms...How about Defcon (www.everybody-dies.com/)? It's made by a fairly small developer (Introversion), and/but it's still under development.

It's not under development anymore. It's already out.
I played the demo and it's really fun, even tough it is very simple basically. :)

But I don't think it's necessary to buy it. If some good programmers are motivated enough to make it, it's possible.
It's just a standard worldmap (but with a cool blue neon look) with schematic units on it.

The game itself is also quite simple in design:
It goes through different defcon phases, each additional phase giving you more possibilities.
-Defcon 1: place units
-Defcon 2: spy on others
-Defcon 3: move units into position
-Defcon 4: first normal attacks allowed
-Defcon 5: nukes allowed
(not sure about the exact rules anymore, but it was something like that)

Player with the most kills wins. (yes, cynical, but just look at the name of the website... ^^)

A simple, but great game. :D

EDIT:
On the defcon webpage:
Linux : Coming soon
Problem solved, except that it probably won't be GPL...

[christian.convey]

Yes, A decent game that ships with Ubuntu would be nice. Though, Most people don't like to GPL there games because games take alot of work to make and selling them for nothing is probably a waste of someones time.

But it's not like we're asking for charity. I think what we're basically offering to do is to buy them out in regards to a single game. From the seller's perspective, this kind of transaction is fairly common I suspect.

[christian.convey]

What about lobbying Linux Game Publishers to build a port?

Would this not be as equally effective?

Theyve done incredible workt with X2 and X3 (which hasnt been released).

I see two down-sides to trying to get a commercial game ported to Linux and remaining commercial:
We have to convince the original distributor and LGP that it's worth the effort, which is a speculative claim and hard to prove.
The game isn't free, and thus can't appear on things like a Ubuntu DVD. Which reduces its benefit as a way to draw people to Linux (or BSD, etc. But Linux is what I care about here.)OTOH, the LGP ports probably make more sense for games that we can't hope to afford to buy into GPL'ed freedom, such as Half-Life. That's my guess, anyway.

[compiledkernel]

I see two down-sides to trying to get a commercial game ported to Linux and remaining commercial:
We have to convince the original distributor and LGP that it's worth the effort, which is a speculative claim and hard to prove.
The game isn't free, and thus can't appear on things like a Ubuntu DVD. Which reduces its benefit as a way to draw people to Linux (or BSD, etc. But Linux is what I care about here.)OTOH, the LGP ports probably make more sense for games that we can't hope to afford to buy into GPL'ed freedom, such as Half-Life. That's my guess, anyway.

It would seem to be relatively easy to target retail games that we could convince LGP would make money. The big dev houses would be impossible to get away with because of their connection to the big M$ (Gas Powered Games comes to mind, and its connection to MS). But there are tons of small dev houses that would as easily qualify. Sierra would seem to be an open target.

[The Joe]

The idea itself is pretty lame, I can't see it working but it is worth a try and your best setting up a project about it.
John Carmack of DOOM fame will most likely accept an offer like this as he's keen on Open Source software, Jon Van Caignem of Heroes of Might and Magic. Hmm there's a problem really, he's more of a gaming Bill Gates in a good way, so there could be a problem. So set up gamefreedom.org or something and get people GPLing games. THAT's a good idea :P

[compiledkernel]

We cant assimiliate the gaming community, they are already opposed to it.

One thing that could be considered -- largely because it still makes money -- is MMO's. Lobby the MMO's to produce GPL'ed clients. Youd still have to pay to play. It was successful with NWN. It could be so with WoW , GW, CoH, CoV, etc.

[donkyhotay]

If anyone is looking for a potentially great game to GPL I would recommend moonbase commander. It was absolutely the BEST game no one ever heard of. It's pretty much abandonware at this point so I'm pretty sure whoever owns it would be willing to sell. I believe you can still download the demo of it for free but it's windows only if you wanted to try it. Don't be put off by the 'kiddy' appearence of the game there really is alot of depth to it.

[DeadlyAura]

I think this would be a great place to start. I certainly love using Linux Distro's butI don't use them regularly since I'm a gamer.

My main PC is running Windows while my other PCs all run Linux. I want to run Linux on my main PC instead of Windows without having to Dual Boot like I do now. Hopefully in the near future developers will starting porting games to Linux.

Who knows.

But I think this is a great idea to start with.

[Ferrat]

I feel for the idea I do but buying out an older game ect. is a step sure but it wont really push the issue..

What would be more intressting is acctually lauching a unified lobbyist association, what it comes down to isn't the amount of old games made to work on linux but getting a stabel user group with enough push to make developers and production companies see the a profit in making games multi-platform based.

Best way to obtain this is to unify existing groups and companies allready looking in to this.

for ex. getting these companies/people/groups
nVIDIA
ATi
IdSoftware
linuX-gamers.net
WineHQ
Linux Game Development Center
SUN
BioWare
Linux Dist developers
and so on under one project, get some of these and more will follow.

I would gladly pay abit extra for a multi-platform game that runs native on Linux, Windows, Mac ect. and my guess is alot of ppl would and I can even provide you with what could be a good target project, Project Offset ( http://www.projectoffset.com )
If this ball got rolling then maybe that could change the view of linux gaming but before that spending money on old code will just keep linux being a more of a novelty than a real choice

[Funk Phenomena]

Forgive me if this is too basic as I'm new, but rather than port individual games, is there a project underway for creating a 'DirectX' equivalent for Linux specifically? Is this what is missing for game developers and Linux?

[Seraed]

Forgive me if this is too basic as I'm new, but rather than port individual games, is there a project underway for creating a 'DirectX' equivalent for Linux specifically? Is this what is missing for game developers and Linux?

A little OT, but since you asked: Simple DirectMedia Layer (http://libsdl.org). More an alternative than an equivalent. It is available for Linux, Windows, Mac, etc. For 3D, it plays well with OpenGL.

[eoshicute]

hmm that's a good Idea, but I think, why we must buy that licensing ? We can make that :)

example : heroes of might and magic, we all know, battle for wesnoth has a same ability with heroes, if we look that from the gameplay.

so.. I think, better that we spend that donation to the organization who want to make a GPL games. That's mor eficient than guy the GPL license for the other games.

[shynko]

these are all great ideas but what we need to is spread ourselves everywhere

1. paying for a game to be ported to linux would be great but we need to make sure that the perfect game is selected and I mean perfect :) .

2. getting a bunch of companies together as ferrat said is a great idea ,but these companies need to be aproached by someone who is very respected in the computer world

3. this idea needs some work but couldn't we get many different people who made some of the best linux games to get together and develop a great and ammazingly addictive game
(probably mmo or something like it) and gather the attention of game review websites and magazines and have them leave thier view of the distro they used to play it :wink:

4. urging websites that have frequent windows visitors to have a couple of things about linux would be great.example download.com has a user submitted spyware horror storys section and in the near future I plan on sharing myne about how the file login.exe got removed from my windows xp computer (true story) and thats what got me to make the jump to ubuntu :-D
( I want to thank whoever made the virus that made me switch)

[weezerisrock]

hmm that's a good Idea, but I think, why we must buy that licensing ? We can make that :)

example : heroes of might and magic, we all know, battle for wesnoth has a same ability with heroes, if we look that from the gameplay.

so.. I think, better that we spend that donation to the organization who want to make a GPL games. That's mor eficient than guy the GPL license for the other games.

I know I'm adding to an old topic but I just found it so please bear with me. I wanted to address this question here. We are talking about getting people who want to play games over here right? If thats the case I don't think offering them an alternative to a commercial game is whats going to bring them over to Linux. People are going to want to say oh they played such-and-such game natively in linux. Not "Oh you played that game? I played this game which is like that but uses different names and such."

I am all for native games in linux no matter what they are, however it seems to me that offering alternatives will not get the positive response from the gaming community in the attempt to make linux a platform for commercial games to be sold on.

My .02

[Cheesycrap]

The thing that made me switch back to xp was my kids begging me to buy them the new harry potter game. So I bought it, hoping wine would back me up and it didnt play. After they had seen me buy it I couldnt go back so I reinstalled xp and watch my kids happily play as harry potter ran about fighting dragons or whatever.
Frankly, although I love all the old games, the new generation is going to want the newest and greatest ones. I think the money would be better spent in areas making this happen.

[Artificial Intelligence]

Set your computer to dual-boot problem solved. Alot of gamers do that. So when the kids want to play a specific game you just switch to Windows. When doing everything else switch to Linux.

[jaybombalous]

Set your computer to dual-boot problem solved. Alot of gamers do that. So when the kids want to play a specific game you just switch to Windows. When doing everything else switch to Linux.


that comment just set back the linux movement for the past 20 years.


what you need is money to force the companies to build linux alternatives. I have no problem paying for a great game, but if I am gonna pay for a game then it ought to be made how I want it to be. One of those simple rules is a linux client so I don't have to waste my time with dual booting.

Linux is a godsend, I will not drown away my sorrows with a dual windows boot. I'd rather offer my money to a project that is looking into supporting companies willing to support linux native code alternatives. DID YOU READ THAT??? I'd pay to a money to see a company actively develop linux native code.


Beyond that, I have stopped buying windows native code clients for any and all games. I am one ex-customer of windows products and until companies like the gaming industry wanna keep up I will not offer my money to them either. Sooner or later my voice will be heard.

[Artificial Intelligence]

Don't shoot the messenger, I'm linux user only. But the fact is alot of people dual-boot , and no I don't think it will set linux back 20 years, it merely help people trying something diffrent than windows and help them open their eyes to alternatives.

[cogadh]

That did not set Linux back at all. Using Linux or any other OS is all about choice. Right now, if you want to game, your choices are very limited: use Linux native games only, dual-boot or use Wine/Cedega/CrossOver. With native games, you aren't going to get many (if any) top-shelf PC games, while using dual-boot or Wine alternatives you can. At the moment, choosing to not play any non-native games until companies start making Linux native clients just hurts you as a gamer, since there is no real driving force for making native games. The market for native Linux games just doesn't exist (yet). You choosing to not support Windows gaming isn't going to change that. The only thing that will change it is getting more people to use Linux and finding some way to statistically show that there is a sufficiently large enough market to justify programming for cross-platform compatibility.

[BoardDWorld]

I don't personally think purchasing a very outdated game of any manner is a wise idea at all. Firstly peoples taste differentiate in a big way. Example I hate RPG's, never touched one again after having a go at Dungeons and Dragons about 10 years ago on a Sega system.

And I’m sorry christian.convoy but in regards to your selection of games, they are just horrible? How on earth are they going to attract more people to Linux? That's like having some sort of notion people will happily step back 5 years or more... People who play similar games to these are already using Linux.

My personal opinion would be to be to pinpoint upcoming games such as Battlestar Galactica: Beyond the Red Line and this is coming from someone who doesn’t usually play such a game. The reason being is it’s already freely available yet it visually attracts me which inspired/compelled me to download and try it. It’s high quality games like this that would inspire/compel someone to trial Linux if the person was a Windows gamer. Now if you were to offer the likes of them the sort of figures you are talking about you never know what agreement you might come to! Good luck!

http://bsg-online.be/gallery/index.php?cat=12

http://www.game-warden.com/bsg/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freespace_2

[christian.convey]

And I’m sorry christian.convoy but in regards to your selection of games, they are just horrible?

No offense taken, but I wouldn't have expected all of us to agree on the choice of games. There's that old Latin expression, "in matters of taste there can be no argument."

How on earth are they going to attract more people to Linux? That's like having some sort of notion people will happily step back 5 years or more... People who play similar games to these are already using Linux.

I was trying to consider only those games that appeared to lie within the realm of those we as a community might be able to afford.

Certainly I would have preferred to include Half-life 2 or Unreal Tournament 3 or Civilization IV on the list.

Imho those are fun games with lots of replay value and a decent amount of artwork polish. Substitute your own list for the sake of this discussion if you like.

As far as how it helps Linux: I thought they're fun to play. Perhaps less fun than Civ IV, but probably more fun than the just about all the games that currently ship with Ubuntu (imho). I was working from the simple assumption: packing a more fun bundle of games --> greater Linux uptake amongst non-techies.


My personal opinion would be to be to pinpoint upcoming games such as Battlestar Galactica: Beyond the Red Line and this is coming from someone who doesn’t usually play such a game. The reason being is it’s already freely available yet it visually attracts me which inspired/compelled me to download and try it. It’s high quality games like this that would inspire/compel someone to trial Linux if the person was a Windows gamer. Now if you were to offer the likes of them the sort of figures you are talking about you never know what agreement you might come to! Good luck!

Sure, no problem. How about pretending I included that game on the list. Now would the idea seem like a good one?

Cheers,
Christian

[BoardDWorld]

No, in my comments I thought I made it obvious I am completely pro your idea, it's a great idea. Only that none of it's worth considering unless the game is of a certain "calibre".

What I have suggested is already my input as this subject requires input from a very large portion of the Ubuntu gaming community.

The likes of HL2 etc is a bit beyond a joke :P I know you know what I am talking about;).

[Lord C]

We cant assimiliate the gaming community, they are already opposed to it.

One thing that could be considered -- largely because it still makes money -- is MMO's. Lobby the MMO's to produce GPL'ed clients. Youd still have to pay to play. It was successful with NWN. It could be so with WoW , GW, CoH, CoV, etc.

I think this idea is brilliant.
Second Life is doing it, NWN did it. Why can't all MMOs do this.

We could easily pitch this to companies, as it just opens doors for them to earn even more money.

The only problem with an open source games client is cheats.

But even if the companies don't want to open source the clients, they could at least provide a linux client.

Set your computer to dual-boot problem solved. Alot of gamers do that. So when the kids want to play a specific game you just switch to Windows. When doing everything else switch to Linux.

This is not problem solved.
Not everyone wants to purchase and/or use Microsoft Windows as a matter of principles.

Not only that, people shouldn't have to need two operating systems on a machine.