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Comment by rpvnwnkl | Hacker News Reader

Im hoping Microsoft will altruistically stop producing these addictive “games”. As a new console player, the differences between a game like Halo Infinite and Overwatch (FPS 4v4/5v5) are enough to put me from playing and in control to binging.

Here’s a tangent:

The most popular sports leagues in the world are mimicked by people all over the world who play casual and team sports. The game itself is not proprietary.

Why can’t we make popular open source video games? If games were not owned by a single entity, anyone could host tournaments and leagues, more similar to baseball, basketball, and football. We could all play the same game.

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> Why can’t we make popular open source video games?

Well, there are some. Check out Bitburner, Battle for Wesnoth, 0 A.D, etc.

The serious answer is that it's very hard work that requires a multi-year development cycle and a diverse variety of talent (design, art, etc) in addition to software engineering.

In addition, a lot of the tools and game engines used to create AAA titles are very expensive (and closed-source).

If you've got a team working on a game in just their spare time, it's going to be very dated by the time it actually launches.

https://www.beyondallreason.info/ as well.

Shoutout to the best RTS I've played in years.

While some decent examples have been provided in another response, it is kind of telling when most Libre/open multiplayer FPS titles are still built on Quake 3 engine. And they are not exactly to most vibrant communities. But it will run on almost anything form the last 20 years I guess.

I think a part of it is that the video game industry is good at absorbing a lot of people with talent. Game folks are at the intersection of arts and technology but it also isn't firmly in either camp, so people can be poached away fairly easily from open projects if they have a lot of talent.

Artists don't work for free.

Many of them do. See OpenTTD

And that's the ceiling for how much you can get away with while not paying artists anything.

OpenTTD is a cult classic and has no mass market appeal.

>Why can’t we make popular open source video games

Nothing is stopping anyone and there are a few. Nothing as big as COD but they exist. But I imagine the result will be similar to how traditional sports work. There will be one big definitive organization for a sport (let's say COD or this example), a few large minor leagues (some knockoff CODs that are fun but nowhere near as popular), and then some small pickup games in a field (the indie games some single dev makes that no one will find).

As a complete tangent, the Touhou series is famously loose in its license and many fans and companies alike have utilized the IP to make games and every other kind of media.

This shows a sad ignorance to how little leagues and the like actually work. The games may not be proprietary in the computer sense, but they are very much beholden to the major players for more than makes sense.

That’s a silly analogy. All you need to play soccer is a ball. A game takes years and tens of thousands of man-hours to make. In your analogy the soccer ball manufacturers are the game companies.

It costs $3 bucks to make a basketball.

It takes thousands to produce the simplest video games.

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