[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider ]]] [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies, ]]] [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]
For practical success, it is desirable to make the game easy to install.
To respect users' freedom, it is important to avoid dependence on any nonfree software.
To let the community make sure the program is safe and not malware, we need to encourage users to package the program for distros. (See https://gnu.org/philosophy/free-software-even-more-important.html.)
It is important to achieve all three goals. The second is often ignored, but then the free software idea is forgotten. The third is one we often forget.
Can you find a good way to achieve all three?
To let the community make sure the program is safe and not malware,
we need to encourage users to package the program for distros. (See https://gnu.org/philosophy/free-software-even-more-important.html.)
It is important to achieve all three goals. The second is often
ignored, but then the free software idea is forgotten.
The third is one we often forget. Can you find a good way to achieve all three? -- RMS
While i do agree that distro packaging is important and should always be available i don't think that relying on it is a good idea for this usecase as: a) not all distro maintainers make the process user-friendly enough (afaik only OpenSUSE and Manjaro has one-click installations) b) I am not aware of any distro maintainer that has any positive impact on helping with discoverability. c) lot of distros introduce functional limitations e.g. apt which from my experience requires a lot of painful debugging to get the modification to build and instal l on the system and is rarely reproducible. d) Currently the majority of Free Softaware Games are funded by the community e.g. 0ad and mindustry (with exception alike Wolfenstein which provide the game engine and tools without the game levels that are paywalled to sustain the development). I am not aware of any distro maintainer that enables the user to help with funding lot of the times the user is not even aware that the developer accepts donations.
So few ideas assuming that the projected optimal solution is to provide a user-friendly way of installing games without depending on distro/OS packaging:
1) GNU Guix https://guix.gnu.org/ has a way to define upstream packages AND environment to provide required build dependencies using one command e.g. `guix shell -m path/to/manifest -- make install` to install the package without depending on downstream of the distro so that the user can build the package or grab a cached derivation to skip build.
I th ink that making this one-click like OpenSUSE is doing and adding a GUI would make the process more user-friendly to be used outside of GNU GuixSD (SD = Standalone Distribution, the package manager is independent and works alongside other package managers) as Digital Distribution Platform ("DDP" meaning platform providing solution to manage games e.g. non-free Steam).
2) There is Athenaeum (https://gitlab.com/librebob/athenaeum) which is a flatpak frontend focused on games that installs them using one-click, but flatpaks are usually significantly inefficient and you have to trust whoever made the flatpak definition.
3) Lutris https://lutris.net which integrates multiple compatibility layers and emulators to play non-linux games and it's installation is one-click, but it has too many issues to be usable in practice (at least last time i checked i had to restart the installation process multiple times, maintainer was unwilling to merge fixes and the code ba se needing a lot of refactoring to be usable)
4) Desura https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desura **WAS** an LGPL v2.1 (https://github.com/desura) competitor to Steam which source code is still available on https://github.com/desura/Desurium which seems to be sufficiently functional as a solution, but it would need reviving of the project.
5. Snap Store https://snapcraft.io/search?category=games has same issues as flatpak (inefficient, trust to whoever made the definition).
FWIW i think it's also important to take a look at how itch.io and other DDPs allow advertising by the game developers e.g. https://supertuxkart.itch.io/supertuxkart which is what they do to handle discoverability.
On 12/31/21 05:26, Richard Stallman wrote:
[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider ]]] [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies, ]]] [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]
For pr
actical success, it is desirable to make the game easy to
install.
To respect users' freedom, it is important to avoid dependence on any nonfree software.
To let the community make sure the program is safe and not malware, we need to encourage users to package the program for distros. (See https://gnu.org/philosophy/free-software-even-more-important.html.)
It is important to achieve all three goals. The second is often ignored, but then the free software idea is forgotten. The third is one we often forget.
Can you find a good way to achieve all three?
-- Dr Richard Stallman (https://stallman.org) Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project (https://gnu.org) Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://fsf.org) Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)
-- -- Jacob Hrbek
[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider ]]] [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies, ]]] [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]
Packaging a program in distros is crucial for the community because it leads to various teams that independently work on the program, and thus have a chance to make sure it is honest. This is why free software tends not to be malware.
You may be right that it doesn't particularly help on other dimensions, but this one is a must.
Also, we in our community use distros of GNU/Linux, so if we sponsor or promote a program (game or not) we will want it to be packaged for our distros.
Packaging a program in distros is crucial for the community because
it leads to various teams that independently work on the program, and thus have a chance to make sure it is honest. This is why free software tends not to be malware.
You may be right that it doesn't particularly help on other
dimensions, but this one is a must. -- RMS
I agree. So what about making a GUI frontend as Digital Distribution Platform ("DDP") that has bindings to the available package managers?
Meaning having a list of games in GUI like (https://gitlab.com/librebob/athenaeum) to address the issue with discoverability and then using the available packaging solution to manage the game?
e.g. Installing SuperTuxKart from GUI for the software to detect the OS and do: a) User on Trisquel -> If supertuxkart is packaged then `apt-get install supertuxkart --yes` b) User on ArchLinux -> if supertuxkart is packaged then `pacman -Suy supertuxkart` etc..
Might also be a good idea to use this frontend to organize the Game Jam and enable community to do their own if needed as currently the only way to do that efficiently is itch.io which has freedom issues.
Proof-of-concept: GameHub https://github.com/tkashkin/GameHub which is a GUI frontend to various DDPs that handles the installation through the provided solution.
.. would think it to be a good idea to fork GameHub to provide the decentralized game list and the binding.
On 1/2/22 07:59, Richard Stallman wrote:
You may be right that it doesn't particularly help on other dimensions, but this one is a must.
Hi!
These game jam threads are an interesting read, but there are some misunderstandings about what the purpose of a game jam is in this thread and the other thread Global Game Jam. This is long, but I hope it is informative.
If anyone with experience running a game jam wants to host a game jam in connection with LibrePlanet conference, reach out to the FSF Campaigns team at campaigns@fsf.org to get this idea rolling. The small FSF staff typically all has roles to play during the conference so this task would need to come from volunteers if you are serious about making it happen. None of the FSF staff have experience running a game jam that I am aware of. A libre game jam related to LibrePlanet would probably need to be before the conference to not distract from the talks. The games could be presented during the Lightning Talks portion of the conference.
A jam is usually a very short period of time where various groups of people with different skill sets compete to make something surrounding a theme or set of restrictions. The theme and restrictions are mechanisms to mitigate groups from using the jam to release or popularize something that they have been secretly working on for months. The purpose of a jam is education, socialization, and friendly competition while gaining functional experience through creating something in an area that they are interested in. There are many different types of jams. Ones that are related to these threads are game jams and game art jams [1]. A game jam usually results in several people hacking on a concept and pulling all-nighters to deliver a somewhat functional concept of a game. A game jam team might be composed of programmers, writers, and artists. A game art jam is where teams of artists create art assets that can be used by other games.
Game jam games are not expected to result in complete games, package their software in repositories, continue development after the jam, or become AAA games. To demand or expect these things from a game jam is an unreasonable expectation. A successful Libre Game Jam should only be expected to produce game concepts released under a free software compatible license using free culture assets where the majority of participants learn something through the process. Anything else would be going above and beyond what is typically expected from a jam.
There are a great deal of free software games that have come out of various game jams over the years since the trend began. Even game jams that are not explicitly focused around free software have developed many free software games. If you can find the code and the licensing is correct or correctable, anyone can pick up where they left off. Keep in mind that fixing a licensing issue becomes increasingly difficult as time passes as getting in contact with a dissolved team or minors is difficult.
In order for amateur programmers or hobbyists to make a game technical demonstration in 48 hours or one week, the code is often similar to spaghetti. The short time frame requires taking shortcuts and hacks to make something fast [2]. To continue development on a game jam game, the first step would probably require refactoring the code which takes development time. The code is usually is found in an archive file released by the game jam organizers so continued development would need to move to a software forge as well.
Packaging software for various distributions is a different set of skills than would normally be expected from a group of game development volunteers with no sleep. Organizers of a such an event could plan to take these additional steps with the games or mentor the winners through the process. If the licensing checks out, there is nothing stopping anyone from packaging and maintaining the games in their distribution of choice. Someone could start the first Game Package Jam where groups compete to see who can upstream the most libre games to the Debian repositories based around a certain theme.
Other creative game jam concepts with a focused scope:
Libre Game License Jam where groups reach out to Game Jam repositories to fix or start licensing issues and pull requests.
Libre Game Fork Jam where groups fork libre game jam games and make improvements, retheme, or change to a completely different game.
Libre Game Doc Jam where groups find libre game jam games without documentation and write instructions about how to compile, play, or modify the game. Many game jam games do not have any documentation as the groups would typically include the what, why, and how through a presentation while showing the game to judges. These ceremonies are typically done in person and not published so the documentation is lost.
Libre Game Mod Jam where groups mod games with extension capabilities such as Minetest.
Libre Level Jam where groups make level packs for libre games.
Disclaimer: I have never participated in a game jam, but I have searched through many hundreds of game jam games to find materials for teaching programming to children.
[1] https://opengameart.org/content/opengameart-late-fall-game-jam-2021
[2] Fast, Good, or Cheap: Pick Two. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good,_fast_and_cheap
Best, Michael McMahon | Web Developer, Free Software Foundation GPG Key: 4337 2794 C8AD D5CA 8FCF FA6C D037 59DA B600 E3C0 https://fsf.org
US government employee? Use CFC charity code 63210 to support us through the Combined Federal Campaign. https://cfcgiving.opm.gov/
A libre game jam related to LibrePlanet would probably need to be
before the conference to not distract from the talks. -- Michael McMahon
I like the idea of it being part of the conference to increase the participation from a new generation.
Game jam games are not expected to result in complete games, package
their software in repositories, continue development after the jam, or become AAA games. To demand or expect these things from a ga... -- Michael McMahon
I do agree that this is how game jams usually works, but i think that we should adjust the rules there to address the issue with discoverability and development sustainability while handling the issue with rushed code and lack of licensing and documentation.
On 1/3/22 17:39, Michael McMahon wrote:
Hi!
These game jam threads are an interesting read, but there are some misunderstandings about what the purpose of a game jam is in this thread and the other thread Global Game Jam. This is long, but I hope it is informative.
If anyone with experience running a game jam wants to host a game jam in connection with LibrePlanet conference, reach out to the FSF Campaigns team at campaigns@fsf.org to get this idea rolling. The small FSF staff typically all has roles to play during the conference so this task would need to come from volunteers if you are serious about making it happen. None of the FSF staff have experience running a game jam that I am aware of. A libre game jam related to LibrePlanet would probably need to be before the conference to not distract from the talks. The games could be presented during the Lightning Talks portion of the conference.
A jam is usually a very short period of time where various groups of people with different skill sets compete to make something surrounding a theme or set of restrictions. The theme and restrictions are mechanisms to mitigate groups from using the jam to release or popularize something that they have been secretly working on for months. The purpose of a jam is education, socialization, and friendly competition while gaining functional experience through creating something in an area that they are interested in. There are many different types of jams. Ones that are related to these threads are game jams and game art jams [1]. A game jam usually results in several people hacking on a concept and pulling all-nighters to deliver a somewhat functional concept of a game. A game jam team might be composed of programmers, writers, and artists. A game art jam is where teams of artists create art assets that can be used by other games.
Game jam games are not expected to result in complete games, package their software in repositories, continue development after the jam, or become AAA games. To demand or expect these things from a game jam is an unreasonable expectation. A successful Libre Game Jam should only be expected to produce game concepts released under a free software compatible license using free culture assets where the majority of participants learn something through the process. Anything else would be going above and beyond what is typically expected from a jam.
There are a great deal of free software games that have come out of various game jams over the years since the trend began. Even game jams that are not explicitly focused around free software have developed many free software games. If you can find the code and the licensing is correct or correctable, anyone can pick up where they left off. Keep in mind that fixing a licensing issue becomes increasingly difficult as time passes as getting in contact with a dissolved team or minors is difficult.
In order for amateur programmers or hobbyists to make a game technical demonstration in 48 hours or one week, the code is often similar to spaghetti. The short time frame requires taking shortcuts and hacks to make something fast [2]. To continue development on a game jam game, the first step would probably require refactoring the code which takes development time. The code is usually is found in an archive file released by the game jam organizers so continued development would need to move to a software forge as well.
Packaging software for various distributions is a different set of skills than would normally be expected from a group of game development volunteers with no sleep. Organizers of a such an event could plan to take these additional steps with the games or mentor the winners through the process. If the licensing checks out, there is nothing stopping anyone from packaging and maintaining the games in their distribution of choice. Someone could start the first Game Package Jam where groups compete to see who can upstream the most libre games to the Debian repositories based around a certain theme.
Other creative game jam concepts with a focused scope:
Libre Game License Jam where groups reach out to Game Jam repositories to fix or start licensing issues and pull requests.
Libre Game Fork Jam where groups fork libre game jam games and make improvements, retheme, or change to a completely different game.
Libre Game Doc Jam where groups find libre game jam games without documentation and write instructions about how to compile, play, or modify the game. Many game jam games do not have any documentation as the groups would typically include the what, why, and how through a presentation while showing the game to judges. These ceremonies are typically done in person and not published so the documentation is lost.
Libre Game Mod Jam where groups mod games with extension capabilities such as Minetest.
Libre Level Jam where groups make level packs for libre games.
Disclaimer: I have never participated in a game jam, but I have searched through many hundreds of game jam games to find materials for teaching programming to children.
[1] https://opengameart.org/content/opengameart-late-fall-game-jam-2021
[2] Fast, Good, or Cheap: Pick Two. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good,_fast_and_cheap
Best, Michael McMahon | Web Developer, Free Software Foundation GPG Key: 4337 2794 C8AD D5CA 8FCF FA6C D037 59DA B600 E3C0 https://fsf.org
US government employee? Use CFC charity code 63210 to support us through the Combined Federal Campaign. https://cfcgiving.opm.gov/
[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider ]]] [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies, ]]] [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]
If the aim of a Game Jam isn't to produce a game that people use, what is its purpose?
In my response I wrote, "The purpose of a jam is education, socialization, and friendly competition while gaining functional experience through creating something in an area that they are interested in."
From what I gathered, most game jams participants are children, students, hobbyists, and mentors who are not professional programmers. I have tried hundreds of game jam games and I would only recommend a few of them to be worth playing or distributing through a repository. The majority of them are incomplete concepts of games. Many are not playable without reading the source. Many cannot be played. Some are great! If most game jam games ended up in standard repositories, there would be a negative effect on the entire ecosystem. As gamers search for free games to play, they would install these game jam games and find a large number of low quality games. After trying several duds, the negative experience could turn them away from free software altogether without context. Every program does not need to be packaged.
Jams do have value. Sometimes the journey is the destination.
Best, Michael McMahon | Web Developer, Free Software Foundation GPG Key: 4337 2794 C8AD D5CA 8FCF FA6C D037 59DA B600 E3C0 https://fsf.org
US government employee? Use CFC charity code 63210 to support us through the Combined Federal Campaign. https://cfcgiving.opm.gov/
On 1/4/22 10:54 PM, Richard Stallman wrote:
[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider ]]] [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies, ]]] [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]
If the aim of a Game Jam isn't to produce a game that people use, what is its purpose?
On January 5, 2022 5:06:26 AM UTC, Michael McMahon michael@fsf.org
If most game jam games ended up in standard repositories, there would be a negative effect on the entire ecosystem.
Ecosystem is biology.
I am conducting experiments of various kinds every day, and measure outcomes, make hypothesis and verify its outcomes. Recommendation is same, if software is free and functions for playing, include it, and then see contributions coming or not coming. Make experiments instead of blocking public access to free games.
As gamers search for free games to play, they would install these game jam games and find a large number of low quality games. After trying several duds, the negative experience could turn them away from free software altogether without context. Every program does not need to be packaged.
It is hypothesis, though quite in contradiction to purpose of game jams as how you described it. Do you see contradictions?
Either you should keep the purpose of game jams or purpose of popularity by quality. Choose one.
Jean
[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider ]]] [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies, ]]] [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]
It sounds like game jams have value for education in programming, but do they have value for the free software movement, enough for free software activists to dedicate time to them for the sake of that?
Can the people who want to do a game jam for free software think up a way to make it educate about free software as well as about programming?
I don't have answers for those questions, but I think they are the crucial questions to pose.
Hi!
On Friday, January 7, 2022 5:21:10 AM CET Richard Stallman wrote:
It sounds like game jams have value for education in programming, but do they have value for the free software movement,
It depends. It is a fun way to introduce people to programming and if we introduce people to Free Software right away, that may have benefits. In my experience, though, a lot of participants are already programmers though and they participate for the challenge. Most programmers have also heard about Free Software before (at least in my experience), so in that case, the benefit may be limited to reminding them that Free Software is important and possibly showing them how to properly license their repositories. Because often times, they do publish the source code of those games anyway, it just lacks proper licensing because they don't want to bother with that.
enough for free software activists to dedicate time to them for the sake of that?
I cannot judge that and I think a lot of what we do is trial and error. So this might be worth trying. Personally, I have taken a different approach to game jams. For example the Global Game Jam is a distributed event with many different local organizers. I have been involved with one in the past and helped set up a sample repository that participants could use and that repository had information on proper licensing and recommended the GNU AGPL3+ as a license. That way, people were nudged in the right direction with little effort. Another step further would be to convince a local organizer to only accept Free Software submissions.
One futher note because the question of (prize) money has come up: I don't see money as the main motivation for participants, so I wouldn't worry about that. My impression is that most games from a game jam are not commercially successful anyway and people mainly have fun writing something together. So I wouldn't worry about offsetting any potential income from those games because the majority of them wouldn't make money anyway.
Happy hacking! Florian
On 06/Jan/2022 23:21, Richard Stallman wrote:
[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider ]]] [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies, ]]] [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]
It sounds like game jams have value for education in programming, but do they have value for the free software movement, enough for free software activists to dedicate time to them for the sake of that?
Can the people who want to do a game jam for free software think up a way to make it educate about free software as well as about programming?
I don't have answers for those questions, but I think they are the crucial questions to pose.
People who value free software would publish their games as free software... Why don't we have so many games then?
It isn't just because people care, it's because some people who care can write code (sometimes), and in the end, if you're successful at making free software important to mainstream, it becomes a tiny subset of people, which might become unhappy because they're underapreciated and they share very little with the non-technical folks.
Richard, I think we discussed that before, maybe I can articulate better this time; do you remember that group you "inspired" in Uruguay? how much do you think it lasted? a couple weeks.
The landscape isn't uniform, software developers are different among themselves, so you need to sort them by interests and have a different approach based on that.
Most people developing games are motivated by the prospects of: either just being able to make a living as game developers, or worse, of making more money as game developers than in their current day job.
But don't take my word, make a poll or something and see for yourself.
On 04/Jan/2022 22:54, Richard Stallman wrote:
[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider ]]] [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies, ]]] [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]
If the aim of a Game Jam isn't to produce a game that people use, what is its purpose?
Most of these events are competitions without prizes, so the purpose is up to the developer... generally people who participate intend to make money out of the games afterwards irrespective of the type of event, so I think having users only counts if it makes money for the author.
Most of these events are competitions without prizes, so the purpose
is up to the developer... generally people who participate intend to make money out of the games afterwards irrespective of the type of event, so I think having users only counts if it makes money for the author. -- Ismael Lucano
One of the highlighted issues was that it's very difficult to maintain freedom and fund the development of more complicated games e.g. Wolfenstein series where the developer releases all the source code under GPLv2 or GPLv3, but keeps the levels proprietary to sustain the development.
So i was arguing about providing >2000 USD price pool that can be crowd sourced to help sustain the development as usually the game can sustain itself after it's playable and well known.
On 1/5/22 11:38, Ismael Luceno wrote:
On 04/Jan/2022 22:54, Richard Stallman wrote:
[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider ]]] [[[ whether defending the US Const
itution against all enemies, ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]
If the aim of a Game Jam isn't to produce a game that people use, what is its purpose?
Most of these events are competitions without prizes, so the purpose is up to the developer... generally people who participate intend to make money out of the games afterwards irrespective of the type of event, so I think having users only counts if it makes money for the author.
-- -- Jacob Hrbek
On 05/Jan/2022 14:37, Jacob Hrbek wrote:
Most of these events are competitions without prizes, so the purpose
is up to the developer... generally people who participate intend to make money out of the games afterwards irrespective of the type of event, so I think having users only counts if it makes money for the author. -- Ismael Lucano
One of the highlighted issues was that it's very difficult to maintain freedom and fund the development of more complicated games e.g. Wolfenstein series where the developer releases all the source code under GPLv2 or GPLv3, but keeps the levels proprietary to sustain the development.
So i was arguing about providing >2000 USD price pool that can be crowd sourced to help sustain the development as usually the game can sustain itself after it's playable and well known.
Making it attractive would mean the prizes and frequency of the contests need to yield an average much higher than what would be possible by selling the game, which sounds unrealistic to me.
A single top game can easily gross tens of millions, I don't think you can compete with the privative models this way; and even the average good-ish games makes 20k-25k USD on their first year.
Making it work would require a different approach.