If you actually do mean “MMO” and not traditional “MMORPG”, then there are skill-based games that would not necessarily depend on “fully-equipped characters” and could be made to be “Massively Multiplayer Online”.
You could have an MMO puzzle game where each federated server can host puzzles that other players have to solve… and where players can create their own puzzles for others to solve (something in the spirit of “the Castle Doctrine” game, for example, but with fixed gold for everyone).
A federated mmo could only work if there are no significant attributes/stats to keep track of, or if said attributes are only accepted from bubbles/whitelisted servers. In the end, it’d be something like Opensimulator, which is a FOSS Second Life of sorts.
I’m curious what you think making SD FOSS would add. Imo, it’s a standout example of a game that hits way above it’s weight class and price point, and a dev that just won’t stop adding content.
IMO all software would be better if FOSS, regardless of the virtues of the developers. That’s why I would love if the games that I love to play were to be FOSS as that would make them even better in my eyes.
I fail to see what makes games any different from other software. The piece of software can be easily studied and tinkered with, users have the power to control what exactly runs on their machine, and the software can organically be improved by people making their changes in their own derivations of that software that they make available for the whole world to use, study, reproduce, and modify.
Furthermore, if the developer dies, the game being FOSS will guarantee that it will live on and continue to benefit future generations.
Many games aren’t profitable to port to older or less relevant hardware and community porting efforts often takes years to properly disassemble and reassemble to work on new platforms. FOSS is easier to access and port to different hardware.
Expanded mod support. Mods are great but they always have limits and there are often certain parts of a game that either cannot (due to tech) or may not (due to developer wishes) be modified. FOSS games wouldn’t have this limitation.
The ability for the community to own FOSS and forks in the event that a company buys the rights to a game and either closes off access or stops supporting certain versions of it.
Likewise your access to a FOSS game cannot be revoked my a marketplace. If a game is for some reason pulled you’re not guaranteed continued unending access to it. The marketplace in question holds all the cards.
FOSS games may also continue to be updated, improved, and worked on after the original dev loses interest or is no longer around. Stardew is well maintained right now, but what about in 15 years when hardware is very different and the dev has stopped updating it?
Stardew valley and kind of in topic. I’d like to see an mmo that is federated.
A federated MMO would be interesting! But cheating might be a concern. Anyone could create a server with fully-equipped character and just federate.
But maybe servers could whitelist trusted servers? 🤔
If you actually do mean “MMO” and not traditional “MMORPG”, then there are skill-based games that would not necessarily depend on “fully-equipped characters” and could be made to be “Massively Multiplayer Online”.
You could have an MMO puzzle game where each federated server can host puzzles that other players have to solve… and where players can create their own puzzles for others to solve (something in the spirit of “the Castle Doctrine” game, for example, but with fixed gold for everyone).
A federated mmo could only work if there are no significant attributes/stats to keep track of, or if said attributes are only accepted from bubbles/whitelisted servers. In the end, it’d be something like Opensimulator, which is a FOSS Second Life of sorts.
I’m curious what you think making SD FOSS would add. Imo, it’s a standout example of a game that hits way above it’s weight class and price point, and a dev that just won’t stop adding content.
IMO all software would be better if FOSS, regardless of the virtues of the developers. That’s why I would love if the games that I love to play were to be FOSS as that would make them even better in my eyes.
Do you mind elaborating on the benefits of FOSS for games? I see the benefits of FOSS for software, but not so much for games.
I fail to see what makes games any different from other software. The piece of software can be easily studied and tinkered with, users have the power to control what exactly runs on their machine, and the software can organically be improved by people making their changes in their own derivations of that software that they make available for the whole world to use, study, reproduce, and modify.
Furthermore, if the developer dies, the game being FOSS will guarantee that it will live on and continue to benefit future generations.
I see. Thanks for the reponse!
Not op, but:
Many games aren’t profitable to port to older or less relevant hardware and community porting efforts often takes years to properly disassemble and reassemble to work on new platforms. FOSS is easier to access and port to different hardware.
Expanded mod support. Mods are great but they always have limits and there are often certain parts of a game that either cannot (due to tech) or may not (due to developer wishes) be modified. FOSS games wouldn’t have this limitation.
The ability for the community to own FOSS and forks in the event that a company buys the rights to a game and either closes off access or stops supporting certain versions of it.
Likewise your access to a FOSS game cannot be revoked my a marketplace. If a game is for some reason pulled you’re not guaranteed continued unending access to it. The marketplace in question holds all the cards.
FOSS games may also continue to be updated, improved, and worked on after the original dev loses interest or is no longer around. Stardew is well maintained right now, but what about in 15 years when hardware is very different and the dev has stopped updating it?
I can see the upside for some of those. Thanks for expansive response.
It’s more about longevity. If it’s open source, the game could be ported to modern systems in the future if the dev stopped updating it.
It would also allow for bigger mods, but the dev has really worked with mods already so maybe not too big of a change.