Comment by DC-3
5 years ago
I'm a libre software advocate but I see little reason why games should be libre. They're not tools - you don't use them to create things or to do your job. They're more akin to movies - compiled and packaged 'experiences' that are by design read-only. When you buy a DVD, you don't expect hundreds of hours of unedited footage to come along with the film so you can cut together your own version. The same is true of games.
> When you buy a DVD, you don't expect hundreds of hours of unedited footage to come along with the film so you can cut together your own version.
instead of accepting this as a fact of life, it should definitely be discussed and debated. What are good reasons for not having this right by default ?
For instance, Star Wars fans have made the despecialized edition from footage from the various movie - the result is pretty good. People remix music all the time; there have been plenty of initiatives over the years to provide songs as separated tracks to allow for more advanced remixes. etc etc...
> What are good reasons for not having this right by default ?
The good reason is that someone or some company paid for creating all those hundreds of hours of footage, so they get the first and final say over who gets to view and/or use it.
> so
there is nothing obvious in that deduction.
For cinema for instance a loooot of the money that serves into making movies come directly from taxpayer money - a figure I can find in the US is 1.5 billion $ of tax per year for instance in one occurence : https://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/04/us/when-hollywood-comes-t... - and let's not get started about public tv which is pretty much mostly public funds.
Likewise for my country, France - only a minority of money invested in movies comes directly from private pockets: https://i.f1g.fr/media/figaro/704x319_cropupscale/2019/03/19...
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That is not a reason or an answer to that question.
No one denies that whoever creates something has the right to dispose of it however they wish.
Having the legal right to annoy your own customers is not a good reason to annoy your own customers.
The question was why couldn't the material be packaged up in any other ways? What's the "good reason" it can't be? Does it kill any babies?
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For first release, sure. But forever? Why? If I want to remix Steamboat Willie in 2020 why should Disney still have an exclusive right to that today?
It depends on whether you think the creators of something do or do not have the right to sell or not sell it if they choose. If they do, then surely they can choose to include or not include any parts of their creation. Why should anyone have a right to cut footage the owner has chosen not to sell?
This is where there needs to be some careful thinking about terminology, since we don't have any right to other people's stuff by default.
The people who made the movie have all the rights to it and then they make some DVDs and sell them. They only sold what's on the DVDs. They didn't sell the other stuff, so people don't have a right to that stuff.
Now, that is not to say that the products couldn't be different in the future. It might turn out that movies which include a footage "parts kit" do better in the market place, so much more so that it becomes the normal way of doing business and is what is the ordinary and expected product at the ordinary price. But there's no reason to expect we have any particular rights to stuff other people did, or that they can't carefully parcel out the rights at prices that they set.
> What are good reasons for not having this right by default?
Getting tired of such free use of the word “right”. [EDIT: see bottom of this post!]
I will assume you’re not from the US, or are using hyperbole when you use the term “right”. Here in the USA our rights are clearly defined in the Constitution & Bill of Rights and they have a special quality: Our military and politicians literally swear not to defend King or country, but the Constitution, which represents a set of rights no human is allowed to abridge.
Rights are things we send our sons and daughters to die for in war.
So maybe you mean something a bit less dramatic?
EDIT: After my bloviating I reversed my position based on something the parent posted regarding government subsidies. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25506982
> I will assume you’re not from the US,
yes
Source available games (don't even need to be "Open Source" or "Free and Open Source") benefit greatly from modding, keeping games alive much longer and making them better even in the very short run.
I dabble in game design and the plan is making the game code open/libre (not the assets or trademarks though) after some time passes (years or maybe even decades, depending on the success) so others can learn from it, extend it and maybe even sell it is quite a draw for me.
> I dabble in game design and the plan is making the game code open/libre (not the assets or trademarks though) after some time passes (years or maybe even decades, depending on the success) so others can learn from it, extend it and maybe even sell it is quite a draw for me.
Some assets are code (procedural content, for example) though, how do you feel about those?
Also, one thing I've noticed is that for many ostensibly open source game code releases where assets are withheld, often no placeholder assets are provided either, without which the code sometimes can't be built, or if built can't be run or tested, which can present a significant barrier to the use or reuse of the code. All the more so when the original assets are in some idiosyncratic, non-standard, and possibly even undocumented, format.
I quite literally meant the code to be something like MIT/GPL licensed and art/sounds licensed something preventing commercial use, but all being available. This should make replacing sounds and art rather trivial.
> Some assets are code (procedural content, for example) though, how do you feel about those?
Code is code, if it produces output, it is owned by the user :) (assuming the "code" doesn't produce copyrighted content).
EDIT: Why do I treat code differently from assets? I have no clue tbh, but probably has to do with I can do code and thus can give it away, and can't do assets and thus can't.
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Video games can largely be described as simulations, and ways to interact with it. This applies to both extensive simulations like dwarf fortress, to incredibly simple simulations like mega man. Combined with the fact they’re software, and thus generally available to be shared and modified without cost, they’re uniquely qualified to be a communal artistic medium — one in which others can modify, enhance, and extend the simulation capabilities.
There’s a reason games have (popular) modding cultures, where other mediums do not, and that same reason is why it is viable/reasonable for games to be libre.
That most games are treated and developed like movies, rather than like simulations, is a result of a fundamental misunderstanding by the game designers/developers.
> incredibly simple simulations like mega man.
Ok, now I'm offended.
Except that games are executing code on your general purpose computer. They are also connected to the internet these days.
When I buy a DVD, I can view it with my own software or on a dedicated device that is not a general purpose computer or connected to the internet.
I suspect that most people who try to carve out an exception for games are just rationalizing. They prefer free software, but don't want to give up their games. Then they often poo-poo someone for not wanting to give up $OtherPropreitaryApp.
The idea that you couldn't hide some kind of code execution exploit in a dvd-playing software and that anyone ever audits their video decoding hardware-software chain in a rigorous manner is also a rationalization.
I don't really play games so that's not my rationale.
Look at Doom, Quake, etc for the benefits: fixing bugs, keeping the game playable in new drivers/systems/OSes, making better mods, etc.
The game content doesn't need to be libre, but the game engine benefits from it.
None of them adopted by Id or Bethesda, and representative of possible lost sales.
If it wasn't for Carmack it wouldn't ever have happened.
Instead of lost sales, one could easily argue on the side of increased market and mindshare.
I do not think it is guaranteed. But there are no guarantees. Even Nintendo has had misses.
Yeah, so?
The point of free software isn't just for the companies but also for the end users.
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I see what you mean, but the existence of thriving mod communities proves otherwise. People do want to fiddle with games and make their own derivative works.
Also, concerns about tracking and privacy.
The days games where complete packaged single player experiences are long gone (unless you're Nintendo). Games are tools: kids see each other in a game of Fortnite and visit concerts together. That makes Fortnite a communication/messenger tool and a browser too. Same for other community-based stuff like Roblox or Minecraft.
Stadia, GeForce Now, XBox Game Streaming and Amazon Luna just entered the bar.
Nethack, DCSS, Cataclysm: dark days ahead and co. show that FOSS games can do very well.
"Do very well" in a community and business sense are two very, very different things.
I would say the nethack dev team/community institution is a lot more valuable to me than any for-profit dev corporation dev team/ community institution, in a qualitatively different way. Company makes a nice game, cool, fine. Open-source community makes a game- oh, that's something that will last.
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So what is their current business revenue?
Having more fun and forks than any propietary game could dream. Nethack/Slashem will be there forever.
A lot of games will be lost due to DRM like Starforce, where even running then under a VM and a crack is not granted gameplay.
OTOH, on libre games with propietary data, a lot of then are having lots of earnings with GOG and for example, ScummVM and open engines running unnoficially under Linux and OSX.
With ScummVM you can buy lots of adventures and now even some games like the ones from the Ultima saga up to VI are perfectly playable, (and integrating Exult for VII is not a big task). In a near future, engines like Little Big Adventure will be playable under ScummVM.
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What do I care? The games exist, the proof is in the pudding.