Some while ago I wrote an article about the Free Gaming Alliance, an organization that could help with the promotion and development of Free Open Source Games. At the time that I wrote that article I was not sure how well it would be received by the public. In the end the reactions turned out to be fairly positive.

Lets start with a reply to the original article. Some while after the article was published on .simplicity Valentin Anastase from the non-profit organization Freezing Moon replied. He provided a link to two sites, including Freezing Moon’s, dedicated to free gaming. Freezing Moon comes close to the idea that I sketched in the previous article, but it is not completely the same. Opposed to the Free Gaming Alliance, Freezing Moon actually develops games themselves. While I think that we should first deal with other issues concerning free gaming, I am happy to see an initiative like Freezing Moon and I encourage people to check it out.

Another interesting development can be found at OpenGameArt.org. OpenGameArt.org is a website that hosts “free, legal art for open source game projects”. It started small, but the amount of art has been growing fast. And the art that is being hosted on OpenGameArt.org is certainly not bad; it looks very good. If you are looking for art for your Free Open Source Game or want to support free game art (OpenGameArt.org accepts donations), then definitely check OpenGameArt.org.

So, there are initiatives focused on Free Open Source Gaming, but what about me? Through Sirrf I am trying to improve the Free Open Source Gaming ecosystem. I am wondering if I can have an impact on it in other ways, though.

Free Open Source Software (FOSS) as a whole is thriving, but Free Gaming still remains a child in comparison to other FOSS fields. That does not mean that Free Gaming is a failure. There have been success stories about Free Gaming (Nexuiz, Battle for Wesnoth, etc), but there have been few of these stories. The goal of this article is to explore how the founding of a Free Gaming Alliance could help the development and promotion of Free Gaming.

Introduction to the Alliance

Games are a complicated beast. A Free Gaming Alliance could help free games during those steps that are crucial to making a successful game: organization, development and publication. And during all steps the goal of the alliance would be the same: to provide professional help to free games. Taking over projects should not be a first thought. Consultants of the alliance would work as external members of the development team. It is not completely unimaginable, though, that the alliance would take over a promising project with the consent of the development team. That way the alliance could allocate more people and money to the project. But again, this should not be the case with every project. Besides there would be also be cases funding would be possible without a project takeover.

Organization

In terms of organization the Free Gaming Alliance could help projects with finding a team. When it comes to the programming department, free games have few problems. However, when it comes to content creation there are more problems. If you have ever visited an amateur game development website you might have noticed that there are few artists (designers, modellers, composers, etc) in comparison to programmers. The solution would be quite simple, though. The alliance could host a website where artists and anybody else involved in game development could upload free content (models, music, pieces of code, etc). At the first place projects in development projects could get the content they need. And secondly anybody involved into free game development would have a place to show of their skills.
Furthermore the alliance could also advice projects on topics such as deadlines and anything else related to organization.

Development

With regard to development the Free Gaming Alliance would have a simple job. The general FOSS community has already produced various tools which can be used for game development: GIMP and Blender to name two. Also with regard to SDKs there are already many usable products. These SDKs range from low-level (OpenGL, OpenAL, etc) to high-level (Irrlicht, Ogre, CrystalSpace, Horde3d). But tools are only one (important) part of game development. Another part is the development of the game itself. This is something the project team will be responsible for them self, but the alliance could advice and actually commit content. Furthermore it is not completely unimaginable that the alliance would create their own tools, libraries and maybe even platforms for game development.

Publication

And last but not least: publication. There are already various hosts for FOSS: SourceForge.net, Google Code, Ohloh. However, these hosts are not game specific. It is quite possible that this scares potential gamers. The Free Gaming Alliance could fill in this gap. By doing this the alliance could also offer services to monetize on publication. These services could include marketing, merchandise, package publishing, etc. Of course this would not only benefit the alliance, but also the project (shared revenue).

Conclusion

Yet, the Free Gaming Alliance is still a dream. I would love to see a real-life implementation, but I realize that it would be quite an undertaking. Still, it is an interesting and I would not mind working for such alliance.