Isn't it time for an Open Source MMO?

Redruum · August 2015

This isn't 1995 where there is a handful of game programmers, artists, renderer's, etc. There are thousands and thousands of new college graduates each year with a focus on video game animation and development. Why does the MMO video game industry continue to put faith into one corporate person or a team of corporate employees that decide what you as the player will enjoy? Isn't it time that the players take more control as to what they would like to have in an MMO? Is one open source MMO going to make every gamer happy? Nope, but I feel this is the direction we should be going as an MMO genre.

Some of the best software ever created is open source. I am sure there are great, bright and creative programmers, artists, modeler's, etc that would dedicate some spare time to working on an open source MMO. We already see the creative people in the gaming world on a small scale with those that create add on's for games. A website/forums would be needed to organize the thoughts, direction and changes.

Am I the only one that thinks this is the direction we should go as an MMO genre? Let me know your thoughts and maybe we can start a revolution in the MMO genre!

RavenMMORPG · August 2015

@Redruum

There's a modern and completely open source game engine, Godot, that would be useful for building a client. That certainly makes an OS MMO more feasible.

However, I'll remain a bit sceptical about such a project until I see a 'successful' one. One largish problem with an OS MMO is that bugs and exploits (in the server, as well as the client) could be found by simply examining the source. It would have to be a high-quality body of code to thrive under such scrutiny!

But, mostly, organizing such an effort of volunteers, each motivated by their own vision, would be incredibly challenging.

An MMO needs a singular vision and plan. Where everyone involved is part of the design committee, arriving at that singular, consistent vision seems nearly impossible. Where everyone isn't part of the committee, keeping the team motivated over the years(?) of development seems nearly impossible as well.

CrazKanuk · August 2015

The biggest issue with Open Source is finding the "right" contributors. First of all, MMOs are big. Secondly, they're complex. Third, they're extremely time-consuming. There are some out there already. Ryzom being one that's been open source for a long time. Planeshift is another. So it isn't that it hasn't been done before, it's just one of those things that's really difficult to do. It's difficult to manage resources on a game project without having the entire team be remote, part-time, and, for the most part, completely unaccountable to the project. If there is someone who could pull all the necessary people together, get them to commit to completing work in a timely fashion, and manage the project itself, I would give a hearty round of applause.

Athisar · August 2015

This makes me want to download a MUD on Linux and run it. While not open source by accepted definitions, most of those allowed people to download the source code and develop their own versions.

Sovrath · August 2015

Well, as CrazKanuk mentions and as I mentioned in another thread, Ryzom is open source.

http://www.ryzomcore.org/about-ryzom-core/

I don't know if any substantial has come of it but I don't think so.

Sometimes "large mods" are announced only to never come to be or to have major issues with those working on them as well as all the accompanying drama. And those are just mods. It would take quite a bit to make an open source mmo come to fruition.

Redruum · August 2015

I think all the comments are great! Ryzom is too dated at this point I think. I have never heard of plane shift, but that is the general direction I had in my head. It is being created by a non profit company. I see that they are going to try and start using the Unreal 4 engine soon. Something like this is definitely a daunting task! As people have said it would need a lot of the "right" people to be dedicated and make something like this happen. There is also the challenge probably of video game media giving it no attention as the big game companies would not be happy if open source MMO's became the norm in the future.

It definitely isn't easy, but if anyone if willing to talk things over and a possible direction I am willing to listen and do what I can to organize. Even though it isn't easy I still think the future of the MMO genre will be greater if it is more open source oriented.

Dullahan · August 2015

I have more faith in indie games than open source games. The whole problem with an open source game is first and foremost the inability for people to put all their time into it because they can't do it for a living. Quality will suffer in such circumstances, as an MMO is more than a mere piece of software.

Beyond that its like Raven said, to really have a good game it has to be created by people with the same development philosophy. If people are approaching the game differently, you will only end up with a bunch of puzzle pieces that don't really fit together. There must be a solidarity among the world and its parts if its to feel right.

Deasant · August 2015

Redruum said:

This isn't 1995 where there is a handful of game programmers, artists, renderer's, etc. There are thousands and thousands of new college graduates each year with a focus on video game animation and development. Why does the MMO video game industry continue to put faith into one corporate person or a team of corporate employees that decide what you as the player will enjoy? Isn't it time that the players take more control as to what they would like to have in an MMO? Is one open source MMO going to make every gamer happy? Nope, but I feel this is the direction we should be going as an MMO genre.

Some of the best software ever created is open source. I am sure there are great, bright and creative programmers, artists, modeler's, etc that would dedicate some spare time to working on an open source MMO. We already see the creative people in the gaming world on a small scale with those that create add on's for games. A website/forums would be needed to organize the thoughts, direction and changes.

Am I the only one that thinks this is the direction we should go as an MMO genre? Let me know your thoughts and maybe we can start a revolution in the MMO genre!

There are thousands of college grads with loans to repay.

You're right this isn't 1995. Cost of living has gone up 2-3 times since then. Yet we earn the same or lesser wages. Who can afford to make an MMO and not get paid for their time?

Redruum · August 2015

You are all right. I guess I tend to be an overly positive thinker. I guess I was thinking that a group of people would collaborate and create a core game. Then from there is where people add things to the game when they have time and keep building on that. I guess I saw that recent college grads could create something and get hands on coding, model, etc practice and then use that work they have done as examples for their real job interviews to help them land jobs.

Nanfoodle · August 2015

This is not like people working together to make a Word program. MMOs are much like Art so its a very subjective subject. Biggest problem would be finding direction. Something as large an as MMO needs just that, a unifying vision to bring a cohesive project. Just dont see that working well in this format.

Wizardry · August 2015

Who is going to build the massive amount of assets and write all the code for the many needed systems?

It really doesn't matter who is making the games it matters more weather that person or persons are super greedy.

If a developer no matter what direction or funding decides they want a 500% markup on profits,you won't get their best effort.They will determine their game might bring in 5 million,so they will only afford 1 million into the project.I am sure there is maybe a 0.5% chance someone out there is making a game with passion but also likely that person has no money or manpower to pull it off,so you end up back at square one,giant money bags making games for profit not with PASSION.

FrodoFragins · August 2015

I don't think you can design an MMO by a huge committee. And I think the biggest issue is getting consistent and acceptable art assets.

sunandshadow · August 2015

FrodoFragins said:

I don't think you can design an MMO by a huge committee. And I think the biggest issue is getting consistent and acceptable art assets.

Nah, there's bigger issues than that. You can more or less ensure consistent art assets if the first thing you create is an art assets creator. An example would be Spore's creature creator. When working with volunteers, the major issue is getting anyone to do anything at all, compounded by the problem that no one will agree on what the game should be like and people will only donate labor to a concept they really like and feel like they are a partial owner/creator of the concept.

tupodawg999 · August 2015

I think projects like this are more likely to come about as commercial game engines become more powerful and easier to use and thus have older, cheaper cut-down versions that are within the price range of amateurs and still good enough for people to create their own games with as long as they don't mind them being 10+ years behind in graphical quality.

edit: The reason for saying that is an echo of what others have said about the scale of the project. The scale means it needs visible progress to be as fast as possible to keep morale high.

Fdzzaigl · August 2015

As Torval said, there are MMO's that have made parts or even their entire code and assets open-source. Constructing a new MMO out of the community would be something completely different though.

The sheer coordination of such a project would probably be a nightmare if a team of users would start it. Not just that, but the workload itself would be incredible and you'd likely have to unify a whole lot of profiles who can do stuff like netcode which aren't typically associated with modding.
Then there's also the security issues etc.

I'm not saying it would be impossible, there have been some amazing community-driven projects. But I wouldn't wonna be in the shoes of the guys who would have to manage a project like that.

Finally, just unifying people's visions would be a nightmare. Just look at how many different viewpoints you get on a forum like MMORPG.com. You'd have to make sure all those noses are turned in the same direction somehow, for no monetary compensation at all.

Fdzzaigl · August 2015

Indeed. Just running a guild and having any of your members willingly put in effort for something is a crazy man's work sometimes.

Getting random people working towards hard deadlines for no compensation would require a boatload of prozac and a back-up ticket to the nearest psychiatric ward.

mgilbrtsn · August 2015

While there isn't anything on the scale people are looking at, you do have games like Minecraft which allows a lot of open source material. There are also several games like ESO which allow for 'add-ons' I would say it isn't out of the realm of possibility, but would have to go through some sort of vetting process before new things are added. Too much chance for mischief and accidental issues which might be introduced into the sphere.

Deivos · August 2015

Crossfire, The Mana World, Ryzom, Daimonin, and Plane Shift are all open source MMOs.

World Forge is an open source framework for developing MMOs.

The Castle Doctrine is an example of an MMO developed using open source coding and data repositories.

The existence of such things is already there, the problem is that you are asking for the contribution of quality content from people that for the most part are either good enough to demand money for their effort, or bad enough that they can't deliver.

It's a very small cross-section of people who know what they are doing and willing to put it forth as a hobby investment, let alone the hurdles of trying to organize such projects and the many problems with normalizing the variety of code and content that gets added.

Gdemami · August 2015

Deivos said:

Crossfire, The Mana World, Ryzom, Daimonin, and Plane Shift are all open source MMOs.

World Forge is an open source framework for developing MMOs.

The Castle Doctrine is an example of an MMO developed using open source coding and data repositories.

The existence of such things is already there, the problem is that you are asking for the contribution of quality content from people that for the most part are either good enough to demand money for their effort, or bad enough that they can't deliver.

It's a very small cross-section of people who know what they are doing and willing to put it forth as a hobby investment, let alone the hurdles of trying to organize such projects and the many problems with normalizing the variety of code and content that gets added.

How many of those were actually developed as OS...?

Deivos · August 2015

Of the games mentioned above, Crossfire, Mana world, Daimonin, and Plane Shift were always open source.

Ryzom is the only one that changed over to being open source.

World Forge is itself an open source platform and Source Forge is an open source data repository that can be utilized by anyone to develop titles for private or open source projects.

Castle Doctrine is a privately developed title that's for-sale, but developed off of open source code.

Axehilt · August 2015

I noticed today that Meridian59 is open source.

Gdemami · August 2015

Deivos said:

Of the games mentioned above, Crossfire, Mana world, Daimonin, and Plane Shift were always open source.

Ryzom is the only one that changed over to being open source.

World Forge is itself an open source platform and Source Forge is an open source data repository that can be utilized by anyone to develop titles for private or open source projects.

Castle Doctrine is a privately developed title that's for-sale, but developed off of open source code.

iirc, Planeshift, while open source, the engine was first developed by ABC and further content development was made avaiable under GNU, so not really OS from scratch. I might be wrong there tho.

Doesn't matter much, I was just curious.

I agree with you tho, something simpler like other titles you mentioned can be probably developed as OS but fully fledged, mainstream MMO is beyond the scope that OS licencing could handle.

Deivos · August 2015

Plane Shift was developed off of the Crystal Space engine and development toolkit, which has existed under the GNU LGPL license. It's been free software for development since ~1997 and only really picked up around 2003.

So while it's not technically open-source, the engine was built with a modular design, and it's code is fully accessibly for rewrite and replacement in tandem with other things like Source Forge, which puts almost no distinction between using it and a different open source engine save for it has a slightly more stable core developer group (though rather inactive).

Planeshift itself is a bit peculiar, as any content developed for it is placed under it' own content and contribution licenses, but the source code is still considered open for all non-commercial use.

Admittedly I don't know a whole lot about the details on Planeshift though.

iDigDinos · August 2015

Deivos said:

Plane Shift was developed off of the Crystal Space engine and development toolkit, which has existed under the GNU LGPL license. It's been free software for development since ~1997 and only really picked up around 2003.

So while it's not technically open-source, the engine was built with a modular design, and it's code is fully accessibly for rewrite and replacement in tandem with other things like Source Forge, which puts almost no distinction between using it and a different open source engine save for it has a slightly more stable core developer group (though rather inactive).

Planeshift itself is a bit peculiar, as any content developed for it is placed under it' own content and contribution licenses, but the source code is still considered open for all non-commercial use.

Admittedly I don't know a whole lot about the details on Planeshift though.

I love you for the simple fact that you've even brought up Plane Shift! I was going to bring it up, but thanks for covering it. On a side note, that game has many fond memories. I only found it because I was looking up MMOs for Linux

Loke666 · August 2015

I think Shards could open up for something like that. Once we can run custom servers I feel that more people will get the idea to put something together.

I will start there with my own server at least, already had a small one in NWN and this will be far more epic. If that works out fine I am surely interested to join something like this. Just having good ideas isn't enough, experience is very important and learning what the players do enjoy and don't can only be learned that way.

Quizzical · August 2015

How do you stop would-be developers from fighting over game mechanics? Open-source development teams can work when everyone agrees on what the software is supposed to do and it's just a question of who will implement what. But people most emphatically do not agree on how an MMORPG ought to be made.

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