[tcaudilllg]

My point is this: this scheme ends up making the rich richer and the poor poorer.

It's the programmers who are stingy with their time, not the artists. I know because a remarkably talented artist was my gf for several years.

In fact, most of the best game designers have considerable artistic talent. It's no accident that Inafune is both the creator of Megaman the character and architect of Megaman the series.

But mark my words: Richard Stallman has his eye on the game industry, and this competition is only the first phase in a massive and concentrated attack. He means TO DESTROY YOUR JOBS. I can see the momentum in the Slashdot posts: they are gonna try it; examine what went wrong; and optimize. The aim to to create free games on scale with the big companies. Didn't you read Bart's responses to the competition posts? "Think BIG!"

Mozilla plans to concentrate the entire indie games movement in that MMO they are working on. You heard that right: the FSF Foundation is attacking indie itself. And why wouldn't it?

But Nodtveidt, I'm willing to listen. Do you think.this contest will succeed? And if it does, do you think the results will be positive?

(this is not an invitation for Bjorn's opinion, as he's already demonstrated that he doesn't think situations through very well. Or at least, not OTHERS' situations.)

[Ninkazu]

[tcaudilllg]

[Ninkazu]

My wife being a psychologist, we talk about that kind of group dynamics all the time. You didn't really respond to my comment that you have a weak grasp on the rules of reasoning. Instead you decided that you would imply proof by the bogus rule of, "I've thought about this more than you."

Here is a complete proof system for first order logic:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sequent_calculus

Your "proof by authority" and "proof by anecdote" rules of inference are unsound.

[Nodtveidt]

There will always be a need for paid artwork. OGA will never grow so large that it negates that need. People made the same claims about FOSS well over a decade ago, and yet Microsoft and other such commercial companies continue to grow at breakneck speeds with their closed-source, proprietary software. If anything, the explosion of FOSS has made commercial firms work even harder.

I use OGA to find placeholder content for building prototypes. It's much easier to find potential artists if you have a working model already in place. While there are always people who are going to just use OGA stuff and never consider hiring a dedicated artist (or two, or maybe three), most of the people who use OGA do so for the same reason... to find stock graphics as placeholder work, so they have something to show to potential artists who get paid for their time
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If you play a Microsoft CD backwards you can hear demonic voices. The scary part is that if you play it forwards it installs Windows. - wallace

[RampantCoyote]

I remember thinking that a great deal could be done with "off-the-shelf" art for indie games (premium or free). Later I discovered that the divergent art styles made that impractical. So while a ton of free / cheap off-the-shelf art can do wonders to create proof-of-concept, I don't see it replacing artists any more than free game engines now available replacing programmers.
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Tales of the Rampant Coyote - Old-School Game Developer talks Indie Games, RPGs, and the Games Biz

[tcaudilllg]

[Nodtveidt]

*sigh*

So, just to be clear... your point is: OGA's decision to run this event will cause the downfall of free society and reduce us to slaves... though it's tough to figure out who the masters will end up being. Got it.

(And they called me crazy for saying that Microsoft would eventually make video game consoles.)
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If you play a Microsoft CD backwards you can hear demonic voices. The scary part is that if you play it forwards it installs Windows. - wallace

[tcaudilllg]

[tcaudilllg]

I'm due to release Gamestar this weekend. For sale. I do not believe we are culturally ready for professional-grade free entertainment software. It's been tried before, yes, but always as an advertising gimmick. There comes a point where gimmicks must correlate to sales of something else. Free culture today relies on three things:
1) gimmicks (this is what Google uses Mozilla as)
2) sales to government bodies (at exorbitant rates... you may have noticed the forum software people do this) and support from companies seeking to exploit the FOSS development model (although I'm not sure how much of this survived the recession.. those cuts came from somewhere, after all).
3) miniscule donations from free users. Again, we are not culturally ready for donation-based economics.

I came upon this report from a guy who put his all into building software for professional scientific use. That's tough data to counter.

I haven't the slightest idea why Google is funding an online game platform. But I do know that once they've consolidated their operations to whatever effect they are aiming for, they will cut back, and all that ideologically driven power amassed through this project (that's what's driving this compo, after all...) will be like a firewall against the viability of competitors. Ask Richard what the wages are of running afoul of Google, whether intentionally or no.

So if you want to contribute directly to Google's personal ambitions, go ahead.... It's been called "God"... maybe it is God! (no of course not, but people aren't wise enough to the dangers of self-interest, no matter how benevolent the intention may seem).

I just don't think this game platform -- nor this contest -- will ever really be in my interest.