Why is there not much developer talk on FGD [split topic]

Technopeasant

Yeah, frankly I don't think a forum is a great structure for actual project management, so I have always seen this as more a place to promote your project rather than develop it.

And frankly on this new forum at least we talk about free games. On the old forum way more was not terribly pleasant conversations about utterly irrelevant political or social topics.

Peter

I have 2 theories why we have less talk about game dev than one would wish. I am NOT sure if they are true.

1.) Could it be that we free game developers need more tools before we can concentrate on developing? Proprietary developers can buy a license of a ready-made engine or throw "human capital" at the development of the engine in-house. We have Godot and other engines but we still have less tools than the game industry, haven't we?

2.) And we have less people but have to do the same job. And also important, we have less capable people I guess. Sure we have coding and art geniusses. But less than the industry has.

EDIT: 3.) Maybe we behave less professional than the industry pros? See old forum. (EDIT2: This is not pointing a finger at someone. Notice that I said "we". That includes me. And maybe being unprofessional is part of the fun in open source developing?)

Greetings
Peter

HuguesRoss

So, some thoughts about folks' responses:

I think FGD was mostly always about giving a space for developers to interact with players/playtesters.

In theory, this is actually a very valuable service. One of the biggest issues I've had over the past decade or so of libre gamedev is actually reaching players, so I think a site built around this notion is actually a pretty good idea. It makes me wonder if the issue is more one of image, since that goal wasn't really clear to me when I joined.

I do agree that a lot devs have built their own platforms now, though smaller/solo devs can still have a lot more trouble since they need to balance that community building with their own dev work.

And we have less people but have to do the same job. And also important, we have less capable people I guess. Sure we have coding and art geniusses. But less than the industry has.

I don't think the industry is a good target, personally--The vast majority of public-facing gamedev and dev discussions are by and between indie devs rather than salaried folks working at bigger companies (Mostly because of social media rules and NDA imposed by their employers). And at that scale, even a single person or a small group can make a successful game, given the motivation and resources.

It would be interesting to hear about a forum where dev discussion is happening. I only know forums about proprietary game-development. There's opengameart.org about assets.

Looping back to this, I think today most places of discussion are sort of agnostic towards libre/proprietary. The majority of folks you might see in an engine's community, or itch, or various social medias will be doing proprietary dev because it's the default, but there's nothing stopping FOSS folks from joining in--and I believe some do. As far as forums go I mostly have around LÖVE's and the Itch.io forums, mostly because they happen to be active and on-topic to my interests.

From my experience with those, if I had to put a finger on the biggest source of developer discussion...I think it's actually complete newbies? When someone shows up with no idea what to do and asks broad questions like "Hey guys how do I make a platformer", it tends to bring all the experienced folks out of the woodwork to discuss and argue about the best resources, techniques, etc...

On the design side, I've noticed that chatrooms tend to lend themselves best to those discussions. Usually it starts with people sharing whatever random bits they're working on, then inevitably people start to make suggestions on some of them and the back-and-forth can result in some really interesting discussions. I think some of the best design talk I've had was actually chatting in the community around a streamer I follow, who specializes in RPGs. Sharing a little bit of work I was doing with people who had a lot of opinions about the relevant genre got a lot of productive discussion about design and mechanics.

I'm not too sure where I was going with this tangent honestly, but maybe it'll interest someone who reads it.

Technopeasant

HuguesRoss

Agreed on the point about comparing us to "the industry". The real question the libre gaming community needs to ask is not why we are not comparable to AAA development (although admittedly FLOSS does compete with proprietary development in most other areas), but why we appear to fall short of the indie and even freeware game communities given those are often staffed at the same level.

I also agree with you that the better way to foster development talk is to share little bits of work you have done. Too often we get distracted by the grand design we hope to achieve that we fail to take note of the little milestones along the way. Showing others your work, no matter how small, can derive useful feedback but also be motivational to other people to keep the ball rolling on their own efforts.

Tryder

What motivates the FOSS game developer to develop FOSS games?

What, if anything, differs from that which motivates the professional or indie game developer?

Peter

Tryder What motivates the FOSS game developer to develop FOSS games?

What, if anything, differs from that which motivates the professional or indie game developer?

I think there's something in common (joy of coding/painting and especially of making games). But imo it differs a lot nontheless: Pros want to make money, get a share of the market, be really popular. FOSS devs, usually amateurs, want to do it right (free software advocates) or think they are not good enough for commerce (open source as a mere tool). They have a project in their mind and want to make it become real. That's opposite to the normal pro who gets told what to do. I think indie devs are halfway in between these two poles.

Greetings
Peter