Crowdfunding Games Into Freedom

Two games recently started "Kickstarter"-style campaigns on IndieGoGo with part of the offer being "becoming open source":

1. Monster 2, a JRPG which has been open source for a while but then was closed during a upgrade of game data/content, will be released under the Give it Your Own License, License if it reaches its goal of USD 1500,-.
2. Tumblegonk, a yet unreleased simple puzzle game, will be released under GPL if it reaches its goal of USD 850,-.

Is this how open source games should receive at least a bit of funding? I wouldn't mind if some old commercial or freeware titles would do such a step (which can't really be repeated for the same project/game). It's not a sustainable principle of course though.

There are few alternatives of making money with open source game development that comes to mind:

1. Make the engine open source and the game data freeware but sell it on closed platforms, like Frogatto (iOS version is for-pay).
2. Port existing open source games to closed platforms like in the case of Word War Vi (iOS version is for-pay - read the original developers' thoughts on this in this forum post).
3. [Warning: self-promotion] Sell additional, proprietary game data extra, while having the engine and base assets available under free licenses, like Nikki and the Robots (Story Episodes are proprietary and for-pay).
4. Donations. Some open source games accept them. The only game with compelling data on this is FLARE. I don't know of any open source games that fund full-time development through donations.

What I would really love to see is commission-based advertisement-games being developed in JavaScript, with at least their source code being released under open source licenses. But HTML5/JavaScript might not be there yet in the eyes of promoters and in the infrastructure of ad-services...

Oh, and Bitcoin! We need more Bitcoin action! FOSS game developers! Open up a wallet on for example blockchain.info and share your wallet address! As for Flattr... I don't know any more...

There is a long and old discussion about whether it is possible to make money and on TumbleGonk's crowdfunding campagin on our forums.

Release Changelog Bullets: Los, SaR2, HoA, NatR

Lips of Suna - 0.4.0

• Lots of sound effects.
• Master server and server browser.
• Climbing over obstacles.
• Merchants and trading.
• Attacks can be charged by holding the attack button.
• Projectiles and sword swings have speed lines.
• Controls can be customized in-game.
• Basic blood effects and beheading.
• More flexible map generation algorithm.
• Improved aer female, android female and kraken models.
• New items: crossbow, musket, revolver, barrel, bookcase, dewspring leaf, fruit.
• New spells: berserk, dig, firewall, light, travel.
• New quests: Brigands, Mining Guild, Sword on the Stone.

Search and Rescue II - 2.3.0

• Copyrighted Guadarrama scenery textures replaced with public domain ones in order to avoid licensing problems
• Small bugixes
• OpenSuse packages have been updated as well

Hero of Allacrost - June 2011 Unstable Release

• Two brand new maps with many scripted events that develop the beginning plot of the main story
• Enter/exit sequences in battle to smooth the transition from map exploration to battle execution
• Better display of battle damage and status indicator text and images
• Receiving damage causes a brief stun on the stamina bar, allowing you to delay opponents actions slightly
• New skills available to use, some of which can target an entire party
• Attack points have specific stat modifiers (for defense and evasion)
• Targeting certain attack points may invoke status effects. For example, targeting legs to reduce agility
• Enemy's are no longer "leveled up" to match the party's strength
• If the player loses a battle, they have the option to restart the battle from the beginning, taking a penalty on XP/drunes earned upon victory
• Two new enemies to fight, one of which is a boss-type

Nikki and the Robots - 0.3 + 0.3.1

• Prettier on-screen display elements
• Editor bug fixed
• Slowdown bug fixed on many systems

Humble Indie Bundle's Source Releases

The Humble Indie Bundles (HIB) have a tradition of at least part of the bundled games releasing their source.

While four of five games released source code under FOSS licenses in HIB1, only one released the source in HIB2 under a FOSS license (according to this comment, a license similar to LWJGL's).

No assets were released under Free-Art-compatible-terms, except for demo objects in Penumbra.

In HIB: Frozenbyte, two (or three) games have source releases, but all of them are non-commercial only.

This is not a complaint/demand/whine and I discourage any whiny behavior reactions. :)

I have no mind-reading ability or technology but I do have a theory, that shy source releases are missing out:

1. When a game has a source release, which is not FOSS-compatible (shy source), contributions will only come from people with high interest in the game. This will improve the game.
2. When a game has a FOSS-release, in addition contributions will come from people who think that the game enriches the community. This will improve availability and usability of the game.

#2 might be perceived as a problem by a game studio if they plan another sequel, because the prequel might become a stronger competitor to it.

Frogatto: open game & editor, closed art

Another game which is commercial (on iDevices) and has FOSS code and closed art (old art has been donated to OGA!) is Frogatto.

Star-filled Sky: 100% public domain

A revolutionary breakthrough were all of Jason Rohrer's commercial games, which are 100% public domain. My feeling is that assets are less of a focus for him, which makes releasing everything less of a risk.

Nikki and the Robots: open & closed

On the middle path is Nikki and the Robots, which is foss-code and has a functional foss-art version and will have a closed/for-pay-story. For now they activated paypal donations, flattr and T-shirts.

Nikki and the Robots

Nikki and the Robots is an incredibly cute platformer developed by people with exotic taste for revision control [Darcs repo] and programming language (Haskell). Read more on joyride's code page. There's a nikki wiki and a bug tracker.

A story mode is in development, which will be proprietary and for-pay.

Code is under LGPL and free-version-art under CC-BY-SA.

Development Video #03: Final Platforms

I made a little level pack:

celldropping 1-4 levelpack

[download | alt | backup]

Also: t-shirts!