What the Gaming Market Can Learn From the Open Source Movement

While exploring our "gaming-metaverse" tag with my amateur eyes, I start to see similarities in the open-source movement. This is why I decide to write this article.

History Lesson on the Economics of Open Source

Before, "big businesses" didn't want to share and improve technologies. It was not their primary goal.

And open software was like leftovers from a big table that nobody wants to "eat."

I imagine a situation that might take place 15 years ago. An employee wants to upgrade the stack and try Linux as the primary operating system. But his boss is not allowing him to do this major change - because they don't have time and resources right now to make a switch. But the same boss is OK if the admin will play with it in his spare time. Common situation? At least it's fading away.

I'm not throwing stones at companies. Most companies have their goals and must focus on them, like accumulating resources and growing revenues. You can't blame them for it. It's in their DNA.

Like you can't be angry at seaweed for not giving you apples each summer.

And as companies we’re not interested in making changes - individuals decide to unite and redefine the game, step by step. Individuals driven by passion changed the process. And it becomes mainstream. As a result, you and I (developers) can decide to share our code, work on system improvements together, collaborate with other folks, etc.

Learning from open-source initiatives

During the development process, we can decide to rely more on open software during our work. We can use the open library instead of re-inventing the wheel.

How does it connect with the gaming market? We decided to share our experience and contribute to a global system of knowledge and skills. If game dev companies do it too - the next generation of gamers will be happy.

Slowly, but inevitably, open libraries are closer to the default choice for business. First, great tools evolved into reliable products or became good services. Then, after reaching a complete form - they start to replace custom solutions.

By using already established services, businesses start to save money. It also reduced tech debt. As a result, teams can focus on other essential things.

From Excitement to Reality

Contributing to an open-source project is exciting to many developers. And blockchain-based projects are now warming developer's souls too. It is one of the reasons why talents are drifting there.

If you believe something is building the "future", it's hard to say "no, I don't want to be involved." The ability to improve people's lives is priceless.

Can gaming projects, combined with blockchain technologies, redefine the current market? If blockchain projects trying to reshape the current gaming market can adopt the same logic that the open-source movement uses, it might speed things up.

Why it's necessary to have an excited dev team?

The reason is simple: it is getting harder and harder to attract the best talents. Best talents might not be interested in building "just another Uber of something."

Instead, a lot of people are looking for challenges. Yes, it's not the best motivator for a lot of people. But being part of an exciting tech project is playing an important role. If you have a groundbreaking project --> people will be interested in participating more.

While joining Facebook or Google can be a success for many engineers, there are still many people portraying them as "evil companies." However, on the other side of internet, Facebook, Google, and Amazon are significant contributors to the open source community.)

What is powering open-source? Great engineers interested in building cool things. We love to automate and improve things.

Plus, being an essential player in some open-source is excellent publicity. It can make you a star. It's like you are building your brand. Do you like to sell yourself each time during interviews? I'm not. A lot of developers too. And if you become a non-replaceable member of "module X," - interviews will become easier for you.

What is next in Open Source Gaming?

By opening the code of your game, you will improve your code quality and reduce your bugs. Imagine how many game devs will be nervous when others can submit a pull request and point to a stinky code :) And opening your code didn't mean that someone will steal it. Ask Facebook, Google, or Amazon (or maybe they want their open source code to be stolen?).Open source sets us up to iterate quickly.

Ave open source! Viva developers!

On that note, I want to finish the first part. I write about ten pages but need to speed things up and submit it before a deadline.

This article was edited with Hackernoon’s Markdown editor ;)

This article is part of The Gaming Metaverse Writing Contest hosted by HackerNoon in partnership with The Sandbox.

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