The Silent Number

Posted: 2009-09-14

The first Ubuntu Gaming Team meeting was a huge success! With over two hours of discussion going strong, we covered a lot of ground. One of the major topics for out next meeting, and our most ambitious project, is coordinating the creation of a distributed content development platform. For this, we will need lots of input from FOSS game artists and free content producers like the Blender Open Movie Project.

The meeting will be on 9/27 @ 19:00 UTC in #ubuntu-meeting
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/GamingTeam/Meetings/Minutes/2009-09-27
Please contribute to the agenda!

Lack of good content is the #1 impediment for FOSS games. Most developers are not artists and the challenge of content creation is much more difficult than code. The need for FOSS content is the same for code, but current platforms that exist for code do not offer features needed for content. Code is all text and much easier to handle, while content is difficult as you cannot “diff” a picture or a blender file. On top of that, while distributed code development has been refined since computers were invented, content is a much newer ground, especially to apply FOSS distributed development to, and it simply hasn't received any of the focus and effort that code has.

We need input to help agree on a base for the platform and what features are most needed. Additionally, we might like to look to Canonical and/or the Blender Institute for support as they will benefit most from and be willing to contribute to such a project.