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Open Source Games
The play of open systems concerns more than player experience: there are ideological dimensions as well. To explore some of the values underlying open culture, we will take a brief detour through the phenomenon of open source software. Open source has two important features: first, code is written as an open system that can be improved and modified by a community of designers rather than by a single development team; and second, open source software is freely shared among users and its source code made available. The model of open source software development is a non-game instance of the player-as-producer paradigm, a precursor to the open play of many contemporary digital games. Open source software had its beginnings in the 1960s with the sale of the first large-scale computers by IBM and other manufacturers. These computers came with "free" software that let users share and modify the source code. This open source model was soon replaced by proprietary software as an industry standard; it would not find a voice again until the early 1990s. As Jesus M. Gonzalez notes regarding the history of open source software,"In the late 1960s, the situation changed after the 'unbundling' of IBM software, and in the mid-1970s it was usual to find proprietary software, in the sense that users were not allowed to redistribute it, that source code was not available, and that users could not modify the programs."[2] Although open source software continued its development during the 1970s and 1980s within relatively small, isolated communities, it wasn't until the early 1990s that the programming community underwent larger changes. According to Gonzalez, one of the most important events was the public release of the first versions of the Linux kernel (the core code elements of the Linux operating system) by Linus Torvalds, a Finnish computer science student. Torvalds made the code for the Linux kernel available to programmers around the world, encouraging them to collaborate on refining and expanding its code. Torvalds believed that an open system approach to software design involving the participation of user-programmers was the most effective way to develop the kernel. He knew that the people who took up his offer to play with and modify the code could push the software beyond what he could accomplish on his own. The fact that many people were working with the source code simultaneously allowed for a form of creative redundancy: when several programmers would find the same bug, or make the same modification, the strengths and weaknesses of the software as a whole became much clearer. There is a strong connection between Torvalds's model and the emergent play of games as open culture. Open game systems, like open source software, are designed to be evolutionary, not static, and to be expressed in multiple forms. Players operate as a community of developers, transforming elements of the game system, playtesting them, sharing them with other players, and submitting them for further modification. This free play is not obligatory, of course: players of an "open source" game can modify it if they wish, but are not forced to do so. The spirit of open source accommodates many levels of participation, from players who like the game as it is to those who want to transform it completely. When users or players manipulate a structure and distribute modifications to other interested parties, they participate in an economy of exchange open to all. This open source approach has the characteristics of being non-hierarchical, openly accessible, non-guided, and emergent. These four principles are the cornerstone of open source software, but also happen to describe open culture games as well. According to the open source model, open source users have the freedom to:
Use the software as they wish, for whatever they wish, on as many computers as they wish, in any technically appropriate situation.
Have the software at their disposal to fit it to their needs. Of course, this includes improving it, fixing its bugs, augmenting its functionality, and studying its operation.
Redistribute the software to other users, who could themselves use it according to their own needs.
Users of a piece of software must have access to its source code.[3]
Now reread these principles, replacing "software" with "game" and "user" with "player." It is striking how smoothly the concepts of open source software transfer to games as open culture. In the case studies that follow, we explore these principles in the context of two games, one non-digital (Icehouse), and one digital (Elemental). Even though open source emerged from computer science, its ideas can be applied to games both on and off the computer. All that is required is the design of an open system and a community of players intent on participating. [2]Jesus M. Gonzalez,"A Brief History of Open Source Software." <http://eu.conecta.it/paper/brief_history_open_sourcel >.[3]Ibid. Ron Hale-Evans,"Game Systems: Part 1." <www.thegamesjournal.com/articles/GameSystems1.shtml>
