Video games are a particularly interesting subsection of software in the context of free software.
Broadly speaking video games are an expression of software and multimedia solely to be used for consumption, and intended to be consumed exclusively within the canonical form presented by it’s developer.
In that way IP is very important, because often there’s more than just the investment in underlying game engine and third party middleware involved; it’s a combination of artwork, audio, video, bespoke scripting, and architecture, to make a whole work. It could be reasonably argued that those pieces should be aggressively defended to ensure the investment is not wasted as these pieces may be of limited utility outside of the complete whole.
I’m certainly all for increased transparency into the inner workings of this package. But it’s an interesting topic and I don’t know enough to even form an opinion on where I think the correct answer lies.
Broadly speaking video games are an expression of software and multimedia solely to be used for consumption, and intended to be consumed exclusively within the canonical form presented by it’s developer.
In that way IP is very important, because often there’s more than just the investment in underlying game engine and third party middleware involved; it’s a combination of artwork, audio, video, bespoke scripting, and architecture, to make a whole work. It could be reasonably argued that those pieces should be aggressively defended to ensure the investment is not wasted as these pieces may be of limited utility outside of the complete whole.
I’m certainly all for increased transparency into the inner workings of this package. But it’s an interesting topic and I don’t know enough to even form an opinion on where I think the correct answer lies.