Being around FOSS a while sometimes you don't realize how formative certain games are, like I think mentally because I was around when Linux had nowhere near the spread it does now, being the kid who played Tux Racer feels like a very personal, almost private experience. Who played that?

But then you run across people who say, "Oh, OpenArena was a huge part of my youth, I'd play it all the time after school" and it hits you how important these games are, especially with economies being what they are today. Even dropping ten bucks on an older title like Quake 3 might be prohibitive.

FOSS games and especially FOSS spinoffs of games are even more important now with a growing awareness of the monstrous behaviour of game studios and publishers. I'm super into Quake 4 right now, but can I really ask people who didn't buy it on launch in 2005 to throw money at Bethesda today? I can't.

And that makes me sad. It feels like there's a piece of history being lost here, like I don't expect Quake 4 to have some renaissance on the level of Quake 1, but it does feel like the clock is ticking because it was never open-sourced.

A friend joked we could name a FOSS spinoff "OpenStrogg", heh.

#quake1 #quake4 #quake3 #openarena #arenafps #foss #linux #tuxracer