Open Source Games Groundhog Day

Most people probably remember the old movie "Groundhog Day" where the main protagonist was trapped in a time loop being forced to experience the same thing over and over again.
When browsing the supposedly open source games community websites I had a similar experience after noticing they constantly put up "new" news that are somehow identical to the "old" news all the time.

First I thought I came across an old article/video with lists like "The top 10 best open source FPS" I watched it out of curiosity to see, if they finally did include my game, that is obviously superior to any of those old quake ripoffs, then I noticed, no they did not include it, so I thought it must be an old video, but I could not believe it when I looked at the date, it was from 2019, 2020, 2021, it was all up to date, even though the content remained the same as many years ago. Then I began digging a bit and watched other videos and their new articles/videos were in most cases identical to their old articles/videos. In most cases the number of open source games in existence in total is not even enough to fill a top 10 list or even top 5 list sometimes, so they add into it some obviously not open source freeware games or pseudo open source games, to make up for the missing titles, but always making sure to never include my new and more up to date game in it.

I really wondered what goes on in the heads of those people are they batshit insane or so? How can you write the same article or make the same video every year suggesting people the "new" titles of the great open source game development movement, but then never listing any new titles, but instead list the old onces again and even add some non open source, abandoned or even vaporware titles in there to fill up the the list. Well for a part I know why they don't list any new open source games, because they don't exist, but even in the very rare occasions they exist, they just ignore them and no it is not just me who gets ignored, there is also a few other game developers that constantly get excluded from those articles or lists.

It is not just one Deja Vu where I experienced the same thing twice, no it is like that for as long as I can remember. In the very past open source games did not exist for the most part, then at some point the Quake engine was open sourced, after that a bunch of people took it and developed a bunch of Quake arena ripoff games, they hardly ever managed to develop something that could match the original games in quality, because the assets and the brand was still proprietary, so their supposed open source Quake was only partly open source aka not open source at all, yet they still celebrated it as a big victory for open source gaming. They kept ignoring the fact, that the original game was never open source to begin with and advertised their efforts that "soon", they will be able to have fully ripped of, I mean reproduced, I mean produced an open source game that is just like the original one. The years went by and nothing ever really progressed and they kept claiming all their new titles coming up and "soon" they will be a real game, which never happened. Now like 10-15 years later I can go online to check their progress and they are still developing things that were already like that last year, over last year, over over last year, 5 years ago, 10 years ago, sometimes even 15 years ago, yet they are not realizing they are not making any significant progress, as if they were stuck in a time loop and only I'm going forward realizing it, it is really crazy.

When I then go and suggest to them "Hey the outside world has progressed a lot in the meantime and a fully modern open source game engine with modern technology is now open source and all their stuff has become obsolete for quite a while", they just pretend it does not exist and keep doing their Groundhog Day thing. It is truly insane. The top comment on their "Top 10 open source FPS games" even said "all of them are Quake" and it is true, every open source FPS ever made is a copy of Quake, well some are not, but they tend to actively ignore them, they cannot perceive anything that is not Quake, they also cannot progress it into something more advanced, since it would not be Quake then anymore.

Also in other game genres the open source games news is like Groundhog Day, every year the same news, the same lists, the same reviews, the same promises that "soon" everything will be different, but it never happens in reality. It goes on as long as I can remember, probably around 15 years now. I watched the scene for years hoping that "soon" they will produce a new project that is more modern or at least has some progress that I can join, so I can develop nice levels for, but for years I just watched and nothing ever happened, then I began using the Torque3D engine and did the same thing there, waited for years hoping someone would start a community project that I could join, nothing ever happened, they seemed to have their own Groundhog Day, where it was the same news ever year, never making any progress, then I finally began and quickly finished my own game, released it, people played it, yet the open source community still keeps on going for years not even accepting that my game exists or games other people made in case anyone tries to argue with me about my supposed bad personality, supposed bad skills or whatever.

There is more to it, there is like a group of people cut off from reality, being stuck in their own time loop, never progressing or even considering anything outside exists and if you suggest them that something new exists in the real outside world, they often get very angry. A professional psychologist doctor would correctly diagnose this as a delusion, a known form of reality distortion where a patient things something is reality that is obviously not reality to anyone else, yet they refuse to accept reality and keep believing in their fantasy, but sadly no doctor is taking care of them.

Some people asked me why I do care so much about that, well really simple, I like computers, I like virtual worlds and especially games, it is an amazing technology that allows you to create complete worlds, not just a 2D drawing but a 3D world that you can enter and experience, imagine all the artistic possibilities. In the past modding days one thing I liked the most was, to try out levels and mods made by other people so I could experience something NEW every day, it was a really amazing time, even though the technology was very primitive and I always wished the technology would be more advanced so people could create better and more content. Now however the technology has advanced rapidly, but it seems the humans did not advance and most people are stuck somewhere in a time loop in the past, refusing that new things exist, refusing that progress exist and try as hard as they can to stay in their virtual reality as they have gotten to know it at some point in the past.

The open source gamers or developers can probably be simply divided into the following timelines Doom 1, Quake 1, Quake 2, Quake 3 and a few hardcore people even managed to reach idtech4 engine aka Doom3 engine but this is really rare as only 2-3 projects have ever used it and after that idSoftware stopped releasing their games or I mean only their engines as open source, probably as they noticed, nobody is developing them any further and it is useless, as people only try to rip off their games with it and so the world ended for the Quake fanatics and everything beyond that time does not exist to them anymore and instead of progressing, they just claim to progress, but in reality just go into a time loop experiencing the "progress" from the old days over and over again.

However some people seemed to have escaped the timeloop of eternally being backwards and starting using new technology, new game engine and make "new" games, but then something weird happen, instead of really achieving something greater they tend to try to reproduce their old Quake like games just in "modern" engines or at least something retro and then try to label it as "innovative indie games" or market it to the mobile game market.

It is really weird to me, if my current self could have told me old self 20 years ago that his will happen I would not have believed myself. In the past I thought "Oh in the future we will have photorealistic games, that are fully interactable and there would be no more limitation on detail and size and possibilities and everything will be massively multiplayer" and if my self from today would have told my past self that "Well I come from the future and I have to tell you that 20 years in the future, Technology has indeed progressed, but a large portion of people still use what you use today and they refuse to use the new technology and actively try to pretend that technical progress did not happen. Even more so, they are still developing games that are what you have now, sometimes even worse and claim it is progress and claim nothing else ever existed and if anyone does claim so, he will be declared a heretic and ignored" then I would not have believed that and would have said, that his is insane, it would be impossible, why would people in the future refuse the future exists?

In the past we wanted to go back to the future, because in the future everything was supposedly better and cooler, but now where we live in the future where things are better or at least partially better or at least should be better in theory, people for the most part pretend that the future does not exist and instead they claim the future is the past and nothing else ever existed. People from today now want to go back to the past, because supposedly in the past everything was better and cooler. I as a sane human being however can remember the past and I can remember what we thought in the past and from that I can conclude that something does not add up here.

For the most part I think this phenomenon is just a typical state of denial, which seem to have become rampant in modern times, it seems to me like that the more technology progresses the more people get stuck in a time loop of denial where they claim nothing beyond that ever existed and they want a world where they wake up and everything is the exact same as the last day as the last day as the last day etc. While in the past where technological progress was slower many people wanted a world more advanced so much that they denied the reality in the past and tried to live in a delusion of a better world, while this still was technically probably also a delusion, at least it was a vision of a better world and trying to strive to improve yourself and things, which I would think is somewhat sane.

Ironically those same people that are in denial of modern progress accused me of being like them when I suggested once that I want to bring back the good old times, they claimed I was like them living in denial of the future and wanting to go back to the past, not realizing I just wanted to bring back what was good in the past and combine it with what is better now. They however want to be backwards for real or combining the disadvantages or today with the disadvantages of the past to create a totally insane reality. SO those people in denial are totally backwards, they claim they are not doing what they doing, but you are supposedly doing what they are doing and you are bad because of it, even though they are actually doing the bad behavior and not you.

It seems to me that most humans cannot handle progress and for the most part would just use the technology to destroy themselves rather than to improve on anything. Another thing that makes me wonder is that most humans do not seem to have a concept of time and progress, they do the same thing over and over again, often for years, getting the same results, never getting anywhere and still believing they are getting anywhere even though they are not getting anywhere.

This Open Source Groundhog Day experience made me once more realize this, I as a sane human being, progressing through time normally from the past to the future, progressing in my skills, abilities, knowledge, everything etc sometimes come back to visit people I came across in life before and I notice they are exactly the way they were years ago, doing the same things, as if they were frozen in time. Maybe the NPC theory is true, because in video games it is similar, on your adventure you come across NPCs sometimes building things, but never getting anywhere for real, since they are just made believable enough for the moment as a background actor, but on closer inspection they are not programmed deeply enough as a main actor or if you come across them again later in the game, they are still the same. Or maybe I'm a super hero with the super power that I can travel through time, from the past to the future, while everyone else can only exist in a short time loop and progress is only done through putting new people in new time loops.