March 2019

Quitting Opengameart

Submitted by Duion on

I decided to quit Opengameart, it was a hard decision, but finally I was fed up with it.

This is also kind of a little follow up to my blog post "The benefits of quitting social media" where I explain the many downsides to social media and since I want to practice what I preach, I decided to quit that social media platform as well.

The main reason for my decision probably is that I was already banned 3 times there and now some admin threatened to ban me permanently and before that happens I decided to leave by myself instead. I'm tired of being censored and harassed, even though I contribute so much stuff for free. The fact that I'm one of the biggest contributors to open source game art and gaming does not seem to matter at all to them, which makes them kinda hypocritical, as they are supposedly for promoting open source games, but in reality they are just sabotaging it through their incompetence and inaction. I also think it is kind of a failed concept, as I explained in this blog post "Why most open source game art is useless". To my research the open source content is probably mostly used for proprietary mobile games, as this is an easy way to make money. I started looking into it as some guy explained to me how he makes six figures income per year, with producing cheap mobile games, full of microtransactions. Sure this is allowed with open source content, but I would reconsider what I'm doing when I try to promote open source gaming, but end up doing the opposite. However the main problem is probably not the abuse of open source content, but the nonexistentness of the open source game development community which I wrote about in my blog post "My experiences with the nonexistent open source game development community" But I don't want to get into more detail about the problems of the open source scenes here, as those are very complex and I don't really have a solution for all, I just try to solve things step by step.

So back to Opengameart:

Initially I got onto the platform to get useful game art, meet other developers for collaboration and for promoting my projects, but somehow it turned out, that the content is mostly useless, other developers don't exist and promotion there has basically no effect.

It seems they don't want me on there anway, so I will make everyone happy by leaving it behind.

I did not really know how to leave, as there is no option to delete your account or content. I could just get myself banned and leave everything as it is, but that would annoy me, to be locked out of my own account and not able to edit my own stuff or interact with anyone, which would mean, they banned me, but stole my content from me. On the other hand, if I just request for deletion of everything it will make the users unhappy, since they just want the free stuff and in the end it is kind of pointless anyway to delete open source content, since anyone could just host it again and therefore also steal it from me. Yes I'm aware that open source content cannot really be stolen, it is meant metaphorically and strictly legally speaking, at least in germany you are always the copyright holder and cannot be separated from your work or your rights on your work, open sourcing it, is just a promise to not make use of your copyright. To make it short, I at least want the right to distribute my own content. Finally I thought the best solution is to just make an archive out of all content I ever released on Opengameart and offer that for download, so whether my content gets deleted it will still be accessible and if it stays online, it will be much easier to just download the archive and get everything at once, plus it will be easier to use, as everything is already unpacked, sorted and updated.

So here is the download link to it:

https://duion.com/files/archive/Opengameart-Duion-Archive.zip

 

Update:
Seems some admin discovered this article and instantly banned me on their website for it.
Initially I did not want to have drama on my website, but as they censor my complaints and keep messing with me, I have to write it down here, it gives me at least a little feeling of justice.

Blog Reference: 
Drama

Open source game development is just plagiarism

Submitted by Duion on

There is a huge issue with almost the whole open source game development scene that nobody ever seems to talk about or even notice and that is that almost every open source game seems to be just plagiarism. I had lots of debates about that topic and I was even banned for mentioning those uncomfortable facts, but I think there is not even a debate in many cases, since many open source games do not even hide that they are just copies of a proprietary product, this goes so far, that they even keep the same name and just add a prefix or suffix or like "open-xy" or "free-xy" etc to it. I once made a list to determine the exact percentage and came out with 80-90% of open source games to be plagiarism, it was then censored and deleted by some insane forum admin who could not handle the truth, but I don't care to reproduce it, since it was not that accurate anyway, because of the small sample size, which cannot be bigger, since the total number of open source games is not that high anyway. But no matter if 70, 80, 90, 95 or 99% of open source games are plagiarism, the problem still remains and my argument as well.

Many people may say that plagiarism is not such a big problem, since you have free games, but in the long run it is a huge problem, because you have nothing on your own and so you can never get ahead or become successful. The only success a plagiarist can have is a part of the success from where he is stealing from, which in the beginning can be a lot, that is why plagiarism is so popular, but as said, in the long run it is bad and overall morally wrong. One has to consider, that the main argument of open source software is the moral aspect which goes something like "Proprietary software is evil, because it is closed and unfree and free software is good, because it is open and free." which in itself is correct, but if you argue the moral aspect, you cannot act immoral all the time, this makes you a hypocrite. I even met people who argued that it is okay to steal intellectual property (which is what plagiarism is) and then make it free instead, which is even legal, if you rebuild it yourself and re-brand it slightly. Even if you get away with such a behavior, by using legal loopholes etc, you still will lose your moral high ground, since a thief who gets away with thievery is still a thief.

So you have to consider you are supposed to be the good guy, fighting against the evil big companies with their evil proprietary products and then everything you do is trying to steal their intellectual property, steal their fame, steal their creativity, steal their brand, steal their users etc. Sure many companies do that as well, but in the business world, the default is still, that every company has it's own product, in their own style, their own brand name etc, but in the open source game development scene the default seems to be, to just steal everything and be a copycat. This amazes me again and again how nobody can see the issue in there. I mean there are areas in the real world, where this exact same behavior exists as well and almost everyone sees it instantly, like with the cheap Chinese ripoff products that are just stolen from western designs. If you merely mention "Chinese product" it will be almost synonymous with "bad product" or "ripoff", which is not true in all cases, but everyone instantly knows what you mean, knows the problem of stolen products and will be disgusted by it, morally and practically and try to avoid those products. However this is not the case with open source games, which are supposedly better, but in the end people just fool themselves, at least the fan-boys themselves, since regular people from outside of the scene obviously avoid those plagiarism products and fan-boys within the scene somehow are unable to see that nobody takes them seriously.

I did not even go into the creative and artistic aspect of it, which is of course nonexistent in plagiarism products. Some people seriously tried to argue to me how plagiarisms can also be art, but most people in the real world will agree it is not, even the legal system agrees it is not art, you may even go to jail for that, depending on the circumstances and intensity of your plagiarism and what you tried to do with it. The reason the open source game development community gets away with it is, that the companies either don't take it seriously and/or it is considered fan art, which is a legal grey area, which means it is illegal, but tolerated in most cases.

Often I even philosophized about this topic, since this seems to be a metaphysical phenomenon, which is that there seems to be an inherent difference in humans: Some are masters who can create things and some are slaves who cannot create things. No matter how much the slaves try to create things, they always end up with doing plagiarism, since they have no creativity on their own and the reverse may also be true, no matter how hard the master tries to do plagiarism, he will inevitable end up with something that has at least some degree of originality and creativity.

Slave tries to create something original -> Ends up with plagiarism
Master tries to do plagiarism -> Ends up with something original

This seems to be some kind of natural law, but I'm not sure if there is a real inherent difference in humans, or if they just chose to be one way or the other. I mean for me it is no big deal to create unique art, sure I have my inspirations here and there, but they are usually so remote, that nobody figures them out. Maybe all humans can do is copy things, the difference is only in intelligence which determines how sophisticated it will be in the end.

Another theory I had was a conspiracy of some kind, that brainwashes the slaves into not thinking for themselves organized by some big company to prevent competition from even beginning to exist. This could work by paid agents infiltrating the gamer scene in this case and starting to create fan art which in return work like marketing for the original product. While this probably happens here and there, I have not enough evidence that there is a planned conspiracy in that regard, but some of those elements exist for sure.

Maybe it was only a chain reaction effect, because some creators of a Linux distribution were missing games and because they did not want to bother with it too much, they just copied a series of popular simple games and called it done. Then the users of that saw it and thought that is the only way this can be and continued the trend. However with open source software the plagiarism problem exists as well, not only with games, so maybe the root causal issue for the whole problem seems to be much deeper and I could apply my Master/Slave theory or the conspiracy theory here again, which will not bring us much further, except maybe the conspiracy theory can be proven easier in the software world as it has been proven that certain big companies work to sabotage open source software.

But in the end I think my Master ans Slave theory is the most plausible, where the Slaves actively refuse to create anything, which I can confirm from my experiences. They like to worship their idols of pop culture, which are their Masters, in this case game development companies. The open source gaming scene only realized one part of the problem, which is the proprietary part of the software, but they still want to worship their same evil Masters and they think they can solve the problem by either begging their evil Masters to produce more ethical products, or to steal their products and "liberate" the products that way, which are of course both logical fallacies and will most likely never work.

The only real solution to this problem can be, to stop being a slave and become a master, or at least chose a better master.

Blog Reference: 
Development

How crowdfunding for open source projects is a delusion

Submitted by Duion on

Initially I believed, like probably many others as well, that there is a way to progress open source projects using crowdsourced funding methods. However now after some experience myself, having met other developers and observing the scene a lot I came to the conclusion that it is not only a bad option, but probably a total delusion, since I not only failed myself, but also everyone else I saw failed as well.

I tried to argue this topic with others,  but most people just replied "Oh you are just not good enough" or "Oh you are so negative" or "You are just jealous of all the successful people", so basically they did not reply at all or think about it to begin with and preferred to believe into their delusions.

So I tried a little exercise in common sense: If you have something, that you cannot do and you never saw someone else do, then maybe it is not possible to do. Sounds logical right? Well most people cannot think like that and instead prefer to believe in things that have never been proven to work and still try to make it work.

Yes I know there are "successfuly" funded open source projects, but those are in all or almost all cases on of the following categories, they are either pseudo open source or subsidized or both or just look like they are fully funded, but I will come to that later.

First let me try to define how successful funding would look like. The first thing you need is a real developer with real skills, since unprofessional hobbyist will not get you anywhere in most cases. Then if you have a real programmer, you have to consider how much he could or would earn on the real market, which is somewhere from $3000 to $10 000 per month an average lets say $5000 per month. That may sound much, but I looked the numbers up, I even met people who claimed to earn even more. So a fully funded one man project would cost at least $3000 per month to fully fund and this is already minimum wage. Of course you need that programmer also to be willing to work for an open source project, but lets say he is idealistic and wants to do that and throw most of his chances on earning more over board. Sadly in reality he would not only to be willing to do that, but be willing to work for less, much less. Most of the best open source developers I saw on crowdfunding earned around a couple hundred per month, which is not even existence minimum. So to be working on open source projects would mean to almost certainly starve to death.

Some people may claim "But there are fully funded successful open source projects", yes there are, at least it looks like there are. As I previously said, those are most likely either pseudo open source projects or subsidized. What do I mean with pseudo open source projects? Well I investigated some of those and a pseudo open source project is either not open source according to the definition or even if it is, it is mostly used to develop proprietary products, for proprietary platforms, for proprietary hardware using proprietary platforms and other proprietary software themselves and managing it all over proprietary platforms. So in those cases the open source part was just chosen out of convenience and for publicity reasons and even in those cases, the project is not really crowdfunded meaning funded by the people but subsidized by companies, who probably found it cheaper to outsource the development of a certain part of their software, saving the salary they would have to pay a real developer and instead donate a smaller part to the open source project. In that case you are not progressing free and open source projects, but are just an (in most cases) underpaid inofficial employee of some company.

The reason why crowdfunding for open source projects does not work is most likely because there is no market for it, the majority of population is not ingelligent enough to understand the reasons to support those projects or not even intelligent enough to understand that those things exist to begin with, so you are left with a very small percentage of the population that could donate, but a large portion of those are probably developers themselves and they may also donate to other projects they seem important, but in the long run it is not enough, if everyone donates to each other, you need a larger consumer base outside of the scene to secure significant funding, which does not exist. Even proprietary projects often need to market to delusional people aka dreamers to secure enough funding, for example like a game engine selling content to dreamers that will never accomplish anything, because they were delusional to begin with and enforced in their delusion through marketing tricks.

So it looks like you need to be corrupt in some way at least to reach a big enough audience to secure proper funding for your project and/or manage to get companies that subsidize you, probably a combination of both in most cases. I encountered a word some time ago called "openwashing" which describes the practice of big companies to water down the meaning and ideology of open source, by supposedly being for open source and progressing it, but in reality not changing anything or becoming more moral, it is more of a marketing trick to regain popularity. Later they also use open source projects to further their own company politics. I mean what difference does it make to use open source software, if it does nothing different than regular proprietary software and does not increase your freedom?

I canceled my effords to make money with it, since I realized it is not going to happen, as soon as (significant) money is involved and you have to play by the rules of the regular market, you will lose, since the bigger players already have a monopoly or near monopoly on all kinds of things. That is why I think free open source software can only survive as it is through being noncommercial and as a work of idealism and/or a hobby. Sure I have nothing against people receiving donations here and there, but as I explained I think truly making a living out of it without becoming corrupt is almost impossible. Contact me if you managed to do it.

Blog Reference: 
General

The benefits of quitting social media

Submitted by Duion on

Some time ago I decided to quit all or almost all social media. The main reason probably is that I read articles about how social media has been scientifically proven to make you unhappy and less productive etc. I will make a short list of the benefits of quitting social media I encountered:

 

1. More happiness

2. More time

3. Saves work updating all the profiles

4. More motivation

5 .More efficient working

6. More willpower

7. Less distraction

9. Less stress

10. Less company with idiots

10. Less superficial bad relationships with other people

11. More deeper good relationships with other people

12. Not getting censored all the time

13. Not getting banned all the time

14. Not getting angry, because getting censored and banned all the time

15. Better mental health

16. Better physical health, because less time spend on the PC

17. Becoming more social, since social media makes you antisocial, counter to popular belief

18. And of course more freedom since social media is a prison system where fascistoid guards try to censor and "correct" you all the time

 

So thats what I could come up with for now, sure some are similar and/or the consequence of another, but I thought it was important to list them all to further underline the many benefits. Overall I think the benefits of quitting social media outweight the mostly nonexistent downsids by far. I just made this up while writing, I did not research this for a long time, so don't go nitpicking on it.

Sure there are also some benefits of social media, but mainly for using it for marketing to other social media users, less in using it yourself, but I had not much luck with that either as I described in another post here: https://duion.com/blogs/my-experience-social-media-video-game-marketing Maybe I'm just not corrupt and manipulative at all, to bribe social media "influencers", but whatever, my personal wellbeing is more important to me, than being popular in my nonexistent business. This brings me to another maybe drawback of quitting social media, which is you will be less "popular", but in my case I think engaging there makes me even more unpopular, so this probably is only a potential drawback for normal people.

Additionally I have to say I never engaged much in social media to begin with, but I followed some types of it, even though I did not engage in it myself for the most part. I still maintain some accounts here and there, but mostly for promotion of my art and my game, but as previously said, it does not benefit me much, so I may quit those as well at some point. Maybe I will quit the remaining accounts as well, when the search engines should decide to boycott me less and give me some clicks.

But overall I enjoy the freedom and more time for productive work and not having to check and update every account on every social media platform I'm on. I mean it seems they don't want me on there anyway csonsidering all the censorship and banning I encountered, maybe those platforms are designed for idiots and they don't want normal sane people on there to begin with, so maybe it was my fault to go there to begin with.

I can just recommend everyone to quit social media and get back on the real internet, not the fake one and become happy and free.

Blog Reference: 
General