In computer context game (also gayme, video game or vidya) is [software](software.md) whose main purpose is to be played and interactively entertain the user. Of course, we can additionally talk about [real life](irl.md) games such as [marble racing](marble_race.md) or [football](football.md). *Game* is also a mathematical term in [game theory](game_theory.md). Sadly most computer games are [proprietary](proprietary.md) and [toxic](toxic.md).
Among [suckless](kiss.md) software proponents there is a disagreement about whether games are legit software or just a [meme](meme.md) and harmful kind of entertainment. The proponents of the latter argue something along the lines that technology is only for getting work done, that games are for losers, that they hurt MUH [PRODUCTIVITY](productivity_cult.md), are an unhealthy addiction, wasted time and effort etc. Those who like games see them as a legitimate form of relaxation, a form of art and a way of advancing technology along the way. The truth is that developing games leads to improvement of other kinds of software, e.g. for rendering, physics simulation or virtual reality. **We, [LRS](lrs.md), fully accept games as legitimate software**; of course as long as their purpose is to help all people, i.e. while we don't reject games as such, we reject most games the industry produces nowadays.
Despite arguments about the usefulness of games, most people agree on one thing: that the mainstream AAA games produced by big corporations are harmful, [bloated](bloat.md), [toxic](toxic.md), badly made and designed to be highly malicious, consumerist products. They are one of the worst cases of [capitalist software](capitalis_software.md). Such games are never going to be considered good from our perspective (and even the mainstream is turning towards classifying modern games as [shit](shit.md)).
PC games are mostly made for and played on [MS Windows](windows.md) which is still the "gaming OS", even though in recent years we've seen a boom of "[Linux](linux.md) gaming", possibly thanks to Windows getting shittier and shittier every year. Many normies nowadays are practicing "mobile gayming" which may be even worse. However, most games, even when played on [GNU](gnu.md)/Linux, are still [proprietary](proprietary.md), [capitalist](capitalist_software.md) and [bloated](bloat.md) as hell.
We might call this the **great tragedy of games**: the industry has become similar to the industry of **drug abuse**. Games feel great and can become very addictive, especially to people not aware of the dangers (children). Today not playing latest games makes you left out socially, out of the loop, a weirdo. Therefore contrary to the original purpose of a game -- that of making life better and bringing joy -- an individual "on games" from the capitalist industry will crave to constantly consume more and more "experiences" that get progressively more expensive to satisfy. This situation is purposefully engineered by the big game producers who exploit psychological and sociological phenomena to enslave *gamers* and make them addicted. Games become more and more predatory and abusive and of course, there are no moral limits for corporations of how far they can go: games with [microthefts](microtransaction.md) and lootboxes, for example, are similar to gambling, and are often targeted at very young children. The game industry cooperates with the hardware and software industry to together produce a consumerist hell in which one is required to constantly update his hardware and software and to keep spending money just to stay in. The gaming addiction is so strong that even the [FOSS](foss.md) people somehow create a **mental exception** for games and somehow do not mind e.g. [proprietary](proprietary.dm) games even though they otherwise reject proprietary software. Even most of the developers of free software games can't mentally separate themselves from the concepts set in place by capitalist games, they try to subconsciously mimic the toxic attributes of such games (bloat, unreasonably realistic graphics and hardware demands, content consumerism, [cheating](cheating.md) "protection", language filters, ...).
Therefore it is crucial to stress that **games are technology like any other**, they can be exploiting and abusive, and so indeed all the high standards we hold for other technology we must also hold for games. Too many people judge games solely by their gameplay. For us at [LRS](lrs.md) gameplay is but one attribute, and not even the one standing at the top; factors such as [software freedom](free_software.md), [cultural freedom](free_culture.md), [sucklessness](suckless.md), good internal design and being [future proof](future_proof.md) are even more important.
A small number of games nowadays come with a [free](free_software.md) engine, which is either official (often retroactively freed by its developer in case of older games) or developed by volunteers. Example of the former are the engines of ID games ([Doom](doom.md), [Quake](quake.md)), example of the latter can be [OpenMW](openmw.md) (a free engine for TES: Morrowind) or [Mangos](mangos.md) (a free server for World of Warcraft). Console [emulators](emulator.md) (such as of Playstation or Gameboy) can also be considered a free engine for playing proprietary games.
Yet a smaller number of games are completely free (in the sense of [Debian](debian.md)'s free software definition), including both the engine and game assets. These games are called **free games** or **libre games** and many of them are clones of famous proprietary games. Examples of these probably (one can rarely ever be sure about legal status) include [SuperTuxKart](stk.md), [Minetest](minetest.md), [Xonotic](xonotic.md), [FLARE](flare.md) or [Anarch](anarch.md). There exists a wiki for libre games at https://libregamewiki.org and a developer forum at https://forum.freegamedev.net/. Libre games can also be found in Debian software repositories. However WATCH OUT, all mentioned repositories may be unreliable!
{ NOTE: Do not blindly trust libregamewiki and freegamedev forum, non-free games ocassionaly DO appear there by accident, negligence or even by intention. I've actually found that most of the big games like SuperTuxKart have some licensing issues (they removed one proprietary mascot from STK after my report). Ryzom has been removed after I brought up the fact that the whole server content is proprietary and secret. So if you're a purist, focus on the simpler games and confirm their freeness yourself. Anyway, LGW is a good place to start looking for libre games. It is much easier to be sure about freedom of suckless/LRS games, e.g. Anarch is legally safe practically with 100% certainty. ~drummyfish }
Some games are pretty based as they don't even require [GUI](gui.md) and are only played in the text shell (either using [TUI](tui.md) or purely textual I/O) -- these are called TTY games or command line games. This kind of games may be particularly interesting to [minimalists](minimalism.md), hobbyists and developers with low ([zero](zero.md)) budget, little spare time and/or no artistic skills. Roguelike games are especially popular here; there sometimes even exist GUI frontends which is pretty neat -- this demonstrates how the [Unix philosophy](unix_philosophy.md) can be applied to games.
Another kind of cool games are computer implementations of pre-computer games, for example [chess](chess.md), backgammon, go or various card games. Such games are very often well tested and fine-tuned gameplay-wise, popular with active communities and therefore [fun](fun.md), yet simple to program with many existing free implementations and good AIs (e.g. GNU chess, GNU go or [Stockfish](stockfish.md)).
## Games As LRS
Games can be [suckless](suckless.md) and just as any other software should try to adhere to the [Unix philosophy](unix_philosophy.md). A [LRS](lrs.md) game should follow all the principles that apply to any other kind of such software, for example being completely [public domain](public_domain.md) or aiming for high [portability](portability.md). This is important to mention because, sadly, many people see games as some kind of exception among software and think that different technological or moral rules apply -- this is wrong.
Compared to mainstream games, a LRS game shouldn't be a consumerist product, it should be a tool to help people entertain themselves and relieve their stress. From the user perspective, the game should be focused on the fun and relaxation aspect rather than impressive visuals (i.e. photorealism etc.), i.e. it will likely utilize simple graphics and audio. Another aspect of an LRS game is that the technological part is just as important as how the game behaves on the outside (unlike mainstream games that have ugly, badly designed internals and mostly focus on rapid development and impressing the consumer with visuals).
The paradigm of LRS gamedev differs from the mainstream gamedev just as the [Unix philosophy](unix_philosophy.md) differs from the [Window philosophy](windows_philosophy.md). While a mainstream game is a monolithic piece of software, designed to allow at best some simple, controlled and limited user modifications, a LRS game is designed with [forking](fork.md), wild [hacking](hacking.md), unpredictable abuse and code reuse in mind.
Let's take an example. A LRS game of a real-time 3D [RPG](rpg.md) genre may for example consist of several independent modules: the RPG library, the game code, the content and the [frontend](frontend.md). Yes, a mainstream game will consist of similar modules, however those modules will probably only exist for the internal organization of work and better testing, they won't be intended for real reuse or wild hacking. With the LRS RPG game it is implicitly assumed that someone else may take the 3D game and make it into a purely non-real-time [command line](cli.md) game just by replacing the frontend, in which case the rest of the code shouldn't be burdened by anything 3D-rendering related. The paradigm here should be similar to that existing in the world of computer [chess](chess.md) where there exist separate engines, graphical frontends, communication protocols, formats, software for running engine tournaments, analyzing games etc. [Roguelikes](roguelike.md) and the world of [quake](quake.md) engines show some of this modularity, though not in such a degree we would like to see -- LRS game modules may be completely separate projects and different processes communicating via text interfaces through [pipes](pipe.md), just as basic Unix tools do. We have to think about someone possibly taking our singleplayer RPG and make it into an MMORPG. Someone may even take the game and use it as a research tool for [machine learning](machine_learning.md) or as a VFX tool for making movies, and the game should be designed so as to make this as easy as possible -- the user interface should be very simple to be replaced by an [API](api.md) for computers. The game should allow easy creation of [tool assisted speedruns](tas.md), to record demos, to allow [scripting](script.md), modifying ingame variables, even creating [cheats](cheat.md) etc. And, importantly, **the game content is a module as well**, i.e. the whole RPG world, its lore and storyline is something that can be modified, forked, remixed, and the game creator should bear this in mind (see also [free universe](free_universe.md)).
Of course, LRS games must NOT contain such shit as "[anti-cheating](anti_cheat.md) technology", [DRM](drm.md) etc. For our stance on cheating, see the article [about it](cheat.md).
Besides dividing games as any other software ([free](free_software.md) vs [proprietary](proprietary.md), [suckless](suckless.md) vs [bloat](bloat.md), ...) we may further divide them by the following:
- [computer](computer.md) ([console](console.md) vs [PC](pc.md))
- by budget/scale/financing:
- amateur
- [indie](indie.md)
- [AAA](aaa.md)
- by [business model](business_model.md):
- [freeware](freeware.md)
- [shareware](shareware.md)
- [free to play](free_to_play.md)
- [subscription](subscription.md)
- buy once
- [pay to win](pay_to_win.md)
- [pay what you want](pay_what_you_want.md)/donation
- [adware](adware.md)
- [spyware](spyware.md)
- ...
- ...
## Legal Matters
Thankfully gameplay mechanisms cannot (yet) be [copyrighted](copyright.md) (however some can sadly be [patented](patent.md)) so we can mostly happily [clone](clone.md) proprietary games and so free them. However this must be done carefully as there is a possibility of stepping on other mines, for example violating a [*trade dress*](trade_dress.md) (looking too similar visually) or a [trade mark](trade_mark.md) (for example you cannot use the word *tetris* as it's owned by some shitty company) and also said patents (for example the concept of minigames on loading screens used to be patented in the past).
Trademarks have been known to cause problems in the realm of libre games, for example in the case of Nexuiz which had to rename to [Xonotic](xonotic.md) after its original creator trademarked the name and started to make trouble.
**Advice on cloning games**: copy only the gameplay mechanics, otherwise make it original and very different from the cloned game or else you're threading the fine legal lines. See this as an opportunity to add something new, something that's yours, and potentially to apply and exploit [minimalism](minimalism.md), i.e. if you're going to clone Doom, do not make a game about shooting demons from hell that's called Gnoom -- just take the gameplay and do something new, e.g. why not try to make it a mix of sci-fi and fantasy with procedurally generated levels which will additionally save you a lot of time on level design?
[Anarch](anarch.md) and [microTD](utd.md) are examples of games trying to strictly follow the [less retarded](lrs.md) principles. [SAF](saf.md) is a less retarded game library/fantasy console which comes with some less retarded games such as [microTD](utd.md).
[Chess](chess.md) is pretty nice, if we can count it as a computer game.
{ I recommend checking out [Xonotic](xonotic.md), it's completely libre and one of the best games I've ever played, though it's [bloat](bloat.md). ~drummyfish }
