Being active in open source game development since around 2000 I always enjoy seeing articles encouraging others to get involved. I often feel like this is one of the most ignored areas of open source software (which is probably not true) since game development is such an insurmountable task at times. This combined with the fact that so many of us don't start wtih a "Tetris clone" and dive right in to "WoW-but-better" or "Oblivion-but-bigger." And far more often than not we end up trying to do it alone. Encouraging people interested to find games that are related to their specific area of interest (e.g. puzzle games, FPS, RPG, etc) is often skipped in articles.
I did want to point out that the two sites you posted for finding projects tend to lean far more towards indie game projects and less towards open source game projects. Many of the open source game projects on gamedev.net that I've posed interest in helping are really "open source by necessity" and choose licensing for things such as their artistic assets which are not inherently open source (by using the NC and/or ND clause of CC.)
I've been increasingly sending interested people to the <a href="http://forum.freegamedev.net/">Free Game Development</a> forums and the <a href="http://freegamer.blogspot.com/">Free Gamer</a> blog to find projects looking for help. There are a number of projects that regular their IRC channel (#freegamer on FreeNode) as well as the forum. You can get a feel for games that are out there on the blog and you can watch the RSS planet and RSS developer planet (which aggregates free game projects' developer blogs.)
In addition to looking at sites like this for existing projects if you're really thinking about striking out on your own I suggest looking into a game engine project to start with such as OGRE, Crystal Space or <a href="http://dev.ryzom.com">Ryzom Core</a>. It might help to play with these engines, contribute a little to get a good solid feel for their inner workings and then when you're technically solid forge ahead with your idea.
Also in addition to the two contests you posted the <a href="http://www.globalgamejam.org/">Global Game Jam</a> often produces playable open source games, you could always go to a GGJ and find a team and go from there.
Also, I've found this particular article valuable when considering game projects which I end up working on by myself: <a href="http://www.pushing-pixels.org/2008/05/13/party-of-one-surviving-a-hobby-open-source-project.html">Party Of One: Surviving A Hobby Open Source Project</a>.
Regarding the GDnet thread of conversation one of the major problems is that people want to sell their game or somehow monetize it and their answer to this is closing some component of the game and this inevitably becomes the artistic assets. Now I have nothing against monetizing open source projects. I'd love for more open source projects to spawn young and successful businesses. It only proves our point. But this doesn't solve the misconception that closing artistic assets slays the mythical "fork" beast - because truly that's the fear, that your revenue stream will dry up because someone will fork an identical game. To the point: if you do your job right, continuously provide quality updates and really make your brand shine then users will have no reason to risk a fork. In reality most forks fail unless the parent project itself has failed already.
I'd like to skip a lot of your topic on scope to talk about something that's been missed in this article and nearly all gaming-related articles of its type. Scope is one thing when it comes to code. I could probably create WoW-but-better in code given enough time and a burgeoning community. The reality of open source is that there are an awful lot of us out there with motivation and interest but one truth remains: we're nearly all programmers and code does not make a game.
Time after time a quality open source game gets poor reviews because it looks bad. When it comes down to it the game is solid, the gameplay is fun and dynamic but it's written by coders so it is plague by coder art. We finally have some great solutions to this such as <a href="http://www.opengameart.org/">Open Game Art</a> and <a href="http://media.ryzom.com/">Ryzom Asset Repository</a>.
Sites like these do not solve the problem that the team members game projects need most aren't programmers. They're creative writers, content designers (level designers), artists and musicians. I'd love to see more individuals interested in these areas actively seeking to volunteer on sites like <a href="http://forum.freegamedev.net/">FreeGameDev</a>. A little extra effort from people creatively inclined would go a long way to improving the visual quality and playability of a great number of open source games. For example I'm working on a hobby game called Neloid but my example levels are terrible. I have a mind for code but I'm not very good at sitting down and looking at the gameplay tools at my disposal and creating an challenging map.
Just something to think about.
Also... Radakan? Only person I've met from that project is Taldor. (=
Authored Comments
Being active in open source game development since around 2000 I always enjoy seeing articles encouraging others to get involved. I often feel like this is one of the most ignored areas of open source software (which is probably not true) since game development is such an insurmountable task at times. This combined with the fact that so many of us don't start wtih a "Tetris clone" and dive right in to "WoW-but-better" or "Oblivion-but-bigger." And far more often than not we end up trying to do it alone. Encouraging people interested to find games that are related to their specific area of interest (e.g. puzzle games, FPS, RPG, etc) is often skipped in articles.
I did want to point out that the two sites you posted for finding projects tend to lean far more towards indie game projects and less towards open source game projects. Many of the open source game projects on gamedev.net that I've posed interest in helping are really "open source by necessity" and choose licensing for things such as their artistic assets which are not inherently open source (by using the NC and/or ND clause of CC.)
I've been increasingly sending interested people to the <a href="http://forum.freegamedev.net/">Free Game Development</a> forums and the <a href="http://freegamer.blogspot.com/">Free Gamer</a> blog to find projects looking for help. There are a number of projects that regular their IRC channel (#freegamer on FreeNode) as well as the forum. You can get a feel for games that are out there on the blog and you can watch the RSS planet and RSS developer planet (which aggregates free game projects' developer blogs.)
In addition to looking at sites like this for existing projects if you're really thinking about striking out on your own I suggest looking into a game engine project to start with such as OGRE, Crystal Space or <a href="http://dev.ryzom.com">Ryzom Core</a>. It might help to play with these engines, contribute a little to get a good solid feel for their inner workings and then when you're technically solid forge ahead with your idea.
Also in addition to the two contests you posted the <a href="http://www.globalgamejam.org/">Global Game Jam</a> often produces playable open source games, you could always go to a GGJ and find a team and go from there.
Also, I've found this particular article valuable when considering game projects which I end up working on by myself: <a href="http://www.pushing-pixels.org/2008/05/13/party-of-one-surviving-a-hobby-open-source-project.html">Party Of One: Surviving A Hobby Open Source Project</a>.
Thanks for the great post!
Regarding the GDnet thread of conversation one of the major problems is that people want to sell their game or somehow monetize it and their answer to this is closing some component of the game and this inevitably becomes the artistic assets. Now I have nothing against monetizing open source projects. I'd love for more open source projects to spawn young and successful businesses. It only proves our point. But this doesn't solve the misconception that closing artistic assets slays the mythical "fork" beast - because truly that's the fear, that your revenue stream will dry up because someone will fork an identical game. To the point: if you do your job right, continuously provide quality updates and really make your brand shine then users will have no reason to risk a fork. In reality most forks fail unless the parent project itself has failed already.
I'd like to skip a lot of your topic on scope to talk about something that's been missed in this article and nearly all gaming-related articles of its type. Scope is one thing when it comes to code. I could probably create WoW-but-better in code given enough time and a burgeoning community. The reality of open source is that there are an awful lot of us out there with motivation and interest but one truth remains: we're nearly all programmers and code does not make a game.
Time after time a quality open source game gets poor reviews because it looks bad. When it comes down to it the game is solid, the gameplay is fun and dynamic but it's written by coders so it is plague by coder art. We finally have some great solutions to this such as <a href="http://www.opengameart.org/">Open Game Art</a> and <a href="http://media.ryzom.com/">Ryzom Asset Repository</a>.
Sites like these do not solve the problem that the team members game projects need most aren't programmers. They're creative writers, content designers (level designers), artists and musicians. I'd love to see more individuals interested in these areas actively seeking to volunteer on sites like <a href="http://forum.freegamedev.net/">FreeGameDev</a>. A little extra effort from people creatively inclined would go a long way to improving the visual quality and playability of a great number of open source games. For example I'm working on a hobby game called Neloid but my example levels are terrible. I have a mind for code but I'm not very good at sitting down and looking at the gameplay tools at my disposal and creating an challenging map.
Just something to think about.
Also... Radakan? Only person I've met from that project is Taldor. (=