> I would note that all of these fall either into the category of "creator encourages community involvement" or "creator has abandoned work and ignores community involvement." Yes, people participate when participation is a net-positive. What I was asking is why people would bother contributing their time and effort to effectively do software development for a company that actively tries to discourage them from doing so.
Well...Pokemon Uranium and the community Metroid 2 Remake. Both actively discouraged, but both worthwhile creations, IMO (and the kind of thing I'd have fun doing). Presumably, they did those not just because they wanted to write an RPG or Metroidvania game, but because they're fans of those specific franchises. I read it as an expression of fandom.
I'm working on an engine re-implementation project for an old game, currently owned by a fairly litigious company, for a few reasons:
- I love the game itself, and writing my own in a similar genre+style misses the point
- I like to feel like I'm the first one to re-discover the file formats in a couple decades
- I like understanding the low-level details of "how the sausage gets made"
- I've seen similar projects with this same game crash and burn, and I'd like to be the different one (there've been half a dozen previous attempts at the same game).
- I want to make it possible to easily mod the game, maybe to get a community to build a remastered version.
> Why not create a Fanny-pack Gremlins March app?
It's a lot of work to attract people to a franchise, and it's easier to ride on the coattails of another one ;-) I also suspect that the driving force was Pokemon fandom, not only the desire to make a game. The legal issues involved clearly weren't a decisive factor during the development phase.
Well...Pokemon Uranium and the community Metroid 2 Remake. Both actively discouraged, but both worthwhile creations, IMO (and the kind of thing I'd have fun doing). Presumably, they did those not just because they wanted to write an RPG or Metroidvania game, but because they're fans of those specific franchises. I read it as an expression of fandom.
I'm working on an engine re-implementation project for an old game, currently owned by a fairly litigious company, for a few reasons:
- I love the game itself, and writing my own in a similar genre+style misses the point
- I like to feel like I'm the first one to re-discover the file formats in a couple decades
- I like understanding the low-level details of "how the sausage gets made"
- I've seen similar projects with this same game crash and burn, and I'd like to be the different one (there've been half a dozen previous attempts at the same game).
- I want to make it possible to easily mod the game, maybe to get a community to build a remastered version.
> Why not create a Fanny-pack Gremlins March app?
It's a lot of work to attract people to a franchise, and it's easier to ride on the coattails of another one ;-) I also suspect that the driving force was Pokemon fandom, not only the desire to make a game. The legal issues involved clearly weren't a decisive factor during the development phase.