When you look into the world of the Open Source gaming movement, you usually see two categories: clones and originals. Originals come under the guise of quick, somewhat shallow pick up and play titles that are innovative in their own right, but not traditionally deep enough to keep the interest of the casual and frugal gamer. Such titles include Tremulous, a strategic first-person shooter, and Vega Strike, a space shooter/strategy title not unlike Descent: Freespace.

Many gamers will give these original titles a pass, however, and forge ahead for the clones. These titles serve to closely replicate the gameplay and experience of their retail counterparts. The attraction point of these titles is, of course, the potential to pick up a game for free – legally – that would normally cost the retail-established $50-$60. “I want Quake, but hey! Look at this for free! And I won’t get sued!” It sounds almost too good to be true.

In many ways, it is. But, in some ways, it’s better. Take a look at OpenTTD, a clone of Transport Tycoon Deluxe. Legally in a “grey” area, but still widely distributed and unchallenged by original creator Chris Sawyer, OpenTTD is an open-source port of Transport Tycoon Deluxe. Herein lies a title that exists with the sole purpose of replicating the Transport Tycoon experience to the letter, with patches, builds and bugfixes thrown in. It offers a few enhancements, including multiplayer, multiple OS capability, and meager graphics enhancements (mostly a larger array of resolutions available), but really sticks to being a “port” and not an “enhancement”.

Moving down the line is the concept of what I’d call the “rebuild” clone. These clones don’t use any of the original source code or graphics, and try and create the same game – or as similar as possible – from the ground up. Freeciv is a prime example of this. As an open-source clone of the original Sid Meier masterpiece Civilization, it serves to duplicate the experience, minus OpenTTD’s somewhat shady legality. A little more rough around the edges is Wormux, a clone of the original classic Worms. Instead of directly copying the graphics and gameplay of Worms, Wormux injects their own brand of humor – namely using known Open Source mascots as the cannon fodder for various weapons available to the player’s disposal.

Clones have, in their own right, good and bad in them. Clones help give the Open Source movement much-needed attention by attracting gamers who would not normally play an Open Source title, even though those gamers are guided primarily by their wallets, and not their wishes to see more activity within the OSS community. Secondly, Open Source clones often have their own smatterings of enhancements within them, which can actually give the gamer a better experience with the game in question than the original retail title would. While many retail supporters would lament the loss of revenue for the for-profit development houses, this also spurs the argument that competition is good, and even more so when the competition is a product that comes at no cost to the consumer.

There are a myriad of problems with clones as well. From the gamer’s perspective, clones have an expectation of perfection behind them. With little creative design effort required, clones have much of the “fun” grunt-work taken out and instead are boiled down to strict code-crunching and meager artwork development. As such, gamers expect that, with less work to be done, a more perfect clone is created; one specifically where a gamer could have played the original retail copy, and would easily be able to start up the clone and expect a 100% picture-perfect transition. This rarely happens as far as clones are concerned. Bugs are often-times rampant, as well as performance and control issues. Wormux, for example, lacks a proper ninja-rope ability, and has a bad habit of crashing during networked games. With bugs like these, casual gamers dabbling in OSS may become turned off, and will instead purchase the retail game (or worse, obtain it illegally), significantly reducing the foot-traffic that the titles need to maintain development interest and summarily survive. And, by turning off the casual gamer to Open Source, the more original titles will stifle and eventually vanish into obscurity.

The problem resides in the title itself. “Clone” insinuates a perfect copy released to the public absolutely free. What should be used as a moniker is “-like”. Linux does this, as it’s a “Unix-like” Operating System. Why not employ this with other titles, and politely ask other organizations to do the same in their literature on the subject? Freeciv and Wormux go so far as to completely omit the mention of their originals (Civilization and Worms, respectively) in any of their official web pages or blog postings. What needs to be done is more aggressive marketing and communication with publications and especially Wikis, removing the concept of the “clone” and replacing it with “-like”. Even OpenTTD should feel obligated to say “Open Source Port of Transport Tycoon”, in an effort to dodge the evil “c” word.

Do “-like” games have their place in the Open Source community? Absolutely. They certainly entice aspiring programmers who may not have had previous experience with coding games with the opportunity to flex their muscle without having to bring on a whole creative development team. They also attract gamers to the entire Open Source movement, providing much-needed motivation to those who would develop, fix and release such titles. Let’s just not call them “clones”, okay? I’ve had enough Star Wars for one lifetime.

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