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Open source games are Video Game s which are Open-source Software and use Open Content . BACKGROUND One example from 1999 is '' Quake 3 Arena '', which was a completely Proprietary game with Closed Source code/engine and everything in the game (graphics, sounds, music, computer models) was copyrighted by and property of the developers, Id Software . In 2005, id Software released both the game and graphics engine of ''Quake 3 Arena'' under an open source license. Although the code done by the programmers was open source (a so called ''open source engine'') the content (done by graphics artists, music composers etc.) is not, so one still must buy ''Quake 3 Arena'' to play it. The gaming community on the internet took the code and rebuilt most of the content of the original game with open content. This way, the game, renamed to '' OpenArena '', could be published as an ''open source game''. Compared to proprietary games, the majority of open source games are very simple in terms of graphics, sounds etc. With proprietary games getting more and more advanced and expensive, open source games rarely, though with notable exceptions, compete with their proprietary siblings. TOOLSET Another drawback was that building high quality content often requires expensive tools like 3D-modeller or a toolset for Level Design . As open source applications like Blender mature and professional tools like GtkRadiant are published under open licenses, this is becoming less of an issue. EXAMPLES Many of these projects are created by programmers in their free time and coded from ground up. A popular and successful example for open source games is '' Freeciv '', a clone of the proprietary '' Civilization '' from Sid Meier . '' Nexuiz '' was the first 3D First Person Shooter that includes high quality content, comparable to commercial games like ''Quake 3 Arena''. COPYRIGHT STATUS As open source, games are freely distributable. They are often Cross-platform compatible and included in Linux Distributions as a result. REFERENCES
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