I organize Fedijams.
Like this one https://itch.io/jam/fedijam-5
These are foss jams and they try to use fediverse and Matrix for promotion and coordination, but they still have one proprietary tool in the loop: itch.io, a game store.

This is a problem for jams not only by being an ideological incoherency: it is practical too. People seem to be uncomfortable/shy to even hit the join button there (it requires an account), often opting in to just join our [matrix chat] (https://matrix.to/#/#fedijam:m.wfr.moe). And other people who see the low count are less interested as a result.

So, i thought, that for federated game developers, at least for jammers, something much better needed, safer to use and adaptable for specific needs and culture.

A Federated Gamestore

What is the bare usable minimum?

  • Ability to upload games.
  • Ability to host jams (event scheduling, submitting games and rating)
  • No federation. Yes, for FediJams even just a self-hostable gamestore would be useful.

But just that will be very poor and unappealing.

Self-respecting minimum:

  • Decorating game pages
  • Decorating jam pages
  • Not being spartan

The last one is very important for games and gamestores. The concept of game is about joy and having a good relaxed time.

Also, by looking at non-spartan Misskey, i have noticed much more mainstream people. On federated foss network.

Basic federated configuration:

  • Jam federation: between servers, with Mobilizon, and with Masto/Pleroma/Misskey
  • Federated game and jam comments
  • Federated game search

QoL:

  • Search by license
  • Jam tagging
  • Explore better jam interest gauges that just ‘joins’. federation might help with that.

Life:

  • Payments?
  • Donation integration?

Making this happen

Some days ago i started a fork of Game Jolt game store. https://notabug.org/Houkime/gj-fedifork-frontend

Upstream Game Jolt (MIT license) has a ton tracking built in and i also temporary curbed realtime communication/streams that will be the hardest thing to support (after potential payments?) and will need a lot of redesign anyway.

Using Game Jolt frontend as a base provides a lot of visual polish, page editing and anti-spartancy out of the box, and those things seem to be the most difficult and most limiting to get for foss projects.

But Game Jolt does not provide the server, so this one i need to write myself (I am looking at peertube as a reference/template). The frontend does provide though database models _

  • Houkime@fapsi.beOP
    2·
    3 years ago

    Atheneum looks cool, they are currently too tied to flatpaks though. One could have a special place on the game page for flatpacks, but then one could just upload a game directly to flathub. I can try to make cute slots for package repos links though so that devs are properly encouraged.

    The thing with itch and other store games is that they are supposed to be portable and run from the folder.
    So, maybe it is also about atheneum supporting portable games.

    lib.reviews looks alright. They will need to federate though. so that reviews are auto-applied to game pages.

    • poVoq@lemmy.ml
      2·
      3 years ago

      Not sure if you participates in the lengthy debate about this on #libre-gaming we had a while ago (both about flatpacks and reviews). tl;dr at least for libre games I would consider reviews to be counter-productive and they open up a can of worms with content moderation and fake advertisement.