Re: Maintainership of gnome-games

[Callum McKenzie <callum spooky-possum org>]

On Tue, 2006-05-30 at 01:17 -0400, Jonathan Blandford wrote:
> But since I'm not the maintainer anymore and am not writing the code, I
> just get to whine from the sidelines. (-:
Also speaking as someone who is not the maintainer anymore:

I never had the guts to cull the list of games. Although I was pushed by
many distributors to do so. 

Unfortunately, making a list of what to cull is hard, I vaguely recall
one distro had a bug open on the matter and from three different
people's lists there was no game on all three. Also, whatever gets
dropped, someone will be claim that it is their mother's favourite game.

So here are some random thoughts:

Things that would be good ideas for new game development,
  - Games for a non-traditional audience. Read any recent article about 
    Nintendo and Brain Age to see what I'm getting at.
  - Popular stuff. Right now this would be Sudoku. But be prepared to 
    ditch it once the craze dies down.
  - IM integration. Network games off your buddy list.
  - Variety. If Aisleriot was just Klondike, it wouldn't be nearly as 
    popular. By being generic, it can accommodate any solitaire fetish, 
    catching the long-tails as well as the center of the Gaussian.
  - Easily extended. You can add new layouts to Mahjongg - but only if 
    you know how and where to put the files. Themes aren't easy enough
    to add either (only same-gnome can pick up themes from the home
    directory).

I almost wrote a list of what I thought should stay or go, but instead
I'll merely list my criteria: Popularity (e.g. Aisleriot), Quality (e.g.
Mines), and Maintainability (i.e. not Gnometris).

Some of the games are there because they are traditional. Robots is
almost the classic example, its game dynamics are determined by the TTY
technology. We don't really need to keep them, even though they have
string emotional appeal to hackers.

Conversely, low-maintenance games can probably be kept around. Mines has
been solid for a long time now. The last serious bug reports where all
related to the new high score code.

Anyway, I've spent too long writing this. I'm not the person making the
hard decisions.

 - Callum