Unity3D released information about a series of open source games they are developing called Unity Open Projects and are making accessible for developers from anywhere in the world to contribute to. This sounds like a first-of-its-kind virtual reality development game that anyone can contribute to from all experience levels.
The idea of an open source game like this is a great one, and actually an idea my mentor and I were discussing about a month ago. Initially we had discussed the lack of successful open source companies, with the exception of a few like MongoDB (an open source NoSQL database technology). And we had also talked about the difficulty the VR (virtual reality) and AR (augmented reality) industry had faced early on creating games and applications that were useful, enjoyable, and could deal with the (at the time) lack of comfortable hardware (headsets) that was difficult to wear for extended periods of time. It was going to be very interesting to see what games or applications ended up appealing to a wide variety of headset wearers (VR headsets of course).
But this idea of developers at-large contributing to games that Unity3D sets the basic foundation (like the initial story and game character(s) for), and then letting the community extend and define aspects of the game that they connect with, I think this has all the promising features of a successful project. And this may be the type of project that generates a great deal of appeal to a large general public, instead of virtual reality developers continuing to build applications that other virtual reality developers enjoy.
If you’re interested in checking out (pun indented), contributing, or just following the progress of the first Open Project, here’s the GitHub repository.
P.S. If you don’t have a VR headset and are looking for a suggestion, check out this link.
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