Game engines already exist. People already develop content though you kind of need a working and enjoyable game first, with some content, before people will develop more content for it.

Who funded Linux development in the early days, answer, noone? Would need to be a volunteer effort to some extent.

Hopefully Carmack will be disillusioned with working for Facebook soon and do it for love of gaming and graphics programming.

Kickstarter is the obvious answer if you really want cash.

There is a pretty obvious solution to the steep decline in modern games. Its the same solution that was found to over priced, proprietary, commerical operating systems.

We need an open source gaming system. Its probably the only escape from eternal damnation to over priced, poorly designed, crap games.

Some critical issues need to addressed up front for it to work.

For starters you need to settle on an open source gaming engine. Torque3D would be one possibility, people here could probably name others. It needs to be capable, open source and multi platform, with as few licensing restrictions as possible. You need high caliber game developers, like Carmack to emraced it and work on it, with someone like Linus holding it together.

You need to develop a small number of core games based on the essential archetypes, FPS, MMORPG, Space battle/trading, racing.

You need to create councils for each game selected from game developers and excellent players who set rules, direction, maintain order and hold the game economy together.

As always if a game/council fails to satisfy their constituencey a solution is a fork but you want to ACTIVELY discourage forking when it leads primarily to fragmentation and wasted resources. You want as much wood behind one arrow as possible.

Each game needs to actively support and leverage mods and user developed content. In fact that will be the primary source of content.

The core games need to be designed for extreme longevity, its the content that needs to constantly changing and growing.

Councils need to design intelligent tournament systems and leader boards that actually put the most skilled players at the top, where they belong, not the grinders, scammers and cheats.

I'm a long time gamer who no longer plays games, because the games I loved the most died at the hands of corporate greed and stupidity. In particular they died because decisions were made by executives who were for the most part not gamers and made decisions that were all wrong.

If I could, I would probably still be playing the original EQ, the original WoW and Battlefield 2, Karkand Infantry only.

Battlefield 2, Karkand Infantry only was, in my mind the pinnacle of PVP. If you had evenly matched teams, with evenly matched gear, fighting a battle decided by 1 point there was no better adrenaline rush and it never got old. The map never changed, the rules seldom changed, the thing that constantly changed was the people playing it, their skills, their tactics and strategy. Developing huge maps like PS3 where you can never find an even fight, or in game purchases that allow the fools with the most money to win, developing massively too dense graphics, that are way to expensive to develop, require to much graphics power to run and add no FUN to the game, and adding too many gimicky weapons and gear that cause nothing but unbalanced matches, are just some examples.

If I could have kept the original EQ or WoW and just added a never ended series of new dungeons, quests gear and battlegrounds I would probably still be playing them. The first rule is you NEVER raise the level cap, because as soon as you do the game turns in to a pointless treadmill. New dungeons, gear and PVP is all a game needs to stay fresh.

I'd still be playing BF2 if there were any servers left that didn't suck.

Did Netcraft confirm it?

Tesla's 3rd generation car is supposed to be a mass market vehicle that may disrupt the "automotive order" if Musk manages to build it. The giga battery factory he is looking for a home for is a critical component since it is critical to have enough affordable batteries for a mass market electric car.

Tesla today wont disrupt NADA, but Tesla in a few years very well may, they know it, so they are trying to nip it in the bud.

I dont think these rich, tech executives are trying to reform illegal immigration from south of the border.

They are trying to reform immigration so they can import as many engineers as possible in to the U.S. from other countries.

You don't think most of them got rich by actually writing code did you?

They mostly get rich by hiring/funding engineers to write code for them. The more engineers they have to choose from the happier they are because they have more startups to choose from and they can suppress engineering salaries which improves profitiability and the value of their stock portfolios.

It's even worse. From the copy on the screen, each of your eyes makes another copy on its retina.

And on the technical side, all the routers temporarily put the data into a buffer. So it causes one extra copyright infringement for every router the data passes.

Did they also calculate how much energy would be saved if we would not waste processor power on DRM decoding?

Less than 1% of the electricity generated in the US is from oil. Solar and Wind only generate electricity.
So well under 1% of all oil is used to generate electrical power. It was less the 2% of all oil in 2004 and has gone down to under 1% of the oil used in the US.

What you say may be true. As non-American I'm not terribly interested in the details of the American energy mix. Indeed, before that post, I couldn't even know which county you are from, so even with perfect knowledge of the American energy mix I could not have decided on the truth of that statement.

But your definition of "stupid" is wrong. "Stupid" is not the same as "uninformed", "misinformed" or "wrong".

And you just flunked your skeptic and critical thinking test.

There was no critical thinking test. I didn't make any statement about the energy situation of the US or any other country. I only made a statement about your use of "stupid".

1. You assumed you knew the truth.

I didn't assume to know the truth of the statement. I did (and still do) assume I know the truth about the meaning of "stupid". And your use of that word doesn't fit that meaning.

2. You failed to question the truth.

OK, I indeed didn't consult a dictionary (but I'm convinced you didn't either). Well, let's do now (I omit the pronounciation and ethymology parts):

stupid I a: slow of mind: obtuse b: given to unwise decisions or actions 2: dulled in feeling or sensation 3: marked by or resulting from dullness: senseless (a stupid mistake) 4: dreary, boring (a stupid plot) [Source: Webster's New Encyclopedic Dictionary]

None of those fits your use of stupid.

3. spouted off without doing any research.

Yes, I did not do any research on the meaning of "stupid". Nor did you, apparently.

4. You trusted without question those that told you that Solar and Wind would reduce our dependence on foreign oil when it is less than 1% of our oil use.

Does not apply. I didn't make a statement about wind and solar energy, I made a statement about your use of "stupid".

5. I am willing to bet that you are proud of your critical thinking skills and consider yourself an enlightened skeptic yet you showed none of those skills.

While I do think I have some critical thinking skills, I certainly didn't need to use them on your comment. Basic language knowledge was sufficient. In that sense I agree that I didn't show any critical thinking skills in my reply, because there was no critical thinking skill needed or sufficient.

You better think about what your answer says about your critical thinking skills.

Stupid == We need solar and wind to reduce our dependance on foreign oil.

No, equalling that statement with "stupid" is stupid.

The smiley at the end already said so. But of course this is Slashdot, so stating it twice may be appropriate. ;-)

My average age is exactly half of my actual age. I'm speaking about the time average, of course.

Probably green jelly beans.

HVAC? What HVAC?

BF2 64 man Karkand Infantry Only probably the best PVP game ever, and I doubt it will ever be topped on the sick trajectory PVP shooters are on.

Sad to see it go, though there is only one server left. Big E, and the Big E admins suck so it was effectively dead already anyway.

All of EA's lame COD knock offs since simply don't capture what makes multiplayer PVP intense and fun, nor does COD:

A. Teams need to be evenly balanced
B. Teams need to be in a confined space so there is immediate contact
C. Needs to be some tactics and strategy but not a lot, versus aimless COD styling circling, killing and being killed
C. Weapons need to be equal, simple, skill based. No air, no armor
D. No stupid gimmicks
E. No excessively dense, expensive graphics. Simple graphics is actually better and you aren't forced in to a constant hardware upgrade just to play games that are immensly fun even if the graphics are simple. Excessive graphics also drive up costs needlessly.

If EA had just kept fixing the bugs in BF2, spent more effort controlling hacks, did new maps occassionaly, did minimal refinements, someone like Twitch promoted a competition system around it, someone provided some professionally admin'ed servers to get away from clan based bias, it would've gone on forever like Starcraft.

Except for the telephone sanitizers whose job is generally undervalued. You know, a single unsanitized telephone could wipe out a complete civilization.