An insightful post which I certainly agree with, but one question regarding the "diplomatic agent" portion - Article 1 e appears to define it as the staff or head of the diplomatic mission.
I might be (and probably am) wrong here, but wouldn't that preclude anyone who isn't functioning in a contracted diplomatic capacity?

Maybe I'm missing something hear as an Australian who is also not a lawyer... but wouldn't the Logan Act therefore also apply to Hollywood's shitstain thugs? Or are they "authorized citizens"?

A nice looking game in its own right, and I love the fact that it's story driven - something very rare in modern gaming. It may be the way that I worded my post, but I was more talking about graphics technology then the art behind it. While yes - it is a good looking game, it won't be winning any awards for it's rendering. Again, I don't mean to imply that needing a industrial heater of a graphics card makes a game inherently better, was just pointing out to the parent that it's hard for small teams to hit the moving goalposts that are the latest and greatest rendering techniques.

Definitely an example of what a small team can do, and I personally think the graphics are more then enough to not detract from the experience - dare I say nice enough to enhance it - but it is no Arkham Asylum, Crysis 5 or Modern Warfare 10. Which in a way, isn't a bad thing at all.

Also, nitpicking, but not open source ;)

Look, as some of that ACs have already pointed out, you are wrong. However pretty it may look, a 5 minute video is not some kind of proof that a AAA game that is competitive with mainstream titles while being OSS is viable.

As for the toolchain? No - an interactive game requires far more tools, and more specialists to create. While animators and texture artists alone can create movies, you need high skill programmers in order to create a game. It is not as simple as just "putting an engine in". An engine is simply the backend classes, interfaces and methods to handle the resources, game logic and input in a structured way. You still need to craft the game itself around that, which requires, at the very least, competent programmers.

You also need competent designers. Not just for gameplay, but for stuff like HUDs, menus and other interfaces. Tool programmers, level designers, network specialists... You'll find that the amount of specialists required for interactive media is much greater then that of others.

Also, how are you going to convince a large enough group of people that your idea is the one? Unlike other projects, games don't serve a direct or obvious purpose apart from entertainment, so direction is something that is not as obvious. What sort of game would everyone want to see? Can the director get everyone to agree on an art/gameplay direction?

Sintel had paid artists, so in their case it was money. And don't expect a government grant enough to keep a much larger, more complex project going.

I don't even see why the open source community needs to compete with AAA games. More often then not, it is smaller budget games that actually innovate. Hell, most of the surprise hits of recent years have been from the indie community.

The parent of my post did.

Yes, what you posted does look amazing, but it is a pre-rendered movie, not a game. So it's really apples and oranges. I don't mean to demean anyone making FOSS games, I just meant to point out that making a game that looks as good as new AAA games generally takes a sizeable, professional team working full time to accomplish.

I definitely agree with you there. Don't get me wrong, I wasn't trying to imply that graphics should be the focal point of game creation. At the same time though, I'm not sure whether there would be "polished games out the wazoo". The thing is, the environment for fan made sequels/clones already exists. The tools already exist for FOSS game creation, and the communities/fanbases are there - apart from legal threats, there really isn't much stopping anyone skilled, with enough free time from making niche games that appeal to them.

Graphics wise, I'd express my doubts that even with years, a small team would even be able to produce something that is considered graphically amazing for the time of release. This is simply due to the fact that new hardware renders old techniques obsolete (pun intended). For a great example of how protracted development time and constant upgrading can actually make a game look _worse_ at release, take a look at DNF or daikatana.

All well and good, but I think a VB6 application created by salespeople would be the sort of thing that you might see in the average slashdotters worst nightmare.

Wow, what a fucking joke, touted as a 100Mbit network, yet the cheapest plan with a reasonable cap is still almost $100 at that speed. But then again, it's Conroy and the Labor party's baby, so can't expect to actually be told the truth. Practically counting down the days until that pond scum and his cronies are out of office.

And when file sending frequency made that annoying, you could just set HelloWorld.exe as the virus scanner.

Totally correct, one of the few English speaking, western democracies institutes one of the most restrictive, broad and opaque internet filtering schemes in the world. Who cares about a measly 22 Million people? After all, countries under 50 Mil. Pop. shouldn't even be recognized. Now give us more stories on bitcoins, dammit!

Glenn Beck might have done better too, had his supporters known how to turn on a computer.

On the same note though, XBLA offers a similar sort of market size to apple consumers and requires the use of DirectX/XNA. Considered that most gamers fall into either the console or Windows PC demographics, it may make more sense to use one of the aforementioned API's, forgoing the opportunity presented by Apple in favor of apparently greener pastures

Starbucks runs? Wouldn't that just make the shitty coffee problem worse?