Publishing Your Game

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Contents 1 Topic Assignments 1.1 Create a GAME Page on the Wiki 1.2 Clean up Your TEAM Page on the Wiki 1.3 Project Ownership and the Open Source Movement 1.3.1 1. For software licensing: GNU

Topic Summary: In this topic you will learn how to publish your fully functional game on the wiki, and how to request that it be published as a featured game in the PLAY area of the Globaloria website.

Topic Assignments

Create a GAME Page on the Wiki

• Log in to the wiki.
• Upload the .SWF and .FLA files for your finished game, as well as an image for your game.
• Go to your Social Profile page.
• Find the "Games" section and click the "Edit This" link.
• You will be taken to a list of your games. Click the "Add a game" link to create a new entry.
• Fill in the form with links to the content you've just uploaded.
• Make sure to choose your Team name from the Team list, so the game will be linked to your Team page.
• Check the box that says "Display in games gallery" so it will show up on the Game Gallery page.

Clean up Your TEAM Page on the Wiki

Make sure your Team Page includes ALL the key assets you created during the course, so it can serve as an in-depth resource for understanding your game and the process you went through to create it.

Team page should include:

1. Your initial game idea
2. Your team members (user names, photos and links to profile pages)
3. Your paper prototype
4. Your game demo
5. Your completed game plan
6. All versions of the game .SWF movie files
7. All versions of the game .FLA source files
8. Any other assets you created for your game (characters, sound files, research, etc.)

Check out this complete team page for inspiration: Fix it with Food

Project Ownership and the Open Source Movement

An open source license is fundamentally and philosophically different from copyright, in that it gives everyone access and the right to use, edit, and republish a piece of software for public use. No one the right to own/make money from it, including you, the author.

We use open source licenses for Globaloria content because we want to share our content for educational purposes. As a participant in Globaloria, you agreed to develop your game in an open source community.

We suggest that you add an Open Source license to your game when you are ready to publish it. GNU is our recommended Open Source licensing option:

1. For software licensing: GNU

GNU is the gold standard of open licenses and is used by Linux. Here is how they describe their philosophy:

“Free software is a matter of the users' freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve the software. More precisely, it refers to four kinds of freedom, for the users of the software:

• The freedom to run the program, for any purpose (freedom 0).
• The freedom to study how the program works, and adapt it to your needs (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
• The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor (freedom 2).
• The freedom to improve the program, and release your improvements to the public, so that the whole community benefits (freedom 3).

Access to the source code is a precondition for this.”

GNU is recommended by OLPC to its developers: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OLPC_on_free/open_source_software

Here is how GNU is described on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Free_Documentation_License