Abstract:

The free culture and FOSS (Free Open Source Software) movements aren't new concepts, proof of that is the increasing number of projects following this kind of philosophy. However common users tend to avoid FOSS instead of contributing to the betterment of such alternatives to proprietary solutions. Although people understand philosophy behind such concepts, they tend to avoid using FOSS in fear of it not meeting their needs.

In the context of an investigation in the MA of Illustration and Animation in IPCA (Portugal) a project aiming to prove that free alternatives such as FOSS are a worthy alternative was born. A videogame was made from the ground up using only FOSS and Freeware solutions, along with free assets made available to the community for free, filling the gaps where the team had no expert to solve (such as sound effects). During the development of this project, several aspects of the software being used were analyzed in order to better discern the advantages and disadvantages of using these free alternatives.

Keywords:

Freeware, Videogames, Open Source, Culture.