Gamasutra: Benjamin Quintero's Blog - Homebrew Can Be A Good Thing

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Homebrew Can Be A Good Thing
by Benjamin Quintero on 10/09/09 02:44:00 am Expert Blogs

8 comments

Posted 10/09/09 02:44:00 am

I recently picked up my DS again. Dusting it off, I booted up the last game I left in the slot; Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia. I quickly remembered why I put it down the first time, after I was tossed around like a rag doll by the boss that was waiting for me in the next room.

It did get me thinking, however. It seems that PC's and digital distribution have been the staples of indie development. If a couple buddies wanted to make a game, it meant the usual assortment of tools that were focused around PC distribution. XNA has recently become a portal for the XBox 360, but few (if any) people have been able to make a living from it.

Nintendo has various channels for Wiiware and now Dsiware, but they all have a high barrer of entry; certainly not the type of environment for a tiny team on a shoestring budget. The iPhone has been very promising for a handful of indie developers, but that has it's fair share of restrictions, besides being a very hot-cold market.

The NDS has been under fire for some time now. Nintendo has been very vocal against the use of unofficial storage devices, like the R4 and other flash cards. Understandably, the debate is that these devices are then used to illegally copy games. The downside is that these storage devices also get a bad reputation from this stereotype.

Personally, I'd love to try and make a low budget DS game using homebrew techniques to avoid the heavy upfront cost of official development hardware. I'd love to try my ideas and get familiar with the hardware before investing relatively significant funds; assuming that they'll even approve me as a licensed developer. I would love to do all of these things, but I feel like the FBI would be knocking my door down if I even typed "DS Flash Card" into Google.

There seems to be such a negative stigma around flash cards that I'm not even sure it would help to have a fully functional DS game along with the game pitch. I feel like they might have security waiting for me at the front door. Is it all in my head? Would a working homebrew game help seal the deal for a tiny team, or seal my fate in a tiny cell?

Comments


Glenn Storm	9 Oct 2009 at 9:33 am PST

You're touching on a subject that seems to be reaching a tipping point. These restrictions are like a wall, or at least a significant hurdle, to smaller developers, but as competition increases, somewhere along this wall, cracks must appear. Some game engines are starting to bridge much of the gap for you; giving you easier distribution to various platforms. But the real watershed moment will come from the manufacturers. One of them is going to open the floodgates first, and do it in a big way. Then I'd expect others to follow suit, but just our luck, it'll probably happen right at the end of the console cycle.


Benjamin Quintero	9 Oct 2009 at 11:19 am PST

It usually does happen at a point when a console becomes obsolete, like Linux for PS2; offering a fraction of the hardware's capability in it's fading years. It would be nice for manufacturers to consider an open platform from the start of a new console cycle. Hopefully future iterations of XNA will have the full capabilities on XBLA instead of a shadow of it's true self. Hopefully Nintendo and Sony would at least acknowledge homebrew with a little less disdain and; dare I say, encourage it for garage developers looking to spark a cheap alternative to building a proof of concept on native hardware.

Should someone feel like they are breaking the law for developing on hardware that they purchased for themselves? It certainly appears to be that way right now; even for non-console devices like the iPhone and it's long list of approvals to copy an executable file onto the device. I can't imagine what PC's would be like if the same restrictions were in place. We'd still be typing in Dos prompts and waiting for the next spreadsheet application to be released.


Daniel Punch	11 Oct 2009 at 8:54 pm PST

Platform holders need a way to monetise homebrew, otherwise all they achieve by allowing it is an avenue for people to release commercial games on their system without paying any royalties. Given that the current hardware strategy seems to be releasing consoles at a loss and making money on the software, this would not be financially feasible.

Microsoft found a way to make money from homebrew when they released XNA and made it so easily available. If you want to make homebrew for the XBox360 you pay the annual fee. Sony had a bit of an attempt with the PS1's Net Yaroze and PS2 Linux, but they were both difficult to get hold of and also relatively difficult to develop for.

Hopefully XNA will start a trend towards lower priced entry level development tools.


Benjamin Quintero	12 Oct 2009 at 9:00 pm PST

Daniel, agreed. I wouldn't mind at all paying a more affordable fee to make native games on console devices. It would give access to more stable and more professional development environments, and create an instant community pool that developers could look to for employment. The problem is that abstractions like XNA aren't exactly the answer. Abstract environments don't spawn potential employees, because they are being mislead about the hardships of native code. It hasn't created a portal for indies to make reasonable money, because many of the key elements that make XBLA games successful are stripped from indie; leaving them with nothing more than support to program for a controller as input. I completely understand the need to protect would-be developers from making and self-selling their games, and some restrictions will have to exist for that. On the flip side, the games that come out of that group will only be as big as the shackles they are wearing.


John Hahn	13 Oct 2009 at 1:16 pm PST

My problem with things like XNA is that it doesn't translate in the real world. It's a black box tool just for that platform. Lots of amateur, smalltime garage developers aspire to work at bigger companies as game developers in a professional context. This means that the little indie games they write in their free time need to use the same tools, libraries, and environments that the pros use in order for that experience to really stand out on a resume. If I write a couple of little XNA games using C# and put that on my resume I may be able to get my foot in the door at a company if I'm lucky, but having that experience in no way means that I'm capable of writing hardcore c++ code for a AAA game title. If I'm an XNA expert (and that's all I have substantial experience writing games with), then I'm used to having all these abstractions that make it so that I don't have to worry about the low level details of the content pipeline, etc., and I'm pigeonholed into that particular way of thinking.

If I'm going to spend months/years of my free time working on a game project of my own, I want to wind up with something that will be impressive on a resume. I want to be able to show a potential employer that I'm capable of working in a professional game development environment. I'm not sure that XNA is the best way to do that. I mean, XNA experience doesn't mean you can write a AAA retail xbox 360 game. Even the bigger XBLA games are properly licensed and written using the professional xbox tools (using C++).


John Hahn	13 Oct 2009 at 1:27 pm PST

The real problem is that garage developers don't want to have to pay up front fees in order to BEGIN developing on a particular platform. They want to develop their game for free, and then if they wind up with something they are proud of, they can get more serious about spending money to get it rated, distributed, etc. Microsoft (and the others) should just release the full xbox development environment (for PC) as a free download, but make it so that whatever is written there cannot actually be run on xbox hardware. It can only be run on PC (and you can use a USB xbox controller). This way people can make full blown xbox games for free. Then once you have a game you're happy with, call up microsoft and pay for a license and get microsoft to QA your game or whatever they do, etc. Then they "unlock" the game on their end so that it will run on xbox hardware and upload it to XBLA.

I just don't see why it would hurt for them to allow people to have the full blown development environment for free, as long as the software they write can only run on a PC until they pay for the license to run on the console hardware.

Come to think of it, even if somebody hacks the "key" system and gets it to run on their personal xbox... so what? They have no way to actually get it uploaded to microsoft's server for XBLA distribution (only microsoft can do that).. so what difference does it make.


fert fer	14 Oct 2009 at 8:39 pm PST

	Goood blog. Convert MOD
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Ross Danielson	20 Oct 2009 at 9:52 am PST

I totally agree that console manufacturers should start to embrace homebrew. More and more, people want to create their own content, which could open up more revenue streams for the manufacturers that monetize the tools in a smart way. By keeping the barriers of entry low enough, companies can attract hobbyists and students, who are looking to just make something for themselves or to learn the basics of how a game is made. I think that Microsoft has done a great job developing this aspect of homebrew with XNA, which has opened up game development to a lot of people who probably never would have been able to make sophisticated 3D games on their own. I believe Sony and Nintendo would definitely get a lot of interest if they released similar platforms for their consoles. Of course, as has been said, XNA is not a great platform for those who are interested in creating more professional games independently.

It would definitely be a boon to those people if manufacturers would release versions of development kits that would allow independent developers to write more native code for a console without having to pay the huge cost of a professional kit. Of course, it’s hard to figure out what features should be included in an indie kit and what should be restricted to a professional version. What do you think such a tool would need to include to be useful enough for an indie developer but not so advanced that it makes the professional kit obsolete?

I think that it is pretty likely that Nintendo and Sony will eventually provide tools similar to XNA for their consoles. As for tools that fall between beginner and professional versions, I think there is less hope. It does not seem like there is as much need for these types of tools, because if you are that serious about making a more professional game, you will be able to find a way to get a professional dev kit.