Rethinking Homebrew - 2023

[dale_coop | 162]

8 hours ago, Dr. Morbis said:

I was wondering because fcgamer's entire argument about rethinking homebrew hinges upon it.  If no one in the world was doing it full time as their day job and it was a "side project" or hobby for people that just happened to also make a couple of bucks, then the term "homebrew" would pretty much still fit in all cases and this topic and thread would be moot.  But it looks like there are indeed people out there living off of the creation of new games for older consoles, meaning that a "rethinking" of the whole concept of homebrew is definitely something worth discussing, which I'll admit does come as a big surprise to me...

How about the people at Retrotainment Games, Broke Studio, MorphCat Games, SuperTiltBro, MegaCatStudios, Nape Games, ...? I mean I am sure most of them makes Aftermarket games as their main activity. (And I am sure there are more people I don't think of)

[Ferris Bueller | 495]

3 hours ago, dale_coop said:

How about the people at Retrotainment Games, Broke Studio, MorphCat Games, SuperTiltBro, MegaCatStudios, Nape Games, ...? I mean I am sure most of them makes Aftermarket games as their main activity. (And I am sure there are more people I don't think of)

This is why I said he limited it to coder. Like, what about the artists making pixels? Or musicians doing bleeps and bloops? What about studios that are becoming established and hiring employees? 

[Dr. Morbis | 2,090]

11 hours ago, Ferris Bueller said:

Like, what about the artists making pixels? Or musicians doing bleeps and bloops? What about studios that are becoming established and hiring employees? 

If anyone is doing any of these things and making NES games full time, then I am A) shocked beyond belief, and B) concerned as to why they have released so little content as the years have gone by.  The cost of living must be way, way lower in other parts of the world than where I am.  Here in Canada you'd have to release a game every couple of months at the very least to support yourself, never mind "hiring employees."  Just saying...

Edited June 15, 2023 by Dr. Morbis

[Gloves | 11,794]

14 hours ago, dale_coop said:

How about the people at Retrotainment Games, Broke Studio, MorphCat Games, SuperTiltBro, MegaCatStudios, Nape Games, ...? I mean I am sure most of them makes Aftermarket games as their main activity. (And I am sure there are more people I don't think of)

Mega Cat at the least I can say does not make aftermarket games as their bread and butter, if they only did so they'd not exist. They do modern games, websites, have a "web3" presence (NFTs), and a bunch of other stuff. They're absolutely faaaaar from making "aftermarket" games anywhere near fulltime. 

[fcgamer | 4,729]

36 minutes ago, Gloves said:

Mega Cat at the least I can say does not make aftermarket games as their bread and butter, if they only did so they'd not exist. They do modern games, websites, have a "web3" presence (NFTs), and a bunch of other stuff. They're absolutely faaaaar from making "aftermarket" games anywhere near fulltime. 

Ohhhh NTFs...where's our Starkeeper friend? 

How much of their business is dedicated to aftermarket though? What percent?

[Gloves | 11,794]

Just now, fcgamer said:

Ohhhh NTFs...where's our Starkeeper friend? 

How much of their business is dedicated to aftermarket though? What percent?

I dunno the percent, never asked or anything. 

[Sumez | 2,967]

As a general rule, if any company deals in NFTs, you don't want to give them any of your money   

[spacepup | 2,405]

I understand that as a general philosophy, but I will say things can be a bit more complex / nuanced.  I have no idea what Mega Cat's involvement is with NFTs and haven't looked into it, but I think they are doing a lot of good things, and they have helped to bring a few smaller developers' projects to light, helping them achieve goals and get their work out for more to enjoy.  They are also very nice and easy to work with.  

I hate NFTs as much as the next person, but I won't necessarily completely boycott any business over it, depending on the situation.

[dvertov | 208]

Late to this thread, but for what it's worth I have an upcoming interview (posting in the next week or two) with a developer who uses GB Studio, which I think has lowered the barriers to entry for the Game Boy scene even moreso than NESmaker has for NES development. Interestingly, he seemed somewhat unfamiliar with the term "homebrew" and wanted me to clarify the meaning. I think this dev sees his games as "indie games" that just happen to be playable on a retro console, which is how someone completely new to these communities likely makes sense of them -- especially when so many titles now go on to get proper ports to Steam and modern consoles like Switch, Playstation, and Xbox.

At this point I use "homebrew" as a term of endearment, almost like a nickname, although in my head I just think of them all as indie games, full stop. And also because "aftermarket" strikes me as a clunky, awkward word. And also because I am not rebranding my podcast, which would be a huge pain in the ass.

[fcgamer | 4,729]

2 hours ago, dvertov said:

Late to this thread, but for what it's worth I have an upcoming interview (posting in the next week or two) with a developer who uses GB Studio, which I think has lowered the barriers to entry for the Game Boy scene even moreso than NESmaker has for NES development. Interestingly, he seemed somewhat unfamiliar with the term "homebrew" and wanted me to clarify the meaning. I think this dev sees his games as "indie games" that just happen to be playable on a retro console, which is how someone completely new to these communities likely makes sense of them -- especially when so many titles now go on to get proper ports to Steam and modern consoles like Switch, Playstation, and Xbox.

At this point I use "homebrew" as a term of endearment, almost like a nickname, although in my head I just think of them all as indie games, full stop. And also because "aftermarket" strikes me as a clunky, awkward word. And also because I am not rebranding my podcast, which would be a huge pain in the ass.

I'm really excited to hear the interview, please let us know when it drops. 

[dvertov | 208]

1 hour ago, fcgamer said:

I'm really excited to hear the interview, please let us know when it drops. 

Will do, thanks!

[dale_coop | 162]

8 hours ago, dvertov said:

Late to this thread, but for what it's worth I have an upcoming interview (posting in the next week or two) with a developer who uses GB Studio, which I think has lowered the barriers to entry for the Game Boy scene even moreso than NESmaker has for NES development. Interestingly, he seemed somewhat unfamiliar with the term "homebrew" and wanted me to clarify the meaning. I think this dev sees his games as "indie games" that just happen to be playable on a retro console, which is how someone completely new to these communities likely makes sense of them -- especially when so many titles now go on to get proper ports to Steam and modern consoles like Switch, Playstation, and Xbox.

At this point I use "homebrew" as a term of endearment, almost like a nickname, although in my head I just think of them all as indie games, full stop. And also because "aftermarket" strikes me as a clunky, awkward word. And also because I am not rebranding my podcast, which would be a huge pain in the ass.

Wow, I am very surprise that someone who make new games for an old console (like the GB/GBC) never heard of the "homebrew" term. It's like he went into it without searching what was already existing?

Hombrew is not a "beautiful" term, is always associated with piracy. I'd really prefer those games to be called indie games / indie retro games as it feels more legit.

[T-Pac | 7,560]

I consider homebrews to be a sub-category of aftermarket games, but the distinction between homebrew and "professional" aftermarket releases is blurry.

I don't think the quality of the game or packaging should be a distinguishing factor, though. A homebrew game can be just as polished as a big-budget release and still be a hobby-product.

[T-Pac]

[Scrobins | 1,727]

That makes sense to me, tools like NESmaker and GBstudio have done a good job promoting their offerings to larger audiences beyond this community, attracting folks who just be virtue of learning about these tools are feeling the itch to try their hand at programming for these consoles. In those cases I could see indie games as their only frame of reference.

I personally like the term homebrew, and I think that aftermarket and indie can refer to similar, overlapping things. The arrival of industry vets with financial muscle to make new games certainly blurs the lines, and ultimately people should use the terminology they feel fits them. What’s important to me is that there isn’t any elitism where one person is insulted that a term like homebrew is applied to them. It’s all amorphous and we want to support each other, be what you want without being defensive.

[dvertov | 208]

7 hours ago, dale_coop said:

Wow, I am very surprise that someone who make new games for an old console (like the GB/GBC) never heard of the "homebrew" term. It's like he went into it without searching what was already existing?

It's not that he'd never heard of it, I think it's just a more common term in some developer communities than others and he wasn't sure how it applied to his game. I've been lurking in the GB Studio discord for a while, and although it's a frequently used term I don't know if it's quite as common as in NESdev. Similarly, I get the impression Dreamcast devs rarely use it and prefer just calling their releases "indie games."

[G-type | 2,483]

I think the way the AtariAge store categorizes is pretty clear from a consumer perspective:

Homebrews
Hacks
Reproductions

[Dr. Morbis | 2,090]

6 hours ago, G-type said:

I think the way the AtariAge store categorizes is pretty clear from a consumer perspective:

Homebrews
Hacks
Reproductions

Hacks and Reproductions are pretty obvious and distinct, but I don't think this solves the "homebrew" issue at all.  Like, is Jay and Silent Bob on NES released by Limited Run a homebrew?  "Independent" or "Indy" is definitely more on point and casts a much further net that would also include the sub-category of "homebrew" within it, if one were to be so inclined as to draw a Venn Diagram...

[fcgamer | 4,729]

9 hours ago, Dr. Morbis said:

Hacks and Reproductions are pretty obvious and distinct, but I don't think this solves the "homebrew" issue at all.  Like, is Jay and Silent Bob on NES released by Limited Run a homebrew?  "Independent" or "Indy" is definitely more on point and casts a much further net that would also include the sub-category of "homebrew" within it, if one were to be so inclined as to draw a Venn Diagram...

Yeah, I wouldn't consider that one to be a homebrew, or Garbage Pail, or the Famicom music carts, or...

And thus the lines are blurred.

[Scrobins | 1,727]

[the_wizard_666 | 1,325]

The terms "homebrew" and "indie" are completely interchangeable.  They are functionally the same thing.

Homebrew: Anything created by enthusiasts rather than commercial entities.

Indie: Any game (board-based, video, or otherwise) published or produced outside mainstream means; a subset of third party game

So basically, homebrew games ARE indie games.  Now, if an actual company that hires programmers and other staff in order to produce the games commercially comes along, they may try to claim the indie tag, but because they are producing the games in a mainstream manner, they are no longer technically indie developers, as they are an actual company.  A relatively well known example would be Minecraft.  At it's creation, Mojang was one guy who made a game in his spare time.  Minecraft was an indie release (and by extension, a homebrew game).  When it got huge and he started hiring developers, Mojang became an actual company.  And now, I highly doubt anyone would claim Minecraft to be an indie game, especially now that Mojang is owned by Microsoft.

Anyway, the TL/DR of it is that homebrew and indie are interchangeable terms, and once an entity is incorporated, they become traditional developers and lose the indie developer tag.

[dvertov | 208]

9 hours ago, the_wizard_666 said:

once an entity is incorporated, they become traditional developers and lose the indie developer tag.

I get the gist of what you're saying, but you lost me here... A corporation or LLC can be as small as a single person, so per this definition a tiny studio like Mega Cat isn't even making "indie games" anymore. Also I think it's useful to have a term like "homebrew" to indicate that the game was designed with the limitations of a specific retro console in mind, even if it's just an informal term used by that console's dev community. So yes, I agree that all homebrews are indie games, but not all indie games are homebrews.

[Seth | 172]

I am coming to this fascinating conversation almost three months late, so likely almost no one will see this comment, but I did want to throw in my two cents from the standpoint of a consumer, collector, and critic who is not also the fourth "c" (a coder).

My sense is that consumers, collectors, and critics do not care about the distinctions between the terms indie, homebrew, and aftermarket—they are more concerned with whether something is wholly original (which in a sense keeps repros and hacks in their own separate categories, as I think we all agree is important). It is coders who, totally understandably, feel some anxiety about how these three terms are deployed. The reasons range from the initial Sole Goose/KHAN complaint—misuse of terms could overshadow or undermine the hard work of certain coders—to from-scratch, solo-artist coders who are for good reasons circumspect about competing with (variously) NESMaker, large-indie, or even corporate projects that could include a large workforce and/or tools that make coding work much easier.

The problem, just in my own opinion—take it for what it's worth—is that this particular sort of taxonomic anxiety is a bit ahistorical. Consider: unlicensed games competed with licensed games during the run of the NES; certain licensed games game from huge studios and others from much smaller studios, and as between unlicensed games you had everything from Tengen and Codemasters to games that surely only had two or three people working on them. The bottom line back in the 1980s and 1990s was that anyone writing code for a game on a given system was necessarily competing with everyone else doing the same thing, with the only distinction being Nintendo deciding who to give a Seal of Quality to (a fundamentally esoteric corporate distinction that was based on eldritch Nintendo policies, and cannot resolve an issue like the one you all are discussing here that arises decades later).

Any game released after the lifespan of the NES is aftermarket, that's true. And any game released by anyone but Nintendo or (I might argue) any of the publishers that published NES games during the lifespan of the NES is an indie game inasmuch as it is a project to release a game for a system that is no longer on the market by individuals who were not ever participants in that market on the producer side—which marks any such effort as an indie endeavor, even if the endeavor has a lot of resources behind it (i.e., it is indie because it is happening outside any well-constructed, extant market for the hardware in question and being advanced by people who had no cultural capital in that market).

As for homebrew, it is honestly (again just IMO) a pretty bad term, even though I use it all the time in my video game journalism and NES collecting and regular gaming practice, because (a) it does, I think, imply things about the quality of and resources behind a game that may or may not be true as to a given title, (b) it technically—by its dictionary definition—a "homebrew" video game would have to include hacks (which I agree it should not) because the term "homebrew" is about where and by whom and to a lesser extent how a game was made and not about whether it is wholly original, and (c) it makes all sorts of assumptions about how many people helped on the project, how widely these makers wanted to sell the game, and so much more. It is, in short, wildly over-prescriptive.

But the thing about the term I was surprised no one mentioned here is that it runs afoul of some key variables wrought by the fourth dimension of time. Here's what I mean: are we going to call a well-financed LLC-born game created by two coders in 30 days *not* a homebrew, and a game made by one person over six years a homebrew, just because of an outside funding stream that no gamer or gaming historian does (or should) care about? Because it is the *latter* game that is, paradoxically, almost certainly going to be more polished and seem less like a "homebrew" than the former. Ignoring this turns "homebrew" into merely a financing term, and I hope we can all agree that that would be a bit silly. Money matters, of course, but who wants to foreground financing streams when we're all hoping to talk about games on their own terms?

The simple fact is that it is not the number of coders or even the financing that determines whether a game is polished, but how talented the maker(s) are, how long is taken on a given game, and even the aesthetic vision of the maker—as we can all agree that "polish" is a subjective term, some makers actually value a seeming lack of polish as a charming gameplay component, there are plenty of gamers out there who do not attach their enjoyment of a game to the amorphous concept of "polish" to begin with, and as noted above polish can be achieved with time no matter how many people or how many resources have been dedicated to a game. (I think we are all aware of NES developers who take 5+ years on each game, and these games invariably come out quite "polished.")

My humble suggestion is that "coder's anxiety" must be put aside because it simply aids no one—not consumers (i.e. "mere" gamers), not collectors, not critics, and not coders. If you make an aftermarket NES game you are, rightly or not, competing with everyone else doing so for the attention of everyone in the 21st c. NES-gaming community. Maybe you will spend less time and money on your game than the Mall Brawl guys did, but people will like your game much more! Or maybe you have a lot of time and money and, strangely enough, despite working alone end up spending *more* time and *more* money on your game than the Mall Brawl guys did and (sadly) people will nevertheless like it less. The market of attention is always based on the enthusiasm with which a game is received, full stop. All this other stuff cannot be the source of any taxonomy, I think, because it is not finally probative of which games people like and talk about and want to share with others or (just as important) lump together in the way they *talk* about such games.

In the end, it seems like trivia. Trivia that matters quite understandably to a lot of people, but in the long view of history still trivia.

In my NES aftermarket-game review series at Retro I have switched to using the term "indie" as a signifier that a game was released after the lifespan of the NES (which means, yes, I include late-1990s games made in Asia and unfairly called "bootlegs" as a way of elevating the 2000s North American homebrew scene; while I know the NES had an extended lifespan in certain Asian countries, I do not think that should have been used to erase certain Asian developers from the history of wholly original "homebrews").

"Indie" is a term people know, respond to, and do not make presumptions about (in terms of an object's quality) on the basis of, as of course we are in a moment in history when so much amazing art is indie art (e.g., in music).

I do not use the term "aftermarket" for three reasons: (i) it is cold-sounding and gets no one anywhere excited (i.e., it does nothing to frame the art, only categorizes it like someone archiving detritus in a dusty warehouse would), (ii) it has a negative connotations that carry over from other fields (e.g., would you rather have a new carburetor or an aftermarket one; the aftermarket one could be amazing, sure, but it could also be dodgy, so "aftermarket" has the ring to some people of "used" or "ad hoc" or "cobbled together [potentially irresponsibly]"), and (iii) it really just doesn't mean anything beside the fact that the NES's lifespan ended decades ago. We already know that, so the term seems like a backward-looking historical footnote rather than a way to pitch a new game as exciting because it has never been seen before by NES gamers. "Indie" signifies new, innovative, and potentially exciting—and the product of someone somewhere's hard work—in a way that "aftermarket" does not and cannot.

My two cents, anyway.

[Sumez | 2,967]

@Seth are you the guy who made that weird top 100 NES homebrew list which spent more time discussing completely arbitrary rules for what qualified for the list, than the actual games?

I think your input is interesting, but you should probably know that this is a thread started by a person who is known for making threads about all anything, which are often not taken completely seriously. So if you're wondering about some of the arguments made or not made here, that would likely explain that. There's an older thread here discussing what qualifies as homebrew, and that one had a lot more back and forth, but also ended up running sour, so I guess it's a good idea not to revive that either.

3 hours ago, Seth said:

a "homebrew" video game would have to include hacks (which I agree it should not) because the term "homebrew" is about where and by whom and to a lesser extent how a game was made and not about whether it is wholly original

I agree completely with this definition, except from the injected statement that contradicts it.
Homebrew is a hobbyist term, and the homebrew scene for any particular platform is a community focused on understanding and documenting exactly how the hardware for that platform works, and working out developing new products for said platform. That involves both making original games, but also recreating cartridge hardware, or even making new peripherals, as well as hacking existing software or hardware. It's not about the products themselves, but about the community and the process. This is why people (at least people in the homebrew scene) will consider rom hacks homebrew, but a NESmaker game isn't - while NESmaker itself is.

If you're looking at "homebrew" from a consumer standpoint that changes the perspective entirely, and that is where the arguments that kicked off this thread, as well as most of what you're covering in your post makes a lot more sense. As both of you are saying, making the distinction of a game being "homebrew" or not is mostly irrelevant, if what you want is a new game for your "obsolete" video game console. Doesn't matter if it was made by a single person, or a big company, and it doesn't matter if it was made completely in assembly or using a premade game building engine with no coding required whatsoever. The only thing that matters here is obviously whether it's a wholly original product, and of course whether it's technically legal.

Edited September 4, 2023 by Sumez

[fcgamer | 4,729]

3 minutes ago, Sumez said:

I think your input is interesting, but you should probably know that this is a thread started by a person who is known for making threads about all anything, which are often not taken completely seriously. So if you're wondering about some of the arguments made or not made here, that would likely explain that. There's an older thread here discussing what qualifies as homebrew, and that one had a lot more back and forth, but also ended up running sour, so I guess it's a good idea not to revive that either.

No need for the disrespect. You showed your knowledge (or lack thereof) in the thread where @Ferris Bueller called you out for being the guy who tries to run the room with "knowledge", only for it all to be my way or the highway-style incorrectness.

[fcgamer | 4,729]

6 minutes ago, Sumez said:

but about ... the process.

Yes, and this is why someone getting a company such as Morphcat games or Broke Studio to publish their games, en masse, does not look to be homebrew.

Now, burning chips and hand soldering them into PCBs you designed, that seems a bit more homebrew. Like you said yourself, the process.