Tapping Into Homebrew Game Development
Switching gears completely for a minute to talk about gaming. For years now I’ve been vaguely aware of homebrew gaming activities for various platforms – but I didn’t pay them much attention because they seemed overly complex or risky. Risky in the sense that a wrong step could cripple the given system’s hardware, not that I was concerned about any legal implications. I fully support the hacking of game system hardware for the purpose of furthering homebrew game development, while at the same time having a bit of a crisis of consciousness when it comes to hacking for game piracy.
I’ve recently become aware of some incredible PSP hacking techniques, some which allow you to play old PSX games, and others which enable proprietary apps made by members of this homebrew community. In particular I am talking about a puzzle game called Hexaxis created by Darksoft. Now I am not a puzzle game player at all – either they bore me, or I just plain suck at them, or both, but I can appreciate solid game design even if the product’s not something that interests me in particular. Anyone into puzzle games, or anyone into homebrewed games should definitely check this out.
What this brings to mind though, is that Sony and Nintendo and Microsoft really should be tapping more into this homebrew community. I don’t know the specifics of how it could be done, but I think it would be of great benefit to the gaming world as a whole to make these kinds of games available to the public through official channels, so that the developers do not have to resort to backdoor hacks and the like. Perhaps they would register as a developer, be able to upload X amount of games within a period of length Y – or whatever.
What this would do, aside from the obvious of providing gamers with new and original content, is really push the competition. And competition breeds innovation. AAA developers these days are so focused on meeting the graphical or technical status quo that they lose something in terms of creativity. Yet these “small-time” developers, who create their homebrew games for little more than some local internet fame or a few kudos on some message board, or maybe at best a few PayPal donations, really put their heart into their projects. No million dollar budgets, no 100-man teams, just dedication, hardwork, and above-all, creativity. There needs to be more official recognition of these developers on the part of the big companies.