Slashdot Mirror
Ask Slashdot: Are The Days of Homebrew Gaming Over?
Croakyvoice writes "A few years ago the Homebrew community went from one console to another releasing some excellent software, from the Days of the Dreamcast the first breakthrough homebrew console, to the PSP which gave us the first handheld Nintendo 64, GBA and PSX emulators on a handheld. The last few years we have seen Microsoft, Nintendo, Sony and Apple all bring out means to thwart homebrew development. The app store on both Android and iOS have taken many homebrew devs over to try and break the market. The major consoles have so many firmware updates that the days of Homebrew seem to be numbered, is there a way back for the Homebrew Community?"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_Law_of_Headlines
I am literally 3000 tokens away from the chaotic crossbow --Stephen
You can write a "homebrew" choose-your-own-adventure text game in minutes or hours at most.
Without some understanding as to what the author means by "homebrew", this question can't really be answered effectively.
Perhaps if there were an article linked, we'd get that additional information...
As far as I know, you can still write a game in XNA, play it, distribute it, and indeed sell it in XBox Live.
Unless homebrew means "writing software by breaking through console security", there's plenty of homebrew out there.
The fact that Android is mentioned means the original question is vague to begin with!
First off, Android has basically no restrictions - you can install any app any which way you want. There's no "security" to break through so homebrew is basically legitimized - anyone can download the Android SDK and whip out an app. For iOS, it's mostly true as well - homebrew apps games well, they just get the SDK, pay $99 and publish it.
If you want apps that Apple doesn't approve, there's jailbreaking (all Apple devices except AppleTV have a method to do so - all iPhones through (and including) the 4s, iPod Touches and iPads), of which there's a homebrew community as well.
And the Xbox has a homebrew games community they call Xbox Live Indie Arcade as well.
Then there's the venerable PC which even with Mountain Lion can still run any valid executable code.
Of course, if the question is about people breaking security for fun, there's iOS jailbreaking and console security busting.
Between the PC, Xbox Live Indie Arcade, Android, and iOS, there's an outlet for one's programming talents that has legit paths that require no work to customize, really. And since the signing keys for the PS3 are public as well, the PS3 is also an open target that no firmware update can remove (though you can get your console banned from PSN if they discover "strange packages" installed on it).
Perhaps the better question is - what is the real question?
that did not have any vendor lock-in problems ...
Fuck homebrew. You want to write your own games? Do it on the PC. Until that's locked down at least. Homebrew is a distraction and a trick to build on a closed platform by prying it open temporarily with a hack. Don't do it. Put your effort into a platform that's actually open. Don't like the diversity of hardware and software? Well if you can build for a Nintendo Wii with it's underspec'd everything and still come out with something fun and usable, stop whining and build for the lowest common denominator on the PC
Between XNA, Steam, flash games, iOS, Windows Store, Kindle Store, Google Play, and the upcoming spectacular failure Ouya, the homebrew gaming scene is better than it has ever been.
StoneCypher is Full of BS
I never understood why people target closed platforms as anything but a last resort. And the more people do it, the less open platforms there will be.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
You incorrectly assume that there is only one gaming market. This is like assuming there is only one car market.
The gaming tastes of the Xbox/PlayStation audience can't easily be stripped down to work on iPhones and Nooks.
What will likely happen is that portable gaming consoles will die off for all but the most demanding gamers. Portable gaming in general will move to general purpose mobile devices (smartphones, tablets.) Home consoles will stick around because there's a substantial market that wants them. Gaming on PCs will likely consist of two main markets: console ports and indie titles, with frequent overlap between them (indie PC games being ported to consoles, vice versa, etc.)
This is actually a great time for "homebrew" development, if by "homebrew" we mean "people with ideas making them into reality without the financial backing of a corporation." The barriers to entry in game development have come down quite a bit in the past few years, as people realize you don't need to spend tens of millions of dollars to make a good game.
Check out my world simulator thingy.
Fuck homebrew. You want to write your own games? Do it on the PC. Until that's locked down at least.
The PC is never really going to be 'locked down'. If you look at the Apple app store, google play, etc. you can always release shitty student project games for free on those. The PC is no different, so long as you can download and run an executable you can play a homebrew game on it.
The consoles are fundamentally different in that they are intended to lock you out of running arbitrary code - that's both good and bad. Bad if you don't have any other means of getting software, good if you want a device that is safe to hand to your 13 year old and know he's not going to accidentally get a virus and blank your data or the like. The consoles also require a certain level of quality and so on for games to show up there, that means you know that whatever you buy on a console will behave a certain way to some degree, you have no such guarantees on the PC. Which is why there's a market for both, not everyone wants to use their brain the think about games.
But yes, generally, if you want to give away your product for free, and you don't want to be bound by onerous requirements the way to do that is PC or Apple or Google, not XBL/PSN/Wii.
Starcraft II implemented the best custom game making system in gaming history. Since SC1 ran steady for like 12 years and set records for the longest time on store shelves primarily because of user-made content, that makes sense. They're both RTS games but I made a board game out of a map :-P It's practically a programming language wrapped in a premade graphics engine so you can make any kind of game you want inside it. Many, many people have made tower defense and full blown RPGs with leveling and saving. Some are even D&D-based. So just because the big name consoles are blocking people out left and right doesn't mean people can't design their own games anymore.
http://www.wiibrew.org/wiki/Main_Page
Wii homebrew still gets made, emulators get updated still. It's slowed down, but after we hack the Wii U, I imagine there will be a bunch of new stuff.
Stuff still gets made for the Xbox 360, the PS3.
Wouldn't even need to ask the question if you googled the various scenes.
Be seeing you...
When I homebrew, I create a batch of beer. Then I put it in a keg marked "BUD LIGHT (but better!)" and sell it to bars. But Anheuser-Busch served me a C&D and now I can't do that anymore. Is this the end of homebrewing?
Everything is better with chainsaws.