Some of his works are created by deliberately (and sometimes targeted) breaking of hardware; this technique is called "circuit bending" :)

I tend to disagree heavily. I would think of it as rather gamey (most games I played over the last year were much more narrative-oriented; this is a quintessential game!). Is there a thing you don't like? You'll look good when playing it, and you might even feel cool!

Leaving the Webring; the thing suffers from pages who are in the circulation, but don't link back to the ring, effectively breaking it. Might eventually build a Webring, but not sure when.

Didn't knew Glorious Trainwrecks. They are imho indeed a vastly different thing.

Underground Game is a open term. If somebody would ask me if they can use it, I'll threw a short glance upon them - and either answer "Yes" or "Fuck you" (usually, not that direct - but clearly telling them what I would expect you to change if they want to be in any relation with me); the latter requires them to do something that I personally despise or reject (group specific forms of misanthropy, strong general misanthropy, exploitation of others). Such a dev might still call it a underground game, but where I can I will hinder it, I will - and I'll never recommend, rate, or recognize such a game. Games might pop up at mastodon or itch, or somewhere else using the term "underground game" (indeed, they did before I started). I might disagree with them being "underground games", but as long as I don't despise them, I won't bother to criticize their usage of the term by them.

Trainwreck is a existing platform, probably with a rather lax curation and no implemented means of monetization; it seems to be directed to people who enjoy rather raw, DIY-style games.

If one of the Trainwreck-Games would come up call itself underground game, and they could do so in their full right - because most of the games there seem to be indeed underground games. But for some I might surely say that they aren't "good" in the way I search for. Those might be underground games, but I usually don't recommend such games to others (if they don't have some spontaneous momentum that they captured, that is so good that it makes the whole thing cool - but this requires some mastery or small chances that are really hard to find by their nature if you don't have any hints).

I skimmed shortly through the games listed there, and most of them are honestly stuff that I would usually filter out when I search for games to play. Because games that are presented in this style aren't usually made to be played, but are mostly nice for the people who made them, and maybe even their friends and relatives. After all, these people are often proclaiming that they hammered them together in a few hours themself - and if you ever tempered with game making, you'll know what short amount of work two or even ten hours are; I guess it is not impossible to make a good game in such a time-frame, but I believe I have yet to see it (at least when it comes to video games: I played quite good easy non-video games that were made spontaneously).

Imho, good Underground Games should be something that the developers thought was worth to invest work in; they didn't do it to make profit, but because it was exactly what they wanted to make, regardless that it doesn't necessarily sells, and who stay true to this idea, often releasing it in a non-commercial space without much marketing blimbim (there are a few examples of commercial successful underground games; "The Sea will claim everything" is a wonderful example where I'm quite sure about this; iirc the dev was even afraid of losing their job over it. But these don't need much promotion from my side.). They don't always succeed, but they want to the good shit, and want make it right.

The Manifest, this "Sublemmy", among some other things, are attempts to initiate discussions about game development, and to "coin" underground gaming as a name that allows people who develop, play, and search for such games to find each other. Some are already here; if you recommend a game, it will be found by few, but cool people - that are somewhat likely to play it. Not sure if this can be done by Trainwrecks, but again - would have to take a closer look.

Hope none of this sounds harsh against Trainwrecks or their developers. I sympathize with them and their call, but I probably don't want to play their games.

As for jams, I see them as a "brain storm"-kind thing that tries to bruteforce good ideas. I don't like "brainstorming": Collecting many ideas and practically doing no critical reflection about those ideas ignores, in the end, moral and logical problems in favor of efficiency and a good look, and this is basically one of the main problems that the world suffers from - if you ask me. Nevertheless, I know some good games that resulted from jams. So if you disagree, do jams - and if they make you happy, ignore me; they are not the problem itself.

I'm afraid thats exactly the barrier I would encounter if I would try to enter these :3. Video games are - while still time demanding - a little bit more accessible.

The community I follow most closely is the Abstract Games subforum on Board Game Geek. BGG’s defitinition of abstract games is broad, but the people who hang out in those forums are mostly concerned with two-player combinatorial games. The community is small, but some designers are quite prolific.

Hark, thats cool :). Do you also play them, or is it more some sort of fascination for the topic?

Variations and mods should be okay. Sometimes their value might not be obvious to someone outside whatever niche-within-a-niche you’re in, and that should be okay!

I absolutely agree. To illustrate this: https://drmortalwombat.itch.io/missile-defence this is a wonderful C64-fan remake very close to its model. It is a well done, nice underground game that does exactly what the dev wanted to do. Yet it only works well if the "clone"-version has some quality. Creativity in gameplay might make a game worthwhile even if there are stronger technical problems, but if your "Tetris" clone sucks you are out of luck, nobody will want to play it nowhere.

While we may admire the lyrical artist who just pours the contents of their heart, not minding whether anyone will appreciate it… community has value too. I just wanted to mention it en passant, cause it’s a conversation that could branch out a lot…

I want to play the games made by lyrical artists, and I try to make games for people who search art in gaming. And I believe I neither can ( because this production require a professionell production and behavior) nor want (because these games do not interest me) to meet the requirements of the players who form the large of the "current market" as things are atm. If you want to make a living from game dev, this will of course not work out for you.

Nice that there is some activity here, welcome guys! I'm also not apt in video game journalism, but from what I gather the people who made this video were fired from an important mag shortly after releasing this video, and from a short reading this might be connected to them being not compatible enough with the (assumed) needs of the market.

Implemented it for Acid Flight. https://thunderperfectwitchcraft.itch.io/acid-flight worked like a charm. Can't test the online support, but the offline variant didn't cause no trouble and saved my stuff correctly.

Didn't use Wine much lately, but when I do i use usually 2 prefixes; one for 32, one for 64 bit. Winetricks is often helpful; so is the appdb on WineHQ.

Have fun!

Hi Dulsi. Well done - might try to implement it in one of our games, just checked your code snippets. See you @ the other board.

• Hyper Rogue: Roguelike set in a non-euclidian world. It redefines what a fantastic world might look like, and has a very unique atmosphere.
• FTL: Deep space exploration ahoy. If you enjoy space operas, FTL is the thing to play.
• Atomic Tanks: Oldschool artillery game. Great fun to play with friends.
• Warsow: The quintessential FPS. Damn good.
• Battle for Wesnoth, SuperTuxKart, Hedgewars are probably known. I love these.

I'm programming our games primarily for Linux OSs. I'm very fond of them.

Its a Private Company which is not focused to gain Profit because Investors push to.

MARS is also a private company and has a section for child and slave labor on the Wikipedia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars,_Incorporated#Child_labor_and_slave_labor

ZF is a private company and produces weapons.

As I already said, Valve has a history of unethical and predatory business tactics. Do you suppose they do these for fun? (and would this improve things in your opinion?)

Private companies are market participants and have to act in their interest, or go eventually down. Valve wants to make revenue with their investments. The Linux community is at best a vehicle, and at worst a target to them.

I’ve used proton more often than not with games purchased through GoG. Their contributions to wine and the layer on top is excellent. Sam Latinga is a Valve employee and creator of libSDL, which is also another significant and foundational contribution to FOSS.

Wine and SDL were around before Valve was involved. It is unclear if and how good they can prevail if Valve decides that they aren't interested anymore. Structures that are lost might be hard to regenerate.

And as for Linux gaming, it wouldn’t be where it is without Valve.

Half on the way to a glorified console for most of its users? The Linux gaming scene is now a reduced mirror of the gaming scene for Windows and the consoles; imo it was to be more interesting before. There was a higher and more vocal interest in smaller and more experimental productions. Nowadays it is the same as everywhere else.

A company can do a lot of good without having to be exclusively good.

Companies do profit, not good. The Linux Gaming scene was once quite sensitive to privacy, self control, and independence. Lemmy is a dedicated left site. But some of the folks here are cheerleading to a monopolist corp like there is no tomorrow. I'm from Germany - if I hear people worrying about what will happen when the benevolent dictator dies (see above in this thread) I get the creeps.

Valve is a capitalist company, aiming for profit.

They were heavily involved into establishing DRM in the video gaming world.

They were among the first to establish "FreeToPlay", Lootboxes and whaling, a predatory business tactic.

They accepted right wing extremist games in the past.

They have a kind of monopolist web store for PC games.

They are known to use the embrace and suffocate tactic against community projects in the past (DotA, once a community driven project is now a trademark of Valve).

The linux gaming scene is flourishing, but this comes at the price of dependency. And not all this dependencies can be resolved at the will of the community; many of the users that came over in the last time are probably unable to start a binary without help.

Valve is a wonderful contributor to Linux. Look what a beautiful wooden horse they have gifted to us!

Take this with a grain of salt - I'm no academic musician: By the time Nevermind was done, there were afaik easier techniques for the composition of popsongs available. Also, using the "contrapoint"-principe would probably have resulted in either quite outworn or very unusual compositions - the counterpoint was used to evade dissonance, but in the 90s dissonances were common in rock music. An example for a modern musician who vocally used the contrapoint technique in a modern way was "Moondog": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I7TPYWD8LUY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RW8SBwGNcF8

You should change your Distribution. Arch is a rolling release distribution with a strong focus on customization. If you use binaries shipped by another source, problems like those you described are quite likely to happen. Going to a distribution that isn't that cutting edge (but still cutting edge enough to deliver working drivers/libs) would reduce the risk for such things.

I'm the captain of all who enjoy underground video games:

http://barbarian.1987.free.fr/indexEN.htm

Have fun :D

In no particular order:

Online/LAN:

Xonotic: Good for online/LAN-play. UT-Style FPS.

OpenRA: Damn well good. RTS.

Warsow: Similar to Xonotic, but much faster. Damn good game. Sadly, defunct.

Sonic Robo Blast 2 Kart: If you like kart games and think they are all to easy, this is your choice.

Online/Split Screen/Couch coop:

SuperTuxKart: Damn fun, especially with a few add on tracks and good company at your place.

Hedgewars: Similar to Worms: Armageddon.

Battle for Wesnoth: Really fun once in a while. Neither the online nor the local experience is really "better".

Offline/Split Screen/Couch Coop:

Atomic Tanks: Worms on steroids.

Barbarian: Rocks. The OSS-Version is a tad bit obscure.

I didn't do VCMI, but Homm3 is one of my big local multiplayer favorites. I wait for the full inclusion of WoG before shooting it up. Also, as a young boi I really loved C-Dogs. The thing is now open source, check it out.

Good idea. I'm using (mostly lurking on) Mastodon (.social), following some people, browsing some tags now and then. Recently noticed the web revival movement (in fact via a certain blog post about a game called "Pete is Hungry") and I'm using melonland.net (a old fashioned bb-forum) as a gateway to it; don't be fooled about the obsession with nostalgia among some of the people there - there is some crazy creativity around. I'm using some of the community functions of Itch.io.

My mailbox is also a bit active, I occasionally chat with some people.

A bit OT: I don't really dwell there, but do you know allegro.cc? Their board is a bit active, and there are many games in different stages of development. Have yet to find the time to take a few strolls there.

They fixed it, works again after updating :)

Yeah, at some threads the counter seems to be off. At least the downtimes are strongly reduced by now; do the problems with the communication from another instance still exist?

Yeah, it is frustrating. I remember a thread where small "Indie"-Devs shared the losses they produced, some where deep in the red. Sometimes I found people who lived on the cost of their partners or family to go into game development. Its indeed not a wise thing to do, but there is a whole industry (book authors, marketing people, asset sellers and especially those who run the asset market places) that prey onto people who try to realize the dream of living from game development.

At least some of the scratchware guys seems to had internet distribution in mind - and while they couldn't foresee the "Indiepocalypse", it would have been possible to foresee that the problem roots deeper. But thats spilled milk. It is - in every case - true that Indie devs rely on the powerful players within the curation segment to gain visibility. It might be noteworthy to point out that the amateurs in this segment suffer from the same problem - amateur streamers, bloggers, reviewers can hardly get any audience, they are also cut out from visibility. It would be great to get some of those who are into this but don't aim to go commercial on board.

About the last paragraph: You are right, if you want to make money making indie games is a bad idea. When I ways younger, I occasionally made some bucks with street music - my average wage per hour easily outweighs the money I made with my online game and music projects combined (I'm defacto slightly in the red here: Paying for Steam and Server costs is easily more than my revenue - not that I regret it). Going in a direction that would be commercially rewarding (might work, might not work) isn't interesting to me: I want to be a game dev, not a entrepreneur - and I'm quite sure many others feel the same way.

I hope that we can establish a place or places where people play the games other people made without the commercial mindset - even through the road seems to there is surely rocky.

Good find! The Home of the Underdogs is a great resource :).

Its noteworthy that there are different voices within the Scratchware Manifesto. Some of the claims they make ("We want to play good games, and we want making games to be an art, not an electronic sweatshop. This problem, also not unique to the gaming industry, is as old as Das Kapital and as new as The Matrix.", the critique of damages to people and environment through exploitation, and the maiming influence of market-streamlining are the major ones I did notice) are fully compatible with Underground Gaming.

The major difference is that they seem(ed) to believe that through some improvements (mainly the avoidance of publishers and big companies, who they call "vampires") the capitalist system could not only be improved but also work in their favor (see their claims about small productions that landed big hits or their citation of "Lord British" and some others), whereas Underground Gaming sees these problems as inherent to the capitalist system - it doesn't aim to create another B or C-market but to establish a parallel working society that tries to discard the basic rules of capitalism (even if only within a limited space for now, but adding to the "large picture" within our possible means by doing so). It doesn't assume that competition creates better art, even if the consolidation of power within the competition would be removed.

Seeing that the people who signed the Scratchware Manifesto were seemingly professionals working within the industry it is understandable that their aims and direction are less ideologic and more directed toward allowing them to make a practical living from their doing in the long run. This is another big difference to Underground Gaming, that is much more directed to be a hobbyist movement.

I don't want to pan them, as it is always easier to be the clever one afterwards: But imho their idea proved to not work out. "Indie"-Gaming, "Social"-Media and the Internet in general opened up channels to avoid the publishers and big conglomerates, but the structures that they criticized where mostly just replicated in a weakened form as the rules of the market still apply (you already pointed this out in the OP).

Hope all of this is comprehensible - when it comes to questions of political theory, I sometimes suffer more from my language barrier.

Will do that. Thank you for your time! :)

Hi. Thank you! Installed what I could; can't resolve the problem that xul, fontconfig, gallium and linux gate are red even after installing the debuginfos I could find :s. But I'm not totally sure if it is successfully delivering the crash data as the "submitted" folder only contains 2 files, even though I repeated the attempt to start several times. The last submitted Bug-URL is https://crash-stats.mozilla.org/search/quick/?query=bp-e8bdb84e-527c-46c8-8138-6dccd0230618

But if I check the details in current crashes, I get: ec8030f7-c20a-464f-9b0e-13a3a9e97384; this, however is not submitted even though both the crash window and submit.log say so.

Hi. This could be a problem of Lemmy.ml, that seems to be overburdened by the amount of traffic in the wake of the Reddit-Exodus. Not sure how to deal with this.

As this area contains next to nothing for now, it would be a possibility to move to kbin; but they seem to have similar issues atm. Smaller instances would also work, but would move the whole thing even further out of the scope. Maybe it would be best to wait until the situation improves here? Not quite sure.

If we move away from Lemmy as software, the nearby alternatives would be a self hosted forum or going to matrix. Both variants have their benefits (more clarity and customization with a forum, more interactivity with matrix - and both variants would be more stable atm) and drawbacks (Workload, more isolation with a forum / Matrix is even less clear than Lemmy, and would make the project even more obscure).

What are your preferences in the whole question?

Full agree on Xonotic! Has also a somewhat active online play.

You are welcome! I can recommend Citadel Unchained, but if I were to chose now I would check out Bane of Oakenshade. Will give it a shot this week :).

Communism and Anarchism, I would also count various groups who engage for the rights of humans in general or for minorities (or for animals), or who try to practice environmental protection to the far left.

Hi Peter. The whole idea is inherently left, as the whole thing makes only sense if you doubt that capitalism automatically produces the best result by applying the forces of the market. If you don't, you just could strife to make the ideal, market compatible game and get rich, and it wouldn't be a problem.

But I do believe that capitalism doesn't work as intended: We have a environmental disaster at hands, are at brink of WW3 and have a outrageous global injustice, leading to mass graves at the outskirts of the "first world". All of this 30 years after the capitalists said that we have reached the ultimate peak of human history. What do you think is the harm that the far left could do?

If you want to make games outside of this capitalist system and your art doesn't live from the belittling of others, you are welcome. You don't have to make political art yourself, but accept that others give their answers and deal with those questions. As said, the concept is inherently non-capitalist, and right wing stuff is explicitly ousted - so the remaining answers are bound to be left or far left by design.

You are welcome, and thanks for posting here :).

-I agree to your opinions about MTX / RMT, and especially about block chains.

-As said, the money thing must be discussed - as far as I'm concerned, taking money for your game is okay.

-From what you describe and from what I know/have seen about your games you make ideal Underground Games in my book :D. Feel welcome to identify with the concept of Underground Gaming (that will hopefully become a scene) if you want. There is no need to do anything other than what you do and did.

#1 This part is what probably disqualifies me as underground. I am not too interested in open-sourcing my games at this time, and while the games I have released so far have been free, I am planning to sell my next one. Not because I expect to make a lot of money or because I am making it for that purpose, but because it feels like the right choice for the project.

Hi. OpenSourcing your game(s) is explicitly not asked. Underground Gaming and FLOSS are close related, but not identical. OpenSourcing video games is okay for some, hardly possible for others (who are working with closed-source engines or do modding), and some might have reservations against it for any reason (feeling that the code lacks quality/fear that it could be misused, or whatever). I believe building a community and linking non-commercial developers is by far more important than bringing people to create free/open source software (though I do hope that some people come closer to the scene via underground gaming and consider going FLOSS).

Also, even if you take money for your games, I wouldn't say that you aren't a underground game through this. It really depends what money you intend to make by doing it in first line. If you plan otherwise, I wish you the best of luck - but from my experience you make more money from putting your hat onto the street than by making and selling an amateur video game. The revenue for most of these is negative, and I don't believe that anybody will blame you if you try to come into the green area. Other thing if you plan to launch some big marketing parade or bundle up with a (indie)publisher.

If you make your game, knowing that it will hardly have any benefits for you, you shun the logic of the market regardless if you identify as an anarchist or not; I would like to add that Underground Games should be a left, but pluralistic scene. As long as you don't mind sharing the scene with political left people, and go along with the "mutual respect" (no bigotry, see #2) thing, you are not forced to be directly political as human or in your work to be a part of it. If you want, check out my games ( https://thunderperfectwitchcraft.itch.io/ ) - there are (if any) only very discreet political statements in them.

But the whole thing about monetization is something that I would really like to discuss within this community. What I have written are my ideas, and partly my ideals - but I'm willing to move towards other people in this aspect - in both directions (be it that underground games shouldn't be sold in any case, or that a stronger monetization than described by me would be okay).

#2 This seems like two different points. Bigotry should be excised, of course. I’m not sure what is meant by “developers and players are both participants.” Is this about the nature of games as interactive art, or referring to playtesting and feedback, or referring particularly to open-source development?

Without a person who plays it, a game can't a game - as it can't be played. If we make a game we should have in mind that the last step in completing it is done by someone who is willing to boot it up and play it. The sentence is in there to take the wind from the sails of those people who state that their group focused enmity (or bigotry, if you want) is a part of their artistic freedom and thous can't/shouldn't be prevented in an artistic setting.

#4 This is the point that I find most peculiar. I know that there are a lot of dead prototypes and abandoned projects out there, but every game is a work in progress until it is finished. This seems to imply that games should not be mentioned, shown, or talked about in the underground scene until they are complete, which I think is counter-productive.

Showing, Mentioning, talking about WIPs is no problem at all. But I would ask to not call them Underground Game until they are in a state you think they are a good, finished game. Maybe use demo or prototype as a substitute term that you can later replace with Underground Game? As things are very easy to go through atm it isn't a problem to post your WIPs, ideas and concepts here - but if the community should manifest and grow, we could (and should) create a separate board to discuss these.

I manually search through the Itch releases, and finished games aren't played since they are buried in prototypes, or even unrealized concepts. Nearly no hobbyist game developer has the nerve to go through these, and nobody who isn't deeply interested in amateur gaming does this. We shouldn't replicate this issue here.

#5 I agree that democratizing game development is overall a good thing. Some of the work that has helped that happen has come from corporations putting out products like Unity and RPG Maker, but of course using these proprietary tools makes your work less portable. It’s a tricky situation.

It is indeed. I believe that a lot of creativity is set free when people have these easy to use tools available, and would love to get them in - but I don't know how to address and reach them atm tbh.

#8 If this refers to mod support, this is always great to have, but unfortunately it also requires a lot of work and planning.

It does. But it says the scene is open; if you include mod support this is great, but if you don't it is no problem. You should - however - not mind if somebody creates a (non vile) mod for your game, even though you didn't intended it.

I hope I could clear some things up. What you think of it? Do you think the manifesto should be changed in some areas? Also, the Practical Questions Post I made also addresses some of the things from your post; it includes some thoughts about the selling of non-commercial games, but I think that the essential things are in this post :).

Good, and np. You can't imagine what takes I did encouter in the past few days ;).

Haha, hadn't this one yet :). Is this pure fun, or had you really problems to make something out of the term?

Opened a community to discuss non-commercial, underground games: https://lemmy.ml/c/undergroundgaming

Opened a community to discuss non-commercial, underground games: https://lemmy.ml/c/undergroundgaming

This is an excerpt of my series about underground gaming. The full text might be found here: https://thunderperfectwitchcraft.org/arcane_cache/2023/06/08/underground-games/

if you prefer, you might find a pdf here https://thunderperfectwitchcraft.org/arcane_cache/manifest.pdf

The text is licensed CC-BY-SA 4.0. This is intended to be a equal, emancipated scene, and I see my text rather as a suggestion about what should and could be done. It would be nice to receive feedback about the definition that I attempted; do you agree, and if not - where do you disagree?

Opposed to most other people here I would like to say that making your game support dependent from a software that 95% won't be able to install or use without getting a partly closed source DRM "app-store" software is - in my book - a bad idea.

Won't buy any games that have no native support.