Posted Tue Jul 19, 2011 3:52 AM
TBH, if someone writes a home-brew game it isn't free for them to do so. They commit their time to it, that itself has a value. Yeah a great deal of it is done for the challenge and for fun, but if a coder stopped working on a game when it wasn't fun, then I seriously doubt you would have many home-brew games of the caliber we have now. The initial part is fun, but chasing down those last few bugs, and minor tweaks can be a pain in the arse.
Some then after all their work and effort choose to give this away.. brill! and if you want to you can pay for a hard-copy or donate cash. No one is holding a gun to anyone's head to pay for it, the prices I have seen for home-brew stuff has varied from reasonable to complete piss-take, but the value of something is only what someone else is willing to pay for it. If someone makes a physical object to sell, that alone takes more time and initial outlay on purchase of materials, if it doesn't sell then its a loss to the person who has already committed their time and money. The small markup on a lot of purchasable home-brew stuff is probably still below the actual real world cost of the whole production process of that title.
Everyone is welcome to provide criticism of stuff, but saying that ALL home-brew is rubbish 8-bit remakes is a pretty sweeping and inaccurate statement, also not exactly critical. Nor does it help inform the developer what you like or dislike on the product.
Home-brew on the Jag IMHO is still in its early stages, thankfully it's building up, things are happening and being worked on, more than I have seen for many years. Some releases are going to be simple fun games, some may be groundbreaking (on the jag), we don't know yet, time will tell. Writing the whole home-brew scene off before it has truly found it's footing, that's just crazy talk.