manifesto

intro

As game developers we sometimes wonder how we can help make the world a better place.
Like many before us, we could use our games to convey our message but what impact does this make in a world where everyone has been aware of climate change for decades and yet we are still headed for more than 2.5°C of global warming by the end of the century?

Maybe it is time for our games to do more than just inform about these problems; they should be a part of the solution.


hardware

The gaming industry has always been driven by a desire for larger-scale games, more realistic graphics, higher refresh rates, and screen resolutions, leading to a never-ending cycle of hardware upgrades.

While this eagerness for greater experiences is inherently human, it is far from sustainable on our finite planet and is mostly driven by the profit-centric ambitions of corporate giants.

However, once their time is over, older generation hardware is often tossed in the back of drawers or improperly discarded, leading to air, soil, and water pollution.
The production of any new hardware not only harms the environment but also society. It obviously contributes to carbon emissions, increases energy consumption, and forces adults and children in developing countries to mine for rare metals in extremely hazardous conditions.

On the players' side, this constant need for upgrades perpetuates economic inequalities, as some people from low-income backgrounds or emerging countries are prevented from accessing the latest gaming experiences.

Thankfully, people on the more independent side of the gaming industry have been fighting against this trend by making less resource-intensive games that can be played by a wider audience.


software

The idea to solve those issues first came across when we discovered the idea of the bedrock platform: a single target platform that can then be emulated on any of your device, removing the need for any hardware upgrade as all the games targeting that platform will always have the same requirements.

The format of those games, known as a ROM, is self-contained and DRM-free by nature, ensuring the compatibility and ease of use. Using this approach, providing new content that can run on older devices will help extend our players' hardware lifespan, as well as fight waste.

While the primary goal of a software-oriented (as in made to run software, in opposition to video games) bedrock platform is "maximizing the probability that a program can be run in an indefinite future", this is to us an added benefit as our objective is to make games that are compatible with a wide range of hardware, both old and new, in order fight waste, now.


requirements

Each developer has different needs and goals, but there are some broad requirements that everyone who wants to try this approach can probably relate to:


platform

We chose the Nintendo Gameboy Advance as a bedrock platform for our first game.
Not only is it a console with which we have fond memories, but it also meets all of our criteria.
The GBA is a simple yet powerful console that has garnered a cult following in the last two decades.
This console boasts an extensive library of popular games, which has led the community to create and refine exceptional emulators and homebrew tools.
Additionally, the small size of the GBA ROM (a maximum of 32MB) helps reduce the needed bandwidth and storage space for both servers and players.


developers

As developers, the transition from large for-profit closed-source engines to simpler open-source tools was a refreshing change, it not only reduced complexity but also let us work on way cheaper and more lower end computers without having to worry about the latest engine update.

Tools and frameworks targeting consoles such as the GBA might probably be (with the exception of the already very accessible GB Studio) less easy to use for non-programmers than more mainstream engines, but their communities are welcoming and working hard to improve their accessibility.

Ultimately, we do not expect anyone to change their pipeline to make GBA games all of a sudden, games are hard to make and throwing away years of technical and artistic knowledge is likely not a good business decision.

However, we hope our little experiment might make you think about your processes and designs, that maybe you do not need as realistic graphics or as many entities in the game world you thought you needed to express the emotions and messages of your game, that maybe you will start reducing the hardware requirements of your games, helping make gaming more sustainable, accessible and human.

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Last updated: 12/03/24