perfectedidiot2
Smash Cadet
- Joined
- Apr 6, 2009
- Messages
- 72
This would probably fit better under the debate forums, but it’s technically within the realm of Brawl so, though I have a feeling my wording is geared towards another audience.
This is gonna get wordy, brace yourself.
More or less I’m looking at the Brawl hacking community from an analytical standpoint. I feel a little compelled to present this after reading an article on gaming societies and cultures., I’m probably not the first to do so, and the accuracy of some statements may vary, but I might as well present my two cents. No one is entitled to agree with the arguments I present or to even listen to me for that matter, I am after all an idiot by nature and name. Anyways, with that out of the way let’s begin.
First, a history lesson, skip this if you‘re not interested, and take everything I say here with a grain of salt. Brawl was released a little more than two years ago and since then it’s community has developed in an interesting way. We originally started off as consumers, people who, in the broadest terms, simply just played the game. Most of the user generated content at this point were of gameplay videos, walkthroughs, photos, and the like. Then came the creation of the Twilight Hack and Homebrew Software, thus opening up the gateway for players to expand their ability from being players to generators of content in the form of hacks. Yet despite these opportunities the producer community in Brawl, in terms of hacking at least, remained relatively small. Most likely due to the relative difficulty of developing hacks. I believe at around this point, Brawl+ came out. This marked a time in which the community attempted to change the gameplay mechanics Brawl, under a standardized system, thus separating a separate game. Such developments lead to the creation of a hacking subculture in the Brawl community, and gave some players the experience of taking on the view of game developer. Then came Phantom Wings’ File Replacement code which made textures possible. Suddenly, the hacking community in Brawl experienced a sudden growth spurt, it was suddenly a lot easier to create altered game content for the masses. The increase in accessibly lead to increase in producers, causing distributor groups like ESH, KittyCorp, MeowMix, and StackSmash to emerge. Though the changes were purely aesthetic, the inception of file replacement lent to growing transition of players to producers. Then came the next File Replacement Code, and PSA, opening up Pandora’s box. Now the masses had the capability of viewing the game from a developer’s perspective, much like Brawl+ before it, but on a more public scale. From then on the hacking community continued to grow and it snowballed with the invention of development tools that allowed for more accessible alterations such as Brawlbox and Riivolution. Thus in a little more than two years the Brawl community has developed a rather large, thriving community of players who are also producers.
Is this a new thing? Not in the slightest, patterns like this are as old as gaming communities and probably even older. So why even bother noting it? Well first off, if you like the history of obscure things, there’s one for ya, and second off it interests me as how the Brawl hacking community developed. Mainly I’m intrigued by how it’s growth was possibly influenced by the transition from a closed source system to a fairly open one.
Now for those who don’t know what open and closed source systems are I’ll give a quick summary. Open sourced systems are systems in which the source code is open to the masses, allowing them to edit and alter it as a community, an example of this would be Linux. Closed source systems are the opposite, the source code is not up for public eyes or hands. As you probably can figure, Brawl began as a closed source system and has slowly been developing into a de facto open source system by the hacking community. Now this isn’t a new pattern, I believe the Starcraft community had similar circumstances. However, what I find intriguing is how this might of led to such a large hacking community in Brawl. Brawl probably has the largest hacking community out of any other Wii game and its still growing. Now I’m not saying that it’s the predominant community in Brawl, non hackers probably out number hackers by quite a margin, but it’s size is still considerable. Is the diversity and size of the hacking community due to the way the game’s code was steadily introduced to the masses, the relative size of the actual Brawl community, or just an anomaly?
Why am I asking this? Because it’s an interesting example of some of my subject material, I have too much time on my hands, and it’s might entertain a few people here and there.
I think I managed to be wordy without saying a whole lot…..there are probably a lot of ways I could have worded this different and there are some points still in my head, but I think I’ll just shut up for now, less I molder until the end comes.
This is gonna get wordy, brace yourself.
More or less I’m looking at the Brawl hacking community from an analytical standpoint. I feel a little compelled to present this after reading an article on gaming societies and cultures., I’m probably not the first to do so, and the accuracy of some statements may vary, but I might as well present my two cents. No one is entitled to agree with the arguments I present or to even listen to me for that matter, I am after all an idiot by nature and name. Anyways, with that out of the way let’s begin.
First, a history lesson, skip this if you‘re not interested, and take everything I say here with a grain of salt. Brawl was released a little more than two years ago and since then it’s community has developed in an interesting way. We originally started off as consumers, people who, in the broadest terms, simply just played the game. Most of the user generated content at this point were of gameplay videos, walkthroughs, photos, and the like. Then came the creation of the Twilight Hack and Homebrew Software, thus opening up the gateway for players to expand their ability from being players to generators of content in the form of hacks. Yet despite these opportunities the producer community in Brawl, in terms of hacking at least, remained relatively small. Most likely due to the relative difficulty of developing hacks. I believe at around this point, Brawl+ came out. This marked a time in which the community attempted to change the gameplay mechanics Brawl, under a standardized system, thus separating a separate game. Such developments lead to the creation of a hacking subculture in the Brawl community, and gave some players the experience of taking on the view of game developer. Then came Phantom Wings’ File Replacement code which made textures possible. Suddenly, the hacking community in Brawl experienced a sudden growth spurt, it was suddenly a lot easier to create altered game content for the masses. The increase in accessibly lead to increase in producers, causing distributor groups like ESH, KittyCorp, MeowMix, and StackSmash to emerge. Though the changes were purely aesthetic, the inception of file replacement lent to growing transition of players to producers. Then came the next File Replacement Code, and PSA, opening up Pandora’s box. Now the masses had the capability of viewing the game from a developer’s perspective, much like Brawl+ before it, but on a more public scale. From then on the hacking community continued to grow and it snowballed with the invention of development tools that allowed for more accessible alterations such as Brawlbox and Riivolution. Thus in a little more than two years the Brawl community has developed a rather large, thriving community of players who are also producers.
Is this a new thing? Not in the slightest, patterns like this are as old as gaming communities and probably even older. So why even bother noting it? Well first off, if you like the history of obscure things, there’s one for ya, and second off it interests me as how the Brawl hacking community developed. Mainly I’m intrigued by how it’s growth was possibly influenced by the transition from a closed source system to a fairly open one.
Now for those who don’t know what open and closed source systems are I’ll give a quick summary. Open sourced systems are systems in which the source code is open to the masses, allowing them to edit and alter it as a community, an example of this would be Linux. Closed source systems are the opposite, the source code is not up for public eyes or hands. As you probably can figure, Brawl began as a closed source system and has slowly been developing into a de facto open source system by the hacking community. Now this isn’t a new pattern, I believe the Starcraft community had similar circumstances. However, what I find intriguing is how this might of led to such a large hacking community in Brawl. Brawl probably has the largest hacking community out of any other Wii game and its still growing. Now I’m not saying that it’s the predominant community in Brawl, non hackers probably out number hackers by quite a margin, but it’s size is still considerable. Is the diversity and size of the hacking community due to the way the game’s code was steadily introduced to the masses, the relative size of the actual Brawl community, or just an anomaly?
Why am I asking this? Because it’s an interesting example of some of my subject material, I have too much time on my hands, and it’s might entertain a few people here and there.
I think I managed to be wordy without saying a whole lot…..there are probably a lot of ways I could have worded this different and there are some points still in my head, but I think I’ll just shut up for now, less I molder until the end comes.
![[TSON]](/data/avatars/l/114/114196.jpg?1360761019){kind=avatar}
