Future of Fan Games ?!?!

Pokemon fan games are intresting stuff these days, however I have observed that they have lost their shine wth only few of them having impressive things. Pokemon Phoenix Rising and Pokemon Destiny are exception though, I feel fan games are good in quantity but lack quality.

They are also less popular when compared to ROM hacks (seeing they have more potential than rom hacks). What do think is reason?. How do you see the future of fan games?, which, I see in danger.

The community is full of kids who are like "hey, I wanna make a Pokémon game like (insert any more popular fan-game here) and be well-known and popular". But they don't realize how much work it entails. They don't realize that it actually takes months of effort and they actually have to do hard work. They jump in with no knowledge, and flounder when they mess something up.

To sum it up, there are only so few "good quality" fan-games because there are so few developers that know what they're doing, and are willing to spend a whole lotta time on their game, people who understand how hard it is to make a game, and take their time, learning what they don't know instead of running out to recruit a whole team to do half of the work for them.

I don't really see the future of fan-games in danger (at least not for the same reasons). It'll be like it always has been. Many try, but only the worthy actually make it.

The state of fan games is exactly where it's always been, with maybe the exception of there being more of them, given how many tools are avaibale to make such games nowadays. As far a quality goes, I think people need to realise that most fan games are someone's first venture into game development. They are obviously not gonna be top notch, and that's fine. I, and most people don't expect them to be. As long as I get a decent amount of entertainment out of them, I'm happy. Then again, I might be easy to please.

Bottom line is: pokemon games are fine and dandy, nothing to worry about.

We had a thread like this about two years ago, my thoughts are more or less the same. I don't feel like quoting what is essentially a 10 paragraph response, so have the thread with my post directly linked to.

In a nutshell though: The Game Dev section is fine, it's where it always been. The only thing that's changed was Uranium and Game Jolt Takedown, and even then both of those could/were making money off respective projects. Fan games and Rom Hacks are fairly equal in terms of Quantity v Quality debates, and that's because of how many people go into either one with outlandish ambitions with no experience. If they're less popular than Rom Hacks, then it's for one simple reason - you can easily download Advance Map, make Viridian Forest a 1-tile wide flash maze, and call it a hack. Whereas if you want to do the same with Essentials, you need to actually buy RPG Maker XP, or find it on The High Seas(tm). It's just more accessible to get into Rom Hacking, but neither is inherently better than one another.

The potential for Rom Hacks to be astounding is still there - a great story with 6th gen graphics and and 80 hours of gameplay does not a "good game" make. Games like Brown and Red++, Yet Another Fire Red Hack, Crystal Dust, Touhoumon Purple, Vega, and so many more games. There is so much potential in Rom hacking, some of it being unutilized, but when it is utilized, you get some amazing results.

I think Derxwna said it right.

Also SpartaLazor was a bit right right about how there are many kids who find the stuff nearly pre-programmed, primed for modification, but when it starts getting tough will run away. But I disagree that it should be discouraged, even if there are a lot of unfinished, abandoned projects. It is up to the developer. Most people begin with a pokemon game because they are so graphically simple it leads to the impression that they are easy to make.

Personally I grew up designing pokemon games because it was fun...and when you finally get a chance to program one (without any experience) is when some one learns a lot. Yes, a lot of people go into this without knowing much about what it takes, but at least the person learns. Just in like any creative field you will have people that pursue and rise to the top and others quit before things get too hard/demanding/time-consuming. Even if the person produces less than stellar game it isn't like it is bad (just like how an art student can start off making chicken scratch and hone his or her skills with practice).

This is a fun opportunity to have people come together and make games. This community is tough because I believe that everyone has very high standards. And you know, there will be whiners and there will be awesome people.

It may seem that this thread is not very active, but it is because most people are away working. Most projects here are completed on the side and rather casually over a LOOOONG period of time. Years even. Even if it seems dead, I think this community is buzzing.

I think that the future of this section is what it always has been - whatever the senior members decide to do next.

Unfortunately that has too often been a transition to inactivity, which does not do much to pave the way for innovations to this section. Many of the senior members move on to other things because this has always been a hobby and as we get older, we have less time for the hobby. This kind of leaves the section on a strange phase of stagnation, and progress and innovation comes in incredibly small chunks. We had the era of Neo-Dragon as a moderator here in the section where there was an influx of developers and activity. After that we saw Maruno step in and hammer out a lot of great work on Pokémon Essentials, and after that we saw the rise of mej71 and Luka S.J, where we started seeing more peripheral options for Pokémon Essentials.

This section has certainly seen its fair share of development and change over the years, and while it is nothing substantial, those projects are seeing more and more development elsewhere on the internet. With projects like Pokemon Unity, and Pokémon 3dPE, to resource bundling projects like Pokémon X/Y/OR/AS model ripping project which is also working with other great tools for future developers to perhaps try to dip their feet into.

I initially put the ball into the court of the senior members here because they have had experience working with Game Dev for a while, which helps picking up some of the more modern tools to start something from the ground up, but the truth is that anyone can start with these tools and the ball is really in their court as well. Anyone who is currently invested in this section, even as a hobby, has the ability to start something great. Even Flameguru and Poccil had to start somewhere, and all it takes is someone just as curious in making something.

I believe that Fangames are better now, with several completed games. Looking until 2012, we have only Raptor, now we have Island, Pyrite, Uranium, Gray Topaz, Metal, Alchemist and some others.

I can list some VERY nice fangames on development too, like: Reborn, Lighting Yellow, Digimon Your Digital Dream, Litharreon, and some others.

A huge disadvantage these days that the players complain a lot is the lack of mobile support. This is the biggest advantage in Rom Hacking over Game Development.

Still, I will continue on Pokémon Essentials.

The problem I always find is that, with so many flashy features, people are always trying to make their games stand out but don't always put the same effort into the story or graphics, etc. In ROM Hacks its generally limited to GBA games and minor modifications made to NDS ROMS which means you can't hide a badly made game behind flashy features.

Additionally, lots of kids/younger people, with little to no experience, try it out and become discouraged because of the workload. That being said, I've generally found that it can also be due to incompitence, they whine about no-one helping them despite the vast wealth of tutorials out there and, admittantly many of us have been there, myself included.

Ultimately it's the genericy of RPG maker that brings in so many fangames but some people expect it to be a breeze. Not sure what else I could say on that matter.

"I have observed that they have lost their shine wth only few of them having impressive things"

I'm wondering when this Golden Age of fangames was? There are definitely many impressive games being worked on/released within the last year or so, possibly more than I remember in the past. Maybe you're just noticing more mediocre games alongside these, which is just what happens when mediums become more popular.
*Insert Sturgeon's Law*

There never was a "golden age" of fangames, but a few years ago there were a lot more eye-catching fangames out there, many of which were discontinued and some of which are still alive. To cite examples, Blue Chrome was an excellent-looking fan game which was eventually discontinued, and Phoenix Rising is an excellent example of a fan game from years ago, still in development.

I'm an adult actually. I'm only creating a fangame just for the fun of making games. I have a non-Pokemon game called Thunder: A Hero's Welcome, but I ended up getting my paws on Pokemon Essentials and added a few Fakemon into the game to see how they'd do and came up with Pokemon Forestbrown and Scarletflame versions. I know about the programming.

It's actually pretty easy once you figure it out. All I did was read the tutorial and immediately, Missingno arrived to the game.