Do you keep your ROM hacking hobby a secret?

[Avara]

To kick the discussion off, let's be honest with one another (we're all friends here!) and admit that our hobby isn't exactly a conventional one. You're hardly going to be discussing pastimes with family, work colleagues or classmates where the conversation goes: "I like playing football and going to the gym, those are my hobbies." "Cool! I like reverse-engineering old Pokémon games so I can make my own!" For some, the legal implication is a point for consideration depending on your outlook and situation. Another reason, I suppose depending on your age, is the worry that you'll be judged for liking Pokémon; that it could be considered childish, although for lots of ROM hackers their interest in Pokémon has only ever gone as far as the games. Some people also think any kind of game development is awesome and worth talking about! During my time here I've met members whose friends knew all about their ROM hacking hobby and were fully supportive, which is brilliant.

Personally, no one I associate with in real life - not even my most trusted friends - knows about my Pokémon ROM hacking hobby. The main reason for that is because it's something very dear to me that I've grown up with over the years, and it's something I like to keep "just for me". No matter where I'm at in my real life, with family or friends or with other hobbies, I've aways got my own little RH universe to come back to and I'd never swap it. I'm definitely not ashamed to say that it's gotten me through some tougher times.

***

Do your "real-life" peers know about your interest in Pokémon ROM hacking? Do you shout it from the rooftops or do you keep it quiet? How come?​

 

[Homerzilla2k]

To answer the question: Not even a little bit!

One of my closest friends is actively helping me with my ROM hack and I have a few other friends with which I bounce ideas. "I'm working in a ROM hack" comes up pretty much any time when Pokemon comes up in conversation. I just like discussing design and Pokemon so I can't help it.

 

[Mab]

Everyone I know knows I'm a huge Pokemon dork and a couple of them know about my RH projects too lol. I've even gotten some help from irls in the past~

 

[BluRose]

when people ask me what my hobbies are or whatever, i say i have a programming project that i've been working for on/off again over the years with varying levels of devotion
it's weird to think that i will have been going on for a really long time and no real project started, as i'm still learning in a sense

 

[hackerofdarkness]

Not really. I often show my projects to colleagues/friends. At the end of the day, I'm always breaking something and they enjoy me telling them how I broke it.

 

[Pekin]

I actually kept it a secret for years, when I first started messing around with ROM hacking. It was only when I moved out of my parents' house and moved in with a roommate that I told anyone about it - my roommate was kind of into Pokémon himself, and he was super excited about it and even ended up designing one of the fakemon in my hack, Fakemon FireRed. Since then, I've told my girlfriend about it, plus a few close friends. It's still not something I bring up with co-workers or even my family, though, I guess just because it is so incredibly niche.

 

[mgriffin]

I'll tell anyone who asks. I'm not going to pretend I go home and twiddle my thumbs all night, and besides, I think a lot of the things I work on are relatively interesting! At least, more-so than what happened on last night's Love Island.

But I guess all my friends and coworkers (that would ask about my personal life) are into similar kinds of nerdy things, so there's little risk of someone thinking ill of me :)

 

[Fatih120]

Not specifically to Pokémon - just ROM hacking in general.
I can easily tell my friends and have brought it up in passing - but I typically never mention these things to relatives or new people I meet out of the house because it's just not a good topic starter. I have gotten bad reactions before from my sibling.

 

[Le pug]

I love letting people know that I've worked on two pokemon fan games. It's nerdy but that's the first thing anyone should know about me. I DM for Dungeons and Dragons after all.

This is a creation through love, time, and effort. I have no problem sharing it among my peers and family. A lot of my family have played it and loved it, friends, co-workers, etc. I've even met strangers at conventions that were talking about fan-based Pokemon games, told them of the games I created and they said they had played and loved my games. Was a minor celebrity moment and it was nice to receive the praise. Validated all the years of work I had put into it.

Never be ashamed of your hobbies.

 

[Tanya]

I definitely keep it a secret expect from my Girlfriend. She knows I'm into this kind of stuff and accepted it.
As for my friends and family, I never told them. For some reason, I can't trust them.

 

[Gavoca]

Tbh my brother only knows it (because he actually a rom hacker years ago)..............

 

[Splash]

Not really I hacked a rom before and was really proud of it. I even let my college classmates play them for sh*ts and giggles.

 

[AkameTheBulbasaur]

I've never really thought about keeping it secret lol. I've been doing this since I was 13 so most people in my family already know about "that pokeyman game you're never finished with". I also have it on a flash cart and will occasionally take it with me somewhere, so I've had people occasionally be like "whoa what Pokémon game is that?!" and usually the reaction when I tell them it's a rom hack that I've been working on is, "oh nice!"

I've maybe had like one or two people ask if it was legal, to which I say "It's exactly as legal as writing fan-fiction is." Which is true. Both fall under the category of 'derivative works'. Basically, you are totally allowed to create it, but you have to be a bit careful when releasing it because you can't make it look to official or it might get confused with the original owner's work.

Example:
Allowed: Writing your Harry Potter fanfiction in your middle school diary and never showing anyone cause it's super terrible to your modern day self.
Allowed: Writing your Ace Attorney fanfiction and putting it on a dedicated website for FanFiction that clearly distinguishes itself as for unofficial fan works.
Not Allowed: Trying to publish your Sonic The Hedgehog fanfiction vía either a self-publishing site or through an official publisher.

Pretty much every case I've heard of a fan game take down was when they strayed too far into the third example and it looked too official. Since I've never actually released my hack anyway I'm not really worried about getting C&D'd cause an unreleased game in one person's house is not really a threat to them in any way, so I doubt they'd bother.

Anyway, back to the original point, I've learned so much about programming, particularly low-level programming from rom hacking that it would be impossible to keep it secret even if I tried hahaha

 

[__fred__40]

I remember telling a friend of mine and he went to tell our other friends about it and I kinda become the different,in a good way, guy of the group cause while all of them were simply playing the games I was actually creating one.
The following summer my laptop was stolen and I lost all my data and I gave up on RH, and told so to my friends.But after a while I told my other friend, Manspart about this project I had in mind and how I gave up on it,but it was like "no man this is too cool,you got to start again!" and so I did, with his help , but has I have skipped town a few years ago I didn't have the possibility of telling my previous friend about it, I dream one day to go back and tell them that I have actually created a full rom hack.
Now that I'm in university I always sit in the back of the class and do some scripting or mapping to keep myself occupied(those Law classes are so boring) and I remember once a girl sat next to me(doesnt happen often) and I miserably failed to hide XSE from the screen and well, I'll let you guess the rest of the story

Back to the point, I'm glad I'm a rom hacker especcially now that we are in quarantine and I'm here alone in my house, I "met" some really cool people here in this community which are filling some empties in my life,I mean sometimes the people I chat on discord are the only people I talk to in the entire day.Still I wouldn't go tell anyone in my real life about it cause I'm just the kind of person who doesn't like to talk about himself a lot.

What I'm trying to say is that I really think it depends on the type of person you actually are rather than how you feel about rom hacking and if you'd be embarassed if some people in your real life knew about it

 

[Meister_anon~Master_o f_None]

Yeah I keep it a secret, I tell people I have a new hobby, and I'm learning some programing but I don't really talk about the whole thing.
I haven't really thought about if I'm embarrassed or not, I just want to deal with any naysayers or people claiming its a waste of time.

Also I worry that saying it out loud will somehow validate me and keep me from every actually completing a project.
If I finish and have something to show, then I'll talk about it outside here.

I don't even like saying I'm working on a hack to much really. Because right now all I'm doing is targeted research.

 

[Xero3C]

At first, I only told my closest friends of this project and they really liked it.

When I made significant progress and now where I'm very close to the planned release date, I told more people about my project.

I was a bit worried about negative reactions, but then I learned a few things: People around my age really like Pokémon, even if they don't play many Pokémon Games, Pokémon had some impact in their childhood. (It's kinda funny, that throughout the different stages of my life I already had, I always found friends who liked Pokémon)
Rom-Hacks are obiously free at charge, they can also be enjoyed on Smartphones and I use a different gameplay concept. All those formulas were applied to Pokémon Go and it became a huge success at it's launch. I don't want to say that my game's going to be as fundamental or successful as Pokémon Go, but you get the point.

And the other thing is that videogames are nowadays a way more accepted media. It's not just something for nerds.
And even if nothing above applies, some people will still be excited to play your Pokémon Rom-Hack/Fangame as they are curious to see what you have achieved.

 

[Mario60866]

Although I used to be super open about it, nowadays I pretend all my rom hack projects are cancelled because people were getting too excited about them when in actuallity I constantly struggle with learning how to code them.
I am also trying to avoid legal complications from Nintendo as I have been hit by them several times with other things such as having a hacked Hall of Origin Arceus in Pokemon White 2 (when trying to take it to Pokemon bank). They've also been after me for modifying my 3ds.

 

[jojobear13]

It's not like I keep it a secret. I just don't talk about it to people who have no interest.