Fangame
Encyclopedia
Fangames are video games made by fans
based on one or more established video games. Many fangames attempt to clone the original game's design, gameplay and characters, but it is equally common for fans to develop a unique game using another only as a template. Though the quality of fangames has always been variable, recent advances in computer technology and in available tools have made creating high-quality games easier.
s. The Unity engine
and Macromedia Flash allow fans to develop standalone games, as do other programs such as Game Maker
or any of the Clickteam
products (such as The Games Factory and Multimedia Fusion 2).
Fangame developers often select and use free and open source game engines (such as OGRE
, Crystal Space
, DarkPlaces and Spring) to help fans create games without the cost of licensing a commercial alternative. These engines may be altered and redesigned within the terms of their open source license and often cost significantly less than commercial options, but do not always allow developers to easily create high-end visual effects without additional effort.
It is also possible for fans to develop original game engines from scratch using a programming language such as C++
, although doing so takes much more time and technical ability than modifying an existing game.
to an existing game, using features and software provided by many game engines. Mods usually are not allowed to modify the original story and game graphics, but rather extend the current content that was provided by the original developer. Modding an existing game is often cheaper than developing a fangame from scratch.
Because of the complexity of developing an entirely new game, fangames are often made using pre-existing tools that either came with the original game, or are readily available elsewhere. Certain games, such as Unreal Tournament 2004
and Neverwinter Nights
, come with map-editing and scripting tools to allow fans to develop mods
using the engine provided with the original game. Games such as Doom are old enough that their source code
has been released, allowing radical changes to take place. A prime example of this is the modifications made to the original Doom engine for Sonic Robo Blast 2.
Another form of modding comes from editing the ROM image
s of older games, such as SNES games. Programs such as Lunar Magic enable a user to modify the existing data in the ROM image and change levels, character graphics, or any other aspect the program allows. While normally played on emulator
s, these newly edited ROM images could theoretically be used in conjunction with a flash drive to actually create carts for the older system, allowing the modified ROM images to run on the original hardware. A notable recent example of such a fangame is The Legend of Zelda: Parallel Worlds which was hailed by reviewers as a remarkable unofficial sequel to A Link to the Past. Other notable examples include Legend of Zelda: Curse from the Outskirts, Blaster Master: Pimp Your Ride, and Super Mario World - The Second Reality Project 2.
Famous fan mods (for example, Counter-Strike
, Day of Defeat
, and Pirates, Vikings and Knights II
) may even be adopted by the game developer (in both mentioned cases, Valve Corporation
) and made into an official addition to the existing game (Half-Life).
Excluding mods (which are technically not true fangames), the vast majority of fangames that have been successfully completed and published are adventure games. This likely reflects the longer history of this genre related to other genres and the availability of many free third-party tools or engines to make these games. Most importantly, there must an unwavering passion by a core group of fans which extends over years to overcome any obstacle encountered during the project's development. This sacrifice is best described by Britney Brimhall of AGD Interactive
, regarding their 2001 released a remake of King's Quest I, "I think a lot of people don’t realize when they initiate a game project just how much sacrifice it will require. Whereas most people enjoy writing a story or making a piece of artwork, most would not enjoy writing hundreds of pages of dialogue or drawing over one hundred pictures when they could be socializing with friends or playing video games."
s. Such shutdown has been believed to have a chilling effect on free speech, where amateur developers can't predict what a court will find as fair use
. The term "foxed
" is often used to describe these incidents, stemming from the original coining of the term from 20th Century Fox
's shut down of an Aliens
-themed total conversion of Quake. In the vast majority of cases, the original copyright holders have full legal justification to order a cease and desist
upon fangame projects, as by definition, fangames are unauthorized infringing uses of copyrighted property. Many fangames go as far as taking music and graphics directly from the original games.
A notable case in late 2005 involved Vivendi Universal shutting down a King's Quest
fan project, King's Quest IX: Every Cloak Has a Silver Lining
. It was to be an unofficial sequel granting closure to the series, which had been abandoned since 1998. After a letter-writing campaign and fan protests, Vivendi reversed its decision and gave permission for the game to be made. As part of the negotiations, the developers were required to remove "King's Quest" from the title. Conversely, fan protests for the shutting down of Chrono Resurrection
(a remake demo of Chrono Trigger
) in 2004 have yielded no result on Square Enix
's action to block the project.
Other times, companies have endorsed fangames. Very few companies have ever officially made comments on fangaming, however. This is seen through a Myst
fangame, called The Ages of Ilathid, where Cyan Worlds
, the original creators of Myst, had given permission to the creators of the fangame. . This also sometimes happens with fan remakes, for example Monolith Productions
has granted the use of Blood assets to be used in the DarkPlaces remake Transfusion. Meanwhile, Capcom
has featured Peter Sjöstrand's Mega Man 2.5D fangame in their community site more than once. More recently, Capcom Senior Vice President Christian Svennson has stated that, while they legally can't sanction fangames, they won't proactively go after them either. Current developers of the Command & Conquer
series EA often promote and feature fanmade games, maps and mods on their websites, even releasing programs and source material to ease the construction of such games. Most companies that don't outwardly promote or challenge fangames have in the past exacted a de facto policy of non-involvement or neutrality, officially stating that their copyrighted material may not be used without permission, but refusing to prosecute fangamers for doing so, in much the same way as fanfiction is tolerated.
Because fangames are developed with a relatively low budget, rarely is a fangame available on a console system; licensing fees are too prohibitive for fangames, even if the game is made with original content. However, homebrew
fangames can occasionally make it onto consoles with prolific homebrew gaming, such as the Dreamcast, PlayStation Portable
, and Game Boy Advance
.
Fan labor
Fan labor is a term used to refer to the productive creative activities engaged in by fans, primarily those of various media properties or musical groups...
based on one or more established video games. Many fangames attempt to clone the original game's design, gameplay and characters, but it is equally common for fans to develop a unique game using another only as a template. Though the quality of fangames has always been variable, recent advances in computer technology and in available tools have made creating high-quality games easier.
Fangame development
Fangames are either developed as standalone games with their own engines, or as modifications to existing games that "piggyback" on the other's engines. Each approach has different advantages, as standalone games are generally accessible to larger audiences but may often be more difficult or time-consuming to develop.Standalone games
Generally, fangames are developed using pre-existing tools and game engineGame engine
A game engine is a system designed for the creation and development of video games. There are many game engines that are designed to work on video game consoles and personal computers...
s. The Unity engine
Unity (game engine)
Unity is an integrated authoring tool for creating 3D video games or other interactive content such as architectural visualizations or real-time 3D animations. Unity's development environment runs on Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X, and the games it produces can be run on Windows, Mac, Xbox 360,...
and Macromedia Flash allow fans to develop standalone games, as do other programs such as Game Maker
Game Maker
GameMaker is a Windows and Mac IDE originally developed by Mark Overmars in the Delphi programming language. It is currently developed and published by YoYo Games, a software company in which Overmars is involved...
or any of the Clickteam
Clickteam
Clickteam is a software company, founded in 1993 by François Lionet, Yves Lamoureux and Francis Poulain, headquartered in Paris, France. Clickteam is perhaps best known for the creation of a script-free programming tool that allows users to create video games or other interactive software using a...
products (such as The Games Factory and Multimedia Fusion 2).
Fangame developers often select and use free and open source game engines (such as OGRE
OGRE Engine
OGRE is a scene-oriented, flexible 3D rendering engine written in C++ designed to make it easier and intuitive for developers to produce applications utilizing hardware-accelerated 3D graphics...
, Crystal Space
Crystal Space
Crystal Space is a framework for developing 3D applications written in C++ by Jorrit Tyberghein and others. The first public release was on August 26, 1997. It is typically used as a game engine but the framework is more general and can be used for any kind of 3D visualization. It is very...
, DarkPlaces and Spring) to help fans create games without the cost of licensing a commercial alternative. These engines may be altered and redesigned within the terms of their open source license and often cost significantly less than commercial options, but do not always allow developers to easily create high-end visual effects without additional effort.
It is also possible for fans to develop original game engines from scratch using a programming language such as C++
C++
C++ is a statically typed, free-form, multi-paradigm, compiled, general-purpose programming language. It is regarded as an intermediate-level language, as it comprises a combination of both high-level and low-level language features. It was developed by Bjarne Stroustrup starting in 1979 at Bell...
, although doing so takes much more time and technical ability than modifying an existing game.
Modifications to existing games
Fangames are sometimes developed as a modificationMod (computer gaming)
Mod or modification is a term generally applied to personal computer games , especially first-person shooters, role-playing games and real-time strategy games. Mods are made by the general public or a developer, and can be entirely new games in themselves, but mods are not standalone software and...
to an existing game, using features and software provided by many game engines. Mods usually are not allowed to modify the original story and game graphics, but rather extend the current content that was provided by the original developer. Modding an existing game is often cheaper than developing a fangame from scratch.
Because of the complexity of developing an entirely new game, fangames are often made using pre-existing tools that either came with the original game, or are readily available elsewhere. Certain games, such as Unreal Tournament 2004
Unreal Tournament 2004
Unreal Tournament 2004, also known as UT2K4 and UT2004, is a futuristic first-person shooter computer game developed by Epic Games and Digital Extremes...
and Neverwinter Nights
Neverwinter Nights
Neverwinter Nights , produced by BioWare and published by Infogrames , is a third-person perspective computer role-playing game that is based on third edition Dungeons & Dragons and Forgotten Realms rules. It was originally to be published by Interplay Entertainment, but the publisher's financial...
, come with map-editing and scripting tools to allow fans to develop mods
Mod (computer gaming)
Mod or modification is a term generally applied to personal computer games , especially first-person shooters, role-playing games and real-time strategy games. Mods are made by the general public or a developer, and can be entirely new games in themselves, but mods are not standalone software and...
using the engine provided with the original game. Games such as Doom are old enough that their source code
Source code
In computer science, source code is text written using the format and syntax of the programming language that it is being written in. Such a language is specially designed to facilitate the work of computer programmers, who specify the actions to be performed by a computer mostly by writing source...
has been released, allowing radical changes to take place. A prime example of this is the modifications made to the original Doom engine for Sonic Robo Blast 2.
Another form of modding comes from editing the ROM image
ROM image
A ROM image, or ROM file, is a computer file which contains a copy of the data from a read-only memory chip, often from a video game cartridge, a computer's firmware, or from an arcade game's main board...
s of older games, such as SNES games. Programs such as Lunar Magic enable a user to modify the existing data in the ROM image and change levels, character graphics, or any other aspect the program allows. While normally played on emulator
Emulator
In computing, an emulator is hardware or software or both that duplicates the functions of a first computer system in a different second computer system, so that the behavior of the second system closely resembles the behavior of the first system...
s, these newly edited ROM images could theoretically be used in conjunction with a flash drive to actually create carts for the older system, allowing the modified ROM images to run on the original hardware. A notable recent example of such a fangame is The Legend of Zelda: Parallel Worlds which was hailed by reviewers as a remarkable unofficial sequel to A Link to the Past. Other notable examples include Legend of Zelda: Curse from the Outskirts, Blaster Master: Pimp Your Ride, and Super Mario World - The Second Reality Project 2.
Famous fan mods (for example, Counter-Strike
Counter-Strike
Counter-Strike is a tactical first-person shooter video game developed by Valve Corporation which originated from a Half-Life modification by Minh "Gooseman" Le and Jess "Cliffe" Cliffe...
, Day of Defeat
Day of Defeat
Day of Defeat is a team-based multiplayer World War II first-person shooter video game of the European Theatre of World War II. As of 2008, the game is one of the ten most played Half-Life modifications in terms of players, according to GameSpy....
, and Pirates, Vikings and Knights II
Pirates, Vikings and Knights II
Pirates, Vikings and Knights II is a multiplayer team-based first-person action video game, developed as a total conversion modification on Valve's proprietary Source engine. The game is currently in beta development stages, with its first public release on 1 January 2007...
) may even be adopted by the game developer (in both mentioned cases, Valve Corporation
Valve Corporation
Valve Corporation is an American video game development and digital distribution company based in Bellevue, Washington, United States...
) and made into an official addition to the existing game (Half-Life).
Development challenges
Despite the good intentions and dedication of fan-game-makers, development of many fangames ended in abandonment. Notwithstanding the legal issues faced by these fans-turned-developers (see Legal issues), numerous development challenges are faced by these individuals when attempting to develop a fangame from start to finish. These failures are related to the lack of development experience, time, resource, money, interest, talents, and other factors. It is unclear what proportion of fangames attempted are never successfully created and released.Excluding mods (which are technically not true fangames), the vast majority of fangames that have been successfully completed and published are adventure games. This likely reflects the longer history of this genre related to other genres and the availability of many free third-party tools or engines to make these games. Most importantly, there must an unwavering passion by a core group of fans which extends over years to overcome any obstacle encountered during the project's development. This sacrifice is best described by Britney Brimhall of AGD Interactive
AGD Interactive
AGD Interactive , LLC. is a non-profit company given a fan license to remake Sierra Entertainment's popular classic adventure games from the 1980s and early 1990s.-History:...
, regarding their 2001 released a remake of King's Quest I, "I think a lot of people don’t realize when they initiate a game project just how much sacrifice it will require. Whereas most people enjoy writing a story or making a piece of artwork, most would not enjoy writing hundreds of pages of dialogue or drawing over one hundred pictures when they could be socializing with friends or playing video games."
Legal issues
Some companies go out of their way to shut down fangames, declaring them copyright infringementCopyright infringement
Copyright infringement is the unauthorized or prohibited use of works under copyright, infringing the copyright holder's exclusive rights, such as the right to reproduce or perform the copyrighted work, or to make derivative works.- "Piracy" :...
s. Such shutdown has been believed to have a chilling effect on free speech, where amateur developers can't predict what a court will find as fair use
Fair use
Fair use is a limitation and exception to the exclusive right granted by copyright law to the author of a creative work. In United States copyright law, fair use is a doctrine that permits limited use of copyrighted material without acquiring permission from the rights holders...
. The term "foxed
Fox Broadcasting Company
Fox Broadcasting Company, commonly referred to as Fox Network or simply Fox , is an American commercial broadcasting television network owned by Fox Entertainment Group, part of Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation. Launched on October 9, 1986, Fox was the highest-rated broadcast network in the...
" is often used to describe these incidents, stemming from the original coining of the term from 20th Century Fox
20th Century Fox
Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation — also known as 20th Century Fox, or simply 20th or Fox — is one of the six major American film studios...
's shut down of an Aliens
Aliens (film)
Aliens is a 1986 science fiction action film directed by James Cameron and starring Sigourney Weaver, Carrie Henn, Michael Biehn, Lance Henriksen, William Hope, and Bill Paxton...
-themed total conversion of Quake. In the vast majority of cases, the original copyright holders have full legal justification to order a cease and desist
Cease and desist
A cease and desist is an order or request to halt an activity and not to take it up again later or else face legal action. The recipient of the cease-and-desist may be an individual or an organization....
upon fangame projects, as by definition, fangames are unauthorized infringing uses of copyrighted property. Many fangames go as far as taking music and graphics directly from the original games.
A notable case in late 2005 involved Vivendi Universal shutting down a King's Quest
King's Quest
King's Quest is an adventure game series created by the American software company Sierra Entertainment. It is widely considered a classic series from the golden era of adventure games. Following the success of its first installment, the series was primarily responsible for building the reputation...
fan project, King's Quest IX: Every Cloak Has a Silver Lining
The Silver Lining (game)
The Silver Lining is an amateur five-chapter episodic fangame based on the King's Quest series, which was developed and released in free download format by Phoenix Online Studios for Microsoft Windows on July 18, 2010. The initial project was titled King's Quest IX: Every Cloak Has A Silver Lining...
. It was to be an unofficial sequel granting closure to the series, which had been abandoned since 1998. After a letter-writing campaign and fan protests, Vivendi reversed its decision and gave permission for the game to be made. As part of the negotiations, the developers were required to remove "King's Quest" from the title. Conversely, fan protests for the shutting down of Chrono Resurrection
Chrono Resurrection
Chrono Resurrection, also known as Chrono Trigger: Resurrection, is an unreleased, non-profit fangame developed by North American team Resurrection Games under Nathan Lazur's direction. It is based on the critically acclaimed Super NES role-playing game Chrono Trigger by the Japanese company Square...
(a remake demo of Chrono Trigger
Chrono Trigger
is a role-playing video game developed and published by Square for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System in 1995. Chrono Triggers development team included three designers that Square dubbed the "Dream Team": Hironobu Sakaguchi, the creator of Square's Final Fantasy series; Yuji Horii, a...
) in 2004 have yielded no result on Square Enix
Square Enix
is a Japanese video game and publishing company best known for its console role-playing game franchises, which include the Final Fantasy series, the Dragon Quest series, and the action-RPG Kingdom Hearts series...
's action to block the project.
Other times, companies have endorsed fangames. Very few companies have ever officially made comments on fangaming, however. This is seen through a Myst
Myst
Myst is a graphic adventure video game designed and directed by the brothers Robyn and Rand Miller. It was developed by Cyan , a Spokane, Washington––based studio, and published and distributed by Brøderbund. The Millers began working on Myst in and released it for the Mac OS computer on September...
fangame, called The Ages of Ilathid, where Cyan Worlds
Cyan Worlds
Cyan Worlds, Inc. is a video game development company, founded by brothers Rand and Robyn Miller in 1987, and best known as the creators of the Myst series. After Myst and its sequel Riven sold several million copies each, Cyan went on to create the massively multiplayer online adventure, Uru,...
, the original creators of Myst, had given permission to the creators of the fangame. . This also sometimes happens with fan remakes, for example Monolith Productions
Monolith Productions
Monolith Productions is a Kirkland, Washington-based computer game developer. Monolith is also known for the development of the graphical game engine Lithtech, which has been used for most of their games...
has granted the use of Blood assets to be used in the DarkPlaces remake Transfusion. Meanwhile, Capcom
Capcom
is a Japanese developer and publisher of video games, known for creating multi-million-selling franchises such as Devil May Cry, Chaos Legion, Street Fighter, Mega Man and Resident Evil. Capcom developed and published Bionic Commando, Lost Planet and Dark Void too, but they are less known. Its...
has featured Peter Sjöstrand's Mega Man 2.5D fangame in their community site more than once. More recently, Capcom Senior Vice President Christian Svennson has stated that, while they legally can't sanction fangames, they won't proactively go after them either. Current developers of the Command & Conquer
Command & Conquer
Command & Conquer, abbreviated to C&C and also known as Tiberian Dawn, is a 1995 real-time strategy computer game developed by Westwood Studios for MS-DOS and published by Virgin Interactive. It was the first of twelve games to date to be released under the Command & Conquer label, including a...
series EA often promote and feature fanmade games, maps and mods on their websites, even releasing programs and source material to ease the construction of such games. Most companies that don't outwardly promote or challenge fangames have in the past exacted a de facto policy of non-involvement or neutrality, officially stating that their copyrighted material may not be used without permission, but refusing to prosecute fangamers for doing so, in much the same way as fanfiction is tolerated.
Because fangames are developed with a relatively low budget, rarely is a fangame available on a console system; licensing fees are too prohibitive for fangames, even if the game is made with original content. However, homebrew
Homebrew (video games)
Homebrew is a term frequently applied to video games or other software produced by consumers to target proprietary hardware platforms not typically user-programmable or that use proprietary storage methods...
fangames can occasionally make it onto consoles with prolific homebrew gaming, such as the Dreamcast, PlayStation Portable
PlayStation Portable
The is a handheld game console manufactured and marketed by Sony Corporation Development of the console was announced during E3 2003, and it was unveiled on , 2004, at a Sony press conference before E3 2004...
, and Game Boy Advance
Game Boy Advance
The is a 32-bit handheld video game console developed, manufactured, and marketed by Nintendo. It is the successor to the Game Boy Color. It was released in Japan on March 21, 2001; in North America on June 11, 2001; in Australia and Europe on June 22, 2001; and in the People's Republic of China...
.
See also
- Dōjin softDojin soft, also sometimes called , are video games created by Japanese hobbyists or hobbyist groups , more for fun than for profit; essentially, the Japanese equivalent of independent video games. Most of them are based on pre-existing material, but some are entirely original creations...
- Game developmentGame developmentGame development is the software development process by which a video game is developed. Development is undertaken by a game developer, which may range from a single person to a large business. Mainstream games are normally funded by a publisher and take several years to develop. Indie games can...
- Amateur adventure gameAmateur adventure gameAn amateur adventure game is a computer game belonging to the adventure genre that has no commercial or similar official backing. The amateur adventure game scene emerged in the mid to late 1990s, when releases of new commercial adventure games became more rare and easy distribution of games and...
- Game MakerGame MakerGameMaker is a Windows and Mac IDE originally developed by Mark Overmars in the Delphi programming language. It is currently developed and published by YoYo Games, a software company in which Overmars is involved...
- BYOND
- KlikKlikKlik or Click is a term used to describe a software created with one of Clickteam's software products. The term Klik originates from the name of the first product in the Klik range of products, Klik & Play, where the alternative spelling "Click" originates from the name "Clickteam", the creators of...
- Microsoft XNAMicrosoft XNAMicrosoft XNA is a set of tools with a managed runtime environment provided by Microsoft that facilitates video game development and management. XNA attempts to free game developers from writing "repetitive boilerplate code" and to bring different aspects of game production into a single system...
- M.U.G.E.NM.U.G.E.NM.U.G.E.N is a freeware 2D fighting game engine designed by Elecbyte, written in C which originally used the Allegro library...
- XGameStationXGameStationThe XGameStation is a line of embedded systems, primarily designed as video game consoles, created by Andre LaMothe and sold by his company Nurve Networks LLC...
- EnterbrainEnterbrainis a Japanese magazine publisher established on April 1, 2000. Enterbrain magazines are generally focused on video games and computer entertainment as well as video game and strategy guides. In addition, the company publishes a small selection of anime artbooks. Enterbrain is based in Tokyo, Japan...
's game suites- RPG Maker
- Fighter MakerFighter MakerFighter Maker is a series of games for PlayStation consoles and Microsoft Windows. It features a robust character creation system, letting players even create animations...
- Sim RPG MakerSim RPG Makeris a tactical role-playing game maker and part of the long-running RPG Maker series, although the name is not a direct translation of the original name which is "Simulation RPG Maker 95".-Releases:There have been two versions of Sim RPG Maker...