Amount of game releases

[Daff]

@Zak

Stats on Amiga games:
http://obligement.free.fr/listejeuxa...miga-stats.php

[Amigajay]

All these stats are fine, but when you can’t filter them down i.e remove multiple language versions of the same game, then numbers aren’t realistically what we need.

If people want to know purely commercial games per Amiga platform, obviously this needs to be broken down into the five obvious categories

OCS Disk
AGA Disk
CDTV
CD32
Amiga CD

Then the ‘commercial’ side needs to be addressed, for me it’s any game sold at retail or mail order that entitles the buyer to the complete game, this excludes license-ware as this was 99% of the time sold through third parties, and share-ware where by a previous disk demo/part game is given away allowing the buyer to donate/send money to get the full game.

Next what constitutes a ‘game’. Imo a game is a single entry on whatever format it’s released on, i.e if it’s a double-pack (Overkill/Lunar-C) the entry is still singular.

I would not include floppy-disk game compilations, or CD compilations (i.e Assassins, Emerald Mines). Data-Disks need the original game disks to work and so should not be counted.
Along with obvious disks like applications and edutainment, the latter also has a fine line drawn between being a game and just a learning tool, in general i leave out if they have any mention of education or age ranges on the cover/disks etc.

Amiga CD is another grey point, for this purpose i only includes discs that do not auto-boot on the CDTV or CD32 and hence need to be loaded directly from Workbench.

Finally the year of cut off! As some have said this grey line needs a definite line just so we can attribute some numbers to this task, it’s not the be all and end all of numbers but simply to help and simpliy things, any numbers could always be added to the date later on.

For me i would choose the year 2000, in a lot of cases that year closed the door on the main Amiga Magazine still going (Amiga Format), the last OCS floppy disk game (Apano Sin) and speaking to a few people seems to define the line of now making an Amiga game is less for profit, i.e the user numbers have dropped below the threshold of making an Amiga game from scratch and surviving on that premise alone.

So going on all that here is the numbers what i think could closely match the above criteria.

OCS Disk - 3500-4000
AGA Disk - 167+
CDTV - 55
CD32 - 161
Amiga CD - 50+

[dreadnought]

For a quick look regarding this topic I usually go to Gamebase. It's very useful for most of the platforms since it is very thorough and only include 1G1R, so no duplicates, compilations, etc. It also has powerful filters for navigating the database (you can build a "View" using multiple operands and categories).

Amiga 2.3 Gamebase, using "commercial" and "is not educational" tags yields 4185 titles.

[Seiya]

However, multi language games (not the same game with language selector) should be considered as separate games. A game released in 4 language are 4 games (you have different box, cover, extra in the box).

[sokolovic]

Originally Posted by Seiya

However, multi language games (not the same game with language selector) should be considered as separate games. A game released in 4 language are 4 games (you have different box, cover, extra in the box).

Mmmm. I don't agree with that. Regardless of the language or the boxes, there is only one Zelda : A link to the past on the SNES. I would'nt country the french version as a different game from the japanese one.

[Tigerskunk]

I am proud and happy to create "Homebrew"..

[Zak]

I am not against Homebrew, but I recon you can't ever really tell, how many games people produced at home for their and their friends' convenience. Thank you for the numbers presented. I expected entries at Lemon Amiga and HOL to be not comprehensive at all.
167 games for AGA is a very small number. I expected it to be a 1000, but AGA wasn't as succesfull as I thought it seems. That's only around 4% of OCS games. That's really marginal, like as if to say this feature was almost unused.

[sokolovic]

Is Another World an homebrew ? It is a one man job, except for the ending music. Even the box was designed by Eric Chahi.

[dreadnought]

Originally Posted by sokolovic

Is Another World an homebrew ? It is a one man job, except for the ending music. Even the box was designed by Eric Chahi.

Back then it was called "bedroom coding". But he had a big publisher too, and the audience was multitudes larger.


So in some respects there are no differences between this situation and somebody writing a game and distributing it via one of the current publishers or online shop like itch, but in some others there are.

[Amigajay]

That’s why the term ‘homebrew’ wasn’t really used back then. If a game was released it was either free (public domain, cover-disks) or charged for (shareware, licenceware or commercial). It mattered not if a game was made at home.

Otherwise from the same logic the majority of 8-bit games would be considered ‘homebrew’ and not commercial!

[Megalomaniac]

Lots of grey areas. I guess you should go with what feels right, on a case-by-case basis?

I think the publishing method matters for whether a game is truly 'homebrew', as well as the development method. Things like Elite / Lords of Midnight / Ant Attack etc may have started life as one or two amateur developers working in a bedroom, perhaps with little thought of the game being a commercial success, but most (including those) were published by established software houses who did the printing / marketing / distribution in a more commercial way. Only a few very early developers (e.g. Jeff Minter with Llamasoft) did the entire process themelves - maybe it's no coincidence that Jeff did shareware games later in among his later commercial stuff?

Coverdisk games weren't automatically freeware as such, unless the developers also released them as such. Magazines like Amiga Fun blur the line even further, I don't think Amiga Action technically should have put games like Crazy Sue or Jump N Roll on their disks, unless they explicitly got clearance and they paid for them?

That leads to games which were commercial in one country but only released on coverdisks in another, e.g. Trex Warrior. Another World may have been mostly one developer's work, but he made use of development facilities which weren't available to an unattached developer (Eric Chahi already contributed to Future Wars for Delphine, and other stuff beforehand). Worms is much closer to the definition of 'homebrew' as Andy Davidson was a pure inexperiences amateur when he started on it.

[malko]

Originally Posted by dreadnought

[...] Personally I'd [...] count all games sold for money as "commercial" [...]

This.
But all itch.io "pay as you want" are on the shareware category (even if shareware means, in a common sense, commercial).
And as far as I am concerned, there is no hypothetical line to be drawn. 1985 or 2024 buying a game/program involve a commercial transaction.

[TCD]

Originally Posted by Megalomaniac

Lots of grey areas. I guess you should go with what feels right, on a case-by-case basis?

"Feels right"? That's the worst idea presented in this thread.

'Commercial' is a term that is way too broad. Companies like Kingsoft and Anco didn't cater to the same market as EA or Activision in the late 80s. The place where a game was 'made' is irrelevant, but how it was published (and marketed) was not.

The initial question was how many games have been 'released' not 'commercially sold' anyway. Now you can bicker about what 'released' means instead

[Daff]

Originally Posted by Amigajay

All these stats are fine, but when you can’t filter them down i.e remove multiple language versions of the same game, then numbers aren’t realistically what we need.

Just look at the list and we will find that all "multiple language versions" are counted as "one" game (f.e. Anstoss (On The Ball: League Edution, Carton Rouge: League Edition)

So numbers don't decrease.

Originally Posted by Amigajay

Next what constitutes a ‘game’. Imo a game is a single entry on whatever format it’s released on, i.e if it’s a double-pack (Overkill/Lunar-C) the entry is still singular.

Originally Posted by Amigajay

I would not include floppy-disk game compilations, or CD compilations (i.e Assassins, Emerald Mines).

There are no compilations in the Liste Des Jeux Amiga, only individual game.
If we add them, the total increases about several hundreds.

Originally Posted by Amigajay

Data-Disks need the original game disks to work and so should not be counted.

It's a list for all games, so these are counted.

Originally Posted by Amigajay

Along with obvious disks like applications and edutainment, the latter also has a fine line drawn between being a game and just a learning tool, in general i leave out if they have any mention of education or age ranges on the cover/disks etc.

All edutainment titles included are "playable" (f.e. they include a quiz). All others are not in the Liste.

Originally Posted by Amigajay

OCS Disk - 3500-4000
AGA Disk - 167+
CDTV - 55
CD32 - 161
Amiga CD - 50+

It's soo 1990's
Amiga games can be published on anything other than floppy disks. We are in 2024. :-)

[dreadnought]

@Daff: your database is truly amazing, but I would really love to be able to search by multiple criteria at the same time. Any chance to get the .xls / .csv file for it?

[Amigajay]

Originally Posted by Daff

It's soo 1990's
Amiga games can be published on anything other than floppy disks. We are in 2024. :-)

The post creator asked for game numbers for different systems, the fact 90% of Amiga games were on floppy disk, whats your problem? Plus 3 lines on my list are for CD-ROM games!

I know my numbers are closer to reality, there is no way there are nearly 6000 commercial Amiga games according to your numbers, no disrespect, but don’t come for me when you list things like ‘Pac Mine’ and ‘SB Mine’ 1-10’ and other Emerald Mines creators countless times on that list, and Scary Poems For Rotten Kids as ‘ commercial games’.

Don’t get me wrong, you have a great list, but all it’s all well and good trying to list every single Amiga disk, but it needs more accuracy and a good search engine to break that stuff down into good data we can all use.

[h0ffman]

A lot of people throwing the term Homebrew around in the wrong context here.

"Homebrew, when applied to video games, refers to software produced by hobbyists for proprietary video game consoles which are not intended to be user-programmable. The official documentation is often only available to licensed developers, and these systems may use storage formats that make distribution difficult, such as ROM cartridges or encrypted CD-ROMs. Many consoles have hardware restrictions to prevent unauthorized development."

The Amiga has always been an open platform, so really by definition you can't have homebrew games for it.

In terms of sales it comes down to two categories, Commercial or Free / Public Domain. A lot of the games you love spanning all the way back to the 8-bits and even being released today were made by people in their bedrooms, it's just they were picked up by a publisher and released commercially.

I guess you could try and split game releases by Major / Indie, but good luck with that.

[Zak]

asks > How many games were produced?
answers > When is a game a game at all?

[dreadnought]

Originally Posted by h0ffman

A lot of people throwing the term Homebrew around in the wrong context here.

"Homebrew, when applied to video games, refers to software produced by hobbyists for proprietary video game consoles which are not intended to be user-programmable. The official documentation is often only available to licensed developers, and these systems may use storage formats that make distribution difficult, such as ROM cartridges or encrypted CD-ROMs. Many consoles have hardware restrictions to prevent unauthorized development."

The Amiga has always been an open platform, so really by definition you can't have homebrew games for it.

Technically this is correct - as in, "there are a lot of homebrew games for my NDS" - but as a roguelike fan I have learned the hard way that once a word is captured then you might as well wave goodbye to proper usage.

Originally Posted by Zak

asks > How many games where produced?
answers > When is a game a game at all?

Welcome to the Weird & Wonderful World Of Amiga

[Amigajay]

Originally Posted by Zak

asks > How many games were produced?
answers > When is a game a game at all?

To be fair, to get an answer to the first part you do need to break down what constitutes a ‘game’ to get a clearer more defined answer, it’s not console gaming, there is no clear lines unfortunately.