ver the last decade, bedroom coders have

risen up: indie became a fundamental

creative force as game makers gained

access to the means of production, in

middleware and free engines, and the market, in open

platforms. Yet during this time, an indie hardware

revolution has also gathered pace. Sometimes labelled

as the ‘maker movement’, fellow hardware designers

have begun getting access to the sort of tools and

markets our software peers had enjoyed for years.

3D printers and computer-controlled milling

machines, once costing tens of thousands, now cost less

than a laptop. PCBs, the complex component-connecting

boards of all electronics, can be designed with free

open-source software and ordered in small batches for

under £10, shipped. Communities have formed, allowing

tinkerers, makers, and small startups to share knowledge

on everything from obsolete components to navigating

deals with Chinese manufacturing plants.

And one of the biggest benefactors of this kind of

hardware cottage industry so far has been the retro

game scene. It’s something Wireframe has written

about in the past: as consoles age, their disk drives

fail and their connections become obsolete. But many

individuals and small companies have started producing

drive emulators and video upscalers to plug that gap.

For example, with the combination of GDEMU and

the OSSC, players can upgrade their flaky Dreamcast to

play games from quick-loading, reliable SD cards while

upscaling analogue video and feed it laglessly into a

modern HDMI TV.

Meanwhile, PC gamers long frustrated with the

handful of mushy commercial keyboards can now

choose from a plethora of different switches and

layouts. Designers build small batch circuit boards

which are preordered by enthusiasts, while wood and

metalworkers produce custom cases. Others create

keycaps, build USB cables, and hand-modify switches.

O

Hardwarecore:

The Rise of the

Garage Solderer

Today, the range and quality of keyboards available is

mind-blowing; the best craftsmen are being drafted in to

create £800+ boards for esports and Twitch stars. This is

something that only a decade ago would have seemed

impossible. And similar progress is happening in the

arcade stick and custom controller scene.

These aren’t the most remarkable stories of this indie

hardware revolution: we’ve had a thousand bargain

bins of microconsoles (remember OUYA?) and the

Pebble smartwatch (fact: I designed the Pebble’s most

successful game, which reached millions and made me

£0). Raspberry Pi was born from these dropping barriers

• without it, you wouldn’t be holding this magazine.
  But the biggest success so far is Oculus VR: Kickstarted
  hardware, ostensibly created by a barefooted boy genius
  in his parent’s garage, later snapped up by Facebook for
  £1.7 billion. While Oculus has failed to realise the potential
  many had hoped for, it’s indicative of what is possible for
  independent hardware developers: to build what people
  and big corporations don’t yet know what they want.
  Hardware is once again as disruptive as software.
  So while we celebrate the indie software pioneers
  of the last decade, it’s worth us all looking forward to
  what is possible in the next ten years in silicon. What’s
  most exciting is not what’s already announced, but the
  possibility of what comes later. That’s to say: the promise
  of independent hardware as the capital overheads close
  in to software. Much as indie games have us playing
  games we never envisioned, could indie hardware have
  us playing in ways we never dreamed of?
  As our next keyboard is less and less likely to be
  from Dell or IBM, could our next console not be from
  Nintendo, Sony, or Microsoft? Perhaps it’ll be an indie
  console. Perhaps it’ll be open source and supported
  by the world’s bedroom coders. Perhaps it’ll look and
  feel like nothing we’ve ever considered before. Perhaps
  it’s being developed right now, on your street, by some
  young kid in a garage, whether barefoot or not.

wfmag.cc \ 03

34

WILL LUTON

Will Luton is a veteran

game designer and

product manager

who runs Department

of Play, the games

industry’s first

management

consultancy. He is

the author of Free-

to-Play: Make Money

From Games You Give

Away and has worked

with Sega, Rovio, and

Jagex. He is also an

avid retro games and

pinball player.