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I will discuss only GSHI, but you may apply all thoughts to the 'Scene' in its entirety: not only is GSHI a key component of the hacking scene, but it is a good representation of its people and content.
GSHI is in need of two things.
-First, it is need of direction and definition.
Years ago, GSHI was born as a site supporting hacking devices that were corporately backed. This presented its own annoyances, but more importantly, it meant that there was sufficient monetary incentive to attract the dedicated time and efforts of highly skilled developers, reverse engineers, and hackers (all of which were each of which). These diligent and clever minds built the hacking systems that catalyzed the 'Golden Age' of video game hacking, opened the minds of thousands of young people in both a general and specialized sense, and spoiled us by allowing us to concentrate on the, comparatively, easy parts of hacking.
Today, there is essentially no corporate backing for hacking systems. When faced with the realization that, if we are to continue this hacking scene, we must develop our own hacking systems, we pooled our mental assets together, shared research, experimentation, source code, and raw, trial-and-error labor, and emerged with such systems as GCNrd, Artemis/PS2rd, CWCheat, WiiRD, and the like. These are great accomplishments, many of which are still ongoing projects striving for improvement to this day. But most of them are slow in the making, sit dormant for months at a time, and never reach the potential hoped for.
The obvious reason for this is that the veritable geniuses involved in the creation of such software often have to work full-time jobs, or go to high school or college, and in any case, they are not being compensated for their rather immense workloads.
I'm putting all this forth, not with the implication that we are going about this the wrong way, but to illustrate that we must recognize the main obstacle to pulling the hacking scene out of the ashes: that our pioneers of ingenuity are not being adequately compensated for their efforts. Thus:
1. We must finally develop a working system of donation, incentive-based task accomplishment, and paid requests for hacking system functionality, for which we will require a highly-interested user base, willing to make such investments and confident that the developers will produce a product worthy of their contributions.
2. We must aggressively build awareness in the general public of the fascinating, entertaining, and enlightening arena of video game hacking, including the need for more developers and better incentive systems to attract, motivate, and retain them.
3. We must actively recruit developers to the cause, both as the unpaid trailblazers we see today, and the compensated ones we envision tomorrow.
4. We must concentrate on relevant platforms, including both the obvious - current generation video game consoles - and other, more pervasive platforms, such as mobile devices (those running Apple's IOS, Google's AndroidOS, HP's WebOS, etc).
If these are accomplished, we will have a plethora of hacking tools, and the scene will become an entity of its own once again, not something that requires a cattle prod to awaken periodically, but something one holds onto as it flies. We must recognize that our direction is primarily that of enabling a hacking scene to give birth to the next generation of itself, by creating and facilitating the creation of hacking systems, and secondly that of actually hacking codes, to amuse ourselves, and impress and satisfy the scene and the general public. Hacking is perhaps the most powerful tool to garner interest from people outside or unaware of the scene, especially when the codes produced are unique and creative.
-Second, GSHI is in need of additional staff involvement, in the form of not only the planning of improvements and additions to our community and content, but in the form of execution of such plans. It is likely that we will need additional staff for this push, and I implore anyone interested in becoming a member of GSHI staff to send me a private message concerning this.
These two are the most important initiatives in GSHI, and the hacking scene as a whole. Concentration on and accomplishment of these tenets will provide a hacking scene for the fledgling hackers that resemble our current veterans in their infancy. Without progress toward these objectives, the scene will surely perish.
I am merely an organizer, a provider of ethereal lodgings for brilliant minds, a supporter of direction, purpose, and unity, and though I've dedicated a significant amount of my personal finances to the hacking scene for years, I can only accomplish so much without the might of the scene behind me.
Thus, I end this verbose statement. May we not fall backward into obscurity, despite all our potential and wonder, because of mere apathy and procrastination...
GSHI is in need of two things.
-First, it is need of direction and definition.
Years ago, GSHI was born as a site supporting hacking devices that were corporately backed. This presented its own annoyances, but more importantly, it meant that there was sufficient monetary incentive to attract the dedicated time and efforts of highly skilled developers, reverse engineers, and hackers (all of which were each of which). These diligent and clever minds built the hacking systems that catalyzed the 'Golden Age' of video game hacking, opened the minds of thousands of young people in both a general and specialized sense, and spoiled us by allowing us to concentrate on the, comparatively, easy parts of hacking.
Today, there is essentially no corporate backing for hacking systems. When faced with the realization that, if we are to continue this hacking scene, we must develop our own hacking systems, we pooled our mental assets together, shared research, experimentation, source code, and raw, trial-and-error labor, and emerged with such systems as GCNrd, Artemis/PS2rd, CWCheat, WiiRD, and the like. These are great accomplishments, many of which are still ongoing projects striving for improvement to this day. But most of them are slow in the making, sit dormant for months at a time, and never reach the potential hoped for.
The obvious reason for this is that the veritable geniuses involved in the creation of such software often have to work full-time jobs, or go to high school or college, and in any case, they are not being compensated for their rather immense workloads.
I'm putting all this forth, not with the implication that we are going about this the wrong way, but to illustrate that we must recognize the main obstacle to pulling the hacking scene out of the ashes: that our pioneers of ingenuity are not being adequately compensated for their efforts. Thus:
1. We must finally develop a working system of donation, incentive-based task accomplishment, and paid requests for hacking system functionality, for which we will require a highly-interested user base, willing to make such investments and confident that the developers will produce a product worthy of their contributions.
2. We must aggressively build awareness in the general public of the fascinating, entertaining, and enlightening arena of video game hacking, including the need for more developers and better incentive systems to attract, motivate, and retain them.
3. We must actively recruit developers to the cause, both as the unpaid trailblazers we see today, and the compensated ones we envision tomorrow.
4. We must concentrate on relevant platforms, including both the obvious - current generation video game consoles - and other, more pervasive platforms, such as mobile devices (those running Apple's IOS, Google's AndroidOS, HP's WebOS, etc).
If these are accomplished, we will have a plethora of hacking tools, and the scene will become an entity of its own once again, not something that requires a cattle prod to awaken periodically, but something one holds onto as it flies. We must recognize that our direction is primarily that of enabling a hacking scene to give birth to the next generation of itself, by creating and facilitating the creation of hacking systems, and secondly that of actually hacking codes, to amuse ourselves, and impress and satisfy the scene and the general public. Hacking is perhaps the most powerful tool to garner interest from people outside or unaware of the scene, especially when the codes produced are unique and creative.
-Second, GSHI is in need of additional staff involvement, in the form of not only the planning of improvements and additions to our community and content, but in the form of execution of such plans. It is likely that we will need additional staff for this push, and I implore anyone interested in becoming a member of GSHI staff to send me a private message concerning this.
These two are the most important initiatives in GSHI, and the hacking scene as a whole. Concentration on and accomplishment of these tenets will provide a hacking scene for the fledgling hackers that resemble our current veterans in their infancy. Without progress toward these objectives, the scene will surely perish.
I am merely an organizer, a provider of ethereal lodgings for brilliant minds, a supporter of direction, purpose, and unity, and though I've dedicated a significant amount of my personal finances to the hacking scene for years, I can only accomplish so much without the might of the scene behind me.
Thus, I end this verbose statement. May we not fall backward into obscurity, despite all our potential and wonder, because of mere apathy and procrastination...
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