I’ve been lucky in my incessant poking at the developers of all kinds of gaming projects, programs and sites recently.
I’m sure by now you’ll know that I’ve done this with plenty of devs: from Heroic and Lutris, to RomM and RetroDECK. With plenty others as well. My aim is to chat to the people who create the things you all know and love, and might use yourselves. I feel that it can be rare to hear from those devs. Rare that they get any of the spotlight, so my series of these interviews is my attempt to change that!
This time I’ve befriended and chatted to the dev who runs the site called EmuReady, which is a site dedicated to compatibility reports - what emulators, devices and settings work best for emulated games.
The developer, Producevity, was kind enough to agree, and I’ll share the full little Q&A I did with him here, in its entirety and without me picking and choosing quotes from him.
However, if you’re more interested in an article format, I wrote one up and shared it on Gardiner Bryant’s site (which you can find here with this link! - he’s been kind enough to let me submit lots of articles and interviews on his site, and posts them there)
THE BEGINNING:
Can you tell me about how the idea for EmuReady first came to you? What pushed you from “this should exist” to actually building it?
This might sound weird, but I have never been into gaming, this changed about a year or 2 ago when I tried the game Elden Ring. Maybe not the best game to start with, but it really showed me the art of games and storytelling. After discovering the world of gaming, I felt like I had missed out on so much, especially the games from my childhood that somehow never interested me back then.
Natually, I started looking into retro gaming and emulation. A lot of emulators not being as mature and stable, the compatibility Google Sheets were a decent solution the community came up with to share this information.
That said, Google sheets suck for information like this, allow me to list a few.
- They are not easily searchable
- Everyone and their dog has their own version of a sheet, for every emulator, every device, every configuration, etc.
- The same people (and their dog) are constantly updating these sheets. Having no archive meant that usefull information would get lost.
- There is no room for discussion and most importantly, no room for verification of the information.
So I started building EmuReady, being pretty new to this community I asked around and received a lot of useful feedback. In particular, Ryan Retro’s community and Ryan himself has been very helpful.
Was it something you made for yourself at first, or did you always imagine it as a public tool? And are you still running it solo…or have others joined you behind the scenes now?
I never intended to use it myself, which may sound weird, but I personally enjoy the tinkering process and it may even be more fun than playing the games themselves. But since Reddit is filled with people asking for help regarding emulation, it’s clear that not everyone enjoys the tinkering process and just want to enjoy their games. I like making things, and emulation quickly turned into a passion. So I might not be the target audience, but I do understand the target audience and this was my way of giving back to the community.
Currently, the development side is mostly done by me, there has been a couple PR’s from the community, which is a way developers can contribute code to the project.
However, there is a lot of moderation work that needs to be done, and I am very grateful for the help I get from the community in this regard. A user by the name of Drackool has been a great help in moderating the site, since every single report needs to be verified by a human before it can be added to the site to ensure the quality of the information.
Then of course, there is the community itself. Once a report is approved, it’s up to the community to verify the information. EmuReady has a voting/verification system in place, where users can vote on the accuracy of the information. If a report gets enough votes, of gets verified by one of the developers of the emulator the report is for, it will be marked as verified and show up higher in the search results.
The community contributions seem to be growing fast lately, with more reports coming in every day. That must be exciting to watch those numbers grow!
Yes, it absolutely is! I did not expect the site to grow this fast, it almost started to stress me out since this hobby project started to cost me 50-60 euros a month in server costs. It’s very exciting to see that we get 10k to 20k unique visitors a day, and as long as I can afford it, I will keep the site running and improving it.
COMMUNITY:
Have there been any standout moments or bits of feedback in your short site-life so far that stuck with you?
Yes, there have been a few, but one in particular. A user on Reddit suggested something like a “trust system”.
This is probably the most complex part of EmuReady and I won’t go into too much detail here, but there are essentially a lot of systems in place that work together to ensure the quality of the information on the site. Voting is a big part of this, but also the amount of contributions, and what information a user has contributed.
A benefit of this sytem is that it slowly allows EmuReady to become self-sustaining, since the more trusted a user is, the more permissions they gain. Being able to edit reports for typos, and having their reports automatically verified, are just 2 examples of this.
Do you feel like the people using EmuReady “get” the vision you had when building it, or has the community helped shape that vision in unexpected ways?
There are a lot of people that do, and use it exactly as I intended it to be used. There are also users who fail to see the benefit of this over the 7392468 different Google Sheets that are out there.
A lot of these users changed there mind, but EmuReady is an alternative, and in my opinion, a better alternative to Google Sheets. People can just use what they prefer, and I am happy that EmuReady is an option for them.
By all means, for anyone unaware on what EmuReady is, tell them how they can help!
EmuReady is a community-driven platform that allows people to find, share, vote/verify and discuss game compatibility for their specific device and emulator. If you are a developer, the project is Open Source and the community is doing a great job of submitting GitHub issues, so if you see something that you think you can implement or fix, you are more than welcome to do so!
As for other people, simply using the platform helps a lot, but the most valuable thing you can do is vote/verify reports to let other know if the information is accurate or not. If you find a report that is incorrect, you can downvote it and if a report matches your experience you can upvote it. This way EmuReady can prioritize the most accurate reports and show them higher in the search results.
THE FUTURE:
I noticed you recently added support for PC games, which seems like a nice move, to really be an all-in-one site.
That’s a funny story, haha. I was personally arguing against this, but the community was very vocal about it. I was worried that it wouldn’t provide enough value because of the sheer amount of different PC configurations, it just isn’t as reliable as a report for a specific device with the exact same hardware.
That said, I don’t see EmuReady as my platform anymore, it’s a community platform and with the amount of people asking for it, I decided to give it a try. Unfortuately, about 2% of all the searches and submitted reports are for PC, the other 98% is still for handheld devices, which still contain PC handhelds like the Steam Deck, GPD Win, ROG Ally, etc.
Maybe it needs a bit more time to grow, but I am happy that we have it now and I am sure it will be useful for some people.
What are your current goals for the site? And what are the wild, dream features you’d love to build one day?
The site is mostly feature complete, but as with any project, done doesn’t really mean done. I recently added a lot more quality of life features and some neccessary features to present EmuReady as a more mature platform. For example, it’s very likely that there are also a lot of users that are minors, so I added a way to report inappropriate content and a NSFW filter to hide NSFW content. So only users that opt-in to see these games will see them, and the rest will be hidden by default.
Could you see something like an Android app, emulator integrations, or even personal game libraries happening? Basically, what does your “perfect future version” of EmuReady look like?
Absolutly! And this is the part I am most excited about. The Android app is already in the works and I have been closely working with the developers of “Eden” (Switch Emulator) and Winlator (x86_64/windows emulation on Android) to make an integration with EmuReady. This will allow users to find a compatibility report and with a single click, open the game in the emulator with the correct settings applied. This is a feature that I am very excited about and I think it will be a game changer for a lot of users. The goal is essentially to make emulation as easy and accessible as possible, so that anyone can enjoy their favorite games without having to worry about the technical details.
This will require a lot of work, and it is work that needs to be done on a per-emulator basis. I am currenlty making the implementation for Eden and Winlator, but I am also open to working with other emulator developers to make this a reality for their emulators as well.
YOU:
Tell us all about you! Is this your first project like this?
It’s not my first project, I have been a software developer for about 15 years now and I love to build things.
This is however my first project relaled to gaming and emulation, and I am very happy that it has been so well received by the community.
(I HAVE to ask this one) – give us your fav games, maybe a top 5 or 10 retro game list?
Well, I don’t have a huge library since I only started gaming about 2 years ago, but I can give you a list of games that I have enjoyed so far:
- Elden Ring
- Portal 1 & 2
- Subnautica
- Hollow Knight
- Undertale
- Cyberpunk 2077
As for retro (or older) games:
- The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap (GBA)
- GTA: San Andreas (PS2)
- Soul Reaver: Legacy of Kain (PS1)
- Gravity Rush (PS Vita)
- Hotline Miami (PS Vita)
- Super Mario Bros. 3 (NES)
- Super Mario 65 (N64)
Are you an avid handheld SBC collector, like some are?
This feels like a self report, since I just mentioned that I only started gaming about 2 years ago. Don’t tell my wife but I have a few handhelds, I currently own:
- Anbernic RG35XX-SP
- Anbernic RG35XX-H
- Anbernic RG40XX-H
- R63A
- Sony PlayStation Portable
- Sony PlayStation Vita
- Retroid Pocket 5
- Steam Deck OLED
And one final thing of note, which he told me in chat after the questions and answers were sent back and forth:
Something I should have mentioned: all money donated goes to server costs, everything above that gets donated to other emulator developers and people in the community like TheGamesDB
If you’d like to see more of EmuReady, and what it is and does:
I know this one’s rather short, but again, I’m sharing this to get the full answers from my questions when chatting to Producevity. If you’re a gamer who loves SBC handhelds, then you might have some experience with what settings worked best on which devices. I know EmuReady would love you to contribute your findings to the site.
I do have more articles/interviews coming with other developers in the coming week or two, as well. So, I’ll share here as they happen (if you’d like)
…and I’m curious, anyone use, or submitted info on here to EmuReady?
If you want to follow along with my gaming words, you can find me on Mastodon, too:
