If you have been around for a while, you may remember this article. It was written in 2000, right about when games were getting to be really big business, but long after the age of shareware, and long before the indie explosion (which I would put at starting around 2008 or so). It is basically a screed against the state of the emerging AAA industry, much of which is still true if not even worse, and a call for smaller teams making cheaper, smaller games.
The term scratchware never caught on, but I think a lot of modern indie and hobbyist works fit into it. On the other hand, some of what we call indie projects are now as bloated and expensive as the AAA projects of twenty years ago.
The central summation is this:
The phrase scratchware game essentially means a computer game, created by a microteam, with pro quality art, game design, programming and sound to be sold at paperback book store prices. A scratchware game can be played by virtually anyone who can reach a keyboard and read. Scratchware games are brief (possibly fifteen minutes to an hour or so), extremely replayable, satisfying, challenging, and entertaining.
I think this is a little too confining, but it was written 23 years ago, when games were almost solely distributed at retail. A broader definition would be more suitable for the digital distribution era.
The underground games manifesto reminded me of scratchware. How do you think the two compare? What ideas do you agree with and disagree with?